Who will win the War against Disease?

Governments and their bankster backers love wars – and not just war wars. 

The War on Alcohol – aka prohibition – started in earnest just one year after the idiot carnage of WW1 (the ‘war to end all wars’) had finally bled out. The war on alcohol (1919-1933) used an array of quasi-military techniques in an utterly futile attempt to change human nature, and like all wars caused an enormous amount of collateral damage. 

For example, prohibition killed an estimated 10,000 drinkers by creating a market for wood alcohol (1), a price that the government thought well worth paying. In 1927 Seymour Lowman, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition, stated that the fringes of society that drink were “dying off fast from poison ‘hooch’” and that if the result was a sober America, “a good job will have been done”.

The war also created a fertile breeding ground for organised crime, which grew so large that it infiltrated all arms of the state – a marriage of convenience that endures to this day. And the war only ended in 1933 because influential folk such as the Rockefellers and the Du Pont’s, and their people in government, wanted the revenue from alcohol taxation (2).

Fast forward a few years, and you have the supremely ironic War on Crime. This was started in 1965 by career crook and President Lyndon B Johnson, who used this policy to distract from the terrible failure of Vietnam, and to demonise and destabilise the counter culture of the time (3). Johnson’s War on Crime, and Reagan’s ‘War on Drugs’ which followed in 1982, dramatically increased drug use and drug deaths, boosted organised crime still further and stigmatised, incarcerated and marginalised a great many recreational users. On the other hand, it was highly effective in increasing prison numbers, and created both the great CIA-sponsored drug cartels that we see today in Afghanistan, Mexico et al, and the modern high-revenue penal business.

In 1971, mid-way between the War on Crime and the War on Drugs, President Nixon declared his War on Cancer. This was primarily a smoke screen for his decision to end the convertability of dollars to gold, and bring in wage and price controls. This war grew Big Pharma business enormously, lead indirectly to the corruption of the FDA and other drug regulatory agencies, and sacrificed millions of cancer sufferers on the alter of the cruel but increasingly profitable oncology business.

We have always been at war with Eurasia, and the current version of this is the War Against Terror. Ably promoted by drug-runner Poppy Bush, the Clinton Crime Syndicate, the out-of-his-depth George ‘Mission Accomplished’ Bush Junior and deep state place man Obama, the Coalition of the Witless bombed and destroyed the social fabric of Iraq, Lebanon and other nations in the MENA, and are even now trying to foment regime change in Iran. The consequences included the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, deemed ‘worth it’ by US Secretary of State Madleine Albright; mass illegal migration into Europe, and the pending break-up of a near-bankrupt EU, which needs the financial and social burden of more unskilled workers and proto-jihadis like a hole in the head.

All of these crusades seduced the stupid, the naïve and, often, the high-minded, but failed completely in their stated aim. They have been highly successful, however, in their unstated aim; they have greatly strengthened the deep state, and hastened the replacement of representative democracy by modern corporatism.  

And finally, what about the various wars on disease? News companies trail wars on cancer, obesity, diabetes, HIV, dementia … chuggers litter our streets and their constant appeals for funds clutter our screens and letterboxes. And although we have won a few battles (the incidence of heart disease in the developed world has fallen, partly due to the War on Tobacco – but don’t worry, Big Tobacco is driving up lung cancer and heart disease in all the emerging economies), public health has deteriorated in many ways. The increase in asthma and other allergies, diabetes and diabetic complications, neurodegenerative disease, affective disorders, cancer (also in children and adolescents), the neurodevelopmental disorders – all indicate that while we were busy waging war on disease, the home fires were guttering.

Research into the blue zones such as mid-Victorian England shows that if the lifestyle basics such as food and exercise are sound, up to 9 out of 10 people are protected against the non-communicable diseases (4).  Our lamentable public health tells us that today, we have got the basics wrong. We are eating the wrong foods, we are taking too little exercise, we have too much chronic inflammation in our bodies because of our modern, processed diets. 

Our doctors still see themselves as Pasteurian warriors pushing pharmaceuticals; when they should be Bernardian carers, helping their patients to live healthier lives.  And while our politicians could actually do some good by declaring war on the food and drug industries, too many of them whore for corporate interests to do any such thing.

Bottom line. If you are interested in achieving optimal health, you will have to do it for yourself.

References:

1. http://time.com/3665643/deadly-drinking/
2. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/nc/nc2a.htm
3. http://time.com/3746059/war-on-crime-history/
4. Clayton P, Rowbotham J. How the mid-Victorians worked, ate and died.Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2009 Mar;6(3):1235-53.
5. https://www.rd.com/culture/how-charities-spend-money/
6. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/122-3005-x150042/cancer-fund-america-inc