Editorial – 5 February 2012

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The canaries in the mine are getting sick

by James Fairbairn, Chief Editor – Open Your Eyes News

We will all know of at least one in our family or circle of friends. A child a with a nut allergy, or asthma, or autism, or ADHD or worse still a serious life threatening illness. This is not a “normal” situation.

When I was at school in the 1970′s and 1980′s there was just one child in the whole of my school with autism. No-one had an allergy, and as for life threatening illnesses in children that was something you only ever heard about on TV fund raising shows. Yet you go into any classroom in a Western country today and you can pretty much guarantee a large number of allergies within the class (official figures show that at least one in 200 Australian children has a nut allergy, however the true figure is possibly much higher), asthma inhalers on the desks (one in 6 Australian children is affected by it), at least one child with “special needs” (numbers in NSW schools have quadrupled in the last 8 years) and chances are the school itself has at least one of its pupils in hospital. There is something seriously wrong here. The canaries in the mine are getting sick and dying, and yet we do not evacuate the mine, we sit passively by and accept it as “just one of those things”.

In the space of just a generation the situation has worsened exponentially. Our bodies, and especially those of our children, are under toxic attack. Ignoring the elephant(s) in the room is not an option. We as a society, and especially as individuals, must identify and do what we can address the causes. The clock is ticking.

Chances are that the causes will be varied, and multi-factorial, but either way the result is the same – the toxic assault on the human body will have negative effects.

Some of the possible/probable culprits are:

• Vaccines – Gen X’ers will have received around 5 vaccines, all for potentially fatal illnesses, before school age. The average Australian child receives more than 30 by the age of five, the vast majority of which are not for illnesses that are fatal in a healthy population
• Additives – Your food is full of additives, many of which are well documented carcinogens
• Radiation – Whether it be a legacy of Cold War nuclear tests, or the ongoing Fukushima disaster or the extensive use of depleted uranium in modern warfare.
• Pesticides & artificial fertilisers-  again, many of which are well documented carcinogens
• Growth hormones & antibiotics in farm animals – A side effect of the industrialisation of the food industry, but you will consume them eventually
• Plastic pollution – The oceans are getting clogged with plastic pollution which breaks down at the molecular level to be consumed by fish, which ultimately you consume.
• Pharmaceutical medication - The percentage of Americans who took at least one prescription drug in the past month is now 48%. Big business but what are the side effects?
• Fluoride – 350 million people globally drink water that has fluoride artificially added. Fluoride is a proven bio-toxin, and as it is mass medication dose and dosage of consumption on individuals is  uncontrolled and its effects unmonitored.
• Genetically modified crops – Good for Monsanto’s shareholders however an ever growing body of medical evidence points to adverse effects on human bodies from its consumption
• Air Pollution – While governments fret and banks profit from the cult of Climate Change, virtually none of their anti-CO2 legislation addresses the very real human killers coming from the internal combustion engine, CO2 and soot particulates.
• BPA – again a known carcinogen and yet still widely found in many of your daily products.

Unfortunately this is not an exhaustive list, and that is probably the most scary fact of all.

The canaries are dropping. What are you going to do about it?