(Copyright ©2003 by Kristofer Dale, all rights reserved.)

Going to Iraq and Ruin

(or Is Resistance Futile? Bastille my heart...)

How about a little history? One of America's lesser known but nonetheless prophetic patriots, Benjamin Rush, M.D., signatory to the Declaration of Independance, who suggested both the writing of and the title to Thomas Paine's "Common Sense", also made the following statement:

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic. The Constitution of this republic should make a special privilege for medical freedom."

Alas, this did not transpire, but one wonders if it would have made any difference, given the sorry state of affairs we have in contemporary America, one that I doubt even the forward-thinking Rush would have foreseen. Let me explain why...


There is a common term for the ability to overcome a challenge to the immune system, resistance, meaning the general ability to ward off infection and avoid illness. Therefore, it follows that resistance is a basic attribute of a strong constitution. There is a remarkable similarity between a healthy functioning body and a healthy functioning democracy, something that was not lost on Benjamin Rush and his compatriots. I suspect that is why they called the basis of their "more perfect union" the Constitution. Abbie Hoffman hinted at the organic quality of democracy in the following quote:

"Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles."


Recent scientific discoveries have brought a newfound awareness (and hope for victims of immune-related disease) of how this "resistance" works, part and parcel of the metabolic processes that convert food into energy and replace dying or damaged cells, allowing us, in turn, to go about the daily business of being alive. The myriad cascading biochemical reactions that take place in the process form a dynamic cycle of checks and balances that maintains the whole system in a state of "ease" called health. To protect this "constitution" from dis-ease, the healthy body "resists" anything (including internal mutations and aberrations) that interferes with the necessary routine of replenishment and elimination. To do so requires basic "building blocks" that contribute to the integrity and vitality of the whole, the "vita-mins", so to speak.


In forming the various branches of our democratic government, the framers of the Constitution sought to create an adaptive and self-balancing system that would be resistant to the "disease" of power and corruption. In this case, the Amendments could be considered the "vita-mins" that maintain the constitution of the body. Truth, self-evident, unalienable, was central to their premise, and they proposed that it was the right, and even duty, of every citizen to overthrow despotic governments and to provide new guardians of their future. Sounds rather like a healthy immune system, does it not? Granted, there was considerable hypocrisy present even at this early stage, slavery was accepted practice, as was the contrived seizure of traditional native lands. Still, the concepts were fundamentally (and radically) sound, accomodating future change, and attempting to strike a dynamic balance between the individual and society, states and nation, even needs and aspirations. This possibility still exists today, albeit under seige by corrupt and despotic unilateral interests hell-bent on "levying war" at the grievous expense of the citizenry. Such virulent activity works to overthrow effective opposition by compromising the underlying Constitution, forestalling resistance and ultimately destroying immunity, leaving the body (politic) defenseless against future assaults.


It is exceedingly ironic that the Bush cartel currently wants to innoculate the population against one specific form of disease, despite the fact that biowar "cocktails" have been devised that are practically impossible to vaccinate against, yet all the while compromising fundamental tenets of American life and liberty, in flagrant violation of public trust, of the Constitution, and even of Christian doctrine. If "we the people" do not offer up appropriate resistance to this fever raging in the White House, we will stand to lose far more than our lives. Indeed, the future of our children and the planet itself are held hostage by an arguably curable disease, we only need be willing to treat it quickly and effectively to restore our nation to health. Consider the words of another American pioneer:

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease." -Thomas Edison

I have borne witness to many sobering violations of state and federal law, of scientific, medical and business ethics, of academic charter, of public trust, of oath of office, you name it, in the course of lending my time and effort to aid a good friend in a lengthy, grueling fight, still ongoing, against egregious corporate greed and profound institutional mediocrity; central to this struggle is the fact that millions of American citizens, who contributed hard-earned tax dollars to research showing that seemingly intractable diseases (including cancer) can be effectively treated with non-toxic and non-invasive means, have been denied access to information and legitimate clinical studies critical to the future of their health and well-being, by an entrenched bureaucracy gone awry that is palpably and gratuitously more difficult and ponderous even than this paragraph!


More than ten million Americans have died in the past decade from cancer and heart disease alone, both of which could be treated by this new approach, one that has important ramifications in the arena of chemical and biological warfare as well. Equally significant is the fact that the public's right to this remarkable technology is currently held hostage by the federal judiciary, who justly should have rejected the legal fiction that sought somehow to legitimize the presumably criminal activities that derailed authentic efforts to make effective treatments and strategic research available as rapidly as possible. As of this writing, the pro se appeal of the unjustified "kangaroo-court" decision, eerily dated 9/11/2001, against the authentic inventors is underway. It is interesting to note that this case has been before the Federal Court of Appeals for more than three months now without a decision issuing, somewhat unusual in the absence of an affirmation of the lower court's decision. Hopefully the myriad violations and ramifications presented to the appellate court are being taken seriously. Despite the outcome, I think it is important that we heed the words of wisdom from men who were visionaries of both their time and (regrettably) ours, lest our "resistance" indeed be futile against the deliberate arrogance, greed, and stupidity that seeks to condemn us to lives of misery and frailty, against our wishes, and in spite of superior knowledge and abilities. The means are now at our disposal; we must be our own physicians, healing ourselves and our country at once...