The Greening of Medicine

The Greening of Medicine

It’s time for the medical and pharmaceutical industries to be held accountable for their role in the current environmental crisis. As with many other industries, the medical profession has long practiced without regard for the environment.  Data now shows that one of the newest environmental hazards is the growing level of pharmaceutical waste accumulating in ground water supplies around the world. The medical industry, long known to over-prescribe and over-utilize medications in most conditions, has sown the seeds of a disturbing environmental crisis that will ultimately affect us all.

The impact of the medical and pharmaceutical industries on the environment takes place on different levels.  Like any industry that produces large quantities of consumable goods and disposable materials there is a significant “carbon footprint” associated with production, packaging, transport and finally disposal of medical supplies, but this visible phenomenon is only a small part of the whole picture.  Far more insidious and deleterious is the pharmaceutical pollution that is gradually saturating global water supplies as medications are routinely consumed and excreted.

As prescription drugs, allopathic medications are already associated with significant hazards when they are consumed voluntarily:

·   10% of all hospital admissions (over 2 million annually) are due to the effects of medications
·   Medications (taken as directed) cause over 180,000 deaths annually

Allopathic medications are the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. when utilized “according to the standard of care” (when taken as directed).  Medication errors cost the U.S. economy an additional $3.5 billion annually.

Now, through sheer volume of use, medications have begun building up in the environment once they are excreted or disposed of.  The average American between ages of 19 and 65 takes over 10 prescription medications daily while those over age 65 take twice that number.

Many of these drugs pass directly through the body undigested and enter the environment completely intact.  Every time a pharmaceutical drug is consumed a portion of it is excreted directly into the environment where it steadily accumulates.  Hundreds of different active pharmaceutical compounds have been discovered in water tables all over the world. Pharmaceutical wastes are appearing in water supplies that were once considered pristine and remote.

The natural half-lives of these chemicals in the environment is not known.  Since most synthetic compounds have no naturally established enzyme systems to break them down into simpler compounds, they persist and build up indefinitely over time.

What happens when these agents are consumed, involuntarily, by wildlife and humans, via drinking contaminated water or consuming plant and animals living in these environments?

The long term impact of these agents on animals and the environment is not known. Researchers have not determined, with any degree of certainty, exactly how these pharmaceutical wastes effect health since the monitoring systems look at short term effects, not long term sequellae.

Meanwhile, anti-inflammatory medicines like diclofenac have been linked to the destruction of vulture populations in Asia, and man-made derivatives of estrogen (birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy) have been associated with disturbances of sexual development in some species of fish.

These chemicals, marketed to alter human health, can and do affect other living systems in the environment in a variety of  disturbing ways.

Conventional allopathic medicine does not monitor the effects of pharmaceutical wastes in the environment since it does not even accept the premise that these agents could cause harm in small amounts.

Insight from Homeopathy

Scientific disciplines like homeopathy have provided some unique insights into how even low levels of pharmaceutical agents in the environment can profoundly affect health.

Homeopathy has a two century-old track record demonstrating the effects that ultra dilute concentrations of medicines have on human, animal and plant growth and development.  Homeopathic treatment has utilized information based, in part, on the scientific principle known as: “The Law of the Minimum Dose” in a system of medical therapeutics that has withstood the test of time.

In Classical Homeopathy, substances are given to healthy individuals in a controlled manner until these test subjects develop symptoms.  These symptoms are caused by the drug, and are recorded and referenced for later use.  This organized, premeditated process is known as a “drug proving.”

The homeopathic drug proving is a little like a “clinical drug trial” of allopathic medical research except that in the homeopathic proving, substances are given to a panel of healthy individuals to determine the scope of a drug’s activity before it is ever used to treat the sick.

The homeopathic drug proving is interesting because it tells the astute observer exactly how each medicine is capable of disrupting health and creating distinctive patterns of symptoms.  In this particular way, exposure to pharmaceutical agents in the environment is similar to a homeopathic drug proving.  In both instances, presumably healthy people are exposed to substances capable of disturbing their health.  The difference is that the homeopathic proving is voluntary and can be stopped as soon as symptoms develop, but the environmental exposure isn’t and can’t.

Homeopaths utilize information gleaned from drug “provings” to subsequently apply homeopathic medicines systematically to the ill and infirm.  It is through the drug proving that a homeopath knows the full extent that a particular drug can either disrupt or repair health.  In this way, direct clinical experience guides the homeopathic prescription toward the most clinically indicated substance.

Homeopaths recognize that several different factors affect the ability of a medicine to alter health.  These variables include:

·Similarity
·Sensitivity
·Concentration, or Potency, and
·Frequency of Exposure

The first, and most important variable is similarity, or the congruent match between a medicine’s “proving” symptoms and the symptoms of a person who is sick.  Homeopaths have found that the more closely the “proving” symptoms of the medicine match the symptoms of the sick and ailing individual, the more likely that a resolution of illness will take place. In homeopathy, where drug doses are extremely small, compared with allopathic doses, precision of prescription is extremely important.  Homeopathic substances must be prescribed in accordance with this principle of similarity if any chance of resolution is to be expected. Homeopathic substances are matched on the basis of physical, mental and emotional patterns of the individual who is ill.  In other words, the medicine and the patient with an illness must individually match each other.  This fact, deeply imbedded in homeopathic practice, is known as the “Law of Similars”.  Any use of these substances that ignores this basic rule is, by definition, not truly homeopathic.

The second factor determining the effectiveness of medical therapeutics is the sensitivity of each individual patient.  Each person responds to chemical and energetic phenomena differently, based on a multitude of factors that include genetics, past medical history, age, sex, constitution and even emotional state.

Allopathic physicians tend to ignore these first two rules because responses to conventional pharmaceutical drugs are more easily predicted without knowledge of similarity or individual differences since these allopathic drugs are administered in such large doses. Conventional allopathic medicines are extremely persuasive (and frequently toxic) precisely because they are administered in such large amounts that they overwhelm the body’s ability to resist treatment. This can have healing effects when the medicine is similar enough (see above), but it can also cause toxic side effects when the medicine does not sufficiently match the patient.

Homeopathic medicines, on the other hand, appear to add a completely new twist to this system of therapeutics.  They are effective at extremely small concentrations precisely because they are so carefully matched to the individual who is taking them. The potential for toxicity from this form of treatment is also correspondingly low because these agents are not delivered in large quantities.

The third factor determining drug activity, after similarity and sensitivity, is concentration, or potency.  Larger concentrations of allopathic drugs are typically more potent (and they are also associated with a greater likelihood of  toxicity) while lower concentrations tend to correlate with milder effects and lower toxicity.  This direct linear relationship is fairly predictable and straightforward at moderately high dosage ranges, but at ultra-molecular, “activated” concentrations a different affect is achieved.

As the dosage range is gradually lowered from large to small and ultimately to the ultra-molecular level a curious transition occurs.  At very high doses, medications are uniformly toxic.  As concentrations are lowered, medicines pass through stages of diminishing toxicity until a level of therapeutic suppression of symptoms is achieved (the basis of most allopathic medications is symptom suppression).  As drug concentrations are lowered further into the range of extremely low concentrations, or ultra-molecular doses a paradoxical reversal of effect takes place.  Medicines that were suppressive at moderately high dosages become stimulatory at  ultra-molecular dosages.  This effect is known as the Arndt Schultz Law of pharmacology.

Common examples of this law include the damaging effects of radiation at  high levels, compared with the stimulatory photosynthetic effects achieved at low levels.  Hormones delivered at high levels are associated with many side effects including cancer, but at extremely low levels they help regulate and stimulate physiological development.  In essence, ultra-molecular dilutions can have profound effects on living systems without the toxicity usually associated with pharmaceutical and herbal substances.

This law of therapeutics has been observed and tested against placebo controls in countless trials even though no credible physical explanation for it exists.  Nevertheless, the phenomenon is real and reproducible. When homeopathic medications are prescribed in this ultra-molecular dosage range the resulting effects follow predictable patterns of resolution that have been repeatedly verified and documented over more than two centuries.

The fourth factor influencing drug activity is frequency of repetition.  How frequently any drug is repeated determines how it exerts its effects.  Allopathic drugs build up in the body (and the environment) if they are repeated frequently.  Homeopathic, or ultra-molecular dilutions of medicines are also affected by frequency of repetition, but do not build up.  It would take the equivalent of centuries to develop measurable levels in the body and millennia to do the same in the environment.

The frequency of repetition of homeopathic medicines does effect how strongly a medicine stimulates recovery, but homeopathic physicians are very careful to avoid overstimulating this process and thereby “overdoing” it.  Homeopaths strive to achieve the minimum amount of stimulation required to enable the body to correct it’s own patterns of illness while avoiding over-correction and risking suppression. A classical homeopath will frequently warn patients to discontinue homeopathic medicines if  “either aggravation or improvement takes place.”  Too frequent repetition of any drug, including homeopathic medicines, can lead to aggravations and “provings”.

From the homeopathic experience with ultra-molecular doses of medicines it is clear that even extremely minute amounts of most substances are capable of producing profound long lasting effects on health and illness when any of the conditions are right (similarity, sensitivity, concentration and frequency of exposure).

Homeopaths have routinely utilized extremely small amounts of medicines in their treatments for over two hundred years.  This clinical experience should offer sobering advice since it suggests that the significantly larger and continually persistent amounts of allopathic pharmaceutical waste in the environment is much more likely to have significant health effects over time. Failure to recognize the importance of this form of pollution could prove to be very serious for many species, including man.

As individuals, ultimately responsible for our own health, the choices that we make as a group and the system of health care that we choose to embrace will have profound affects on future generations through potential environmental accumulation.

The health choices that we make today will definitely impact future generations if these agents continue to be produced, consumed, and excreted at their current rates.

The allopathic medical profession has chosen to ignore the implications and long-term effects of these treatments, so far.  Their attitude that the body and the environment are isolated, non-interacting systems is fatally flawed.  Allopathic medicines are building up in our water supplies and reaching toxic levels that will affect all of us whether or not we chose to take them.

Several medical organizations have begun to take up the call to “green” the practice of medicine and to reduce these toxic exposures, but change will only be possible if the public collectively expresses it’s concern and outrage and chooses alternatives to the medical-pharmaceutical industry.

Conclusion
We know that pharmaceutical compounds are biologically active and that they are accumulating in our water supplies. We can be sure that they can and do affect us. Therefore, we need to take steps to deal with this problem now.  These steps should include:

• A strong message to the medical-pharmaceutical industry that irresponsible production of environmentally toxic medications will not be tolerated

• Pharmaceutical firms must strive to reduce the Persistence, Bioaccumulation and Toxicity (PBT) of all medications that are developed, manufactured and marketed today

• Reduced reliance on all forms of prescription and nonprescription medications

• Responsible recycling of all unused medications (instead of flushing them down the toilet and into the water table)

• Improvement in wastewater treatment methods to help destroy these agents before they are released into the environment

• Design and development of more environmentally friendly “green drugs”, which rapidly biodegrade into harmless compounds

• Utilization of more natural therapies including homeopathy and herbal medicine as first line treatments whenever possible

Toxic pollution of the environment with pharmaceutical compounds is a preventable ecological disaster in the making.  The health of the environment and of future generations is at stake.  Consider the final destination of these drugs before swallowing your next prescription or nonprescription medication.

The information in this article is not intended to replace care provided by a skilled physician.  Always seek proper evaluation and diagnostic testing after an injury.  Follow up closely with your primary care physician.

Ronald D. Whitmont, M.D.
General Medicine-Homeopathy, PC
6250 Route 9
Rhinebeck, New York  12572
845.876.6323