My contention in The Hundred Year Lie is that as a result of chemical synergies, we humans may be on a slippery slope toward becoming a mutant species.

We see the evidence everywhere around us. It started in the animal kingdom.
Several decades ago we began to hear about alligators being born in the Florida Everglades with both male and female sex organs. Since then fish in the Great Lakes, fish off the coast of California, and fish in rivers throughout Europe, began exhibiting intersex characteristics and other reproductive abnormalities.

What links all of these disturbing patterns is the presence of synthetic chemicals in the water. While the types of chemicals from case to case may vary, what is happening cannot be disputed any longer. Reproductive patterns of life, which took millions of years to evolve, are being altered within a matter of years and within a few generations.

Similar mutant species patterns are beginning to show up in humans. As I point out in the book, synthetic chemicals in public drinking water have triggered hormonal imbalances. Clinics in London are reporting huge increases in the numbers of British men seeking breast reduction surgery as a result of ingesting that city's tap water. Worldwide, we are seeing increases in the numbers of children being born with both male and female sex organs, or boys born with severely underformed penises. We know that infertility is a growing problem. We also know, based on nutritional studies done by neuroscientists, that the very structure of the human brain is being altered by the synthetic chemicals found in most processed and fast foods.

A question I often hear is this ---if the situation is as grave as The Hundred Year Lie portrays it, why are we living longer on average? Why did lifespans increase by about 40 years during the 20th century?

I believe there are two primary reasons. The first is public sanitation. As a result of immense improvements in public sanitation throughout industrialized countries, we reduced many of the infectious diseases that killed people at an early age.

The second reason is medical technology. We now have heart pacemakers, kidney dialysis machines, and a range of other technological marvels that are keeping people alive longer.

My position in this regard has received support from a 2006 study from the American Society of Integrative Medical Practice which described increases in average life expectancy this way: "Improvements in hygiene, workplace safety, child labor and water borne illnesses have dramatically reduced fetal and maternal morbidity and mortality. As a benefit, life span from birth has lengthened from about 40 to about 72 years of age during the 20th century. However, when we compare the life expectancy of 40 year old adults in 1900 and 2000, there has been almost no change. More sobering, the current epidemics of obesity, hyperactivity, stress related ills, stress fractures and signs of early diabetes in our adolescents predict that in their 20s they will experience epidemics of full blown diabetes followed, in their 30s, by cardiovascular, coronary and cerebral diseases, poor fertility and life expectancies many years shorter than their grandparents."

Here is another serious flaw in the life expectancy averages. If we examine statistics for longevity we find that the United States ranks 46th in life expectancy among the nations of the world. Yet the U.S. spends twice as much per capita on health care than any other industrialized country.

Why the huge disparity between spending and longevity? It is my contention in The Hundred Year Lie that the answer can be found in the U.S. dependence on
synthetic chemicals. More than any other nation the U.S. has pioneered the synthetics revolution and more than any other people its citizens have embraced the synthetics belief system.

This dependence is a root cause for triggering many illnesses and diseases, while simultaneously driving up health care costs still further with the over-prescribing and over-pricing of prescription drugs.

As many of you know, there is a body of scientific evidence emerging that demonstrates a link between food additives and aging. One study in particular deserves mention. It appeared in last December's issue of the journal, Public Library of Science Genetics. The researchers from the University of California at Berkeley found that DHC, a synthetic chemical manufactured for use as a flavoring agent and fragrance in foods and cosmetics, inhibits an enzyme that is crucial to controlling cellular aging. DHC is added to everything from soft drinks and dairy products to cosmetics, lotions and soaps. According to the researchers, DHC may act to age body cells by as much as 30 percent above natural aging.

Our culture of dependence on synthetic chemicals is not sustainable. We will either bankrupt ourselves as wage slaves to the current health care system, or we will evolve strategies that integrate the strengths of Western allopathic medicine with the verifiable strengths of alternative approaches to health and healing. Many of these approaches are ancient wisdom traditions from India and China.

As part of my research for this book, I became a guinea pig in my own experiment to test whether I could quickly and easily detoxify my own body of synthetic chemicals. First, I had my blood tested for dozens of chemical toxins by the Accu-Chem Laboratory in Dallas, Texas. All of the major categories of chemicals found in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testing were found in me. Some toxin levels in me were far higher than what is considered average. Two were pesticides. DDE, which is a breakdown component of DDT.
And Mirex, an ant killer. Both pesticides have been banned in the U.S. for decades, yet these chemicals persist in the environment and persist inside of our bodies.

Next, I checked into the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida and entered their three-week detox program.Each day I ate only raw organic vegetables. Twice a day I drank wheatgrass juice. Every day I took chlorella supplements. Once a day I exercised on a stairclimber followed by a 20-minute session in a far infrared sauna. Once a week I fasted for 24 hours. And each week I had a colonic treatment. At the end of three weeks my blood was tested a second time by the Accu-Chem Laboratory.All of the categories of toxin levels, especially the pesticides, had dropped by two-thirds or more.

The chief toxicologist at the lab who analyzed my results, Dr. John Laseter, pointed out that the five parts per billion of pesticides and other chemicals measured in my blood was deceptive. The real body burden of chemicals is carried in the body fat and body organs. Those levels, which can only be measured with tissue biopsies, are usually up to 200 times the concentration found in blood. By most public health standards, any chemical measuring in the range of 200 or more parts per billion in the human body is usually considered a warning sign of toxicity.

Such a finding begins to make a mockery of assertions by chemical manufacturers that trace levels of their chemicals in the human body can do no harm. We have entered a period in human history when no one, not manufacturers, not government, not science, really knows with certainty what is safe anymore. Not that any of these institutions really knew before. It's just that the myths and illusions of safety that previously comforted us can no longer blind us to the mounting evidence of what we are doing to ourselves.

We were sold the idea that synthetics are an improvement over the foods and medicines of Nature. That belief has become a health care system disaster.
Even Global Warming, to the extent that it's accelerated by human actions, is mostly a byproduct of synthetic chemical processes.

The toxins genie is out of the bottle and it can never be put back in again, at least not in our lifetimes. We still have choices about how we can take more direct responsibility for our health and for our lives.

Our most reliable defense as individuals against the onslaught of toxins in our lives is to periodically detoxify our bodies of the chemical body burdens that we absorb. There is always hope....and with it, opportunity. If anti-aging medicine
is a youthful and growing field, so too are strategies for detoxifying the human body.

From my perspective as a journalist, both fields of medicine are destined to merge in a way that supports our longterm health as individuals, and our very survival as a species.

My thanks for your attention and for your patience.
May good health be your constant companion!