how the government and corporate elite work together to silence those with environmental illness and others who threaten the status quo balance of power and profit

by Patricia Ann Rattray

FRIDAY THE 13TH OF FEBRUARY, Congress passed H.R.1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a 1000-plus page bill which intentionally hides health legislation designed to force the public to remain permanently chained to a false and ineffective ideology of health.

I have just spoken with my father on one of the rare occasions that I call him. He never calls me. He tearfully spoke my name “Patricia?” and then told me that a few days previously he had lost most of his remaining eyesight. Almost simultaneously to his loss of vision he had experienced his second stroke. He is now essentially blind permanently.

The stroke and the loss of his vision are seen as two separate events by the doctors that he sees, one specialist for his stroke and another specialist for his vision. Never the twain shall meet. These specialists think it inexplicable that the two events occured together, the stroke and the loss of vision. And even though he was being watched closely by the best practioners that medical insurance can buy, neither doctor thought there was anything that medicine could do to prevent his foreseen impending health crisis.

I did think there was something he could do and in past years I begged him, both for his own self and for my life to listen to me.

In a curious synchronicity, two thousand, three hundred miles away and with an age difference of 24 years, I am experiencing the same health problems. My veins are breaking open spontaneously, although not in my head, and at the same time I am experiencing problems with my visual field.

The difference between my father and I is that I am educated about environmental medicine. I understand what is happening to me and how I can prevent further damage given the right resources. I know that I have allergy-induced vasculitis causing my veins to constrict and cut off the blood supply to key areas and also to cause the veins to break open. The vasculitis is currently caused by a neighbor burning incense.¹

Because of his social dominance orientation, and because chemical sensitivity has been discredited in the media by chemical/ pharmaceutical conglomerates effectively labeling me and millions like me as social outcasts, my father neither listens to me nor does he want to be associated with me. At one time, several years ago, the L.A. Times ran a prominent article labeling chemical sensitivity the “mental illness that is catching.”

The best lies have a little truth in them and there is something about chemical sensitivity that is catching—common sense and personal responsibility. although my family has been innoculated against both these germs of truth, as this letter sent to them years ago attests:

“You probably do not know that most pesticides are derived from chemical warfare agents—nerve gas—developed in World War II. The industry had a lot left over, simply watered it down, and sold it to kill bugs. I have the same condition that Father has with his eyes. I know the specialists Father saw finally decided it must be due to vasculitis cutting off the blood supply to his optic nerve. I remember they postulated that the vasculitis was due to disease contracted from pigeon droppings in the attic of the house on Walnut Street. I happen to know that he spent a lot of time in that attic spraying Raid or some other bug killer to combat an abnormal infestation of flies. He sprayed massive amounts of it in a small enclosed space with no protective covering for himself. Which is the more likely to cause blindness—nerve gas or pigeon droppings?

That is why I urged people to read. When you have all the available data, it does not take a degree in Biochemistry from the Sorbonne to make up your mind. Any lay person can see the validity of what environmental medicine is based on.”

Physicians as the New Priests

In a culture where possessions have come to be used as markers, as measurements, as symbols of all goodness, Americans are not naturally drawn to environmental medicine where competence is available to everyone. There is no elite, esoteric body of knowledge, and exercising your own judgement is key to your health rather than buying a prescription or paying a physician.

It is inevitable in a country that worships power and honors the elite, that the role of conventional physicians has evolved to be equal to that of the priesthood in the Dark Ages, complete with a protected, sacred body of knowledge and an assumption of moral expertise.

The above passage from Amerlia E. Barr’s fictional account of the Texas Revolution vividly brings home how conventional physicians today have become synonymous with the old priesthood with all the potential for misuse of power and social control.

With no scientific investigation and a flagrant disregard of constitutional rights to a formal hearing in deciding questions of mental competency, conventional physicians willingly curse people who realize they are chemically sensitive and labeled them as mentally ill. And despite what must be an awareness of their pivotal role, the great majority of physicians never take the responsibility of looking at the system behind them that hands out these proclamations in whole form to find it is made up of pharmaceutical/chemical conglomerates with massively vested interests in denying the problem of chemical injury. It has been my experience with people in the medical profession that after the intensity of medical school, their new free time is earmarked for wind-surfing lessons and European vacations. Medical school does not instill a love of truth in it’s scholars, and replaces a profound respect for human life with a profound respect for conventionality and the American Medical Association.

One of the key minds of our age, John Taylor Gatto, lectures throughout the world, continually speaking out on the danger inherent in the false idolatry of the “expert.” Gatto explains,

“[Thomas] Jefferson said school has only five justifications…

…and last, If it taught an ever present skepticism against expertise because Jefferson knew that the Greeks had scorn for specialists and experts, believing that anyone who was crazy enough to unbalance their life that way might be useful in limited situations but clearly they had bad judgment and probably were dishonest. So it was to teach experts to stay in their places because they would have bad judgment.”

You needn’t take Gatto’s or Jefferson’s word for it, you can watch “The World According to Monsanto”² on YouTube by award-winning French journalist Marie-Monique Robin to form your own idea of the lack of job and personal security available to any expert today who attempts to be honest.

Turning Physicians into Agents of Social Control

By combining protection of their own interests with a certain mental lethargy, conventional physicians have allowed themselves to become the ultimate agents of an incidious and repressive social control.

Despite a daily influx of new information from inspired and motivated physicians and from concerned citizens’ groups, conventional physicians remain the three wise monkeys regarding chemicals—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

In this, they tacitly give permission to the general public—to use pesticides in their home, to use herbicides in their yards, to use fragrance-emitting machines in public places like stadiums and national park visitor centers, ad infinitum assuring continued sales of toxic chemicals ($29 billion in 1995 for pesticides alone) and a continual stream of health problems supporting sales of pharmaceutical drugs ($400 billion last year).

Chemical/pharmaceutical conglomerates reap huge profits from sales of toxic chemicals, then harvest a second windfall profit by selling prescription drugs which cover up symptoms of chemical injury.

In this system, there is no motivation for physicians to challenge the status quo which provides their own flow of personal income ($150,000 – 250,000 per physician, not including additional income from drug companies which can be significant).

Psychiatrists have the less passive, more virulent role of agents of social control as they discredit and derail witnesses to the human body’s vulnerability to toxic chemicals, and fragment the diagnoses for different groups suffering from chemical sensitivity.

No malevolence is required on the part of the psychiatrist. Only the desire to get paid is necessary which leads them to open the DSM-IV to select from predefined billable insurance codes which are crafted under the direction of chemical/pharmaceutical conglomerates. A type of self-hypnosis is also necessary that will keep them from attending to the words of those like Dr. Loren Mosher, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at University of California and past Official of the National Institute of Mental Health upon his resignation from the American Psychiatric Association:

“At this point in history, …psychiatry has been almost completely bought out by the drug companies.” ³

A huge amount of data on chemical injury is ignored as victims are turned into social outcasts whose information can be discredited.

As public awareness of holistic health grows and increasing numbers of people wander or flee to alternative medicine (4 out of 10 Americans spent out-of-pocket for complementary medicine in 2007),⁴ chemical/pharmaceutical conglomerates have schemed to permanently block access to non-toxic effective therapies by taking choice away from the individual and giving it to the federal government, blocking escape for all Americans from a fallacious, crippling system.

H.R.1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

February, Friday the 13th, Congress passed H.R.1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which includes provisions that cement the chemical industry’s version of health care in place—right or wrong.

Under the new legislation, every American will be required to have their health information stored on a central computer system. This same system will tell doctors what medical conditions can be diagnosed and what treatments will be allowed.

The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, (an Orwellian name which attempts to hide the fact that the council will only consider ineffective drug therapies) is staffed completely by conventional physicians, neither environmental medicine nor any other holistic discipline is represented by a member on this board.

So, for instance, if you have a child that school authorities claim has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and you take your child to a doctor who has independently maintained their continuing education, and consequently has read one or more of the 80 papers showing that hyperactivity in children is caused by food allergies and chemical sensitivity⁵ or if you personally had been alerted by watching a television program featuring Dr. Doris Rapp,^6,7 or if you are familiar with the work of Dr. William Rea at the Environmental Health Center-Dallas⁸ where people come from as far away as Germany and Japan to have their children successfully treated with environmental medicine for food allergies and hyperactivity—none of that will matter. The federal system, authored and controlled by chemical/pharmaceutical companies, will force your doctor to prescribe a psychiatric medication for your child, and if the toddler, or pre-teen or adolescent child of your dreams suffers and then dies later of a heart attack or stroke or medication-induced suicide,⁹ well, pharmaceutical-controlled research would have you believe they were damaged goods anyway as the industry is promoting a field of research which shows brain shrinkage in children diagnosed with ADHD.¹⁰ The fact that these kids have already been assaulted for years by drugs and chemicals before brain scans were taken fazes no one except a few doctors who have maintained their humanity like Dr. Fred Baughman who appears in Gary Null’s film “The Drugging of Our Children.”

This is your child on “health reform.”

As overall American health began to collapse in the eighties and nineties (The U.S. ranks 30th in life expectancy, below every other economically developed country and 20th in healthy life expectancy¹¹—45% of Americans are chronically ill¹²) and conventional hi-tech American medicine had no solutions to offer an increasingly suffering public that clamoured for help, one physician I know commented that his favorite poster put up at the hospital read “No Whining.”

So ends the world, not with a bang but with a nation full of whimpers.

Unraveling the Fabric of the Family

Manufactured corporate reality has unraveled the very fabric of the family, our most sacred bonds on earth. I saw my father once 13 years ago. He stopped to see me in California on his way to Oregon. I had a premonition it would be the last time we saw each other and so I didn’t speak of anything disturbing that would challenge him mentally. As I saw it there was one thing both my father and I could agree on as we sat at an outdoor cafe, which was that one of us sitting at the table was delusional. And you only strengthen a delusional system by arguing with it.

References
¹ Despite the fact that incense is sold in health food stores, incense smoke contains particulate matter four times greater than that of cigarette smoke, also gas products such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. Volatile organic compounds are produced some of which are toxic to the lung and allergenic to the skin and eyes. http://www.clinicalmolecularallergy.com/content/6/1/3

² Robin, Marie-Monique. “The World According to Monsanto.” 11 March 2008. Online video clip. YouTube.com. Accessed on 10 April 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68iLe9StLh0&feature=related

³ Lauen Mosher, M.D., Letter of Resignation to the American Psychiatric Association, 4 December 1998. http://www.moshersoteria.com/resig.htm

⁴ National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, The Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States (April 09, 2009) http://nccam.nih.gov/news/camstats/2007/camsurvey_fs1.htm

⁵ Boyles, Jr., John H.,M.D., FAAEM.
“Taking the History in the Food Sensitive Patient.” Online video clip. American Academy of Environmental Medicine. (11 April 2009) http://progressive.uvault.com/pd1005/AEM072/03Jaeckle/player.htm#

⁶ Rapp, Doris J., M.D. “Children’s Allergies to Food and the Environment” on the Phil Donahue Show 1989. Online video clip. YouTube.com. (11 April 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRDpcWZUEiU

⁷ Rapp, Doris J., M.D. “Hidden Environmental Dangers at Schools” on the Oprah Winfrey Show 1996. Video removed due to copyright violation by Harpo, Inc. Link to partial transcript: http://www.ecoflourish.com/rapp_schools.html

⁸ Rea, William, M.D., http://www.ehcd.com

⁹ Rapp, Doris J., M.D. “Dr. Rapp at the Rio Theatre, Part 2” 10 January 2008. Online audio clip. LBAMspray.com Defending the Central Coast From Biochemical Aerial Spraying. (11 April 2008) http://www.lbamspray.com/Audio%20Video.htm

¹⁰ Null, Gary. “The Drugging of Our Children.” 20 October 2005. Online video clip. Google Video. (11 April 2009) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3609599239524875493

¹¹ PBS Series. “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick: Trailer.” 27 March 2008. Online video clip. YouTube.com. (11 April 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diMVgcb8Qzk&feature=related
* This PBS series provides some disturbing current health data for Americans, however the authors go on to present conclusions which equate health with personal choice and a wealthy lifestyle neglecting to include information about the increased toxicity of living in low income housing and neighborhoods and working in environments such as factories. See Anniston, Alabama in footnote 2 of this article: “The World According to Monsanto.”

¹² Deoul, Kathleen”Cancer Cover-Up: The Book”, The Oncologist Vol. 12, No. 1, 20-37, January 2007 http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/cgi/content/abstract/12/1/20

photo credits: © Victor Maffe / iStockphoto

Patricia Ann Rattray is a writer specializing in issues of holism and social justice and is actively engaged in creating a healthy sustainable world.