My story
Years ago I had health problems that failed conventional treatments. I was cured using alternative methods. Our federal government appeared to be wedded to pharmaceutical medicine, and completely unsupportive of alternative medicine. As a result, I formed the Foundation for Alternative and Integrative Medicine, FAIM, to search the planet for successful treatments and bring information to the people of what we find.
Our planet is also ill. It is threatened with a temperature that is nearly 2 degrees above normal; oceans that are 30% more acidic than normal; hurricanes and forest fires that are more violent than normal; and melting ice in the Arctic and Antarctic threatening to raise the sea level and flood coastal areas including cities. The symptoms are clear.
It has been pointed out by environmental scientists that unless we take action to eliminate the cause of the earth’s current health problems, its temperature and symptoms will continue to become worse. We will experience another extinction as has happened five times in the past. This time it will end human life on the planet.
Just as we share information on effective treatments for human disease, we must share suggestions to cure the planet as well. This article is an attempt to offer those suggestions.
To begin, let me share some of my life story.
I was born, and grew up in the Iowa Great Lakes region of Northwest Iowa. I could ride my bike to fishing spots, and hunt pheasants literally out of my back door. My brother and I would ride our bikes to duck hunting after delivering our newspapers. Few people have had the opportunity to enjoy Mother Nature and this wonderful planet as have I.
While I was in high school in the thirties, I took $50 I had saved from my newspaper route and started my own business of selling fishing flies. No one ever invested any additional money into the business. Over the next 75 years it grew from that original $50 to become the largest fishing tackle manufacturing company in the nation. When I started, the local hardware store owner told me I could not hope to compete with the big fishing tackle companies. But through teamwork great things can be accomplished.
When World War II began, many people in the United States did not want to engage in the fighting. But when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor it united us as nothing else could. The next day I signed up for the Army Air Corps. I spent most of the war teaching other young men how to fly. I saw how much our nation could accomplish if we worked together. The young men like myself volunteered to go to war. The women and those too old to join the fight built the planes and tanks we needed to win that terrible war. I think we showed what teamwork can accomplish if we will all work together, no matter how great the challenge.
After my son gave me a book about the Vietnam War, I became convinced that the war was a mistake. I arranged for some of us to meet with our congressman. He refused to even discuss it with us. I was so disheartened that I decided I should run for Congress. I had a poll taken to determine my chances if I ran against him. The pollster said, “Don’t run. You do not have a chance.”
So I ran. I received 49% of the vote the first time I ran. In the next election I became only the second Democrat that has ever served Northwest Iowa in Congress.
I arrived in Congress with 74 other young democrats. We organized as a class, elected officers and met regularly, pretty well taking over the Congress. I served for 12 years before retiring because of my health problems. During my term campaign money did not have the impact it does today. We did not have the party polarization of today. Republicans and Democrats worked together.
While I was in Congress, corporations could not contribute to campaigns, and individuals could give no more than $2,000. I spent almost no time on the telephone trying to raise money – and I spent not much more than $100,000 in any of my campaigns compared to the millions of dollars that many congressional campaigns cost today.
I have seen a tremendous number of changes in the 97 years I have been on this planet. I am extremely concerned about what I believe some of those changes mean for the lives of our grandchildren.
How did my health issues lead me to alternative medicine?
I have had some health problems during those 97 years. I did not find conventional medicine very helpful, but alternative treatments seemed to take care of both my Lyme disease and prostate cancer.
I contracted Lyme disease when I was bitten by a tick in Maryland. I tried all the conventional treatments but nothing was working. I was so ill I had to retire from Congress. Then I heard about a farmer in southern Minnesota who was using colostrum to cure Lyme. He would take the patient’s blood infected with Lyme spirochetes and inject this into the udder of a pregnant cow. The cow would create antibodies to the Lyme to protect the new born calf. These antibodies were in the colostrum which is the first milk the calf receives. As soon as the calf was born some of the colostrum was harvested. According to his instructions, I carried a little timer and a little bottle of the colostrum in my pocket. Every hour and a half, while I was awake, I took a tablespoon of the colostrum. After a few weeks my symptoms disappeared and I no longer had Lyme disease.
My prostate cancer appeared to be cured with a medication called 714-X. This is a therapy that was developed by Gaston Naessens, a French scientist living in Canada. I did daily injections of 714-x for 21 days. See Gaston Naessens and 714X for more information.
Why did I create the Foundation for Alternative and Integrative Medicine?
After I left Congress I worked closely with Senator Tom Harkin to create an alternative wing at the National Institute of Health, NIH. This was called the Office of Alternative Medicine, OAM. I served on the board for several years until it became evident that the NIH was not interested in investigating innovative alternative treatments. I determined if the NIH would not do it, that I would. Thus the creation of FAIM. FAIM searches the planet to find treatments that are effective. Our FAIM website, is our effort to bring those treatments to the attention of people who might benefit.
What awakenings has FAIM experienced?
FAIM became very interested in stem cells and the healing potential they presented. I became aware of countless patients who had benefited from this therapy. I had been out of Congress for some time, but I had friends in the White House and was able to meet with a staff member who was close to the President and the Vice President. FAIM shared information with them that showed how many people could be helped who suffered from diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, COPD, etc. It also shared how much money could be saved by the medical system with this therapy. In addition, I met with the head of the FDA. The FDA had changed some language in their rules and regulations without public comment that brought stem cells under their jurisdiction. In order to make stem cells available to the public the FDA needed to relinquish this jurisdiction. In some ways, stem cell treatments could replace treatment with pharmaceutical drugs. The government was mainly interested in protecting the bottom line of the pharmaceutical industry. Neither the FDA or the White House were interested in investigating the potential represented by stem cell therapy. For more on the information FAIM uncovered see Why Can't We Use Our Own Stem Cells to Heal Our Bodies?.
It has become quite clear to many people that our federal government is married to the pharmaceutical industry and is not about to see the promotion of alternative treatments for health problems. It is no secret that the FDA gets about half of its funding from approving pharmaceutical drugs. To confirm the unfortunate conflict of interest, there is also a game of revolving doors between employees of the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies.
How does this relate to the health of the planet?
Later in life I came to know a young man who sailed in our Iowa lakes named David Thoreson. David joined a couple of other sailors from Minnesota and tried to sail around the two continents of North and South America. When they first tried they could not make it through the Northwest Passage of the arctic area above Canada because of the ice. The second time they tried they could easily make it because of the melted ice. Having seen how the arctic ice is melting due to global warming, David is now spending his time trying to alert people to what is happening to our planet. I learned from David.
I am not an environmental scientist. But I can listen, and I can read. As inhabitants of this planet Earth, we are in trouble unless we change our ways, and start to do it right away. Both the problem and the solution are easy to understand.
The problem
Unrestrained capitalism has brought us better lives as we now travel around the world. In comparison, when my grandparents were young they could hardly visit the next state in their horse and buggies.
Robots, computers, cars, airplanes, tractors, air conditioning and a host of inventions since the birth of my grandparents have improved the lives of those alive today. Most all of those inventions require energy. That electricity can come from burning coal, oil and gas, or by capturing the incoming energy from the sun, wind and tides, converting it to electricity.
The burning of fossil fuels creates carbon dioxide and other polluting gasses, whereas converting energy from the sun is non-polluting. Polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other gasses increases heat from the sun’s rays that reach the earth and warms the planet.
Some pollution is obvious. We can smell rotting garbage and sewage. We are not as aware of increased carbon dioxide or methane in the atmosphere. It is harder to get people to address problems that are not apparent. Not many people, including politicians, take the time to study climate change.
Recent improvements in the production of wind turbines and solar panels make converting energy from the sun almost competitive with fossil fuels. However, our government favors fossil fuels that pollute the atmosphere over non-polluting sun and wind. This is due to the political influence rising from the impact of campaign contributions from corporations that benefit from extracting fossil fuels. Many congressional campaigns depend on these contributions for re-election. But corporations do not have grandchildren.
Our United States of America has become the most powerful nation on the planet. Unrestrained capitalism and the importance of money in politics has enabled the wealthy and corporations to have tremendous influence on government policies because of their massive political contributions.
The solution
Our planet is just the right distance from the sun to be warmed sufficiently that we humans and other animal life can enjoy this great planet.
Scientists warn us that our pollution of the atmosphere could warm the planet sufficiently to bring on another mass extinction similar to those that have occurred in the past millions of years.
We must stop burning of fossil fuels to supply our energy needs. As mentioned earlier, the earth will continue to become warmer; our agricultural production will collapse; our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic; storms will become more violent; and fires will become more widespread. Unless we take prompt action environmental scientists tell us that human beings will no longer be able to live on this planet. This could all happen during the lives of babies now being born.
The solution is fairly simple.
We simply have to replace our burning of fossil fuels for energy with non-polluting energy from the sun, wind and tides. We have to start now.
If we remove the government subsidies to fossil fuel corporations, energy from solar panels and wind turbines can compete with energy from the burning of fossil fuels.
As I see the many cars and trucks on our city streets and our highways, the important task of converting our entire fleet to non-polluting electric cars becomes apparent. Changing how we heat all of our buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer is a tremendous task. Almost all of the automobile manufacturers are already planning to start making electric cars and trucks. Electric heating and cooling of buildings is commonplace. This electricity must come from renewable sources such as solar and wind.
Fortunately, scientists at some California universities have written up what each nation and what each state in the United States would have to do in time to save the planet. It includes how many solar panels and wind turbines each would have to install by mid-century.
It is a tremendous challenge, and will require teamwork among all the nations of the earth.
We in the U.S. have seen what teamwork can do. As in World War II, we know what our nation can do when we all work together to make the necessary sacrifices to accomplish our goals.
FAIM was formed to bring information to sick people that might save their lives. We also feel it is important to bring information to help heal a sick planet.
Our planet already has a temperature. My hope for my grandchildren is that we will decide to join and lead a world effort to save this planet earth, our only home.
We know how to solve the pollution problem, reduce the temperature of the oceans, and save a sick planet, just as we do with sick people. It is just a matter of commitment to address it.
The statement, “We have found the problem and it is us” has never been more appropriate. We all live on this one sick planet. The world’s humans are going to have to learn how to live together in peace and take prompt action to cure the planet or we are sentencing our grandchildren to a death sentences due to a dying planetary home.
Like most illness, every day we wait to address the problem reduces our chances of success.
If you care about your grandchildren as I do, I suggest that you try to become educated on the climate change realities, and become active politically.
