1. The Truth about Bird Flu:
The most frequently covered media topic currently is bird flu. We are told almost daily that bird flu or avian flu will develop into a pandemic. It is only a matter of time it seems before the virus, which has gone from bird to bird and now from bird to human, will jump from human to human in its mutated form. (An epidemic is a disease confined to one area while a pandemic occurs around the world).
There have been three influenza pandemics in the last 120 years. They were 1918-19 (Spanish flu), 1957 ( China flu) & 1968. I have spent over 2 years studying the subject of influenza, particularly the flu pandemic which occurred just as World War One was ending in 1918. This edition could be one of the most important ones you will ever read.
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flew-enza.
( 1918 Children's nursery rhyme ).
If you have been following the daily reports in the media you will be aware that the pictures painted by medical, pharmaceutical & government officials is grim indeed. We are facing possibly the biggest catastrophe ever on a global scale, according to Dr David Nabarro, United Nations Flu Co-ordinator: “ I am almost certain there will be another pandemic soon, with possibly 150 million people dying worldwide. It could be a nightmare scenario”
On Australia's ‘60 Minutes' program on the 23rd October 2005, molecular biologist Graeme Laver stated: “the probability is that 2 million Australians will die from the flu when the pandemic hits. The world as we know it won't exist any more & very little can be done about it.” The opening scene on 60 Minutes was a fictional news reading in Australia of complete social breakdown with gangs running wild through the streets, people dying everywhere & riots widespread because there weren't enough hospital beds or drugs to go around. This fictional scene, we were told, could become fact if we were to believe the “best scientific brains in Australia ”.
On the same program it was stated that 2 million Americans (1 in 150) could die as well, which is a small ratio compared to Australia (1 in 2). This gets one wondering where these figures are plucked from. No wonder Prime Minister Howard called for calm discussion & for people to avoid panic. This is War of The Worlds stuff, where people rioted & committed suicide in The States seventy years ago when Orson Welles broadcast his novel over the airwaves in America .
The only hope we have according to the “experts” lies in anti-viral drugs such as tamiflu & in the future manufacture of a vaccine against the avian strain H5N1 (bird flu). Immunologist Dr Peter Doherty even stated that the reason so many young people died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was because their immune systems were too sensitive & turned against them, actually aiding the virus.
The average person (especially those in group 1 in my previous newsletter) would be excused for succumbing to this hysteria & panic buying as much tamiflu as they can get prescribed. But there is more!
2. Conflicting Messages:
Many individuals & organisations forecasting this global catastrophe, who are stating that the only hope lies in drugs, are at the same time casting doubts on the efficacy of these very drugs.
Dr Nabarro, speaking from the United Nations conference in New York in September this year & quoted earlier in forecasting 150 million deaths worldwide, actually said: “we don't know if our drugs are going to work & we're not sure vaccines will work because the virus mutates.”
Speaking in August this year at a World Health Organisation conference, head of Asian Influenza Task Force Dr Hitoshi Oshitani stated: “Avian flu vaccines developed in advance will have little impact on the pandemic. It may be impossible to contain”.
Another medical report, this time from the ‘Archives of Internal Medicine', Jan/ Feb 2005, reported on a study in the USA headed by Dr Lone Simonsen, which found NO correlation between increasing flu vaccination rates & declining death rates in any age group. It was long believed & advertised that the flu shots given annually to the elderly resulted in mortality rates being cut by half.
In January 2004, the Centres for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) in America , one of the most prestigious government health bodies, stated that flu shots had”no or low effectiveness”.
The journal Midwest Nurse Week in March 2002 reported outbreaks of flu in nursing homes where the flu shot rate was 98%.
Some researchers & doctors go even further. Not only do they question the drugs' efficacy in preventing deaths & sickness, they even blame the anti virals for worsening the situation by suppressing the immune systems of those taking them.
Dr Sherri Tenpenny, an Emergency Specialist in America , stated that tamiflu can lead to the virus mutating into a more potent strain. In a teleclinic broadcast in conjunction with Dr Joseph Mercola recently, she advised people to avoid the tamiflu & concentrate on healthy living. Dr Joel Fuhrman & Dr Ron Cridland from the USA & Canada respectively have also denounced the drug treatment method for flu.
From the predictions of the experts, the combination of a mutated avian virus infecting humans from birds & then jumping from human to human, combined with a defective immune system which, as Dr Peter Doherty asserts, offers mankind no protection at all & the admitted fact that the drugs may also be ineffective, it seems, as Dr Laver stated, it could be the end of the world as we know it!
There is however, a saner and healthier way to approach the problem.
3. Germs don't cause disease- they follow it:
Germs (viruses, bacteria etc) do exist, but they do NOT cause disease by & of themselves. They need assistance. They are not gatecrashers! Germs must not be equated with disease. Millions of people this minute are harbouring pathogenic organisms within their bodies but are symptom-free & in robust health. If germs cause disease why aren't they sick? They remain well because they have a high level of health & energy & are not toxaemic.
Flies and maggots do not cause filth and garbage. They follow it. Likewise germs do not cause disease, they also follow it. Countless patients who previously suffered severe flu annually, upon changing their diets and lifestyles, experienced robust health with no flu whatsoever. If the flu virus is the cause of the flu symptoms, why were these patients spared the flu? The flu virus did not go away. We are led to believe that our diet and lifestyle offers no protection against the flu virus.
In truth, health is the only protection!
4. Toxaemia is the Primary cause of disease.
In a nutshell, enervation is the depletion of vital energy, or nerve force. This occurs through a number of ways, namely poor diet,
lack of sleep & rest, overexercising or under exercising, overwork, negative emotions such as fear, anger, hate, envy, guilt etc, stimulants such as tea, coffee, alcohol & tobacco, excesses of all kinds & drugs of all descriptions. This is not a definitive list. When enervation occurs, the body cannot efficiently eliminate the wastes that accumulate internally, both from internal by-products of metabolism & from external chemical sources. When this elimination is compromised, toxaemia results within the blood & tissues of the body.
When the toxaemic state reaches a point where it is intolerable to the body, there results an acute elimination or crisis. This can take the form of discharge or elimination in any of the body's 10 outlets (2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, skin, mouth, anus & lastly the penis/vagina). The body's temperature will often rise (fever) & inflammation will be commonly experienced (redness, local heat, swelling & pain). In addition, extreme lethargy & weakness, plus loss of appetite (anorexia) almost always accompany the acute crisis, in order to conserve energy for the vital clearing. This acute process is what is commonly called illness or disorder by the average person & by the medical fraternity. In truth, there is nothing disorderly about it. It is natural AND it is beneficial. It is reparative in nature, defensive & remedial & is in fact life-saving!!
5. Old Wisdom:
This understanding of the body's intrinsic & purposeful intelligence has been known for centuries. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, championed the body's innate capacity for self-healing.
Many researchers and practitioners have realised this truth & spoken out, only to incur the wrath of the medical, & of late, pharmaceutical professions.
In the middle of the 19th century many medical doctors argued that diseases were not disorders, but expressions of defence & repair against some internal imbalance. Dr Isaac Jennings stated in 1864 that health & disease were “controlled by express law”.
Dr Russell Trall in 1880 stated in his address to his medical colleagues at the Smithsonian Institute “disease is a process of purification & I do not wish to subdue it. I would not repress the remedial action -it is the vital stuggle in self-defence”. This famous address was put in book form titled “The true Healing Art”. At this address, he challenged any medical doctor to publicly debate with him the efficacy of his views versus the medical view of disease & the results they respectively got from their treatments. For 10 years this challenge went unaccepted, while hundreds of thousands of people around the world died having their cholera, typhoid, scarlet fever & influenza symptoms vigorously suppressed from drugging & feeding.
There were many others who spoke out against the practices of drugging, bleeding & feeding the acutely sick. Drs Thomas Low Nichols, James C. Jackson, Harriet Austin, Charles Page, Robert Walter, Susanna Dodds, Felix Oswald were also vocal in their condemnation of the medical treatment of infectious & acute illnesses. These men & women courageously went against the standard treatment at the time of drugging, bleeding & feeding acutely sick patients. As conditions like cholera, typhoid & other diseases were cutting a swathe through those who received strong medical intervention, the mortality rate of those who were cared for by the few enlightened doctors was almost nil.
Dr John Tilden said in 1921 in his book “Impaired Health: Its Cause & Cure” about the following “disorders”: Typhoid (pp8-9) - “feeding & drugging will prolong the disease twice to three times the duration it will have on the drugless & foodless treatment. This no doubt sounds exceedingly radical even to those liberal-minded physicians”; smallpox (p17) - “ the patient should be given plenty of cold water & nothing else until the temperature has gone down”; scarlet fever (p26) - “if I should feed broths & fruit, I should not expect to cut the disease short. There should not be any fruit juice fed until the temperature has reduced. As for drugs, they can do nothing except to complicate the case”; measles & whooping cough (p34) - “the mortality is due to the care & treatment. No food should be given”; influenza (p37) - “positively no food or drugs are to be given in such cases. If this plan is carried out, there will be no complications & the disease- even the very worst forms of it- will terminate in one week. Such symptoms as delirium,, spasm & peritonitis etc can be developed only in those patients who are fed & medicated”.
More recently, paediatrician Dr Robert Mendelsohn wrote in his book ‘How to Raise a Healthy Child': “let me remind you again that the fever associated with a disease is a mechanism the body employs to cure itself. It is unwise to interfere with it. Fevers below 105 do not pose a significant risk. The penchant of doctors to prescribe drugs for the reduction of fever is one that I find appalling. Every doctor learns that for every degree of rise in temperature the rate of travel of the disease- fighting leukocytes in the bloodstream is doubled. This process is known as leucotaxis. I can't comprehend why a doctor would want to put the brakes on a mechanism that is striving to make his patient well”. (p124).
Dr Herbert Benson in his book ‘Timeless Healing' says on p253 “As natural as it is for our bodies to heal us, it goes against the grain to let them do so. The prospect of ‘not doing something' is very threatening. So we neglect the substantial therapeutic rewards of watchful waiting”.
In ‘The Economist' journal of December 10th, 1994 , Dr Randolph Nesse from the University of Michigan stated “drugs & technologies may impair the body's natural mending processes”. Prolonged & watchful observation may be “preferable to our societal expectation & medical norm of immediate intervention”.
A most revealing finding was reported in the book ‘Organ Metabolism & Nutrition: Ideas for future Critical Care', edited by Kinney & Tucker in 1994. Under the subject “Fever: Metabolic Asset or Liability?” the author of the study Matthew Kluger studied the role of fever in different animals. When iguana lizards, goats & rabbits were given induced fevers, one group was given anti-pyretic drugs (to stop the fevers) & the other was allowed to run the fever. In all animals the mortality rate increased when the fevers were drug-suppressed. “Fever resulted in enhanced survival rate… & the results of correlation studies are generally consistent with the theory that fever has a beneficial function… suggesting that fever might lead to the inactivation of viruses” (p97).
6. The real reasons so many people died of Spanish Flu :
‘After War, comes Plague!'
Chinese proverb
In the Spanish Flu pandemic immediately after WW1 in which 21 million lives were lost, the conditions at the time are crucial to a full understanding as to the tragedy.
In ‘Plague of the Spanish Lady', author & researcher Richard Collier states: “ for millions, few had electric power, gas, running water, sewage or septic tanks, baths…..most often on a farm girls slept three to a bed, the boys with the hired men. There were no refrigerators & in winter families subsisted on cured ham, canned beef & pickles, potatoes & root vegetables stored in the cellar…..It was a hungry world. In England to conserve poultry, they were shooting foxes. One meagre slice of bread was a Berlin office worker's dinner & in America Edward Hoover exhorted people to ‘Hooverise'- to observe the ‘gospel of the clean plate'. This hunger would only intensify for the millions weakened & emaciated by four fears of privation” (pp16-18). These were the social conditions at the end of WW1.
As people started getting symptoms of influenza, things were made worse by people reciting the nursery rhyme quoted at the beginning of this newsletter. They literally locked themselves up, nailing down windows, closing doors, even “blocking the keyholes up” (p76), so scared were the people of ‘in-flew-enza'. “A little fresh air could be fatal” warned a farmer when writing to his relatives.
As more people fell sick with a vast array of symptoms, from skin to lung to bowel to nervous system, the common denominator was fever & anorexia (loss of appetite). All symptoms were ruthlessly suppressed by whatever drugs were available. These included alcohol, falsely believed (not unlike today) to be health promoting, arsenic, calomel (mercury) by mouth & by injection, quinine, strychnine, diphtheria anti-toxin & anti-tetanus & anti-meningitis serums. People were encouraged to “do, try & take” the weirdest things- “go to bed between wet sheets”; “ take fluid nourishment every 2 hours”; in Melbourne Hospital, boys were offered five shillings for every hundred black leaches delivered to the reception , in order to “ bleed the patients back to health” (p219).
One Harley Street doctor, Edward Turner, emphatically stated that patients should be “drenched” with the new wonder drug aspirin,” twenty grains an hour for twelve hours non-stop & every 2 hours thereafter”.
Even in 1918-19 the knee jerk reaction to “cure” all patients with symptom-suppressing drugs met with some criticism. “This is poly-pharmacy run riot” lamented Dr James Herrick of Chicago 's Presbyterian Hospital , (p106).
As soon as someone developed a temperature, they were force-fed & medicated. To drink milk & whisky & eat 4 raw eggs was a common prescription if the articles could be procured. Hospitals were described as “an inferno of sick & suffering” by one nurse in Alberta , America . One sign on the wall of a hospital pronounced: “Castor Oil to be given immediately to Incoming patients” (p113).
The very sick patients were treated even more severely, many being “debarred from even fluids” (p214). They were forced to inhale burning sulphur for twelve seconds in emergency inhalation chambers. All the Armed Forces were forced to take every conceivable medicinal precaution including passing through fumigation chambers. It is no wonder the morbidity (sickness) & mortality rates amongst the armed forces was much higher than in the average population.
(As an aside, one seriously sick youngster who recovered after one week of delirium in late 1918 to later delight the world with his vision was Walter Elias Disney).
By far the main cause of death was related to the pre-existing conditions at the time, which saw most people quite enervated & toxaemic, coupled with the suppression of the fevers & other reparative symptoms with drugs, food & other forcing measures.
In fact, there were some encouraging examples of the body's simple requirements & the very favourable results which arise when those requirements were provided. In Framingham , America , patients under the care of Surgeon-General William Brooks were kept outdoors in tents, with fresh air, a fruit & water diet & only 2 drugs sparingly used-Dover's powder & iodide of lime. The results were “daily producing miraculous results” (p79).
There were a few similar examples but in the main the treatments were tragically suppressive.
7. HAS MUCH CHANGED?
Fast track to 2005 & the pessimistic prognostications of the impending avian flu (which is closely related to the Spanish flu strain of 1918-19) by the leading medical, government & pharmaceutical officials.
Is the advice much different than 80 years ago? What will they have people do if they experience fever or other symptoms?
Stop the fever! Suppress the cough! Inject to stop the diarrhoea! The treatment protocol has not changed, just the drugs used. The body is still viewed as having a disorder. The only disorder is the confused medical philosophy that suppresses the body's vital, life-saving functions and regards fever as an enemy to health which has to be medicated. My friends, who read this newsletter, please weigh carefully the subject discussed.
Your body gets a fever BECAUSE IT NEEDS ONE! You vomit or get diarrhoea because YOU NEED TO. These are essential crises where the body is WORKING AS DESIGNED! They are just as natural as an earthquake but they are not NORMAL! Understood & managed intelligently, they will lead to a quick recovery & better health, especially if the dietary & lifestyle advice given in this & other hygienic literature is followed. Such symptoms can be very uncomfortable & even painful but they have a job to do. You were sick (toxic) before you got sick (symptoms) & by ‘doing nothing intelligently' you are now getting well (less toxic).
The world is sadly full of tired, toxaemic people, either having an excess or a deficiency of foods. Two-thirds of the western world is overweight or obese. We are drowning in drugs. Kids are placed on more medication than ever in man's history. The same with the elderly. There is no doubt that stress, unhappiness & anxiety are widespread. Every deviation from normal physiology is medicated.
Become a discerning consumer & make intelligent choices regarding your daily behaviour- what you eat, drink, think & how you live. Don't medicate as a first resort but let your own bodily powers have “first right of refusal”.
Do not necessarily believe the supposed experts who predict 2 million Australians dead from bird flu or the health official who states you need a flu vaccine because your immune system is deranged. Question the doctor who wants to lower your fever or drive another symptom deeper within the body to later manifest as chronic disease.
If & when there arises a situation in society where a large number of people become acutely sick (epidemic or pandemic), my advice is to follow the road less travelled. By looking after yourself with a predominantly plant-based diet, by not imbibing social poisons mentioned in previous newsletters, by getting adequate activity, rest & sleep & by engaging in constructive & enjoyable hobbies & activities, you will more than likely be only a spectator to the mass of illness around you.
If in the event you also find yourself feverish & unwell, understand your body is not out of control or chaotic. It is working as designed. You then let the fever do the job it has to, do not eat anything at all until the temperature has returned to normal & rest as much as you need to. Avoid stimulation. Do not routinely suppress the symptoms. Get fresh air & drink only water. Stopping the fever through any medication is dangerous.
This is a lengthy newsletter I realise & it's contents was originally going to be shared some time in the future. With the explosion of media interest in the bird flu & the resultant fear-based pronouncements already mentioned, I felt it needed to be covered immediately.
With Faith in Health,
Greg Fitzgerald
