3andfro

I receive emails and letters from people around the world, every day. They write to share their stories with me. Some have so many food sensitivities and allergies that they struggle to find anything they can eat. Others describe strange and debilitating health conditions that have flummoxed their doctors for years. Parents of children with autism and other neurological disorders share their despondency and ask for my advice.

I am grateful for these letters. I'm heartened by the dogged determination people have to understand what's making them sick; by their eagerness to dive into complex science they never learned in school; and by the humility and openness it takes to change eating and lifestyle habits they may have had for decades. You're doing better than you think. Even your willingness to ask questions, and to read a book like this, is a step in the right direction. We are up against Goliath. Because the truth is that there are powerful forces at play that profit, enormously, from making people, including children, very sick. Glyphosate is a global threat, and we cannot be satisfied until it is banned worldwide. The agrichemical industry's persistent deniability of harm is nothing short of criminal. Manufacturing plants where glyphosate is being synthesized need to be shut down. Research dollars need to be spent on projects that investigate how to get glyphosate out of drinking water, out of rivers and oceans, out of soil, and out of our bodies. Once glyphosate is gone for good and its residues are no longer detected in our soil, food, water supply, and urine, we will know that we have won. It's time to change. We need solutions for producing food using renewable agriculture, practices that improve the soil year by year instead of contaminating it. We must never make the mistake we made with DDT and simply substitute glyphosate for other toxic herbicides.

I believe that glyphosate is the most dangerous environmental chemical we face today due to its unique mechanism of toxicity, careless application, and pervasive presence. But other toxicants are destroying our health and poisoning our planet, as well. These include aluminum, arsenic, bisphenols like BPA, fluoride, lead, mercury, phthalates, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane, Teflon, styrene, and many others. And of course, there are other toxic herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides that are commonly used in agriculture As I've explained throughout this book, many of these chemicals work synergistically in a way that amplifies their toxicity. Sometimes the burden to the body is so great it results in infertility. Even when it doesn't, later generations can be harmed by exposures their parents or even their grandparents experienced when they themselves were young.

If you're like me, it's hard to fathom that entire industries, or even whole sectors of the economy, could be predicated on human sickness. It's simply hard to believe. Perhaps the most dissonant realization we must confront is that the health care sector is predicated on making and keeping people sick. When you follow the money, you realize that the pharmaceutical industry, and most of the medical establishment, make the bulk of their profits from treating symptoms of chronic illness. The pharmaceutical industry has experienced tremendous growth in the past 20 years; the research, production, and distribution of medication is so lucrative that it generates $1.25 trillion in revenue in a single year. Autoimmunity alone is a $108 billion industry. There is little incentive to identify and correct the root causes of chronic disease or empower people to keep from getting sick in the first place when there's so much profit to be made. Quite the opposite, in fact. The pharmaceutical industry thrives when America is unhealthy. Vibrant good health harms its bottom line.