Freedom, Health, & Ginger
by Paul Schulick
If you're feeling well, just stay away from the doctor
EUGENE ROBBINS, M.D.,
PROFESSOR EMERITUS,
STANFORD UNIVERSITY'
 There
is probably only one consensus regarding modern health care: The system is in
crisis. The crisis lies not in the need for more or cheaper doctors and drugs,
but in the flawed precepts of modern medicine. It is this deep conceptual fault
that is challenging both our financial and physical well-being.
Death by Prescription
More than 50 percent of the average American diet consists of processed foods
that contain some 3,000 different food additives. The typical American ingests
fifteen pounds of these food additives each year. Every hour 660,000 animals are
killed for meat in the United States, and every three days the average American
consumes a pound of white sugar. In 1982, the National Research Council
determined that diet was "probably the greatest single factor in the
epidemic of cancer, particularly for cancers of the breast, colon and
prostate."
Despite an all-out war on cancer over the past 20 years,
people are developing malignancies at a higher rate than ever before.
-- SCIENCE NEWS 1994
The currently prevailing health-care system is unfortunately incapable of
changing this direction. Instead of remedying the underlying reasons why so many
of us are sick, the system is structured simply to bandage the problem or manage
disease.
Studies show that more doctors or more physicals are hardly the answers. The
Kaiser Permanente Health Group in California reported no significant difference
in death rates for people who did or did not receive physicals.
We certainly don't need more surgery. More harm than good has been
demonstrated by many commonly performed procedures. For example, men who receive
radical prostate surgery experience incontinence and impotence rates from the
surgery itself of 30 and 90 percent respectively. Men who avoid this surgical
procedure are found to benefit more from "watchful waiting." The
researcher, Dr. John Wasson, concluded in a study published in the Journal of
the American Medical Association (JAMA) that "we have, in essence, an
epidemic of treatment and no scientific proof that it's valid. The take-home
message is that we don't know what we're doing, but we're doing a lot of
it."
Last, no one really believes we need more prescription drugs. By the time we
Americans are age fifty, almost one out of three of us will be on eight or more
prescription drugs and, according to recent figures cited in JAMA, between
60,000 to 140,000 of us will die each year from adverse reactions to these
drugs.
51.5 percent of drugs approved by the FDA have serious
post-approval risks including heart failure, birth defects,
kidney failure, blindness and convulsions.
-- 1990 GAO REPORT
The Money Pit
To add irony to agony, our current disease-care system is killing us
financially. Our total health-care bill is a staggering $3 billion daily, the
highest of all industrialized nations. Included in this bill is an excessive 800
percent markup for the pharmaceutical industry's adverse-effect-riddled drugs.
The consequences of maintaining this faltering system are already devastating
to business and middle-class America. Health-care costs are the leading reason
for bankruptcy, and one million Americans earning $25,000 to 50,000 annually
lost their health insurance last year alone due to inflated premium costs.
Recognizing the peril of this crisis at a conference on health care, President
Clinton banged a table with his fist and told the 300 participants that
"the cost of health care is a joke. It is going to bankrupt this
country." Considering the tragic fact that among industrialized nations, we
place close to the lowest in life expectancy (fifteenth) and highest in all
cancer and heart disease rates, it is painfully obvious that our national health
system is chronically ill -- not to mention a very bad investment.
We don't know what we're doing in medicine.
Perhaps one-quarter to one-third of medical services|
may be of little or no benefit to patients.
DR. DAVID EDDY, DIRECTOR,
DUKE UNIVERSITY HEALTH POLICY RESEARCH
Milligrams of Hope
The evidence is accumulating that people who are taking
an antioxidant of some sort seem to have
a high degree of protection from coronary heart disease.
DR. CLAUDE LENFANT, DIRECTOR OF
THE NATIONAL HEART, LUNG AND BLOOD INSTITUTE
When considering this nation's and more broadly the world's health-care
crisis, our story on ginger is seemingly insignificant. But, when appreciated
for its far-reaching healing and political potential, this report takes on
fantastic proportions. Ginger, at once common and superlative, can trigger a
dramatic change in the way the industrialized world views medicine. This change
would take the form of a renewed look at the thousands of years of medical
tradition and, specifically, the enormous potential that less invasive natural
healing modalities offer. Clearly, there are signs that this transformation is
beginning to happen, and the time and conditions could not be more ripe.
While we are getting poorer and probably sicker as a nation, there are
flickers of hope. New doors are beginning to open in the renowned edifices of
the U.S. health-care establishment. The most respected medical journals are now
acknowledging that simple changes in diet and the mere addition of milligrams of
dietary supplements hold the potential for drastically improving the nation's
health.
Recently published studies proclaim that we can conceivably disarm two of our
greatest killers, heart disease and cancer, by simply adding to the diet food
constituents like antioxidants, beta carotene, and vitamin E. Researchers are
going so far as to suggest that dietary supplements like vitamin E could lower
the risk of heart disease, independent of other risk factors by as much as 40 to
50 percent.
Noting that heart attacks alone kill 600,000 Americans annually, this safe
and easy prescription could potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives and
billions of dollars each year. Considering that more powerful antioxidants than
vitamin E naturally occur in herbs like ginger, and that many of these herbs are
proving therapeutic potentials transcending those of our most powerful drugs, a
profound possibility is waiting to be tapped.
Last, rating perhaps as the most positive development, is the recent opening
of the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) at the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). It is hard to believe that the NIH, a bastion of conservative allopathic
medicine, has actually opened an office to examine the efficacy of alternative
forms of health care like herbal medicine and acupuncture. Although the budget
for this office is only one-five-thousandth of that of NIH as a whole, it is a
promising sign of events to come.
The Roadblocks
Herbs like ginger and the traditions of thousands of years of natural healing
modalities will never be fully understood, appreciated or allowed to fulfill
their mission unless major problems are identified and eliminated in our current
healthcare system. Needless to say, whole books are written trying to diagnose
and answer these problems.
I would not be so foolish or unrealistic as to suggest eliminating the
doctors or the drugs or the governmental establishment that has evolved to
support them. Rather, I would like to expose a few problems with these modern
icons which I label as the roadblocks and propose the most basic and simplest of
solutions. Acknowledging the considerable risk of being labeled oversimplistic,
I hope there will be some value in this exercise.
The FDA
Unfortunately, the agency given the authority to dictate what information is
disseminated to the public on foods, drugs and general health claims -- the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) -- has held a long bias against preventive
health and the natural-foods and dietary-supplement industry.
What is the physiological effect of prunes? How about coffee? Is ginger good
for digestion? When I ask these questions of an audience, without exception
everyone knows the answers. Strangely and disturbingly, as of this writing, if
this truthful information is placed on a product label or even in a brochure,
the FDA has determined it to be a violation of the law.
The government agency brings its bias a step further by promoting the notion
that herbs and other dietary supplements are inherently dangerous. The FDA
refers to safe and soothing teas made with herbs like chamomile as "unknown
brews" implying that there are perils lurking within them. The FDA
Consumer, the agency journal, absurdly depicts herbal teas with a skull and
crossbones. Considering that three of the top four causes of lethal poisonings
in the U.S. are FDA-approved drugs and that a toxicity category is virtually
nonexistent for herbal dietary supplements, the skull-and-crossbones symbol is
clearly misplaced.
To make matters worse, the agency has for the past twenty years continuously
attempted through wily, circuitous and one-dimensional arguments to regulate
virtually all traditional medicinal or tonic herbs out of the U.S. marketplace,
thus threatening both national health and medical freedom of choice.
THE SOLUTION:
The FDA should appoint a panel of experts who are open-minded and aware of
alternative health-care modalities. Fair and clear guidelines should be given,
actually encouraging the use and development of safe and inexpensive dietary
supplements and traditional medicines. This age-old therapeutic class truly
deserves its own regulatory category free of the draconian impediments of modern
drug classifications. Also, the structure of the process that results in drug
companies spending up to $359 million for drug approval and marketing should be
reevaluated. It is hard to imagine how traditional health remedies will be
integrated as long as drug companies are spending these huge sums of money.
THE PROBLEM:
The pharmaceutical industry is arguably the most serious obstacle to progress
in our health-care system. Being the most profit-oriented segment, it will
therefore be the hardest to change. As difficult as it is to defend this
industry, part of its problem lies in the regulatory structure for drug approval
and the bloated $359 million it costs to develop and market drugs. These
enormous expenses drive prices into the stratosphere and foster greed.
The most frightening aspect of the pharmaceutical industry, however, is its
relationships with the nation's health-care providers, our medical doctors and
the FDA. Within the hundreds of millions of dollars behind each drug lie
regulatory jobs at the FDA and a $5,000 promotional allowance for the nation's
479,000 doctors. In an expose published in Time magazine some of these benefits
to physicians were detailed. Wyeth Ayerst, for example, has offered to doctors
1,000 points toward American Airlines travel for each patient put on the
hypertension drug Inderal, and Ciba-Geigy has given free Caribbean vacations to
physicians for simply attending lectures on Estraderm.
The Task Force (FDA) considered many issues in its deliberations including to
insure that the existence of dietary supplements (vitamins, minerals, amino
acids, herbs and other) on the market does not act as a disincentive for drug
development.
The only way change will occur in this industry is through consumer awareness
and diligence on the part of medical ethicists. Government should offer
incentives for drug companies to develop less expensive, safer and more natural
medications while still allowing free enterprise to smaller purveyors of
traditional medicines. This is certainly a Sisyphean task in itself.
The Food Industry
Among life's great dichotomies: Kids like junk food,
but their parents want them to eat right.
The folks behind the food are betting the kids win out ...
Companies are appealing to a fertile audience:
Children ages six to fourteen spend $7.3 billion a year
and influence family buying of more than $120 billion a year.
SELINA GUBER, PRESIDENT,
CHILDREN'S MARKET RESEARCH INC.
THE PROBLEM:
How will we ever be healthy if our food is laden with chemicals and depleted
of its life-giving values? The problem with the food industry is epitomized in
the above statement by Selina Guber.
THE SOLUTION:
The food industry is driven by market forces. Increased pressure by consumer
groups should continue to force product development of healthier food
choices.
The Medical Establishment
THE PROBLEM:
One of the most serious problems with the medical profession is highlighted
in the following combination of facts:
1) Six of the ten leading causes of death among Americans are diet related,
including heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes mellitus, chronic liver
disease and atherosclerosis;
2) Data from the Association of the American Medical Colleges concludes that
in 1992, only one-fourth of the 127 medical schools in the United States taught
nutrition as a required course. The number of medical schools with a required
course in nutrition has actually decreased in recent years.
Besides poor priorities, established from the very beginning of the medical
education process, physicians face serious ethical issues which might derail a
positive change in the health-care system. A recent report in JAMA highlighted
this when it concluded that "requests by physicians that drugs be added to
a hospital formulary were strongly and specifically associated with the
physicians' interactions with the companies manufacturing the drugs." Also,
what kind of ethical message is its representative body, the American Medical
Association (AMA), sending to its constituents when a recent New England Journal
of Medicine study concluded that the association financially supports the very
positions it is supposedly working against (i.e., tobacco exports and lack of
hand-gun legislation). The AMA actually gives more money to congressional
members who oppose AMA positions on public-health issues than to those who
support AMA positions.
THE SOLUTION:
How can our health-care providers truly help us if they can never really
understand the problem? A drastic and immediate change should be called for in
the basic structure of medical education in the United States compelling it to
include extensive courses in both holism and the ethics of healing. Last, a
proposal that is inconceivable but worth mentioning: It is well known that in
certain Asian cultures, healers have only been paid if their patients were kept
healthy. Who would doubt that if we could make such a visionary shift in
remuneration structure here that focus on details like nutrition would be
adopted overnight.
The Insurance Industry
The insurance industry has driven the nation to the brink of
bankruptcy. It is time for all Americans to stand up and say to the insurance
industry: Enough is enough. We want our health-care system back.
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
THE PROBLEM:
Premiums for health insurance are like a spider's web directly tied into the
escalating costs of medical technology. Not only can fewer and fewer Americans
afford health insurance but even those with insurance find that when it is
finally needed for a catastrophic illness, their coverage has been dropped
through a loophole or technicality. Instead of dealing with the roots of why so
many of us are sick, a large segment of the insurance industry has chosen simply
to adapt by raising premiums and dropping coverage. Sadly, the industry actually
denies reimbursement for lower-cost alternative health-care treatments that are
currently defined as experimental.
THE SOLUTION:
Insurance companies started on the right track when they reduced premiums for
nonsmokers. What about people who eat a whole-food diet, exercise, practice
stress reduction or take dietary supplements? Also, why should a drug treatment
for arthritis be reimbursed at $100 while a $10 alternative ginger treatment be
disallowed? The insurance companies could at least offer the choice. A few
companies like American Western Life Insurance and Mutual of Omaha are proving
that it can be done.
Ginger Accepts the Challenge
Ginger by its very existence could safely, inexpensively and successfully
challenge the foundations of some of the giants of the pharmaceutical industry
and many of their flagship products totaling literally billions of dollars in
annual sales.
Even more importantly, ginger might act as a representative of a limitless
inventory of life-saving medicines. If spices like ginger can offer so many
medical benefits, just imagine what other treasures might be waiting in the yet
unexplored 99 percent of the world's flora. Considering that 25 percent of
modern drugs are currently being synthesized or isolated from less than 1
percent of the world's flora, it is easy to understand why noted pharmacogonists
like Dr. Norman Farnsworth have declared that there is a botanical treatment for
every disease that faces humankind.
In our common spice ginger, we hold the promise of awakening our awareness to
the vast potential herbs and natural healing modalities possess, a potential
that can quite literally save our lives.
For every disease that afflicts mankind,
there is a treatment or a cure occurring naturally on this earth.
DR. NORMAN FARNSWORTH, PHARMACOGINIST
 This
article is excerpted from Ginger Common Spice & Wonder Drug, ?1996,
by Paul Schulick. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Hohm Press. www.hohmpress.com
Info/Order
this book.
About the Author
Paul
Schulick is an herbalist and advocate of personal choice in health care. His
research extends from the therapeutic values of plants harvested from the seas
to the healing powers of herbs commonly found in the spice cabinet. He lectures
throughout the country on the health impact of herbs and natural foods. Visit www.new-chapter.com
for more information on his work.
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