The Battles

These three related postings affect our survival on this planet.  They were all written during the election period: 

• 2011-04-23  ONE disease, different manifestations. Proposal: “Disease” organizations form a coalition against poisons.
• 2011-04-23  Science and logic. Depression is DETERMINANT of heart disease?… Depression and heart disease are both SYMPTOMS of poisoning. You have one, you may have the other.
• 2011-04-20  MS, Parkinson’s, Autism, Fibromyalgia, Cancers, Mental unhealth = one disease?

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RE: It’s time for a national response to Canada’s dementia crisis  +  MS  + Alzheimers + Parkinson’s + Cancer + autism + developmental problems + autoimmune diseases + …

Dear Renee, 

Thank-you for taking the time to write about the crisis in dementia.   I live not that far from you .   Maybe after the Election we can have a chat over coffee. 

I responded to a number of people whose email is basically the same as yours;  however, their families are afflicted by MS or Alzheimers or . .    

EXCERPT from my response to them:

These diseases and developmental problems are not separate;  they are different manifestations of the same basic problem.  The problem is that we are poisoning ourselves and our children, our water supplies, the food we eat . . .  indeed,  all creatures and all of creation.  The poisons are neuro-toxins, among other things. 

The following draws dementia and alzheimers into the discussion, although it began as a response to the question of MS.   I hope it will be helpful until such time as we might talk further. 

My home town of Luseland, SK  is said to have the highest incidence of MS,  but so are other communities in the province said to have this distinction.  My Father fought a very long battle with Parkinson’s disease,  as did other people from that relatively small community.  Cancer rates are also high in the area.  The care facilities in the nearby town of Kerrobert and elsewhere in the health district have a burgeoning population of people with dementia and alzheimers. 

The high incidence of MS was mentioned in casual conversation with Jennifer Brooke Fox when I was in Humboldt last Monday.  A large family in Luseland whose children went to school with my younger siblings:  all but one developed MS.   A fellow Girl Guide, a year younger than me, developed MS.  A friend at my Halifax workplace when I was in my mid-twenties was diagnosed with MS  –  I believe that was the first I ever heard about MS.  I have friends whose family members have MS.  I believe that I myself may well have had the onset of MS.  Through good fortune I was able to identify and remove a major culprit for me (it’s not the same for everyone amd it’s not just ONE poison). 

Something is wrong with the picture.   We have “normalized” disease and developmental problems when they are not normal at all. 

I have done a fair amount of work in the area of disease and the poisons we are putting into our bodies and into the environment.  (I’ve run an activist email network for more than ten years – when people pool information we all learn much more than any one of us can learn working alone.)

From my blog, www.sandrafinley.ca  “We have come to a better understanding of how our immune systems work.  Is there a direct causal relationship between a poison and developmental problems or a particular disease?   …  No,  the same poisons in various combinations with other poisons (stresses on the immune system) will have different health outcomes for different people. 

Immune systems 

• have different strengths and weaknesses
• in different people,
• affected by their life experience and
• affected by the DNA that gets passed down from generation-to-generation. At least some of the time, DNA that has been damaged by poisons is passed down, in its damaged form.  

Scientists most often research DIRECT causal relationships between poisons and a particular disease.  They draw the wrong conclusions because they do not take into account the nature of our immune systems.  

The situation SHOULD be simple:  do not put known, unnecessary poisons into the environment or into our bodies.    

We know from fish in the Arctic, for example, that poisons disperse widely in the environment and have lasting toxic effects inside the bodies of beings who live far from the production sites of the poisons.    The cellular life of human beings is basically the same as the cellular life of fish and other species.   What we are doing to them we are doing to ourselves.   

The problematic poisons are most often colourless and odourless.  You most often do not know that you are ingesting the poison.   Chemicals, radioactive wind-borne particles, various heavy metals (mercury, lead, aluminum, etc).  We put poisons directly into our water supplies.   

I tried for four years to get the City to stop using a chemical combo called vaporooter to dissolve tree roots in sewer lines.   In defending its actions,  the City (and I) discovered that for one of the chemical ingredients, there isn’t a laboratory in all of Canada that knows how to test for the presence of that chemical in water.   For the chemical ingredient that they COULD test for,  one test cost $3,000.    So you know how often they are testing for the presence of that (just one) chemical.  Unfortunately, upstream communities like Calgary and Medicine Hat, Riverhurst,  etc.  also decided to use vaporooter instead of good, old-fashioned augering to remove roots in sewer lines. 

We are very stupidly poisoning ourselves.  Some people develop MS, some develop cancer, others dementia, children are autistic (a word I had not heard until I was in my 40’s.  Today, very few people have not heard of autism.) 

• I told you that I believe I had the onset of MS.   My particular symptoms were, among other things, chronic pins-and-needle sensations in my left upper arm and shoulder and a vertical pain in the left backside of my neck.  I worked for more than a year on it, with no success.  I thought I had a pinched nerve and tried first massage and then chiropractic treatments.  Through serendipity I was reminded of what I had forgotten:  “silver” fillings, also called dental amalgams, are 50% mercury.  Mercury is one of the most toxic elements on the planet.  I had the amalgams removed.   The symptoms of MS are gone and the “brain fog”.   That story and supporting information is at  Heavy metals in vaccinations, Mercury in dental amalgams. 

I had a brief email exchange with Jock Murray from Halifax, a retired doctor who has headed up an MS centre at Dalhousie University.  (click on  http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=1110  ). 

Here’s the problem if we accept the usual cause-and-effect direct relationship worldview:

• I say:  poison X contributed to my likely symptoms of MS
• Someone else (Peggy) says:  the likely cause of my MS was poison Y that was sprayed on corn which we frolicking young people snitched out of a market garden at midnight for a corn roast.
• The scientist says:  there is no causal relationship between X and MS.  Nor is there a causal relationship between Y and MS.
• Someone else says:  the same poison X is the likely cause of my fibromyalgia
• And someone else says:  it was poison Y that caused my cancer.
• The scientists says:  there is no causal relationship between X and fibromyalgia;  nor between Y and cancer. 

The statements regarding poisons  X, Y and Z and a causal relationship with diseases A, B  and C are not contradictory, but science treats them as though they ARE contradictory.  In their mind the hypothesis about cause-and-effect fails. 

The chemical Y freshly-sprayed on the cornfield probably played a causal role in Peggy’s MS.   AND the very slow, almost continuous, release of small amounts of mercury (X) that I kept swallowing because it was in my saliva from my dental amalgams probably played a causal role in the onset of MS symptoms for me.   I had a series of health problems,  the mercury poisoning caused different symptoms at different times. I battled to address a symptom,  in time a different symptom would present itself.   It is not an easy, single expression of the poisoning.  And in many cases the immune system can keep the poisonous effects under control for a long time.  It can take 10 to 15 years before some cancers reach a stage where they are identified.  They are slow-acting, but nonetheless lethal.  Dementia and alzheimers do not develop over-night.   

For 50 years the Cancer Societies have been collecting millions and millions of dollars to “find a cure”.   I remember reading a small book in the late 1970’s.   The author documented then:  we KNOW the causes of cancer.  We are not going to find a “cure”.  Remove the CAUSES of the disease.   Unfortunately,  there is a lot of money to be made by the pharmaceutical industry in the “find a cure” approach.    That approach says “it’s okay for you to get the disease.  Because we’re going to find a cure and in the meantime you can take all these pills and treatments.”   It is an extremely inhumane approach, not to mention costly and inane.  

The corporations that are allowed to put their poisons into the environment are not the ones who pay the price.  It is in their interest to find ways to sell and load the environment with MORE poisons.  As with our bodies, the Earth is accumulating a “body-load” of poisons.  They just keep building and building.  But we ARE the Earth – –  more than half of our body is water that keeps recycling through (as it keeps recycling from the sky, through our food crops, into our rivers and lakes, through our bodies and back up into the sky).   If radioactive particles fall in raindrops on our food supply, how do we expect that we will not ingest them?   They are invisible and you can’t smell them.

In order to fight disease, you need to build your immune system.  In many cases the drugs are another assault on the immune system.  They may offer temporary relief.  In time, in many cases, the “side effects” of the drugs become another set of health problems. 

The Green Party of course, works to protect the environment.  “Preventative healthcare” is, to me, almost the same thing.   

It may be a decade ago:  the canvasser for MS came to my door.  I asked her to show me in the brochure what the MS Society was doing for “remove the causes” of MS.   There was nothing.  I told her I would phone the national office and have a discussion, which I did.  The Executive Director at the time told me that they had 20,000 items in their data base.  There was nothing to suggest a link between MS and exposure to chemicals.   I hung up and phoned a data base maintained by a group of doctors in Florida.  They keep track of all the research that is done on chemicals.   I asked them about a possible link between chemicals and MS.  Their answer was:  given A, B, and C (which I have forgotten)  it is definitely PLAUSIBLE that there is a connection.   I sent the information to the MS Society.  Nothing happened.  No research into possible connections between MS and synthetic chemicals.   It is not uncommon to find that the pharmaceutical corporations are hugely influential in disease organizations.   In some cases they own the chemical corporations.   They are both the biotech corporations.

Today, there is a further barrier:  a criterion for funding of health research (and now for most projects) is that the project have the “potential for commercialization”.   But there is no potential for corporate profits in the removal of the causes of disease.   We have lost funding for the public interest. 

We are in a sorry state of affairs.  Hopefully more people are becoming aware.  The incidence of things like autism, MS, childhood cancers, asthma, learning disabilities,  – – the list is long  – –  Good Grief!  Can we not see what we are doing?   These diseases and developmental problems are not separate;  they are different manifestations of the same basic problem.  The problem is that we are poisoning ourselves and our children, our water supplies, the food we eat . . .  indeed,  all creatures and all of creation.   The Earth will be happy when we, as a species, are gone!! 

So what do we do about today?   And the people with MS, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, diabetes, asperger’s syndrome, depression, high blood pressure, prostate cancer, gastro-intestinal problems, auto-immune disease, learning disabilities . . .  ?

Number one we get the corporate interests out of Government, the Universities, and the medi-care system.  

Number two, remove the poisons.   We know that mercury is a neuro toxin.  So you do not put it into human beings, whether in the form of dental amalgams, or as a preservative in vaccinations.  Do not take flu shots.  They contain thimerasol which is mercury.  Research shows (no surprise) that people who have received the flu shot for more than 10 years have an increased incidence of alzheimers   … there’s a whole long list of poisons that need to be eradicated. 

Personally, I believe that disease-support organizations should recognize the extent to which they are connected.   A win for the Lung Association on removing air-borne poisons is a win for the other disease organizations.  (Inhale an invisible radioactive particle.  It will sit in your body continuously emitting.  In time you will develop cancer.  Or it could be diabetes, depending on your individual immune system.)  A win by the parents of autistic children is a win for people with MS and others with cancer or alzhemiers.   As is a win for families and people (like my daughter) who have learning disabilities – – developmental problems caused by the poisons that I can’t escape because they are everywhere.   Worse yet,  no one told me. 

Think of how powerful the force to stop the poisoning would be, if the organizations joined together, if they became a coalition working together.   What if, instead of the MS people getting together by themselves, they had their meetings in conjunction with the other “disease” organizations in Saskatoon?    What if the MS support people went to the planners of the Breast Cancer events and said, “This year, would you consider sending the money to Prevent Cancer NOW?” instead of to whoever it normally goes.     

You may want to check out “Health”, a category you’ll find in the right-hand sidebar of the blog, www.sandrafinley.ca    Also, at the top of the page “Heavy metals in vaccinations, Mercury in dental amalgams.”   

In my experience, it is not elected officials who drive the change (unfortunately).  It is citizens themselves.  

We need to work together.   It is most likely that we are back into an era where our tax dollars will be used for little more than paying down debt (and buying stealth bombers to the tune of $30 billion dollars, more debt).    You may remember that the Mulroney Government ran up the debt to the point where 37 cents out of every tax dollar went to the banks for debt servicing.  Preston Manning created the single-issue Reform Party to challenge Government debt.  Paul Martin’s Government cut social programmes, we spent years paying off debt, to the point where 14 cents out of every tax dollar was spent on debt servicing.  Not bad!   BUT in the last three years, the Harper Government has out-done Mulroney.  They racked up the highest-ever deficit.  Three years of deficits and we now have more than $110 billion dollars of debt to re-pay.   Brad Wall is doing the same thing in Saskatchewan as his predecessor, Grant Devine, did:  driving up the debt.  It makes me furious.  We will be back in a place provincially (as well as federally) where a third of our tax dollars go to debt servicing.

The Parties will tell you the wonderful things they will do for you.  No – we are back into an era where the banks will pay great dividends to the wealthy and to their CEO’s, because of the public debt.   Especially with the $6 billion in tax-cuts to corporations if the Conservatives have their way.  It is quite frustrating. 

HOWEVER!  Hopefully, your lobby joined with other lobbies joined to efforts by the Green Party will secure programmes that provide care and assistance.  These are exciting times with more and more people mobilizing to create a new economy based on caring and sharing, for the Earth and for others.   The Green Party has well-thought out policies to help with caregiver supports and income security.  This email will be too long if I go into that, too!   Please refer to  http://greenparty.ca/issues/vision-green . 

I fully support your work.  I hope that the on-going efforts of my network are a contribution –  www.sandrafinley.ca  is a continuing record of those “battles”.  

When you weave together the accumulated information,  I think it is most likely that the escalation in dementia is due to the neuro toxins (poisons) we are receiving, not only through the environment, but through direct input into our bodies.  Exactly the same situation as with MS.  And, as I say,  if people don’t get dementia, they get Alzheimers or other ailments.

The pharmaceutical companies are putting ingredients like mercury (in the form of thimerasol) and aluminum (another heavy metal) into vaccinations.  Research shows that people who have taken the flu shot for more than 10 years have an increased incidence of alzheimers.   Repeated injections of mercury – what do you expect?   The situation is made worse by the mercury in dental amalgams (“silver” fillings)  – a slow, small, but continuous release of mercury into the body.  Countries in Europe have banned dental amalgams.   In my experience (and I have worked on many issues)  lobbying the Government is often ineffective because the corporate interests, the interests in making money, are too great.    

If it is okay with you, I will be back in touch with you.   The timing is now – – I believe we have the building blocks in place to mount a coordinated effort at the University to work with the toxicologists and medical people to start dealing with the situation so we can stop the creation of all these diseases and developmental problems.  We have created an industry based on making people tragically sick. 

It is really ONE dis-ease  with many different manifestations,  all caused by the numerous poisons we are putting into the environment and directly into our bodies.   

In solidarity,

Happy Easter,

It is indeed a time of re-birth, of excitement – – a new way of seeing ourselves in the World. 

Sandra Finley

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Dear Debra,

Earlier in April I responded to a few people regarding dementia.  And then people with a family member who suffers from MS.  Then came the families of people with Alzheimers. 

 I have run an activist email network for more than ten years, working at different times on different poisons and their impacts on health. 

Our immune systems are different, we each have a different history of known and unknown exposure to poisons that are neuro toxins, teratogens (interfere with normal cell development) and so on.  We each now have a “body burden” of poisons, and the Earth has a “body burden”.

I hope you will read the documentation I sent earlier to others.  Please click on:  2011-04-23 ONE disease, different manifestations. Proposal: “Disease” organizations form a coalition to stop the poisons. 

 Today, I sent an update, as follows:

Each of you contacted me concerning disease.   It was very helpful.  I am able to make stronger and stronger arguments to say that we need to join the organizations for disease and for developmental problems together in an effort to stop the poisons we are putting into the environment and directly into our bodies.

 I was at a meeting in the village of St Denis on the east side of Saskatoon.   In the conversation following, women there spontaneously voiced their concerns about the amount of disease in the community.   It may have been prompted by the fact that many people were absent because they were attending prayers for a woman who had died very suddenly from leukemia.  She was 62 years old.

Sherbrooke Community Centre yesterday  was an opportunity to introduce the idea that many different diseases and developmental problems are the manifestation of one thing:  slow poisoning from a variety of sources.  Before I left Sherbrooke it was arranged that I will be back in touch with Administrators to work out their participation in a project.  I think we can create a fairly powerful force for change.  

The Green Party has very solid, well-thought out plans in aid of care-givers and people who are afflicted.   It makes it easy for me to be a representative of the Green Party. 

A large part of our health policy has always been PREVENTION.   Personally,  I think it is terribly inhumane to say, “It’s okay for you to get the disease.  We’ll treat you and search for a cure.”  After 40 and more years of promising to “find a cure” for cancer,  we need to understand:  we know the CAUSES and we have to remove them.  That is the only way that the disease trend-lines can be reversed. 

Families and individuals bear heavy loads because of the diseases and developmental problems.  I know because of my Father’s long years of dealing with Parkinson’s disease.  If people could just understand:  there isn’t a SINGLE cause, it’s a matter of cumulative impacts on immune systems – –  but that’s said in

I will keep you posted on developments.   In the meantime,  I would like to invite you to join us on Monday evening, 8:00 pm for a celebration.  

There is a very good chance that Elizabeth May will be elected.  I know her personally.  We kept bumping into each other during the years when she was the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and became friends.  She is intelligent, warm-hearted and caring, with amazing energy, dedication and integrity.  She understands the issues and is the reason why I joined the Green Party.  I know that if she is to achieve her potential, there have to be people in every province to help build Green support.

We cannot poison the place where we live, and our bodies, too. Elizabeth has been a strong voice and active force through all the years at the Sierra Club – I am confident that she, working with others in the Green movement, is our best choice when it comes to driving the change in thinking that is urgently needed.

But back to lighter fare:  Please consider coming to the celebration.

 Best wishes,

/Sandra

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Date: Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 12:52 PM
Subject: Better caregiver supports, income security and research benefit people with MS

Ms. Sandra Finley
Green Party Saskatoon-Humboldt
Saskatchewan

I am writing to ask you to support issues that are of real importance to people affected by multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is an often disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord.  Unfortunately, Canada has one of the highest rates of MS in the world, with an estimated 55,000 to 75,000 people living with the disease across the country.

People with MS need your commitment right now.

– People with MS need answers. It’s time to set aside funds for a clinical trial of the CCSVI procedure. Earmarking funds ensures there won’t be a delay, if and when the scientific evidence shows a clinical trial should proceed.

– Caregivers need support. It’s time to help family caregivers by providing a range of supports including tax credits and benefits and other programs to ease the daily load for all caregivers.

– People with MS need secure incomes. It’s time to ensure people with MS have the incomes they need. This means making Employment Insurance sickness benefits more flexible so people can work part-time and receive partial benefits. It also means making the disability tax credit refundable – to actually put money in people’s pockets.

– All people with brain conditions need a national brain strategy. Regardless of diagnosis, people living with brain conditions share similar needs and challenges. It’s time for a national brain strategy to accelerate research and improve the quality of life for millions of Canadians.

Multiple sclerosis has a profound impact on the ability to earn a living.  Most people with MS are diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 40, just when they are finishing school, starting careers and beginning families.  MS progresses in unpredictable ways. For many people, unexpected periods of worsening are followed by equally unpredictable periods of improvement – and then more worsening. This takes a devastating toll on people with MS and their families.

I urge you to support these issues to help people with MS and their families. It would be great if you would become a champion during this campaign – and in Parliament if you are elected. I will look forward to hearing how you will support action on MS.

Yours sincerely,

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Date: Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 5:10 PM
Subject: It’s time for a national response to Canada’s dementia crisis.

Ms. Sandra Finley
Green Party Saskatoon-Humboldt
Saskatchewan

Dear Ms. Finley,

During this election campaign, Canadians are looking to elect politicians who will provide leadership on the most important health issue facing Canada. Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias impact over half a million Canadians and more than 100,000 new dementia cases are diagnosed each year. According to Rising Tide: The Impact of Dementia on Canadian Society published by the Alzheimer Society of Canada last year, the economic burden of dementia in Canada is $15 billion a year; without a plan to address this crisis, costs will spike to $37 billion by 2018.

On behalf of the millions of family carers, physicians and those with dementia, I am asking you to answer three questions during this campaign. Your party’s leaders are being asked the same questions.

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Question 1
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Canada lags behind our international partners in the development of a national brain strategy to address the growing dementia crisis. Australia, S. Korea, UK and other Countries in Europe already have plans in place; we need leadership at the national level.
If your party forms the next government would you commit to meeting the needs of the 500,000 Canadians with dementia with a national brain strategy within the first 90 days of the next parliament?

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Question 2
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In 2008, Canadian families and friends spent approximately 231 million hours providing care for people with dementia. This number is expected to more than triple by 2038, reaching 756 million hours. The financial and social burden on informal caregivers will be unsustainable.
If your party forms the next government would you commit to a comprehensive and universal package of support programs for family caregivers during the next session of parliament?

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Question 3
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Budget 2011 contained important measures for dementia research, caregiver support, and improved health care delivery.  Despite promising recent leads, the causes of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias remain unknown and there are no effective treatments.  Canadian researchers rank among the best in the world, but they need more funding to follow the many clues that will lead us to the breakthroughs we will need to conquer this disease.

If your party forms the next government would you support these investments and commit to the $100 Million contained in the Budget for brain disease research as a first step towards a comprehensive permanent federal research program?

Today, Canada has no strategy or plan to address the dementia crisis we face, and our commitment to address it pales in comparison to other G20 countries.  Our study, Rising Tide: The Impact of Dementia on Canadian Society was released in 2010, and provided evidence for the enormous and rapidly escalating health, economic and social impact of this devastating disease.  We have been told by politicians that there is no appetite for another national health-related strategy. Yet national strategies have been developed for a long list of other health issues, many of which have far less impact on the health of Canadians than neurological conditions.

We know that a rising tide of dementia is coming; the need for a national brain strategy has never been more apparent and more urgent than now.

Sincerely,