The Fitzgerald Report

Some perverse reasons why our medical system fails to support natural prevention.

Insurance companies and the U.S. medical system fail to encourage natural preventive medicine because those treatments, no matter how successful, simply aren't profitable enough.

That disturbing conclusion comes from an insightful article on the diabetes epidemic appearing in in The New York Times -- a newspaper serving a city with an estimated 800,000 people suffering from diabetes. The newspaper clearly laid out how a warped incentives structure harms human health and absurdly raises medical costs.

Consider these examples:
() Insurers will refuse to pay $150 so a diabetic can see a podiatrist and prevent foot problems caused by diabetes, yet the same insurance company will cover the $30,000 cost of amputating a food lost to diabetes.

How can that be? It's a familiar pattern. The insurance industry figures that preventive measures "are often so far into the future that many people will have already switched jobs or insurers, or have even died, by the time that medical complications hit. As a result, any savings from preventive measures will only go to their competitors."

() Rather than spend $20 per person on nutritional counseling to help diabetics and potential diabetics manage their insulin levels through proper diet choices, hospitals will spend $50,000 on the quick-fix of bariatric surgery to shrink a diabetic's stomach size to control food intake. Once again, when insurance companies or Medicare are covering the bills, physicians and hospitals opt for the most expensive alternatives.

() A simple and relatively inexpensive test in a doctor's office can screen people for their risk of developing diabetes, yet that test is rarely covered by insurers or even encouraged by physicians. Symptoms of diabetes can take 7 to 10 years to manifest, but by that point the disease is irreversible and becomes a huge cost burden to consumers but a huge profit cash cow for the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

"It's almost as though the system encourages people to get sick," conceded Dr. Matthew Fink, former president of Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, in what must rank as a classic understatement. Another of his medical colleagues put it even more bluntly: "our financial success depends, in part, on our medical failures."

These perverse incentives that blind people to future repercussions have a parallel in another aspect of American life – bank savings rates. Compared to most other industrialized nations, the U.S. has one of the lowest investment savings rates. That situation, when combined with the failure to embrace preventive health care, are symptoms of a society that views life as a sprint instead of a marathon.

Such chronic short-sightedness insures that we will remain slaves to our habits of mind.

Posted by Randall Fitzgerald at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Alarmist moron, your entire premise is invalidated by the rising trend of longevity in humans and domesticated animals."

"If we were being poisoned you would think the average age of death would be getting lower? And the infantile death rate counter-argument has been shown to be erroneous. Let me guess, you are selling a book. I would call you a whore, but they actually provide a service; you are just a snake oil salesman, a run of the mill charlatan. What goes around comes around chief, I would be careful."

The above e-mail, unsigned, just came in and represents a common state of denial and infantile anger that erupts in people unable or unwilling to challenge their own belief system. This is the second or third such unsigned e-mail I have received that substitutes character slander for logic or facts. Cowards hide behind anonymity.

If the person had read The Hundred Year Lie, he or she would know the following-- longevity over the past century is a result of more efficient Public Sanitation and a consequence of Medical Technology. Kidney dialysis machines, heart pacemakers, open heart surgery, the entire range of technology and techniques have kept people alive longer.

Synthetic chemicals ARE NOT generally keeping people alive except in rare circumstances and even in these circumstances, only for months at a time. Cancer researchers have made this confession about the impact of cancer drugs on that disease.

Consider the impact of pharmaceutical drugs. According to the American Medical Association, more than 100,000 people die in the U.S. every year from adverse reactions to the chemicals in pharmaceuticals.

Imagine if 100,000 people were dying in plane crashes in this country each year caused by faulty engines. The outrage and outcry would be immense.

Why don't we hear that outrage about what chemicals in foods and medicines are doing to our health? It is because most people are in denial and have chosen to believe the lie.

The real question is not longevity but the quality of life as measured in frequency and duration of illnesses and the associated costs of health care.

As for snake oil salesmen, they too, receive attention in the book. The book does not, however, address prostitution. That profession, like some slander mongers, will always lurk in the shadows of anonymity.

Posted by Randall Fitzgerald at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Pesticides Common In U.S. Rivers?

Forty pesticides are widespread in most U.S. rivers and streams and 90 percent of fish tested contain traces of these pesticides, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey, released in March 2006, that analyzed 51 major river basins and aquifer systems.

Most of the pesticides are used in agriculture to control weeds, insects and other pests. But three herbicides that show up in the nation's water -- simazine, prometon and tebuthiuron -- are normally used in cities and suburbs for gardening and lawn care.

A spokesman for CropLife America, a trade association for the pesticides industry, replied to the study by claiming "the large majority of pesticide detections in streams and groundwater were trace amounts, far below scientifically based minimum levels set for protecting human health."

The Hundred Year Lie makes a case that 'trace amounts' of these and other toxins bioaccumulate up the food chain until the body burden of chemicals we each carry in our organs and body fat create synergies -- interactions that can trigger illness and disease. Given that scenario, there may be no minimum level of safety because these chemicals exact a cumulative damage far beyond the effects any one of them acting on its own can generate.

A Hidden Threat In Plastics?

A hospital supervisor in Eugene, Oregon noticed that the threadlike feeding tubes inserted into premature infant's stomachs began to lose their flexibility after a couple of days. Concerned about possible harm to infants, he researched the chemicals used in manufacturing these medical tubes and made an alarming discovery that many other medical personnel are making nationwide -- a chemical used to soften the plastic can leach into the human body.

Animal testing of the chemical known as polyvinyl chloride -- commonly used in such medical devices as feeding tubes, umbilical catheters and intravenous bags -- produced genital deformities and sterility in test subjects. While these animal study results can't automatically be extrapolated to indicate harm to human health, they do raise enough questions to prompt remedial actions by some manufacturers that use the chemical.

Microsoft announced in late 2005 that it would phase out polyvinyl chloride from its computer packaging materials. Makers of children's toys and a range of other products are reported to be re-evaluating their use of the chemical. As one might expect, producers of polyvinyl chloride contend that it is safe for human health, though they concede no longterm studies of toxicity have been conducted.

So next time you smell a new shower curtain, or new vinyl flooring, or new children's toys, keep in mind that
you are inhaling toxic fumes from a chemical acid 'off-gassing' from the product.

Posted by Randall Fitzgerald at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A common question I sometimes hear during my appearances on radio talk shows goes like this -- "you have a lot of alarming facts in your book, but are you sure they add up to a situation that requires our urgent attention?" Here's my answer: The toxic repercussions of our dependence on the Synthetics Belief System have been playing out in slow motion for decades within our bodies, our culture, and within Nature. But the cycle of effects on human and animal health are now multiplying and acclerating in ways that we can measure. This book details dozens of those measurements and projects how the impact will turn us into a mutant species. Whether we can transcend our individual and collective denial about the presence of these patterns and trends is an altogether different question. So the short answer to the first question is "yes, I am sure. As sure as my logic and intuition together can lead me to believe." The facts do add up. We are on a slippery slope.

Posted by Randall Fitzgerald at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you thought conservatives might react negatively to a book that criticizes food, drug and consumer product manufacturers along with the entire medical science establishment, prepare to adjust the lens of how you view consensus reality.

Two weeks before the release of my book into bookstores, The New York Post newspaper published a fullpage news story promoting the book. As some of you may know, international media baron Rupert Murdoch owns The Post and has steered it with a firm corporate conservative hand.

Yet, what appealed to the two reporters who wrote this story was the book's emphasis on what ordinary individuals can do to protect themselves from chemical toxins that trespass against them to colonize their bodies. This is a classic populist argument and The Post embraced it and the book with unabashed enthusiasm.

Next, as a result of The Post article which appeared on a Sunday, Fox News called wanting me on their Fox and Friends national morning show. If the book was good enough for The Post, it was acceptable to Fox, which is also controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Conservative radio commentators weren't far behind in wanting to trumpet the book's message.

After my appearance on Philadelphia radio station WPHT, the host, Michael Smerconish, spoke to me off-the-air for a few minutes. "Your book confirmed what my intuition had been telling me for years about our health and all the chemicals we're exposed to," he told me.

Here's my take on these conservative endorsements of the book and its message. They are receptive to the idea that our bodies are our private property and we should have a private property right to keep our bodies free of chemical toxins. That's their bottomline. It strikes me as a convenient place to start in making the book's broader arguments about the institutional forces that don't want us to break free of the synthetics belief system. More on that later.

Posted by Randall Fitzgerald at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Institutions of commerce and government are redefining what it means to be human!

We have no one to blame-- or to rely upon-- but ourselves!

These are some of the themes that will animate my interactions with you from this point marking the launch of the book forward into its promotion campaign.

So please stay tuned. Fasten your seat belts. Prepare for a wild ride. This is where I will chronicle the magical mystery tour of stripping the Synthetics Belief System of its clothes in public so together we can ignite a bonfire of vanities.

Posted by Randall Fitzgerald at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Bisphenol A, found in baby bottles and microwave cookware, permanently altered genes in newborn lab rats, a study finds.

By Marla Cone
The Los Angeles Times

Linking prostate cancer to a widespread industrial compound, scientists have found that exposure to a chemical that leaks from plastic causes genetic changes in animals' developing prostate glands that are precursors of the most common form of cancer in males.

Posted by Thomas at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)