Dear Subscribers,

Well, the polls are closed and now we have the pundits assessing, interpreting, and deluding. I am going to limit my talks to health care, deep breath!

First of all, in terms of the big picture and health freedom, the same corporations lobby both Democrats and Republicans so while there might be a difference on subjects such as Obamacare or some other compulsory system, there is very little to celebrate where health is concerned. While we have been rearranging offices in Congress, the European Union clamped down even further on health supplements. I am afraid most Americans are not aware of the global plans to conform to a corporate scheme that would severely limit access to vitamins, herbs, and other supplements such as probiotics and enzymes. These are already restricted in most European countries and beginning April 1st next year, access will be even more restricted.

In a matter of hours, Obama is leaving for India to twist arms and insist on more compliance over intellectual property rights. Obviously, there is a context here. What is now happening, unprecedented actually, is that studies that have been performed that show efficacy of a natural substance or drug for some symptom or condition would be regarded as intellectual property and the results could not be cited in promoting a similar product. It's important to underscore how this will impact production, marketing, and information.

For someone such as myself, it is already very difficult to explain the proper use of an herb or formula. Let me give you a couple of examples. I spent years researching a book on botanical cancer treatments but regardless of what I know or think I know, I cannot really say, "take this if you have cancer." That would be completely over the line. I have to beat around the bush and suggest that there might be adjunctive treatments that support the functioning of various systems of your body and that if you perhaps consider these, you might be glad you did. At a meeting years ago of a health freedom group in New Mexico, the State Attorney General said that, in an adversarial situation, suggesting to someone that he might feel better in the morning if he gets some sleep would be construed as practicing medicine without a license. In this case, however, no medicine was recommended to aid sleep. Parents give this kind of advice constantly so they are all crossing the line. However, if ginger tea or warm milk were suggested in addition to turning off the lights, this would be even more risky and if the recommendations involved a bottle with a nutritional label, the lines would be bolder.

Okay, that is one side of picture, but what I have seen over and over and over again if that patients who are absolutely desperate shriek, "What about me? Don't I have any rights?" That's actually a huge question. As things stand now, patients have more rights than practitioners, but in countless really heart breaking situations, parents have lost custody of their children at times when the children are very, very ill and need the love and support of their parents the most. The reason for custody loss is that the medical authorities do not give parents the right to choose treatments that are not recommended by the attending physician. Under Obamacare, as we have seen, the decisions would be made by people sitting at computers who are in no way able to assess subtle matters such as determination to survive or factors that are important but not considered such as life style. Soon, one size fits all and health care will be delivered in a manner similar to an outmoded assembly line.

To an extent, adults can sometimes self prescribe, but many have to go abroad for the treatments that are banned here. What you do in the privacy of your own home using the knowledge you have has been largely permissible, but under the new food safety and other bills, even these rights would vanish. Enforcement is always an issue, but personally, I do not find any comfort in the statements made in emails from my elected officials that attempt to convince me that the laws were not intended to impact my garden or kitchen. If this were true, why are people in flak jackets with automatic weapons and helicopter support descending on those whose sole crime is that they are growing organic food for their own use.

NASA SUGGESTS AEROSOLS ACCOUNT FOR 45% OF GLOBAL WARMING

This, however, isn't even the "big" picture. The wide screen shows more egregious activity. I have said again and again that discussing health care without addressing chemtrails is a farce. How can covert operations that are blanketing the planet in toxic metals, medical waste, mycoplasma, and nanobots not be a health concern? Add to this fluoridation of water and mercury amalgams in the teeth and the problem is humongous. Then, if the utter nonsense about vaccines is put under scrutiny, the magnitude of the health problem and health crisis is still only barely beginning to come into focus. What about microwave ovens, nuked spices, GMO viruses, and so on and so forth. The whole charade is just that: an ongoing, expensive, daredevil act to shift more and more power into the hands of the elite.

Except for Ron Paul and few others in Congress, elected officials are not experts in either health or medicine. In short, if they cannot qualify as expert witnesses in a trial over medical subjects, why should they be allowed to vote on such? If their votes represent the industries that have lobbied them rather than their constituents or cutting edge outcome research, they should disqualify themselves and leave the decisions to the free market. Of course, individuals can also be ignorant, but they still have a need to be responsible and a right to make their own decisions. In any professional setting, those who currently determine our fates would be disqualified and proper reviews would be performed by interdisciplinary academies that are completely free of any conflicts of interest. How far are we from this Utopia?

In the past, I have gone on record saying that I have no objection whatsoever to global coverage of all health for all humans in all countries. In fact, I would be willing to cover all animals and plants so long as there is freedom. If however there is no choice and if there are decisions made on the basis of cost-benefit analyses, and if the bureaucrats get stuck in medical theories that are outdated and/or known to be false, we are doomed and this is exactly what bureaucracies are prone to do and they do this because they are beholden to the power of the status quo rather than sensitive to the validity of the concepts influencing their actions.

The laws as they currently stand are already very restrictive. Examples might help. Research on Artemisia annua was done at the University of Washington by two publish or perish academicians. The study cited ancient Chinese sources found in an archaeological dig. A dog with osteosarcoma recovered quickly when given a chemical derivative of the plant. Much to my surprise, the government "approved" the conclusions of the research so it has been legal not only to cite the research but to make claims based on it. Sit tight and just be logical. There are hundreds, actually 2500 herbs, that have been traditionally used in cancer treatment. An example of a claim that cannot be made involves mucura, a rain forest herb used in treating pancreatic cancer. It cannot be marketed as anything but an ethnobotanical herb from the jungle whose traditional uses among this, that, and the other tribe included who knows how many conditions. Likewise, jergon sacha, another South American herb that is in high demand in Eastern Europe as a remedy for AIDS is in more or less the same state as mucura. It's a tribal remedy for something or other.

I am not suggesting that we should throw caution to the winds and allow claims to be made for mucura or jergon sacha. I am saying that given the climate, the studies that might satisfy the need for proof will not be funded. Even if a study is done in Peru, foreign studies are rarely taken seriously by our government. As it is now, if the winds don't change, a point will come when even the ethnobotanical uses cannot be freely discussed, perhaps not even in an academic manner with a target audience of medical anthropologists. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg.

From an herbalist's point of view, there are nearly always several herbs that are comparable and easily substituted. This is Nature at Her best. If there are climate changes, droughts, floods, etc., we find another herb and use it instead of the one usually added to the formula. For herbalists, this is the normal way of formulating and compounding and it is not "unscientific" or careless but erudite. However, when pharmaceutical companies investigate herbs, their motivation is to patent and profit, not support biodiversity or tradition. The studies are seldom clinical. Rather, the studies are done in a specific manner in order to reach the anticipated conclusion.

The way research is done by industries or universities is pretty unnerving to herbalists and it ought to unsettle patients as well since what happens in a petri dish or to a healthy animal that is subjected to torture is not necessarily completely relevant to people who have become ill and want to survive the treatment. Now, what Obama wants to force on Indians and, of course, what is happening in the EU and is planned for here as well is that by focusing on the intellectual property issue, only the owners of the property will be able to refer to the study when a product based on the study is produced. This is, of course, more or less how highly competitive industries work. First, they zealously guard their secrets. Eventually patents run out but if a study is done on aspirin, one can discuss aspirin in a general way and also infer that the various brands of aspirins have at least some similarities. Under the rigorous new laws, the intellectual property rights would exceed the patents so industry would be able to strangle the supply of generic drugs by preventing the manufacturers from referencing the intellectual property used to support the patented drug. This is tantamount, perhaps even more lucrative, than extending patents by decades.

It is a little hard for me to imagine that India is going to thrilled with this descent of locusts. In a country where knowledge is first divine and then graciously shared with saints, profiteering on knowledge is not respected. Moreover, India will have to figure out how its traditional knowledge would be impacted given all the biopiracy and other issues faced by those who are trying to preserve "indigenous systems of medicine."

Herbalism has countless long traditions involving many cultures, including ones with rigorous academic presentations such as Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, and Tibetan medicine. However, we also have oral ethnobotanical traditions and a rich heritage from ancient Greece and from monastic practices such as that of Hildegard of Bingen. All of these are at risk under globalization. This is very, very serious.

Obviously what is being sought by the power elite is absolute control over all potential to profit so even if the White House will soon have to function without the support of the House of Representatives, this does not in any way suggest that the desire for control and profit has shifted in any way. Against this backdrop, we need to look at the new face of Congress as a place where we continue to make our wishes known. There is not one person who won the election without raising mega amounts of money. Moreover, most of those who won as well as those who lost will begin restocking their campaign war chests the moment the balloons are gone. This means ongoing sources of $$ infusions and whatever influence those $$ can buy. What some campaigners found in yesterday's election is that in some cases, dollars alone did not tilt the voters.

There are political commentators who have put their spin on what happened yesterday, but if this were a parliament in another country, we could look at the last two elections as no confidence votes. People were fed up with Bush and voted change. They didn't like what they got and they said so loud and clear. Congress went into the elections with an approval rating around 30%. I read a comparison of dozens of polls and most showed Congress below 30% and Obama in the 40's.

When dissatisfaction is as high as it is and the agenda has not changed, we either have chaos or revolution. I do not think we can assume for one moment that because signs on doors are changing that we will have the change we want. If we do ever get that change, it will be by refusing to roll over in the face of the immense bulldozers that are running over our Constitution, political processes, and rights.

What are my suggestions at this point? First, treat the newcomers in office to a barrage of emails and petitions reminding them of their responsibilities to their constituents and the future. Keep their feet to the fire. Second, keep organizing at the grass roots level. I watched some of the returns last night, not the ones with the commentators, but just the ones with the maps. I live in Washington State where there have been some very tight elections in recent years. On my ballot, there was not a single third party candidate so I was very surprised that an independent won the governorship of Rhode Island. We need to outgrow the two party system and get busy.

Third, acquire knowledge now because it could become less accessible. Download, download, download, and archive what you download. Buy at least two books on growing your food and medicine and making your own herbal remedies. Make it clear to everyone close to you that these books are treasures, like what you take with you to the proverbial desert island.

In the meantime, I will continue to speak out as much as possible while it is still possible.

Many blessings,

Ingrid
http://www.sacred-medicine.org/

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2010

Essay on Chemtrails

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