Is Your Health Care System Killing You?

Cause of Death	Deaths	Cost	Author
Pharmaceuticals	106,000	$12 billion	Lazarou1 Suh49
Medical error	98,000	$2 billion	IOM6
Bedsores while hospitalized	115,000	$55 billion	Xakellis7 Barczak8
Infection while hospitalized	88,000	$5 billion	Weinstein9 MMWR10
Malnutrition while hospitalized	108,800	———–	Nurses Coalition11
Outpatient Drug reactions	199,000	$77 billion	Starfield12 Weingart112
Unnecessary Procedures	37,136	$122 billion	HCUP3, 13
Surgery-Related	32,000	$9 billion	AHRQ85
ANNUAL TOTAL	783,936Deaths!	$282 billionDollars!

Does this sound like health care to you?

 Our Synthetic Health Care System…

     Synthetic pharmaceuticals tend to treat one health condition but often produce many other health conditions due to a vast array of side effects.  Lets take the hypothetical situation of Mary, a young energetic professional who is a healthy, happy, 36 year old woman.  Mary goes to the doctor because her stomach is bothering her lately. The doctor diagnosis her with acid reflux and prescribes her Zantac 150, rather than telling her to stop eating Habanero peppers. A few weeks go by and Mary’s stomach is doing much better thanks to the Zantac, however, now she begins getting achy joints late in the evening, a common side effect of antacids. She goes back to the doctor and explains her situation that her stomach is better, but now her joints ache at night. The doctor prescribes Celebrex for the achy joints. A few weeks go by and Mary’s stomach is still doing better, her joints are no longer aching, however NOW she begins having slight chest pains while going on her nightly walk. The chest pains make it difficult to breath at times and Mary is concerned , so she goes back to the doctor to question whether or not these pills are the cause of her symptoms. The doctor responds with, “well if Celebrex gives you chest pains, then lets try XXXX and see if that works better for you.” Mary tries the new pills and instead of having chest pains, she now has irritable bowel syndrome. You get the picture…     

     Mary, who was otherwise healthy before taking the prescribed medicines, goes to the doctor and tells him that she doesn’t want to take any of these pills anymore due to all of the accumulated unpleasant side effects she is experiencing. The doctor responds “Mary, if you refuse to follow my advice as a medical doctor, I cannot be held accountable for your health and well being. Additionally, your insurance company may no longer cover you because you are a liability if you don’t follow my advice.” Mary is now stuck with quite a dilemma; continue on the prescription rat-wheel, or find her self uninsured with newly acquired medical problems. She asks about herbal alternatives to the pharmaceuticals she is currently prescribed and the doctor explains that there are currently no herbal medicines in the United States which are currently prescribed and FDA approved and therefore he cannot even recommend that she take them for fear of losing his license to practice medicine.           Pharmaceuticals are FDA approved if they have reasonable safety profiles. Safety is determined through years of phase I and phase II clinical trials etc.. However, these drugs are not approved in combination with other FDA approved medicines! This is a little known fact. I will say it again, FDA APPROVED PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS ARE NOT FDA APPROVED TO BE COMBINED WITH OTHER FDA APROVED PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS. By taking multiple prescription medicines you are becoming the pharmaceutical companies’ guinea pigs when testing the safety profiles of these drugs. Look at the popular diet pill Fen-Phen, an amphetamine like drug mixed with an SSRI type drug to calm the jitteriness of the amphetamines. The FDA, insurance companies, and doctors alike, knew that this combination was never tested for safety. Nor was either drug ever tested or approved for long term use. It wasn’t even proven to keep weight off after the patient stopped taking this addictive, dangerous “medicine”. Yet the FDA, turned its head knowing that it was the top prescription weight loss pill of the time. Many died, many more were injured. Billions were made.          Pharmaceuticals kill over 150,000 people in this country (America) every year and result in nearly 1 million cases of serious injury. These 150,000 victims trusted their doctors to provide professional health care and abide by the Hippocratic oath, and died because of it. This figure also does not take into account the millions of elderly (the highest population of elderly that America has ever experienced), who are in nursing homes on several “medicines” to extend the quality of their lives. Many of these folks got onto the prescription rat-wheel years ago and are taking several medicines to counteract the effects of other medicines. The combination of all of the drugs plus old age, only worsens their memory, vision, and mobility problems. Try taking any combination of 6 prescriptions every day and see how you feel. That’s one hell of a way to treat America’s elders after they are no longer economically viable to support the economy with their labor and taxes; leach their money slowly with medicines that promise to better their quality of life while they die slowly and painfully, in a confused and lonely state in a nursing home.          There are over 12 million prescription drug abusers in this country, and that number rises every day. The new gateway drug for children and teenagers can no longer be pinned upon cannabis; according to recent studies, prescription medicines from mom and dad’s medicine cabinet are the new gateway drug. And its no wonder. The average American receives one new prescription every month and a half. 9 prescriptions a year due to the “prescribe and see” method of healthcare. This leaves quite an excess of pills laying around the house for youngsters to experiment with.

          Lets now take a look at the system of distribution. The doctors, sadly enough, have lost their rights to properly lend medical care to their patients. I say this because certain health care plans only prescribe certain medicines due to the kickbacks they receive from large pharmaceutical companies as incentives to recommend only their drugs. Additionally, the average pharmaceutical rep has an allowance, on average of $10,000 per doctor for a marketing budget. This includes anything from lunches to fancy trips to Hawaii that the drug companies hold to “educate” doctors on their products. Basically a doctor goes to the seminar and learns how to prescribe the medicine for an hour and the rest of the time, they drink and play golf. $10,000 per rep, per doctor, per drug, per company. That’s a lot of incentives for the doctor to simply sign a piece of paper. Now the insurance company, they will only cover certain drugs as well, often the cheapest for them, and not necessarily the most safe or most effective. Additionally, the FDA is under heavy pressure from pharmaceutical companies to hurry their drugs though the trials process. At millions of dollars per trial, you better believe they want to run as many drugs through the process as possible.           Lastly, you would think that with all of the miracles of modern medicine that these companies could come up with medicines that don’t  have side effects, are not  addictive, and don’t  have terrible withdrawl symptoms after you stop taking them. Its intentional. Take Adderall for example. A child has a hard time concentrating, so he/she  is diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Adderall, a time released amphetamine. After a few weeks, the child’s grades improve, he/she  is focused, and doing much “better”. When its time for the checkup, the doctor is told about the positive progress and this justifies his diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and warrants the continuous prescribing of amphetamines to the child.   When the child does not take the medicine for a week at summer camp, the child is irritable, tired, and disruptive and as a result, gets kicked out of camp. These withdrawal symptoms also justify the doctor’s diagnosis and prescription of the pills. What is not taken into consideration is that ANYONE who takes amphetamines can focus better, perform better, and feel darn good doing it. ANYONE who stops taking amphetamines will undergo serious withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, inability to focus etc.. So in this way, once prescribed, there is no way for the medicine not to work, or for the doctor’s diagnosis to be incorrect.

So we can see here that your health is not in the hands of doctors who have undergone rigorous training to attain the title of M.D. Nor is your health in the hands of the FDA or your insurance company. Folks, your health is in the hands business men with Doctorate degrees in business, not medicine.  KT Botanicals is dedicated to educating the public about alternative medicines and provides highly effective, low cost, herbal products to anyone who wishes to rid themselves of the toxic, synthetic, health care system that is currently in place in America and many other countries.

 Important Advances in Medicine During the 1950’s

A Short Article Written and Copywritten by KT Botanicals

There were many important advances in medicine during the 1950’s including the first human aorta transplant, the discovery of Hepatitis A, as well as the synthesis of the world’s first wonder drug, Penicillin.[1]  All of these discoveries happened in 1950 alone.  Truly, 1950 was a turning point in modern medicine.  The following is an overview of some of the most important advances in medicine during the 1950’s.

The synthesis of the Penicillin sparked the golden era of antibiotics.  In fact, most of the antibiotics that we have available today were discovered in the 1950s and use the same method of action against infections; “namely by interfering with the formation of a bacterium’s walls, proteins or DNA, so that it cannot reproduce and spread.”[2]  However, researchers were quickly finding that penicillin and other early antibiotics could not kill every illness causing bacteria.  Thus, the term “superbug” was coined.  A superbug, is an organism which readily adapts to the treatment of antibiotics and passes down its resistant traits to its offspring.  Staphylococcus Aureus, or staff bacteria as it is commonly called, was the first of these superbugs, taking only 4 years to develop resistance to penicillin.[3]  Science pushed very hard during the 50’s for the research and development of new antibiotics to win the race against resistant strains of bacteria.  In 1951, the first pharmaceutical to combat alcoholism was marketed under the brand name, Antabus.  Antabus worked by inhibiting the enzyme needed to process alcohol, making 1 drink feel more like 5 or 6.[4]  This quickly proved dangerous and was later removed from the market.  In other news in 1951, a report was underway which ultimately proved that some cancers are caused by viruses, a vaccine for yellow fever was discovered, and neurologists were the highest paid physicians in the country with an average income of over $28,000.[5]  The average American income at that time was a mere $3,400![6]In 1952, much research was being done to combat cardiovascular failures.  For example, the first heart-lung machine is used on a 15 month old girl with a failing heart[7], electric shock was successfully used to revive a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest, an artificial heart valve is inserted in a human heart, holes in the heart are surgically fixed, and the world’s first pacemaker is invented![8]  Other noteworthy medical achievements include the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Rutgers’s University for discovering Streptomycin, a powerful antibiotic that combated Tuberculosis.[9]  With Tuberculosis well on its way to becoming extinct, another epidemic is at its height.  By 1952, the Polio epidemic had reached an all-time high of over 58,000 reported cases.[10]  The race for the Polio vaccine was now hot and heavy and a cure seemed only moments away.

1953 marks the first successful Polio vaccination for both monkeys and humans by Dr. Dr. Jonas Salk.[11]  By 1954, the trials began to test the vaccine for efficacy.  It was also in 1954 that the first open heart surgery had occurred, a huge step in cardiology.  Yet, with all of the advancements in cardiology, President Eisenhower suffers a heart attack in September of 1955.

Sadly, in 1955, a mere 5 percent of medical school students are women and less than 3 percent are African American, even though the American Medical Association opened its doors to African Americans back in 1950.[12]  Also noteworthy in 1955 and early 56, the first kidney transplant occurred and shortly thereafter, the first kidney dialysis machine is used to effectively filter blood.[13]   Also in 1955, A birth control pill called Enovid, is tested on more than 15,000 Puerto-Rican and Haitian women under the supervision of Harvard University physician Gregory Pincus.[14]  Although there were serious side effects, they were downplayed and it went on to become the first widely distributed birth control pill.  Smoking was also becoming a known health risk in 1956.  It took them a while, but finally in 1956, the American Cancer Society links the smoking of cigarettes to lung cancer.[15]  Despite this warning, it was estimated that 48% of Americans above the age of 14, smoked cigarettes in 1958.[16]

The early to mid 1950’s was a booming time for medical advancements.  There were not too many medical discoveries in 1957, 1958 and 1959, but I will briefly list the most important ones. In 1958 ultrasound was employed for prenatal care, greatly decreasing the rates of prenatal complications.[17]  Americans during this time were also very concerned with the growing problem of pollution caused by the sheer amount of auto traffic in urban areas such as Los Angeles and New York.[18]  The very first national conference on air pollution occurred in 1958.  In 1959, a cure-all vaccine for diphtheria, polio, and whooping cough was released.[19] 

These are, in a nutshell, the medical advances from 1950-1959.  Clearly, some of the most important discoveries in medicine were accomplished during this era.  It is important to note that this was the golden era for synthetic pharmaceuticals.  Before the 1950’s it was still common to see herbal medicines marketed by large pharmaceutical companies. However, patents could not be placed on naturally occurring products, meaning that companies could not exclusively own the rights to market and sell their products.  This all changed with the introduction of synthetic medicines, since they could be discovered, synthesized, patented, and hugely profited from.  Nonetheless, these profitable patents provided the fiscal means to propel the medical advancements of the 1950′s which changed the face of medicine, as the world knew it, forever.

[1] “1950′s Medicine and Health: Important Events in Medicine and Health, 1950–1959.” American Decades. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard Layman. Thomson Gale, 1994. eNotes.com. 2006. 29 Oct, 2006 <http://history.enotes.com/1950-medicine-health-american-decades/
important-events-medicine-health>

[2] “Merck produces first-in-class antibiotic to fight MRSA” Wai Lang Chu.  05/19/2006 Drugreasercher.com 29 Oct, 2006 <http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=67809-merck-antibiotic-platensimycin-mrsa>

[3] ‘How Penicillin Kills Bacteria” Cells Alive.com 29 Oct, 2006

<http://www.cellsalive.com/pen.htm>

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7]“Fifty Years of Open-Heart Surgery” Lawrence H. Cohn, MD. American Heart Association, Inc.  2003  American Heart Association Webpage.  29 October 2006.

< http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/107/17/2168>

[8] Ibid.

[9] “The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1952” Presentation Speech.  Nobelprize.org     29 October 2006 <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1952/press.html>

[10] “Celebrating The 50th Anniversary of the Salk Polio Vaccine.” Remembering Polio.  University of Pittsburg. 29 October 2006.    <http://www.polio.pitt.edu/>

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “THE STORY OF THE PILL” Kenneth S. Davis American Heritage Magazine Online August/September 1978    Volume 29, Issue 5.  29 October 2006. <http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1978/5/1978_5_80.shtml>

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and the Birth of a Synthetic Economy

Written and Copywritten by KT Botanicals

The date was August 2^nd, 1937 whereby a relatively empty 75^th congress instituted the “Marihuana Tax Act of 1937,” after a mere 30 minutes of debate.  While this act did not criminalize cannabis or hemp as it is commonly thought, it did call for heavy taxation, strict regulation, and introduced harsh penalties for those who did not adhere to it.  Nonetheless, the key figures that advocated for the passing of this act had strong social, political, and economic motives towards eliminating hemp altogether.   This paper will discuss the social, political, and economic motives of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and will demonstrate how the key figures behind this act paved the way for the new synthetic economy of the 1950’s which has forever changed the American way of life.

Before the synthetic boom of the 40’s, and the pharmaceutical boom of the 50’s, much of the world including America, depended upon natural products like hemp for their everyday needs such as foods, medicine, building materials, clothes, paint, and even fuel.  Jack Herer, author of “The Emperor Wears No Clothes,” the number one best selling hemp book of all time, writes: 

“In fact, eighty percent of our economy depended on hemp for paper, fiber and fuel, 125 years ago. At that time, it took 300 man-hours to harvest an acre of hemp, but with the invention of the brand new hemp decorticator in the 1930s, it only took 1-1/2 to 2 hours. This is equivalent to reducing the labor burden from $6,000 down to $40 per acre, in today’s money. Keep in mind that the cotton gin of 1793, reduced the man-hours from 300 hours down to 2 hours to harvest and clean an acre of cotton.” [1]

Armed with the invention of the hemp decorticator, America was staring in the face of the 20^th century industrial revolution; the great depression was fading, alcohol prohibition was repealed, and now an already billion dollar industry was about to explode on the already good wartime economy.

The hemp-based economy was looking very bright, optimistic, and extremely profitable for Americans.  However, in 1937, the largest ammunitions manufacturer in America, DuPont Industries, had announced exciting new developments in the chemical-based synthetic field.  These developments included plastics made from coal and oil, a sulfur based paper making processes, as well as the man made textile, Nylon.  DuPont Industries had just one problem:  Hemp already had a tight grip on the markets for plastics, paper, textiles, fuels, medicines, and with the invention of the hemp decorticator, their relatively expensive synthetic products would not stand a chance in the American marketplace. A law such as the Marihuana Tax Act would eliminate hemp from the competition by heavily taxing all medical and non-medical sales of hemp from the farmers to the end users.  As DuPont had predicted in its 1937 annual report, “Radical changes from the revenue raising power of government would be converted into instruments for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganisation.”[2]  Indeed, America was unknowingly well on its way to being forced to accept a radical new economy, as well as a radical change in their ideas of industrial and social organization.  It was as if DuPont Industries had known something that the rest of America did not.

DuPont Industries’ primary financial support came from the 6^th largest bank in America, Mellon bank, which was owned by the United States Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon.[3]  Andrew Mellon invested very heavily into DuPont’s patented sulfur –based process of converting wood fiber into usable paper.  According to a 1938 article that appeared in both Popular Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering magazines entitled “New Billion Dollar Crop,” hemp produces 4 times as much usable pulp per acre than trees.[4]  Not only do hemp fields outperform trees in pulp production, hemp is also a renewable resource (unlike trees), as hemp can grow up to 20 feet tall or more in one growing season.[5]  The article also states that paper alone was a billion dollar industry in America at the time, and that 80% of American paper was imported.[6]  Despite these facts, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, and owner of the 6^th largest bank in America, Andrew Mellon continued to invest in DuPont’s sulfur-based paper making process.  It was as if DuPont Industries and Andrew Mellon had known something that the rest of America did not. 

In 1930, Andrew Mellon had appointed his niece’s husband, Harry Anslinger, to be the first director of the Federal narcotics Bureau.[7]  Anslinger had previously been the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner for the Bureau of Prohibition.  However, when Mellon saw that the Alcohol prohibition days were numbered, Mellon used his power to appoint Anslinger to a new office for the sake of his niece’s financial security.  Anslinger eventually went on to secretly write the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 for two years before he sent a copy to Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina, who introduced the Act in Congress on April 14, 1937.[8]  Anslinger secretly worked on the act without consulting the American Medical Association or law enforcement agencies for fear of having it shot down by doctors, farmers, law enforcement, and businessmen.  At the hearings, congress called upon William C. Woodward of the American Medical Association to be present for the hearings.  Woodward opposed the act saying, ”We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any initiative, even to the profession, that it was being prepared”[9] Indeed the act would have been shot down, had congress and the American people known that they were about to outlaw the number one cash crop of the American economy, hemp.  Woodward goes on to explain, “No medical man would identify this bill with a medicine until he read it through, because marihuana is not a drug, simply a name given to cannabis.”[10]
Anslinger, with the help of William Randolph Hearst, had effectively duped the American people as well as the United States congress into outlawing cannabis hemp by simply renaming it ‘marihuana’. 

            William Randolph Hearst is arguably one of the most powerful men in American history.  Hearst who owned almost every major newspaper in the country had a heavy investment in the timber industry to support the trillions of pages in his newspapers and did not want to see hemp ruin his investments.[11]  Hearst began a new form of political and social influence called ‘yellow journalism’, which he used against hemp in 1898 when he lost 800,000 acres of timber land to Poncho Villa in the Spanish American War.[12]  Hearst then, had a hatred for Mexicans and through the use of his media monopoly, associated marihuana usage with lazy Mexican immigrants which in turn shaped American’s negative views on both Mexican immigrants and ‘marihuana’.  In the 1930’s Hearst’s campaign shifted from the lazy Mexican who abused marihuana, to the violent Negros that abuse marihuana, rape white women, and create the satanic music that Americans now appreciate as jazz and soul.[13]  The Hearst smear campaign was one of the worst and most inaccurate campaigns in history.  It was also one of the most effective.  By the time Anslinger’s bill was sent to congress, even congress believed that marihuana was a powerfully addictive and very dangerous narcotic that should be outlawed for the sake of public safety.  Little did they know that they were about to outlaw hemp, the billion dollar cash crop that would have began the 20^th century equivalent of the industrial revolution.             

     The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 solidified the foundations for the new synthetic economy of the mid 40’s to early 60’s by eliminating hemp from the marketplace. The heavy taxation and strict fines made it a risky business to cultivate, distribute, prescribe, or manufacture hemp based products forcing many farmers, businesses, and consumers to accept the new wave of a synthetic based economy.  The future of the American economy was now in the hands of a select few unscrupulous elitists, DuPont, Mellon, and Hearst.  As a result, the synthetic market exploded as synthetics became popular in almost every application imaginable replacing their natural predecessors.  In an article that appeared in Popular mechanics, the president of DuPont explains, “Synthetic plastics find application in fabricating a wide variety of articles, many of which in the past were made from natural products… the chemist has aided in conserving natural resources by developing synthetic products to supplement or wholly replace natural products.”[14]  These were truly the golden years of synthetic science. Scientists were well funded and well paid, synthetics were proving to be reliable and cost effective, and the American people were open and accepting to the synthetic movement.During the 1940’s the United States Armed forces were tremendously invested in synthetic markets in an effort to make their war machines cheaper, faster, lighter, and more reliable.  After Pearl Harbor, the rubber supply lines from South East Asia were constantly being disrupted and other exporters of natural rubber such as South America could not fulfill the wartime need for rubber.[15]  It came to a point where the United States Military was going to have a graveyard of useless and tireless cars, trucks, and planes.[16] As time was dwindling to correct the American rubber shortage, the United States Government met with the industry leaders, including the Goodyear Tire Company, to formulate a cost effective synthetic rubber that could meet the high demands of the military.[17]    By 1945, the American government had shelled out more resources developing synthetic rubbers than they had developing the atomic bomb![18] Not only was the Government concerned about their military program, but they were also concerned with the average American family who had come to depend on rubber tires for their automobiles.  If Americans could not drive to work due to a shortage in rubber tires and gaskets, the American economy would fail at a very inconvenient time. The American military also relied very heavily on synthetic lubricants for their increasingly complicated highly refined aviation engines.  Synthetic lubricants could withstand higher temperatures for longer periods of continuous use without losing viscosity, allowing the air force to evolve from small turbo-props to jet fighters that could travel faster than the speed of sound.

            The 1940’s and 1950’s also saw an immense increase in the usage of synthetic pesticides such as DDT.  Prior to the 1940’s, pesticides were limited to a few botanicals such as pyrenthium and rotenone, as well as a few inorganic pesticides such as copper, sulfur, and arsenic.[19]  All of which proved to be both effective and generally well tolerated with a high safety rating and very few incidents.  The ‘second generation pesticides’ of the 1940’s, were mostly synthetic because they were cheap to synthesize, more effective against a wider range of pestilences, and had a perceived low toxicity to mammals.  DDT was often called the miracle pesticide due to its ability to increase crop yields.[20]  Soon the petrochemical companies found the pesticide market to be a very profitable way to dispose of their toxic byproducts such as hydrocarbons and organophosphates, which became the dominant chemicals for controlling pests over the next several decades.[21]  As the market became dominated with synthetic pesticides, the research and development of organic pesticides came to a standstill and organics were unable to compete in the open market with their synthetic counterparts.

Medicine was also rapidly adopting the synthetic approach during the 1940’s and 1950’s.  Up until the early 1950’s, several of the leading pharmaceutical companies continued to market and sell botanical medicines, which had been effectively employed for thousands of years by every culture throughout recorded history.  However, botanical medicines like hemp were quickly on their way out as their synthetic pharmaceuticals counterparts began to overtake the market.  In the early 1950’s, pharmaceutical manufacturers shifted their primary focuses from selling botanical medicines to researching, developing, and marketing potent synthetic chemicals. For example, by the end of the 1950’s, Smith Kline & French, a large pharmaceutical firm, had cut their line of botanical products down to less than 60, whereas in the 1920’s they had stocked over 15,000 botanical products.[22] However Americans were enjoying many of the positive aspects that the new synthetic medicines had to offer. 

James Harvey Young, PhD, author of The Medical Messiahs:  A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America, explains the tremendous immediate heath benefits that synthetic medicines had made available to the American people:

“Life expectancy at birth in the United States had been 60 years in 1937, when sulfanilamide appeared. By 1956 it had risen to almost 70 between 1938 and 1950 as between 1921 and 1937. Infants, children, and young adults had benefited most. The death rate from childhood diseases had tumbled 90 per cent. Almost as dramatic were declines in the death rates for influenza-pneumonia and for infectious diseases.”[23]

Austin Smith, the scientist that is recognized today as the pioneer of human embryonic stem cells,  rhetorically asked in 1959, “How much value can we place on 3.2 million American lives?…These are the lives that can be attributed in large part to the chemical revolution in medicine.”[24] The synthetic economy was beginning to change every aspect of the American way of life, it was even saving lives.

Through pharmaceuticals, synthetics were changing the way that Americans looked, lived, felt, thought, and behaved.  Synthetics were revolutionizing industries, strengthening the military, increasing agricultural productivity, saving lives, while simultaneously rocketing America’s economy to an all-time high.  By the early 1960’s, natural products were a thing of the past and synthetics now had now absorbed the markets of its natural predecessors. As DuPont Industries had eerily predicted in 1937, “Radical changes from the revenue raising power of government would be converted into instruments for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization.”  For better or for worse, the economic, political, and social motifs of DuPont, Andrew Mellon, and William Randolph Hearst, resulted in the birth of the synthetic economy had left America forever changed.

[1]  Jack Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes Ah Ha Publishing Company; 11th edition (November 2000) pp 23.

[2] Ibid. pp 29.

[3] Colby, Gerard. DuPont Dynasty. (Secaucus NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1984) pp. 238-239

[4] "New Billion-Dollar Crop" Popular Mechanics Feb 23. 1938. pp. 238-239.

[5] Lower, George A., “Flax and Hemp: From the Seed to the Loom”, Mechanical Engineering, Feb. 26, 1937. pp. 282-283.

[6] Ibid.

[7] “Harry J. Anslinger” All Experts: About.com < http://experts.about.com/e/h/ha/Harry_J._Anslinger.htm> Last Accessed 10/21/2006.

[8] N.O.R.M.L. “Still Crazy after all These Years, Marijuana Prohibition 1937-1997” August 2, 1997

[9] Ernest L. Abel  Marijuana The First 12,000 Years  (New York: Plenum 1980) Pp. 244

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid. pp 29

[12] Ibid. pp 29

[13] Ibid. pp 28

[14] Lammot DuPont quoted in Popular Mechanics, June 1939. pp. 805.

[15] “The Synthetic Rubber Project” Science Reference Services (linked from library of Congress) <http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/trschemical_rubber.html> Last accessed 10/21/2006.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19]  Robert Hatherill, Ph.D, “Commercial Agriculture: Facts and Figures” Environmental Studies
Program, University of California at Santa Barbara.  <http://www.vegsource.com/articles/chemical.farming.htm> Last accessed 10/21/2006.

[20] “DDT Ban Takes Effect” The Environmental Protection Agency Website <http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/ddt/01.htm> Last accessed 10/21/2006.

[21] Ibid.

[22] R.T. Stormont, “From Alchemy to Antibiotics,” FDC Law Jnl., 11 (Feb. 1956), 98-99

[23] James Harvey Young The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967) pp. 356-357.

[24] Ibid.