Randall Fitzgerald - The hundred-year lie: how to protect yourself from the chemicals that are destroying your health

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

READING THE SIGNS

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND

WIZARDS OF OZ: THE FOOD INDUSTRY

SORCERERS APPRENTICES: THE DRUG AND MEDICAL INDUSTRIES

BEYOND APOCALYPSE NOW

How to Detoxify Yourself

Modern Science Affirms Ancient Cures

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OURSELVES?

Over the past one hundred years, our species has been engaged in a vast and complicated chemistry experiment. Each and every one of us, along with our children, our parents, and our grandparents, has been a guinea pig in this experiment, which uses our bodies, our health, our wealth, and our goodwill to test the proposition that modern science can improve upon the foods and medicines of nature.

My awareness of what I will refer to on these pages as the Hundred-Year Lie came about gradually from a concern for members of my family who seemed to be on a slippery slope of health dilemmas. My younger brother had become overweight, apparently from the side effects of prescription drug use and a diet of processed foods. The excess weight facilitated the onset of type 2 diabetes, a diagnosis prompting physicians to prescribe still more drugs for his daily consumption. My father took the prescription drug Vioxx for arthritis and suffered a stroke, becoming one of thousands of people apparently victimized by this drug before it was withdrawn from the market as a health danger. Both my father and mother take more than a half dozen prescription drugs every day for various ailments ranging from thyroid imbalance to high blood pressure. Some of these drugs were prescribed to counteract the side effects of the other medications. Their total monthly cost of nine hundred dollars exceeds what my parents spend on food.

My sister had her uterus removed, at age forty-one, as a result of fibroid tumors. These tumors erupted a few months following the steroid injections she had received as treatment for a car accident injury. She has numerous female friends in her age group who have also had hysterectomies. Others have been found to be infertile. If this trend continues, she remarked to me after her surgery in 2005, we may poison ourselves to extinction, and I mean that literally.

Among my friends and acquaintances, all of whom are baby boomers like me, or younger, three are battling various forms of cancer, three others are in remission from cancer, two have come down with multiple sclerosis, one man and one woman have AIDS, two people suffer from Parkinsons disease in its advanced stages, two in their thirties have Crohns disease, and three others endure such severe bouts of migraines and food allergies that doctors say, only half-jokingly, they must be allergic to civilization.

The synergy of imbalances in my own circle of friends mirrors the larger patterns at work throughout our culture. During the three decades I spent as an investigative reporter for newspapers and magazines, my journalistic survival often depended on an ability to recognize patterns in the activities of people, government, and businesses. Sometimes these patterns and trends could only be discerned if I visualized the broader historical context. To achieve that detachment and overview, I would pretend that I was a stranger in a strange land, an alien visiting this planet and this culture to see if anything made sense.

The patterns and observations you are about to confront may seem so alien and alarming, so contrary to your comforting worldview, that you too may feel like a stranger in your own strange land. But please dont let this warning dissuade you from venturing forward. We all periodically need such jolts to awaken us to a larger web of truths that we have overlooked or chosen to ignore.

Like many people, I have mostly taken food and health for granted, at least until a medical crisis intervened to remind me that I am subject to the laws of nature. Once the crisis passes, once medical technology treats my symptoms (or doesnt), I return slowly but surely to my old habits of thoughtless eating and reflexive consumption.