Dogmatists

For me, Nathaniel Hawthorne reached his zenith and permanently joined a select few as a great American writer when in 1850 he published his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter.

The title reflects the essence of the novel. For having an adulterous affair, Hester Prynne was condemned by her Puritan community to wear a scarlet letter A on her chest. The Scarlet Letter is a towering work about sin, guilt and intolerance. It was Hawthorneâ€™s personal attempt to exorcise the ghosts of his intolerant ancestors.

Some things I think never change.

Thatâ€™s why such works of Hawthorne are universal and timeless. The most recent advent of the things Hawthorne so brilliantly described is in Swedish Hospital combining with Providence, a Catholic Health and Services organization. Evidently this kind of â€œmoney-savingâ€ adventure of secular hospitals combining with Catholic hospitals is rapidly occurring across the country.

In making the combination Swedish wanted to be â€œdeferentialâ€ to the Catholic dogma of anti-abortion and so moved its abortion services over to Planned Parenthood, next door. I am deeply troubled by this. I feel that they might as well plant a large letter A out front, thus marking the services offered there as out of the purview of â€œnormalâ€ hospital care.

I think in and of itself this is a denigration of a particular field of medicine that I do not accept. In doing this I think isolating it will provide a much more prominent target for harassment. I have a feeling Swedish will come to rue the day it walked straight into one of our ongoing cultural wars.

Now before I go any further, I feel it necessary to state that I am a patient of Swedish Hospital and Swedish Partners. Since going there I have been absolutely happy with everything from surgical care to my ongoing relationship with the number of specialists I need to continue to see. The last time there I marched in with a written statement that I was appalled at the position Swedish had taken on the abortion issue. I had on file an updated version of my Power of Attorney, Living Will and POLST, detailing my wishes for end of life care.

I was gratified that each one enthusiastically declared that â€œI will be your advocate.â€ I deeply appreciated that, but felt that I had been so thoroughly queried when I initially submitted them, that we were on the same page. Those were excellent dialogues. In my years of submitting those documents to MDs I had never had the positive experience of a serious discussion of the reasons I felt the way I did. Still, I insisted that my ethics did not stop at my navel. I have always been a strong advocate of womenâ€™s rights on all levels.

Further, becoming â€œdeferentialâ€ on one issue is not going to limit the dogmatists. Dogmatism is like a virus. It is always lurking about, looking for a host to attach to and then overwhelm it. This is true of political or religious dogmatists. In this instance dogmatism will, however subtly, undermine hard won right to die standards AND birth control laws.

If you think that is far-fetched, change your pot dealer because it would take very little political realignment to bring all this about given the volatile state of American politics.

For me these issues are not subject to state or religious dogmatists. These are issues quite complicated enough without outside interference. I speak from recent personal experience and from years as a counselor.

Practice your own beliefs but do not lay a trip on others. Well, I admit to being dogmatic about that.

(Ron Keeshan has always appreciated the French Libertarian/Philosopher Georges Palante from early in the last century: â€œIf there is a single and universal truth, freedom has no reason for existing.â€ )

Photography And Change

When I started to work seriously at wildlife and nature photography many years ago I admit to being quite simply a gee whiz, wow, oh my gosh photographer. There is still some of that feeling whenever I pick up a camera but also there came a time where I saw change. Because of our love of grizzlies we returned many times to the same places in Alaska, Churchill and British Columbia. I remember the feeling when I first flew over vast areas of dead forest in the Kenai peninsula, killed by insects now able to thrive in Alaska. We also visited glaciers that had changed so much I would ask if we were in the same place. We saw stands of trees thriving in areas of Denali Park where there were no trees 15 years before. The greatest change was re-visiting Churchill and seeing the differences in the land and the impact of those changes on the polar bears.

We realized that we had experienced world climate change which we had read about for years. Photography began to take on a different dimension. In some ways it became painful to photograph iconic species of birds, the polar bear or the grizzly. I began to question (even more than I always had) my right to be intruding on their turf. Would this be the last of this great species? What would it feel like if there were none? It was incomprehensible to me that our grandchildren would not experience what we had.

The work of Ian Stirling, a professor at the University of Alberta, and the acknowledged world authority on polar bears, who has spent forty one years studying them, impacted me deeply. Stirling says the iconic polar bear of the Hudson Bay region is doomed to extinction this century. It is the disappearance of ice upon which the bears depend for hunting. Since our visits to the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic areas we follow the daily Canada ice maps. We have seen the diminishment of ice in both area covered and thickness in the ice. Iâ€™ll return to this before I conclude. Bear with me as I seem to shift gears here.

I recently read The Fate of Greenland by Philip Conkling, et al, which had a profound impact on me. The narrative and the photography are stunning. The book details the research in the Arctic made possible by Gary Comer. Comer was a venture capitalist who became a millionaire after his founding of Landâ€™s End. He had a longtime fascination with the Arctic. When he sold Landâ€™s End he took off in his incredible ship, Turmoil, carrying a helicopter and became the first non-commercial ship to transit the Northwest Passage. This was 2001. Accompanying the exhilaration of success was a very deep questioning of what the ice changes that made his journey possible meant to the Arctic and indeed the world.

Comer set out to find people who would answer that question. He met Wallace Broecker of Columbia University who had spent his life studying the oceans, and he agreed to recruit scientists, organize voyages and coordinate the reports for study of climate change to be called the Comer Fellowship Program. Among those he recruited were George Denton, a geologist from the University of Maine, Richard Alley a glaciologist from Penn State, and Philip Conkling, Founder of the Island Institute in Maine. Broecker also formed an advisory network of 23 senior scientists. They would recruit young scientists to study in this field without having to spend their time fund raising.

The Fate of Greenland is the report for the general public on the trips. The photography is stunning and the commentary priceless. I have read it three times and Liz once and we both intend to read it again. I would uplift the authorâ€™s hope that involving so many young scientists will help us comprehend the meaning of the changes in our climate. Nonetheless, ominously present throughout the book is abundant historic evidence from cores drilled out of the Greenland ice sheet of just how abruptly climate change can arrive in the Arctic. The book also has research from the rest of the world to show that climate change has impacted the entire planet in the past.

In Hudson Bay Comerâ€™s question about the meaning of the ice melt stands answered by Ian Sterlingâ€™s research showing the coming extinction of the Hudson Bay polar bears. The Fate of Greenland is a sobering book. But one of the positive feelings I had as I finished this treasure was here we have a portrait of American capitalism at its bestâ€"but alas Comer did not live to see it published as the whole time he was working with this project he battled cancer, succumbing to it in 2006. Courage. Dedication. Vision. And all of it produced a gigantic legacyâ€"the Comer Fellowship Program, American science at its best. Every time I pick up the book I feel humbled.

Ron Keeshan thanks you, Gary Comer.

Therefore I Propose

Washington D.C., home to the largest brothel in the history of western civilization, seems paralyzed on budget reduction decisions. If you even mention the military-industrial complex (over half the budget) you would think you were desecrating the flag. In fantasy, I see the spirit of Ike keeping our representatives awake at night by over and over delivering his farewell address warning us of the dangers of the military-industrial complex.

Then thereâ€™s the farm bill, loaded with staggering amounts of money absurdly accomplishing nothing. Ah and then the energy subsidies. Taxpayers for Common Sense state that â€œEvery year, taxpayers shell out $15.6 billion in tax breaks and other handouts to the oil and gas industry.

This is on top of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to the mature nuclear, coal, and biofuels industry. All the while the oil companies are thriving.

In the third quarter of this year alone, six of the largest oil companies recorded $36.8 billion in profits, bringing the year-to-date total up to $115.1 billion.â€ The only thing that gives me perspective on this was a joke a while back that traveled the internet: â€œThe economy is getting so bad the oil companies had to lay off thirty Congressmen.â€

Well, I donâ€™t think I can do anything about that bunch. But I hope some of us can work to redirect how money is spent on the local level. I donâ€™t consider it an over statement to say that when Rep. Kristine Lytton appeared before the Council she in essence said â€œYou donâ€™t have your act together. Let me know when you do.â€ I would like to make some proposals that make common sense to me at least.

Therefore I propose:

The Council immediately sell the properties on Beaverton Valley Road and the Windermere Building.

This would help pull the plug on the San Juan County Real Estate Investment Trust and the unwise investment of pots of money in property and equipment which are all marginal to the core operations of the County. The monies would be used to help pay down the County debt.

Secondly, I would like to see a committee of six business men and women with the authority to examine the major issues facing the County, and make reports directly to the public without review, revision or vote by our elected officials.

Perhaps the newly elected Charter Review Commission can find a â€œslotâ€ in our Home Rule system for this committee. An analysis of the finances of the County would be the first thing I would like this committee to tackle. We have both active and retired business people with records of success who we need to talk into serving on such an Independent Blue Ribbon Committee.

Third, I propose that the community recognize superior work done on its behalf by striking a medal to be awarded to those doing such work. I would call it something like the Order of the San Juans.

I would give the first award to Ed Kilduff and David Hyde for their exemplary work on the islandsâ€™ environment. The argument over the CAO has shown how much really fine local thinking we have. I think the island is really fed up with the squandering of money on one so-called consultant after another.

Writing letters and all the complaining we do to each other will no longer cut it. We need to think creatively. We need to think in terms of options in ways we have not done before. Perhaps the Council would then demonstrate that it recognizes the seriousness of the financial dilemmas we find ourselves in.

(Ron Keeshan whose years in business were part of an eclectic journey to understanding the world he lives in.)

BEST

I have always been interested in how things become â€œinâ€ within a local or larger culture. For instance I was amused at how â€œinâ€ firemanâ€™s caps, of greater and lesser expense became â€œinâ€ for women to wear. Then there came the use of â€œcoolâ€ and â€œawesomeâ€ both of which I am ready to have deleted from the dictionary. So it is with interest that I have observed a newly coined favorite, â€œbest.â€

A few decades back I went to hear a scientist from Los Alamos who came down to Santa Fe to talk about the future of the earth. Making a long story short, he was the first person to grab my attention on the issue of climate change. The essence of what he had to say was, donâ€™t worry about the earth, it will be here when all is said and done. However what exists now upon the earth is going to change radically unless the course is altered.

Since then I have tried to understand the issues involved. No matter which side you came down on, what interests me as much as anything is, was it peer reviewed? Who furnished the money for the study? And of course who attacks you tells a lot.

First, on a positive note, I have been interested in a â€œbestâ€ study to come out of Berkeley. A long time climate change skeptic, a most notable physicist, Richard Muller, decided that, ok, he was going to go back to square one to meticulously examine the evidence presented for climate change.

He assembled a team of 10 physicists to attack every assumption made by climate change advocates. At least part of his motivation was to ascertain what scientific reality lay behind the attacks on the East Anglia University scientists whose e-mails had been hacked and whose work was used as evidence that climate change was based on a hoax.

Ultimately in irony of ironies, the Koch Brothers Foundation anted up $150,000.00 for the study. It became known as the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study, or given the way we love acronyms, BEST. A cryptic conclusion, not yet peer reviewed, is that yes, climate change does exist and yes, we have a problem. Weighing who was involved, how the evidence was obtained, and the money involved, I find this â€œbestâ€ personally acceptable. It is a best effort by one of our best scientists.

Now I want to turn to a â€œbestâ€ that has troubled me from the very inception of its local use, and that is the â€œBest Available Scienceâ€ invoked on behalf of legitimizing the so-called Critical Areas Ordinance update.

I will admit, again, personal predispositions. One is that I have consistently found the Friends science to be at best, weak. Secondly, much always seems to be based on what some bureaucrats from the south end deem best for all areas of western Washington. I think this is how we ended up with an expensive Hood Canal Tax, the septic system tax. Hood Canal had a major problem so ipso facto everyone does. Not so.

I have always thought of the northern area as part of what was known as the Salish Sea. We have more in common with British Columbia than Seattle. From the beginning I have been far more locally concerned about what was being dumped in the Fraser River than the long time chemical dumping in southern Puget Sound. Ergo, I have found the whole Ordinance thing extremely troubling. Yet I have kept on trying to understand the whole thing.

Let me tell you that over the years I have, for myself, concluded that â€œcomplexityâ€ is an obfuscation of the issues. It hides a lack of substance. And then along comes a report that the waters around the San Juans are â€œpristineâ€. Then on top of that there is a splendid report by an experienced oceanographer who makes it clear that looking south for analysis is looking in the wrong direction. We need to look north to the rivers of British Columbia.

If you start out looking in the wrong direction you sure get lost. So, where does that leave â€œBest Available Scienceâ€ or for that matter the staggering dollars invested in consultants? I am not impressed. For me, the â€œBestâ€ evidence comes from non-ideological sources that have no ax to grind.

The best I have seen is the short and very substantive piece Dave Hyde and Ed Kilduff did, San Juan Archipelago Water Marine Water Quality & CAO/SMP. It is a quick Google. There was an old expression, if it ainâ€™t broke donâ€™t fix it. That says it best for me. Hey, here we have the best work, done and it is free. We have truly the best resources right here amongst us.

(Ron Keeshan whose vision of the shoreline is Friendless)

Hymn To The Serviceberry

Our large, old serviceberry tree has run its cycle and is rapidly preparing for its well deserved winter rest. The serviceberry doesnâ€™t get the admiration that a lot of other trees get. It does not have the stately grandeur of the Douglas Fir. It does not have the great color displays of the maple. It cannot produce the truly beautiful color of the chain tree. I guess you might say that it is just, well, plain vanilla. But in this case (as in all others) looks can be very deceiving as each year it produces a magnificence no other tree does, at least for me. Wildlife landscapers will tell you it feeds at least fourteen species of birds. Now, I freely admit to being a tree loving tree hugger. And before this particular tree, I simply stand in awe.

Every summer, about mid July we have anxiously awaited the arrival of the banditos, otherwise known as the cedar wax wing. For without fail, that is the time that the serviceberry berries have ripened. At first a few scouts come in to check the berries out. Then very quickly a vast swarm of cedar wax wings swoop in and by the end of the weekend the tree is stripped. Then we do not see the banditos until the following year.

But this year was different. For a while I really did wonder if the few berries there would ever ripen. As it turned out they were 4-5 weeks late, I reckon pretty much like everything else this past summer. The bandito scouts would come in, check the berries out, and leave. Then, something happened that has not happened around here in many years. When the berries finally did ripen the starlings swarmed in, en mass, cleaning the tree in a flash. A very few bandito scouts ate what they wanted. The starlings hung around for about a week, eating off the ground but then fortunately left.

Then something different happened. All kinds of warblers came to the serviceberry which graciously served a generous plate of insects to all arrivals. This was something really new. There was a quantity and variety of warblers we had never seen before. Usually they are very skittish and do not linger. I had never had the opportunity to casually study the warblers. That was certainly a major reward in itself. But another great reward was not long in coming, for casually mixed in with the warblers was a young three-toed woodpecker. This was a first for me and fortunately this treasure feasted long enough for me to study every angle. Then gone, not to return, but Iâ€™m grateful for the miracle.

Amongst the other wonders of this magnificent tree are the seeds, via the vectoring feeding birds, which are fertilized, dropped all over the place, and grow heartily. I asked an acquaintance who knows trees why the naturally deposited seeds grow more easily than the transplanted ones like from nurseries. She offered that the transplanted ones have to adjust to a new soil whereas the seed is instantly at home. So, we have a bunch of serviceberries establishing homes. What a joy.

So adieu, magnificent serviceberry. Your year was a great service and joy to us all. Thank you and rest well. We will anticipate your return next spring.

(Ron Keeshan: after years in the diamond business finally found the real gems of this world.)

Allergy To Totalism

This past spring and early summer I spent most of my time sleeping and reading. One of the books I came across is a memoir by one of my long time favorite authors, Robert Jay Lifton, entitled Witness to an Extreme Century .

Early in his childhood, Lifton remembers his frustration with the absoluteness of the orthodox Jewish religion of his grandparents. It made a lasting impression on him and played a large part in his approach to some of the ghastly major events of the 20th century.

He came to call the effects on him as â€œan allergy to totalism.â€ The work required Lifton to spend years overseas exploring the similarities between such diverse historical movements as Maoâ€™s thought-reform, Soviet gulags, Nazi doctors, orthodox psychiatry and American McCarthyism (America: love it or leave it).

These were worlds of â€œall or noneâ€; â€œsuffocating dogmaâ€ (religious or secular); good vs. evil (and no gray in between); a fundamentalist I am right and you are wrong; or as Lifton put it, â€œan abstract idea above human lifeâ€. It requires reforming the deviants even if it takes killing them off.

A short summary of his thinking is found in what he terms the eight deadly sins of totalism:

* milieu control, that of virtually all communication in an environment;
* mystical manipulation, maneuvers from above by an obscure but ultimate authority under the guise of group spontaneity;
* the demand for purity, imposed pursuit of absolute good in order to defeat absolute evil;
* the cult of confession, obsession with continuous all-encompassing and ever-critical self-revelation;
* the sacred science, claim to doctrinal truth that is both divine and scientifically proven;
* loading the language, the reduction of all human problems to definitive-sounding phrases, to the thought-terminating clichÃ©;
* doctrine over person, a primacy so absolute that any doubts about prevailing dogma must be considered a form of personal deficiency or psychological aberration, and
* the dispensing of existence, the sharp line drawn between those who have the right to exist and those who possess no such right

Lifton said: â€œThe last feature of ideological totalism for me summed up its larger evil.â€

I think if we are honest with ourselves we can admit to our own totalism. I came to dislike it and broadened my horizons. I also came to be repulsed when others are laying a totalism trip on me.

No one has a lock on escaping from totalism. For me, I was late in coming to the inflexabity/rigidity/totalism of the left. Amongst other ways I have bounced against it more recently is in the sneering attitude some liberals have towards The Island Guardian. Heaven forefend, they would not deign to read it.

That is sad. They missed John Evans recent column, Working with What Works . It is the most salient piece on the contentious Critical Areas Ordinance I have read. When I find something like that I always finish it feeling my horizons have been broadened.

One of the ways I have seen totalism work in every day life is when someone confronts me with â€œeveryone knowsâ€. Well, that is a show stopper isnâ€™t it? Iâ€™ve gotten to the point where it is harder to restrain my laughter when I get hit with that pontifically delivered piece. My warning flags start being raised when I encounter those who disallow questions. I am more and more put off by that absolutism.

On the right I found the rightâ€™s position in the House of Representatives of all or none on the so-called debt ceiling to be not just a classic example of dogmatic totalism but the loss of an incredible opportunity to get rid of a whole lot of bizarre government spending.

Goodness, the opportunity to deal with so much waste was lost for the want of setting aside totalism. I think maybe recent polling of the American people reveals their unhappiness with that.

Obviously not every example of totalism is as horribly evil as thought reform in China, Russia or Germany. But they can serve as a negative model for all of us. This is dehumanization perhaps at it worst. I canâ€™t change the world but in refusing to practice totalism I can encourage its opposite -that which we cannot ultimately live without, human community.

(Ron Keeshan thanks all of you who have in one form or another contacted him in the last few years expressing appreciation for the attempts in this column to bridge build. I have felt more humanized for it. For me, nothing is more important in life than that. )

Aging And Ethics

In the early seventies I read a paper on bioethics published by the Hastings Center. It was very prescient. At the time it was the only articulation of these issues I was aware of. The paper dealt with how the medical system and the cost of medical care would impact society when the baby boomers reached the so-called golden years. How would society deal with the increase of people with serious long-term disease? Could we afford to let all elderly patients have life-prolonging surgeries or costly medications that prolonged life for only a relatively short period of time?

All of this was not just a theoretical enterprise for me as in my years in the ministry and after when I was in business the issues including the right to end ones life without state prohibitions when confronted with unbearable pain, became very concrete. I walked many miles through the valley of the shadow with many folks. It is not helpful to raise red herrings in this debate as the Republicans did recently over so-called death panels. As Medicare is â€œreformedâ€ the use of money for a short prolongation of life is going to be evaluated. One statistic I saw was that 40% of Medicare dollars is spent on the last 30 days of life. Another statistic I encountered was that in 2010 fifty billion dollars of Medicare money was spent in the dying patients last two months. What I found was that however I encountered statistics what is evident is that a staggering amount of Medicare money goes into a very short end of life time. This misallocation of medical resources must be faced and addressed.

It was during my years in the ministry that I developed a great antipathy for the Moral Police, those who for reasons of their own â€œethicsâ€ worked to prohibit those who could have greatly benefited from pain relieving drugs from obtaining them. So they had to go to the street for them. Also, in this context I encountered many folks who had friends or relatives that ended life wrapped in tubes, etc. This made a lasting, fundamental negative impression on them. They vowed they would never go out that way. Most did not. It was a time when I became an unqualified advocate of the right of a person to deal with the end of his/her life as they saw fit.

Ethics has always interested both Liz and me: ethical issues frequently enter our end of day 4 oâ€™clock discussions. End of life issues came up more frequently with the illnesses and death of Lizâ€™s parents and brother. So, it was not new material when I confronted end of life issues prior to recent surgery. In a pre-surgical consultation when my nephrologist questioned me on dialysis, I responded by stating that I would not do long term dialysis if that option presented itself. He asked â€œWhy?â€ I responded that it was not the quality of life that I was used to and I did not want to end my life tied to a machine. Secondly, it was a matter of long held ethics for me. â€œHow so?â€ he asked. I responded that I had always believed medicine should expend its resources wherever possible on prolonging the lives of younger people, not those at the end of life. By doing this I was not going to change western civilization but I needed to feel I was going out with the ethics I had tried to teach and to live by all of my adult life. He quietly nodded his agreement and said, â€œI agree.â€ Then he said that he would like my permission to try to work with me in case of an accident or a surgical problem when he thought there was a reasonable chance of reversing the damage within a short time. I agreed. In a difficult time, this conversation was reassuring and comfortable to both Liz and me.

One of the things I did before surgery was up date my Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and Living Will. The previous ones were a decade old. I called Compassion and Choices and got their forms which I found excellent. They can be found at
www.compassionandchoices.org/wa or email: wa@compassionandchoices.org or toll free at telephone 1-877-222-2816. They customize the papers by state. They will ask for a donation. This organization does NOT have anything to do with assisted suicide and the right to die movement. I happen to believe in my right to both (screw the Moral Police), but that is a different matter from what I am talking about now. Doing this in advance and talking your decisions through with family and friends will go a long way to accomplishing what you want done. And oh my does it save time and frustration in a time of real stress.

(Ron Keeshan: Iâ€™ll take charge of my own life. You keep your mitts off it. )

Immune Systems

As of this writing there is an outbreak of chicken pox and a cold/flu that goes on for a long time. Since both Liz and I have suppressed immune systems it is a time when we, more than usual, attempt to avoid crowds. It seems that there are more and more who either wear masks, avoid crowds or always swipe off a grocery cart before using.

Raising children has to be tougher now than 50 years ago. Yes, I know we faced things like polio before being immunized against it. When it came time to do that there were no questions raised. We were all grateful. Likewise, I was not aware of questions about the food supply. E-coli had not entered the everyday vocabulary of America and whether it was my unconsciousness or something else, we did not go through grocery aisles studying each item to see what additives were put in foods. Genetically modified foods would have been in the science fiction of comic books.

It is one very different time. As a character in a recent mystery, Rogue Island by Bruce deSilva put it:
â€œSmoke from house fires used to smell like burning wood, but that was a long time ago. Now house fires stink of burning vinyl, polyester fabrics, chipboard, wood glues, electric appliances, hazardous cleaning products, and polyurethane foam that generates poisonous gases, including hydrogen cyanide. This fire smelled like an exploding petrochemical plant.â€

I was reminded of buying a four wheeled spinner piece of luggage (made in China of course) recently with a sticker that stated it conformed to California requirements in the use of formaldehyde. It all gives me a new appreciation of what fire fighters now face. And of course there is the unknown element of what the Fukushima nuclear disaster is going to bring about world wide. All in all, parents under stress in our culture from all directions, have more on their plate than I ever dreamed of.

Adults are looking seriously at natural remedy healing. This would include natural treatment for diseases. I have always had a visceral reaction to the â€œbetter living through chemistryâ€ mantra we were regularly fed. Yes, I also know we have greatly benefited from chemical technology. Nonetheless I feel that it has been a Faustian bargain. But now we are caught in it and how do we cope with it? One of the areas that has produced conflict is the argument between parents who vaccinate their children and those who refuse to do so. Does a vaccination produce things like autism or does it not? Alas, the state of Washington has the highest rate of any state of unvaccinated kindergartners. This I think is an ethical choice which says, â€œI will not put my children at risk but I will put other children and people with suppressed immune systems at risk.â€

I will try not to be glib. There is a lot of fear and pain at stake in this issue. Nonetheless, I have had to come down on the side of those who choose to protect their children from the terrors of disease. I think the bodyâ€™s natural immune system has been compromised by the addition of unnatural chemicals. Likewise, I think Mother Earth has been compromised. Our earth is now out of balance. I donâ€™t think we can expect our bodies to be anything less than out of balance.

Where I think this leaves us is that we may not like having to deal with chemicals but we are trapped now in having to accommodate to an altered world. The natural immune system that used to work for us has been thrown off course. One way we have seen it work in our families is that when a disease has been diagnosed it has been treated with an arsenal of new drugs. These drugs alter the response of the body to the disease. With some diseases the prognosis may be grim. The body survives the disease but is now altered by the chemicals. This is the compromise we make. In taking some chemicals our body is left more exposed because of the suppression of our natural immune system. Also, as we pass on genes to following generations these folks have seemed to develop the disease earlier and in addition develop multiple diseases, reflecting the immune systemâ€™s increasing inability to cope.

It is not possible to live in an unambiguous chemical world. It is as two writers quoted in Jack Doyleâ€™s Trespass Against Us put it: â€œthe chemical industry has engaged in a massive chemical experiment on the worldâ€™s human population and the entire web of life. No one has ever given their consent for this experiment. Most people donâ€™t even know it is happening.â€

Nonetheless, as there has for a century, voices are now being raised that may very well demand a reevaluation of where we are headed. The Polluters:The Making of Our Chemically Altered Environment by Ross and Amter discusses how the massively financed chemical industry lobby has held updated regulation at bay for a century. A second one may get very interesting. A policy statement by the American Pediatric Association (April 25, 2011) recommends that the chemical-management policy of the United States be revised. The TSCA (Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976) was passed in 1976. With tens of thousands of chemicals marketed since then only five have been regulated. â€œVoluntary programs have been inadequate in resolving problems.â€ says the APA. â€œThe US Environmental Protection Agency must have the authority to demand additional safety data about a chemical and to limit or stop the marketing of a chemical when there is a high degree of suspicion that the chemical might be harmful to children, pregnant women, or other populations.â€

Gee, the American Pediatric Association vs. the anti-regulators. Iâ€™ll buy a box seat.

(Ron Keeshan: by my count this makes 101 columns and special thanks to a long-suffering Guardian Editor. No suffering at this end Ron, just enjoyment -Ed)