Sarafina Foods & Supplies

More Knowledge More Power

                               M a r i a n d i n a

THE TREE OF LIFE AND OF KNOWLEDGE

· Without plants no life can exist as we know it

· We need plants as they are made

· The tree of knowledge of good and evil

· Vitamins and minerals

· Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize lauriet, recommends vitamins

· Disease vectors are healthier than humans

· Cancer can be treated by promoting oxidation Vs fermentation

· MEDICINAL HERBS AND TREE

· Why are primates in forests healthier than us?

· HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORGANOPHOSPHATE POISONS
 
 

Without plants no life can exist as we know it

When God created this world, he first made the earth and then he made the plants. The plants got their nutrients from water and the earth’s crust that contains the minerals that are required to make the plant grow and convert solar energy to nutrients that we call fruits and vegetables.

In the vegetable and fruits, we find the necessary organic and inorganic components that mix with earth’s crust when the plant dies. It is also the source of nutrients for both animals and human beings. As a matter of fact, if we go back to the Bible, which is the source of knowledge, we find, in Genesis 3:18-19, that the earth will produce weeds and thorns and that you will have to eat wild plants. This is the source of body health nutrients and the prevention of diseases. We tend to take this as a myth with no real truth in the actual facts as we know them now and yet this is most likely the real truth. If you analyse the human body, you find that flesh is made out of organic and inorganic matter. The complete analysis will reveal that the human body is actually made of the same composition as plants are made of organic and inorganic minerals and water in just the same way as the plants which goes to confirm that the body’s composition is just like the dust which is made up of organic and inorganic matter from plants as we know them now. We find when we analyse the blood and body tissues, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper and so on, just like in any sample of dust.

Again in Genesis we find that in order to keep alive, man was commanded to eat of the plants in form of herbs, fruits and other plant structures, in order to keep alive and maintain growth and prevent starvation and aging. It is plants that we find the means by which we maintain our immune system in a proper working order. Plants provide the necessary nutrients that replenish our body requirements in form of vitamins, minerals, various types of enzymes and antioxidants that clean our bodies of impurities and prevent bacteria or viruses from endangering our lives.

If we change the nature of plant foods and fruit through purification or cooking, we may reduce the quantities of the necessary nutrients in the plants as modern man has undertaken to do for the sake of modernisation.What I did was to compose something that would be useful, from nature.Examine the components of a leaf and you will find hundreds of different nutrients, like vitamins, enzymes, minerals and others that have nutritional and medicinal value. These nutrients are essential for life, and they work in synergy with each other. It may be vitamin A or B, but if we purify down to a tablet just these few we think are useful we are leaving out those other vitamins, all of which have a vital function in the body. These are just a few examples. Each suits a particular requirement of a person with reduced immunity, reducing cellular aging as a result of oxidation, and so on.My own theory is that if we could compose our food by taking a small amount of plants and herbs and put them together in our daily food, we would be getting every possible nutrient in nature that prevents every imaginable disease that we know can affect man.

As a matter of fact, all diseases attack man just because he’s got a nutritional deficiency of some sort; for example, if we had a little bit of the plant from which degoxin, the medication for heart disease is obtained, then no one would suffer from heart failure.The same applies to the fact that if we had sufficient vitamin C and B in our food, we would hardly have to use any other medication because these series are capable of building the immune system to such a strong position that most bacteria and viruses could not be able to overcome it. This has been proven scientifically by use of mega-dosage of these particular vitamins that are found naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables.

We need plants as they are made.

When we discovered fire, we thought we had made progress, but, as a matter of fact, we created major problems for our health by reducing the value of our foods through cooking and purification. When grain is harvested, it should have been, in most cases, carried through processing with minimum loss of nutrients. What we have tended to do, is to purify grain to make white flour, and in so doing, we have lost the germ and coverings of most of our grain that contain the vitamins and minerals and we choose to go on with just the carbohydrate. The carbohydrates that have reduced nutritional value.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil

If you go back to the biblical text, Genesis 3:4-5,

“the snake replied, that’s not true, you will not die. God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad.”,

you discover more information as the following example will show.
“When the Bible says we ate of the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, that is not what annoyed God; that is like knowing that a book is good and if you read it; nobody blames you. But if you know a book is bad, and you learn the knowledge in it, then that’s bad. A good person should avoid reading bad books. We gain by the knowledge of good but not the knowledge of evil. No one will encourage his child to read a book about Mafia methods of killing and extortion, because, he will acquire evil knowledge. And that is what we did: we got the evil knowledge and applied it.
We misused nature: we discovered fire and used it to cook our food, and destroy nutrients, and similar things. Now we have also manipulated nutrients, changing them by genetic engineering. We discovered making dangerous weapons that cause mass destruction including poisons and diseases.

Vitamins and minerals

What I did was to compose something that would be useful, from nature. Examine the components of a leaf and you will find hundreds of different nutrients, like vitamins, enzymes, minerals and others that have nutritional and medicinal value. These nutrients are essential for life, and they work in synergy with each other. It may be vitamin A or B, but if we purify down to a tablet just these few we think are useful we are leaving out those other vitamins, all of which have a vital function in the body. These are just a few examples. Each suits a particular requirement of a person with reduced immunity, reducing cellular aging as a result of oxidation, and so on.

My own theory is that if we could compose our food by taking a small amount of plants and herbs and put them together in our daily food, we would be getting every possible nutrient in nature that prevents every imaginable disease that we know can affect man. As a matter of fact, all diseases attack man just because he’s got a nutritional deficiency of some sort; for example, if we had a little bit of the plant from which degoxin, the medication for heart disease is obtained, then no one would suffer from heart failure.

The same applies to the fact that if we had sufficient vitamin C and B in our food, we would hardly have to use any other medication because these series are capable of building the immune system to such a strong position that most bacteria and viruses could not be able to overcome it. This has been proven scientifically by use of mega-dosage of these particular vitamins that are found naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables.

Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize lauriet, recommends taking vitamins in mega-dosage for a better immune system.
A good illustration is our present pandemic of AIDS which is thought to be caused by HIV, a virus also found in monkeys. Before it affected man, this virus existed in some form in monkeys as SV40; it is a well-known fact that monkeys do not suffer from AIDS and even in experimental animals, AIDS has not been reproduced in primates. The difference between humans and our close relatives, the primates, is that they do not purify their food nor do they cook it, like we do. Their diet consists of fruits and vegetables, straight from nature.

The reason why Adam was sent out of the Garden of Eden is found in Genesis 3:22-23,

“Then the Lord God said, ‘Now the man has become like one of us and has knowledge of what is good and what is bad. He must not be allowed to take fruit from the tree of life, eat it and live forever.’ So the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden.”

So, there is a tree of life that was distributed among all the plants.

Disease vectors are healthier than humans

If we extrapolate the amount of vitamins a monkey takes every day in it’s diet, we would find that we are only taking one fiftieth of the amount a wild primate takes in its food. That accounts for its resistance to diseases that affect man, including AIDS.

Another example is a mosquito which converts glucose into vitamin C by using an enzyme called gulacogalactoseperoxidise which is encoded form a gene we have lost during our evolution. Lower animals like rats, mice, pigs, flies, still posses it and convert glucose to vitamin C, which is absolutely essential for the immune system. It is this reason that enables flies and mosquitoes to transmit diseases to man without themselves suffering from those fatal infections.

A fly can enbibe deadly cholera bacteria without even suffering for one minute from the deadly toxins of the organism and yet man succumbs to it within days. A guinea pig lost this enzyme and that’s why it can be infected experimentally with all the diseases that affect man.

While primitive man was living in the wild, he was eating of wild plants and fruits without tampering with their composition as we do now at this present age, where advanced society indulges in eating cakes, white bread and overcooked vegetables or meat, deprived of essential vitamins and minerals.

During that time, the human body had access to vast quantities of all the natural nutrients at levels in the blood that are ideal for maintenance of the immune system. During the years of evolution, because of the presence of vast amounts of these nutrients in the body, the gene that is essential for the manufacture of the enzymes, gulacogalactoseperoxidase degenerated and disappeared.

When man invented fire and started cooking purified food, the immune system suffered its worst blow and man succumbed to diseases, as we know them now.

By the use of pesticides, artificial fertilisers and forming hybrid seeds in plants, we have reduced the nutrients that were originally naturally occurring in plants. This has added to our problem of nutritional deficiencies, as we know them now. We have incorporated in our environments, pollution in water in the form of chemicals like chlorine, to kill the bacteria. We have put industrial wastes into rivers and lakes, creating environmental disasters to marine life and vegetation.

The invention of atomic reactors has added more hazards to the environment, both in the atmosphere and in marine life. Whatever we eat of the fish that has acquired these toxic wastes, goes on to defeat the power of our immune systems. It is by reducing the pollution in the atmosphere and use of pesticides, herbicides that we can hope to save our source of nutrients in herbs, forests and marine life. The herbs provide the antioxidants we use to get rid of free radicals which cause the equivalent of iron rust in body cells. This takes place in diseases like AIDS and to change the body and repair the damage, one has got to provide a wide range of these specialised antioxidants, some of which are vitamins, enzymes and minerals.

I had to search alone, or asking people far afield such as South Africa, but without their being told exactly what the purpose was of what they were looking for. Certain plants live in a particular place because of the presence of particular minerals that it requires, and it is those minerals that are important in that plant's role in the body. Some grow near the sea, others grow as parasites on trees, so there is a reason why it is growing there. The plant or herb uses sunlight and water to manufacture the various medicinal compounds that help us to survive disease by repairing our immune system. Among the traditional herbs we use in this country are cabbage, nakati, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli and others.

These herbs are then collected, sent to a reputable pharmaceutical company that crushes, purifies and makes them into capsules. Here are some examples. They do not produce toxic symptoms in anyone because they are natural; this is a value of herbal treatments. If you eat too much of a particular herb, you may get harmed, but we compose them so that they cannot harm anybody. In Mariandina, we have endeavoured to recreate the tree of life in miniature.

Mariandina J is used to treat the persistent sores of genital herpes. You can use other antiviral treatments, but this is cheaper and its effects last longer. You would take one capsule three times a day to maintain yourself free from herpes. There is no harm in taking it for as long as you like, since it promotes health and resistance without side effects, boosting the immune system. That is the value of this treatment, Mariandina A, B, and J.

Cancer can be treated by promoting Oxidation vs Fermentation

Cancer is a change in the body cells that is a result of toxic substances that interfere with the normal metabolism of the body cells, stopping them from using glucose to produce energy by oxidation and instead produce energy by fermentation. This results in uncontrolled growth of cells to make cancer. If we had a good supply of herbs and plant leaves and fruits, we would not allow this change to happen. In Mariandina J, we have incorporated the herbs that can reverse the malignant change in human beings.

There is also herpes zoster. This causes another viral infection, called shingles, which produces a very painful scar. If you use Mariandina J the scar will not be painful. You may have experienced this, the pain that shoots through the whole scar. With Mariandina J within ten days pain is gone. If the blisters are caught when they are just starting, they will not progress. If it has already become a big scar, it will still heal very well though the scar will remain as already damaged tissue.

Our experience with these three preparations from 1992 was that we had 1366 patients treated in 24 months. Out of this total we had 983 who improved, that is 72%.
Those who stabilised were 123, which is 9%.
Deteriorated were 40, and those who died were 122. The total deteriorated were 164, that is 12%.
Lost to follow up were 96.

We did a CD4 count and found that 59% improved their CD4 levels. These actually kept improving, and they went back to their work with their cell count back to normal. People have found this difficult to believe, assuming you can't improve the CD4 count. Actually it improves because you have removed the cause that is damaging the cells. We find that in people with kaposi's sarcoma and chronic infectious disease, once the cause is dealt with they also start to improve.

MEDICINAL HERBS AND TREES

CODEX
This concerns the right to use vitamin supplements and therapeutic dosages of herbal remedies, food supplements and generally all forms of healing methods based on non-pharmaceutical approaches! It is NO JOKE. We are about to lose our hard won health freedoms RIGHT NOW.
An insidious bill, called the CODEX LAW or CODEX ALIMENTARIUS, has already been sneaked through both the Senate and the House of Representatives in record time. It has been passed by both houses. The Codex is a nutrition code to set worldwide standards for foods, drugs, pesticides and their trade. The latest German proposal includes the following provisions:
1. No vitamin, mineral, herb or food supplement can be sold for preventative or therapeutic use.
2. None sold as a food can exceed dosage levels set by the Commission. For example, 50 mg of vitamin C is the top dosage sold in Germany today.
3. CODEX regulations for dietary supplements would become legally binding in the USA through the GATT Treaty, which would involve enormous fines in America and all member nations of the United Nations if they do not comply.
4. All new dietary supplements will be banned unless they pass the CODEX approval process. You can imagine what that means. The wording in the Congressional Bill uses the term "harmonization" which means that most senators and congresspersons are likely not aware of the implications.
The delegates that make up and decide on the CODEX mandates are made up of 90% of the giant Multi-national Pharmaceutical corporations. The drug companies want to monopolize and create pharmaceutical versions of the Natural health food and nutrient business throughout the world.

Action page link at www.leggs.com/ or through www.netline-to-congress.com

"If you value freedom of choice in health care, it may still not be too late for you to help stop the pending world wide suppression of Complementary Medicine. If the Codex Alimentarius (Nutrition Code) Commission has its way, then herbs, vitamins, minerals, homeopathic remedies, amino acids and other natural remedies you have taken for granted most of your life will be gone. The name of the game for Codex is to shift all remedies under the prescription category that would be controlled exclusively by the medical monopoly and its bosses, the major pharmaceutical firms. This scenario, predictably, has been denied by both the Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) and the Health Protection Branch (HPB or Hocus Pocus Bunch). Do not for one second believe these people.

Let me explain:
In October, 1996, Codex met in Bonn, Germany to make radical changes in the rules governing dietary supplements for member nations. The proposals of greatest concern were those made by the German delegation (Proposed Draft Guidelines for Dietary Supplements) and are being sponsored by Hoechst, Bayer and BASF.

These are the three drug companies formed when the Nurenberg War Trials disbanded IG Farben, manufacturer of the poison gas used in Nazi concentration camps. This is not the first time that the U.N. has been linked closely with Nazi war criminals. Ostensibly, their purpose is &quote;....create a set of international standards to guide the world's growing food industry and to protect the health of consumers.& quote;

The drug company backed proposals call for the following:
No vitamin, mineral, herb, etc., can be sold for prophylactic (preventative) or therapeutic reasons.
Natural remedies can be sold as food but they must not exceed the potency (dosage) levels set by the commission. This means that consumer access to dietary supplements will be limited to the RDA dosage as a maximum limit for vitamins (vitamin C - 60 mg, vitamin E - 15 mg, etc.).
Supplements without an RDA (e.g. coenzyme Q10) would be illegal to sell because they would all become drugs.

Codex regulations for dietary supplements would become binding, eliminating the escape clause within the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that allows a nation to set its own standards.
This applies to all member countries of the U.N. Any nation that does not accept and apply these new standards will be heavily fined by the World Trade Organization (WTO) creating the potential of crippling entire sectors of that nation's economy.

After all, several voting members of the CHFA are owned by or are subsidiaries of major drug manufacturers or pharmaceutical chains. Neither group can be trusted to give the public straight answers about the Codex scam. They are in a clear conflict of interest since they stand to gain financially when the supplement prices are boosted out the roof. Further evidence of Canadian involvement is the HPB (Hocus Pocus Bunch) position on what is or is not a food or a drug. This bunch is either cleverly devious about their support of pharmaceutical concerns or just plain dumb. For example, garlic, ginger, licorice and peppermint are considered to be foods when sold as spices. If a grocery store manager makes claims for their therapeutic effects, they then become drugs via a hocus pocus mechanism which remains to be defined. As it now stands in Canada (and this changes on a regular basis given the current mood, blood sugar level or whims of officials at the HPB) the following list of currely available health food store nutritional supplements are considered nebulously to be either a drug a drug even in the absence of claims or a new drug with claims

Aloe vera Capsicum Dong Quai Feverfew Ginkgo biloba Gotu Kola Licorice Peppermint Saw palmetto Camomile

Ephedra (Ma huang) Cascara sagrada Echinacea augustifolia Garlic Ginseng Hawthorne Milk Thistle Psyllium Yohimbe

Astragalus Cat's claw Echinacea purpurea Ginger Golden Seal Kava Kava Pau D'arco (Taheebo) Sarsaparilla Bilberry

This list is likely to expand over the next two years.
If the Codex and the HPB have their way, your favorite supplements will be replaced by expensive, patented, over-the-counter or prescription drugs.

Just look what has already happened to amino acids like tryptophan. Once available for under $20 for a bottle of 100 tablets of 500 mgs. at your local health food store, the same tablet is now only available by prescription at a cost of over $120 at your pharmacy. On top of that, in order to get a prescription for tryptophan, you will have to convince your doctor to give you one. This is easier said than done simply because most medical doctors have no clue what tryptophan does or believe it to be toxic. Project this shallow thinking on to the herbs listed above and it becomes quite clear that public access to natural remedies will be a thing of the past."

Codex proposals, contact:
John Hammell, Legislative Advocate, The Life Extension Foundation
2411 Monroe St. #2 Hollywood, FL 33020 USA
Telephone: 800-333-2553, 954-929-2905
Fax: 954-929-0507
E-mail: Jham@concentric.net
Internet web site: http://www/lef.org/lef/index.html

Why are primates in forests healthier than us?

We should wonder why monkeys and chimpanzees are not dying from AIDS as much as the people that claim to be more advanced in every sense of the word? They have the SV virus equivalent to HIV that they have lived with for generations. The reason is that they eat from the trees and herbs that are the source of life as we have said. Why is Mariandina banned, a preparation made out of herbs and natural products from foods and vegetables. The National Drug Authority and the Minister of Health that are the custodians of the government means of looking after our health interests have failed to give me a satisfactory explanation for maintaining the ban. They have licensed products like AZT that carry severe toxic side effects in preference for that of natural products from herbs that have no toxic effects.

The multinational drug companies that are conspiring to ban the use of vitamins and all herbal medicine with significant medicinal properties are behind the activity and policies of our National Drug Authorities in most of African countries. In Kenya, the National Drug Authority of Kenya banned Dr. Kobel’s discovery of Pearl Omega. In South Africa, a recent discovery of an effective drug against AIDS was banned within days of its announcement. In Zambia, the same thing happened. In Uganda, the National Drug Authority banned Mariandina under the pretext that it has a few milligrams of vitamin C more than what you find in a mango. In Ghana, Dr. Drobo was murdered by multinational pharmaceutical companies for his discovery for an effective remedy against AIDS.
Before introducing AZT and protease inhibitors in Uganda in 1997, the Minister of Health placed a ban on Mariandina and then staged a party to launch it in Sheraton Hotel. (Date 05.11.97)

He assured the whole country that Uganda is fortunate to get a drug that costs 1.5m Uganda shillings a month at a good subsidised price of 600,000 shillings a month, compared to Mariandina that costs 30,000 a month.

The multinational drug companies, in corroboration with UNAIDS, and the local health authorities, are placing a ban on natural herbal products to monopolise the vitamin and herbal remedies as their limitless source of revenue. These same multinational companies have introduced diseases to destroy plants and herbs that we use as source of nutrient so that we can become more dependent on their products. The same people have monopolised the business of producing the pesticides and herbicides that poison the environment and produce changes in our foods so that they score a double purpose of selling their products and reducing our population.

The people who ban locally invented products derived from vitamins and herbs are just the front for these multinational companies. It has become a society of man-eat-man just for the dollar.
First of all - volatile, synthetic pesticide poisons are the largest group of poisonous substances purposefully being added or disseminated throughout our environment. All of the major poison producers are in the "health" pharmaceutical business too - so as you become poisoned/polluted and sicken and begin to die from their allopathic poisons - they will sell you allopathic drugs to "survive". These people are not "guardians" of the environment. They are the destroyers of the environment - they are not in the "chemical or health" industry - they are in the death or poison "industry".
In addition, approximately 250,000 to 300,000 acres of Roundup Ready soybeans were planted in Argentina for the 1996/97 season. Since 1995,Monsanto has invested over US$200 million in glyphosate manufacturing technology, and plans to invest another US$180million for 1997.

Nathan Diegelman the S.T.A.T.E. Foundation b1891@FreeNet.Buffalo. EDU noted in his "Poison in the Grass: - It is a violation of U. S. federal law to claim pesticides are "safe when used as directed" since nothing can assure safety. (In spite of this fact, Agriculture Canada, the federal agency responsible until recently for licensing pesticides in Canada, routinely used this misleading health statement, adding for good measure that "most pesticides are safer than table salt". (Fortunately, pesticides in Canada are now licensed by Health Canada.) Some pesticides labeled "bio-degradable" degrade into compounds more dangerous than the original! Examples include Mancozeb, which degrades into a substance that is an EPA-classified probable carcinogen.

Pesticides drift and settle during application. In the Antarctic ice pack alone there are 2.4 million pounds of DDT and its metabolites from years past. Lawn pesticides engulf the home an dare easily tracked inside, readily inhaled and absorbed through the skin. They do harm by attacking the central nervous system and other essential organs. Symptoms of pesticide poisoning are often deceptively simple, commonly mis-diagnosed as flu or allergies. They include, but are not limited to, headaches, nausea, fever, breathing difficulties, seizures, eye pains, vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, sore nose, tongue, or throat; burning skin, rashes, coughing, muscle pain, tissue swelling, blur division, numbness and tingling in hands or feet, incontinence, anxiety, irritability, sleep disorders, hyperactivity, fatigue, dizziness, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, spontaneous bleeding, and temporary paralysis. Long-term consequences include lowered fertility, birth defects, miscarriages, blindness, liver and kidnedysfunction, neurological damage, heart trouble, stroke, immune system disorders, menstrual problems, memory loss, suicidal depression, cancer, and death.

The National Academy of Sciences reports that at least one out of seven people are significantly harmed by pesticide exposure each year. Increasingly, reports from many people around the country are "beginning to link their 'feeling terrible' with the fact the neighbors had the lawn sprayed the day before", notes Catherine Karr, a toxicologist for the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides. Unfortunately, except for industrial accidents, tests for pesticide poisoning are rarely performed, partially because they are expensive. Doctors also attribute most pesticide poisoning symptoms to stress, allergies, influenza, or an overactive imagination.

Sharon Malhorta, a registered nurse from Pittsburgh, would get so sick from lawn and tree spraying that she had to leave her home every spring. Otherwise she would suffer headaches, paralysis in her hands and feet, and muscle seizures. Repeated exposure caused blurred vision, speech difficulties, and severe stomach cramps. Her husband, a doctor, suspected early on her symptoms were the result of nerve damage from organophosphates, which are widely used nerve-gas type insecticides, like Diazinon. After questioning lawn companies about their poisons he was told they were "practically non-toxic", registered by the EPA, and not harmful to people or pets. He later discovered that the poisons his wife was exposed to were in fact neurotoxins, and was shocked to discover there were surprisingly few EPA studies on their health effects.

According to the EPA, 95% of the pesticides used on residential lawns are possible or probable carcinogens. In 1989 the National Cancer Institute reported children develop leukemia six times more often when pesticides are used around their homes. The American Journal of Epidemiology found that more children with brain tumors and other cancers had been exposed to insecticides than children without. Studies by the National Cancer Society and other cancers had been exposed to insecticides than discovered a definite link between fatal non-hodgkins lymphoma (NHL) and exposure to triazine herbicides (like Atrazine), phenoxyacetic herbicides (2,4-D), organophosphate insecticides (diazinon, Dursban, etc.), fungicides, and fumigants; all of which have uses as lawn chemicals.

This is an important contributing factor to the 50% rise in NHL over the past ten years in the American population. Studies of farmers who once used these pesticides also found alarmingly high numbers of NHL, especially in those who didn't ar protective clothing. This latest finding also proves the theory that most danger from pesticides comes through dermal absorption, not ingestion. A University of Iowa study of golf course superintendents found abnormally high rates of death due to cancer of the brain, large intestine, and prostate. Other experts are beginning to link golfers, and non-golfers who live near fairways, with these same health problems.

In April, 1983, the public learned that Dow Chemical officials had scientific information on dioxin (a substance found in herbicides such as 2,4,5-T and the Viet Nam defoliant Agent Orange as early as 1965 that raised questions about its safety to humans but withheld this information from the federal government for more than fifteen years.
In regard to herbicides, "every spring, farmers across the Farm Belt apply 150 million pounds of five herbicides. . . . Drinking water contaminated with these herbicides is a serious public health issue; the manufacturer's own laboratory studies show that these five herbicides cause nine different types of cancer, various birth defects, and heritable genetic mutations. None of these herbicides is removed by the conventional water treatment technologies that are used by more than 90 percent of the water treatment utilities in the U. S. . . . 3.1 million individuals in 23 cities with populations over 100,000 are exposed to cancer risks from herbicide-contaminated drinking water that exceed federal cancer standards by a factor of 10 or more. (Springfield, Illinois leads the list with the highest life-time risk.)".

Ouellet and four other scientists have been studying deformed and normal frogs found in more than 100 ponds in the St. Lawrence River Valley during the past four years. Normally, less than 1% of frogs are deformed, and that's about what Ouellet CNN special investigative unit recently discovered that several of the corporations accused in the outbreak of deformed babies in Brownsville (1988-1992) had, in fact, been dumping toxic material along the border. The companies paid $17 million to the families of the deformed babies but denied that they had caused the epidemic of birth defects.

Traces of long-lasting pesticides and industrial chemicals that didn't exist before the 1920s can now be found virtually everywhere. Scientists have detected the man-made compounds in the meat of Arctic seals, in fish from New England's rivers, in drinking water, in far fields in almost every nation- even in mother's milk. Everyone carries measurable traces of chemicals in their bodies, having ingested the like of PCBs in fish or DDT and dioxin in other foods.

New evidence connects environmental toxins with birth defects, researchers reported at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association last week." -Los Angeles Daily News, Dec. 2, 1996. Some common commercial cleaners used to clean clothes and household surfaces contain chemicals that cause cancer and birth defects, a leading environmental group says." -Calgary Herald (Canada), Feb. 12, 1997.

There are hundreds of individual stories each year - all of them indicating that as we pump more and more poisons, chemicals and toxins into the environment, normal life is in fact threatened. Help! We are being destroyed by invisible poisons! As the evidence continues to mount that this stuff will kill us, the political environment is increasingly callous - will we have to croak like frogs before 'our' regulators do anything about it?

Dioxins
Liane's book Breast Cancer: Poisons, Profits, and Preventions carefully spells out numerous cases where industry and our government have suppressed information for years and often decades. For example, in regard to the dioxins, which are exceedingly toxic even in parts per trillion and less and which contaminate chlorinated pesticides, incinerator discharges, and hundreds of industrial processes. Dow Chemical "knew about dioxin's toxicity for decades." During the Vietnam War, they knew that dioxin was a toxic contaminant of the herbicide "Agent Orange." Nevertheless, they continued to aggressively sell it, both during the war and afterward for home and farm use. "Dow's own studies showed extreme toxic reactions in animals and humans . . . including liver damage, nervous system disorders.

HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORGANOPHOSPHATE POISONS

J.E. DuBois Jr. in The Devil's Chemists noted that the organophosphate pesticides (OPO4) were developed in Hitler's Germany during World War II. These toxic poisons included TEPP (tetraethyl pyrophosphate, developed as a nicotine substitute), chlorpyrifos and Diazinon became direct descendants of these nerve gas agents. "insecticides", they were of immediate interest to the German Ministry of Defense which recognized their value as chemical warfare agents.

(For the complete text: go to http://home.earthlink.net/~alto/boycott.html )

On November 13, 1996 a report in the 'Folha de Sao Paulo' noted that at least 300 thousand people suffer poisoning from agro-toxics each year in Brazil according to the Ministry of "Health". According to the World Health Organization (WHO) estimations there are at least 50 cases of poisoning for every case reported!

On December 5, 1984 (in one night), the Union Carbide Corporation killed an estimated 8,000 residents of Bhopal, India and injured 300 thousand others, some 50 - 70,000 of those injuries are permanent disabilities from Carbides' leaking pesticide - manufacturing plant. Carbide fought their victims with the aid of $50 million in legal talent - the result? Carbide's "settlement" came to about $300 per victim after fees and bribes were paid, scarcely enough to cover the medical bills of many claimants.

Our Children's Toxic Legacy" noted that in spite of all the world's pesticide usage, pests including insects, plant pathogens and weeds annually destroy 37% of all food and fiber crops in the world! V. E. Gary, et al Environmental Health Perspectives (1996) book Pesticide Appliers, Biocides and Birth Defects in Rural Minnesota found the children of the pesticide poison applicators had "significantly" increased rate of birth defects, including defects of the central nervous, circulatory, respiratory, gastrointestinal, urogenital and muscoloskeletal systems! This increased rate was found to be highest in Western Minnesota, where, by a strange coincidence, the highest levels of synthetic pesticide poisons were used!

Several Japanese studies (Ishikawa & Miyata 1980 and Ishikawa 1973) show an increased incidence of persons with visual problems with the increased agricultural use of organophosphates (OPS) in Japan. Many patients were from the farming belt where pesticides were increasingly used, there being virtually no findings of eye disease in the mountainous areas where these poisons were not being sprayed.

Power to the People