Day 51: December 7, 2006
When we were last in Chennai meeting with the former pharmaceutical CEO who
is now an “expert believer” (my term for a highly skilled layman) in
traditional Indian herbal healing, we were given a contact name of a very
senior member of the Ministry of Health and asked to meet with him. He was
called by his friend who was serving as our go-between (even though it was
a Sunday) and he agreed to meet with us at a particular time Delhi. We had
missed the appointment because of the traffic between Mussoorie and Delhi
(NEVER, NEVER, NEVER DRIVE THAT ROAD. WE WERE TOLD THAT THERE IS A 4 LANE
BYPASS BUT NOT ONE OF OUR MANY DRIVERS EVER LOCATED IT. Instead, we
planned on the travel time the 4 lane road requires and found ourselves
stuck on the National 74, a major road to Hell because it is paved with the
good intentions of the drivers to take us to and from Delhi on the wide,
safe, well maintained National 1 road while we actually wind up on the bullock-cart, tractor, pedestrian, bicycle, auto, truck, bus, horse-drawn
carriage, donkey cart and miscellaneous transport road creeping along at a
pace that would frustrate the pokiest of snails while they choked in the
red dust of India’s winter months for close to 11 hours. The time on the
apparently mythical National 1 between Mussoorie and Delhi (or vice versa)?
Four hours.
Anyway, by the time we got to Delhi, there was no way whatsoever that we
could see the Ministerial personage. We called, though, and he kindly
agreed to see us later in the week, so the meeting will take place tomorrow.
Day 52 December 8, 2006
This time we got to the office of the senior Health Ministry person on
time. He was in a meeting so we waited for him to finish that meeting and
meet with us.
While we were waiting for him to finish his meeting, and were drinking the
requisite cup of tea proffered by the requisite-cup-of-tea person, we saw
that there was a copy of the India’s Declaration on the rights of mothers
and babies and the huge importance of actually moving forward to protect
them, not just taking about it. We agree. The 3 million babies lost to
poor nutrition a year and their mothers are inexcusable. We know enough,
we have enough and we are determined enough that we, as a world community,
should be providing high potency nutritional support to every pregnant
mother and every child who is challenged by under-nutrition. India’s
excellent new Food Safety and Standards law makes that possible, just as
DSHEA, the 1994 US statute which treats nutrients as foods, does. So
making these nutrients available in a high potency form, consistent with
the Natural Solutions Foundation’s International Decade of Nutrition
(inaugurated September 5, 2006) is a goal which can be achieved by a
determined health community and a determined government. Why should the
lives of babies and their mothers be compromised by cheap, easily available
and abundantly safe vitamins, minerals and other basic nutrients? There is
no reason whatsoever. None.
The International Decade of Nutrition’s High Potency Nutrient Feeding
programs can be carried out in compromised communities through excellent
documentation before and after the nutrient feeding programs to show the
ups and downs of high potency nutrient feeding: increased health, decreased
illness and mortality, increased productivity and quality of life,
decreased costs of health and/or illness care. All of this, of course,
would be made impossible under Codex if, for example, a country tried to
export high potency nutrients which violated the restrictive and dangerous
Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (ratified July 4, 2005, at the Rome meeting
of the Codex Alimentarius Commission).
India has taken up the process of protecting herself and her people at Step
2 of the two step process we show in the Codex eBook (available on the
Natural Solutions Foundation website, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org). She now
can easily, through her regulatory structure of her new food law, perhaps,
carry out the first step and, we believe, become “WTO Sanction-Resistant”
on this issue. And what an issue it is. The cost of human under nutrition
can hardly be described here because it is so immense. Drugs, of course,
will never cure that, just as they do not cure the diseases that under
nutrition causes, nor, in the end, the death it causes, too. And no drug
ever cured suffering, although some suppress pain, both physical and
mental/emotional. The cost of such suppression is great economically,
medically and in human terms, too great, in fact, to bear in nearly every
case.
I was taught as a Psychiatry Resident that an operational definition of
neurosis is that when something does not work, the neurotic person keeps on
doing more of it. Hmmmm. What does this fixation on using drugs, which are
the single leading cause of death in the developed world, and which are
breaking the bank and leading to more and more illness and expense when
they are used instead of nutrition and common sense, look like, sound like,
smell like, cost like? Sure enough, it must be a duck!
Anyway, there we were waiting for the very senior Health Ministry person.
We told him why we were in India, told him how concerned we were with the
pending law there that would make acupuncture, acupressure,
electro-acupuncture, Pranic Healing, frequency medicine, etc., illegal to
teach or to practice in India. He listened very attentively and discussed
how we could maximize our impact on the Indian health and nutritional
situation. It was a great meeting and one that gave us a good deal of
valuable insight into both the opportunities and ways around some
roadblocks in India in order to achieve our goals of Optimal Health using
the arrows in our quiver and the new Indian Food Act.
Then, because he thought our information would be useful and that he could
provide useful information in return, he sent us off to meet the head of
AYUSH, India’s special division of the Department of Health which is
devoted to Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathic medicine.
As you probably know, while Ayurveda has its roots in the Hindu traditions,
Unani serves the Moslem community in much the same way and, like its better
known (at least in the West) counterpart, Unani is an herb and food based
system with great wisdom and highly educated and skilled practitioners
here. Siddha is focused on cure and health through yoga, meditation and
the connection between sprit, mind and body while Homeopathy, also well
known in the West (and under major attack in the EU because it is so
effective) is a very popular form of prevention and treatment here.
Interestingly, this very enthusiastic and educated gentleman, over the next
requisite cup of tea, defended the notion of restricting the practice of
non-allopathic medicine because the practitioners of AYUSH therapies all
went to school for a long time and they should not be economically or
professional undermined by people who do not have the same degrees,
credentials or union cards that they do.
It’s a familiar point, and one that is being exploited here by the
allopathic interests to narrow and control the field, divide and conquer.
Does that have a familiar ring? Doesn’t that sound a lot like the
process John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie engaged in prior to the
full-blown assault on every type of medicine that did not use drugs prior
to the put-up job called the Flexner Report in the early 20th Century
which said that only allopathic medicine should be allowed to exist.
Rapidly, all other forms of medicine were attacked and their practice
criminalized. You know, of course, that John D. Rockefeller owned the
total world output in petroleum at that time and, because he did not
believe that the internal combustion engine would every consume all of his
output, sought out another demand stream. He found it in Germany’s
pharmaceutical industry, focused at that time on drugs made from petroleum
(also called coal-tar derivatives) and set out to get rid of the
competition. How he did that includes the story of IG Farben and World War
II, but that is another story, about which there will be an article on the
website, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, shortly.
Both the first and second encounters were good meetings because each was
highly informative, although we learned something different in each. We
can go back and talk to both gentlemen and probably will. We learned a lot
from them and introduced the Natural Solutions Foundation to them.
Later, we met with a former Bollywood actor turned healer who is doing some
interesting stuff integrating all the Indian and non-Indian religious
traditions with their corresponding healing traditions and then picking and
choosing from among their wisdoms to create a personalized frequency
response on a DVD for each person. Of course, that will be illegal here in
India if this new law passes.
Day 53 December 9, 2006
We decided to fly to Dehra Dun (30 minutes), the nearest town to Mussoorie
since we had to go back to further our discussions with the frequency
scientist there about deepening our work from interest to healing
technology. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there were no
tickets on either flight (there are two a day).
So we decided to take the train (3 hours or a 6 hour overnight sleeper).
We could book on line. That’s the good news. You can only do so if you
have an ICI card, which appears to be available only to residents and
citizens of India. We don’t have one. That’s the bad news. The travel
agencies and post offices that could have booked the tickets for us were
closed by the time we realized that the Indian Government’s Press Release
last January trumpeting the on-line availability of booking did not apply
to us. That was the even worse news.
The really bad news was that the only way to get back to Mussoorie was to
drive. Worse news? We drove. And the worst news of all is that, despite
vigorous verbal assurances that he knew the National 1 road and that he and
his car were licensed to drive on it, he did not and he was not.
Fifteen minutes shy of 11 hours later, we arrived at our destination in
Mussoorie.
Sigh.
Oh, by the way, the guest house we were booked into in the Himalayas was
unheated and there was no warm water there.
Even bigger sigh.
Day 54 December 10, 2006
Today was the birthday celebration of the frequency scientist/healer in
Mussoorie whom we had come to talk to and work with. Early in the day we
were taken to see the beauty spot of the region, a magnificent view of the
Snow Peaks of the Himalayas. We paid our 20 Rupees each to climb a
staircase (2 flights) to an observation deck with heavy duty binoculars
through which we could see the magnificence of the top of the world. We
could also see the highly aberrant HAARP array and the heavy Chemtrails in
the sky.
Climbing down the stairs we came back to the level at which the local lady
had collected our 20 Rs each and I took a photo. If I knew how to mount it
to show it to you, I would. It is a picture of the top of the world, the
snow peaks of the highest and remotest mountain range on earth in the far
distance and, in the foreground, a snack pack rack bearing an advertisement
for Frito Lay chips and packages and packages of them (made, I believe,
with GMO corn right here in the US) on the rack. It is quite a photo.
Later, we went on a drive to see another of the view spots of the universe:
this one a resort now in its down season. I won’t even begin to tell you
how terrified I was during the drive along the crests of mountains with
unguarded roads plunging into near vertical cliffs which went down
thousands of feet ON EITHER SIDE. Oh, by the way, the road was 1 lane and
the curves, which were mostly much more than 90 degrees and all blind, were
shared with fuel trucks, tour busses, SUVs, motor bikes, etc. The peaks
were glorious. My calf and knee muscles were in spasm from the reactive
terror flinch. I could barely peel my hands off the handle on the roof of
the car over the window in the back seat where we were sitting.
And then we had to get home for the Birthday Party. In the dark. Don’t
ask!
When we got back, and warmed up at the wood burning stove, we noted that
there was a tent on a patio on a lower level. It turned out to be for the
party. I have to tell you, this was the first time I ever attended a
birthday party outdoors in the Himalayas in December while it was raining,
hailing and, to some extent, snowing. But the warmth of the blazing love
of the people that the scientist/healer was treating and had treated was
blazing hot so the weather was meaningless. It was a palpable expression
of love and devotion like few that I have seen in my life.
Among the people there were some with genetic inborn errors of metabolism
who said that their genetic examinations were now normal. This healing
capacity is worth the drive if it can be substantiated.
Guest House Report: no towels, no hot water, no heat, and the breakfast
omelets was made with such an abundance of green chilies that I had to send
it back with tears streaming down my face from the first bite.
Day 55 December 11, 2006
After a walk in the town to buy one of the amazingly warm shawls which
serve as winter coats for men and women here (and which are as light as
cotton or, sometimes, silk although they are wool), we took a taxi back to
the house of the scientist. The conversation is highly significant but the
wood-burning stove reminds me that indoor pollution is one of the leading
causes of death in the developing world.
We deepened our talks about how to proceed with our research. Then down
the horrifying and dangerous road to Dehra Dun. And, to make things
complete, it snowed up on the mountain road so that getting back UP that
road was another level of terror that I, personally, had never experienced
before. Neither had the General and he has been in combat!
Think about it for a moment: we are talking about energy that can repair
genetic diseases. And I have seen the patients and the process here.
Energy that can repair a hole in a baby’s heart.
Energy that can reverse ALS. No drugs. Energy that can be delivered
through technology. No heat, terrifying drive vs. energy. No contest.
We’ll go to Mussoorie. Again.
Day 56 December 12, 2006
Mussoorie to Delhi (by road B complete with assurances that the driver
knew, was licensed to take, was in a car that was licensed to drive on, and
would choose the National Highway 1 to Delhi so that we could make the
flight to Chennai. HA!
We finally got to the Delhi airport and found that all our stress over
missing the flight was unnecessary: we did not depart until at least 4
hours after the scheduled time because of a Delhi winter delight: fog. So
we missed our dinner meeting in Chennai. Of course, we did get there,
which was a great up from hanging out in the Delhi domestic airport with no
planes flying, no seats, hardly any food, etc. You get the idea.
The hotel in Chennai has both hot water and air conditioning. Of course,
they had cancelled our reservation because we were late so we wound up
sharing a cottage: Lacey in the living room on a roll away bed and the
General and I in the bed room. Hey, we all had hot water and we were
happy. And clean. And cool. And dry. And off the damn road!
Day 57 December 13, 2006
We had series of meetings here about how to bring natural medicine to
India. They were exciting and highly productive with a really powerful
structure proposed which we will look into. You can understand that we
can=t talk about it yet. There is too much to explore, investigate and
formalize. But if you could design what you would like, it would look
quite a lot like this.
Lacey left after the meetings and my computer froze. Happily, one of the
people in the group here in Chennai is an IT guy so, despite my
forebodings, he was able to fix it up after about 6 hours of intensive work.
Then we went to the airport to take a flight back to New York. Nope. The
travel agent, our Indian IT friend and we had all misread the ticket. We
mistook the flight number for the time of departure. We got to the airport
to have the armed guard at the door to the departure terminal tell us that
we had missed the plane B it was gone, gone, gone.
Back to the hotel (since we were now in the middle of the night, checking
back in for a few hours of sleep.
Sigh.
Day 58 December 14, 2006
We had to check out by noon so we spent the day next to an outlet in the
wall in the very nice veggie restaurant, had lunch, dinner and did email
and this blog. This is really an internet café. Now we are eating dinner
(excellent home made tomato soup as I write this), I will go back on line,
send it to the blog site and say, see you in the US.
We have had stunning success and should be deeply encouraged to continue
our work. Don’t forget to go to our new store at
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org/store to buy organic nutrients and other needs
while supporting us. And, speaking of support, we need your tax deductible
donations. You can do that on our site, too. Just go to
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and click on Donate, sign the Citizen’s Petition
while you are there and sign up for the secure email newsletter.
See you. We’re having a final meal here in India before we leave for home
early on December 5, 2006.
Day 59 December 15, 2006
Fly home, arrive home. I’ll let you know what happens.
November 28, 2006
We had an astonishingly successful (and important) day yesterday in Delhi. Today we headed north to the foothills of the Himalayas for a meeting with a world-class frequency scientist and healer whom we had met last July through the good offices of a physician in Delhi whose hospital is using some of this gentleman’s technology to cure cancer successfully. When we met him before it was a great joy and the beginning of a working relationship. We were headed back to pursue this connection and to learn from him.
The car was booked for 6:30 AM but did not arrive until 7:30 AM. Off we went into a hideous traffic nightmare: the “rules of the road” are a meaningless construct and the dust, bullock carts, pollution, dangers of drivers coming in the other direction, etc., made the 10 hours we spent on the road more harrowing than I can recount.
So instead of getting there for lunch (6 hours) we got there in time for dinner.
Despite that, we found time to watch the healing process (astounding) and talk (even more astounding) while eating a phenomenal home-cooked dinner of local and Punjabi Indian food cooked by a lady with one of the sweetest faces I can remember seeing.
The people being healed included folks with Motor Neuron Disease (for example, ALS), diabetes type I (Insulin dependent), a child with a tiny head (microcephaly), cases of asthma, eczema, depression, violent discontrol and on and on and on. We saw some people who did not respond to a particular session and many, many who did. We also saw people with neurological and other devastating diseases get significantly better in one or two sessions although many of them needed to keep coming (and stayed to do so).
We know, and this remarkable scientist knows, that there are ways to get these effects with technology so that everyone in the world can access them. We also know that they will be illegal here in India if the new law pending now goes through: no “new” medicine will be allowed here: not acupuncture, pranic healing, music therapy, only AYUSH (Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy), Naturopathy and Reiki and, of course, allopathic medicine will be legal to teach or practice. You can see the game clearly: get rid of the others and then attack the other included practices one by one. Does that give you an idea what is in the works in the US?
While there, we talked about the need to move the research forward which we want to do in common and the importance of making sure that Codex does not become the law of this land.
We stayed in a cold, but very clean, hotel in the village. No internet, of course.
November 29, 2006
Several hours of talking with the professor and his brother (also a professor, this time from Harvard University) about the research and devices we hope to build and we were off back to Delhi. At night. On the killer road.
We watched as the brother visiting from the US told the driver in the local language a shortcut which would take us to a superhighway which was faster and safer. “Ok, OK!” with the famous Indian sideways headwobble (which can mean yes, no, maybe or go away) to support it and we were off.
The driver had NO idea where the shortcut was and, in fact, about 45 minutes down the (harrowing) mountain switchback road (during which I literally screamed at the driver, “SLOW DOWN!!!!!”) We stopped to change cars (“The driver has no license for Delhi” and I asked the old driver to tell the new one about the short cut. Same “OK, OK”, same head wobble, this time from two drivers.
He had no idea whatsoever about any road or shortcut other than this one. The road was unlit, the drivers were clearly certifiably insane. We were driven off the road 7 times. One time, the first car passed us in the wrong direction, occupying our entire lane and 6 more cars followed right on his tail.
I have never been so frightened for so long in the company of 2 other terrified people in my life. Never.
Eventually, we got to a clean rest stop and had a much needed break. A family from the UK, although they were culturally Indian, sat at the next table and the mother of the family came over and asked us if we would like some help. “Yes, thank you”, we said and she helped us pick out dinner from the incomprehensible menu.
Rested, but reluctant to go back out into that terrifying experience, none the less, we did so. When we got to Delhi, the new driver had not even the faintest clue where our hotel was (“Yes, Ok, OK, I know where it is” — complete with head wobble) did not correspond with any kind of reality so we wandered around dark Delhi for a very long time.
When we got to the hotel we were staying in, there was the woman from the rest stop who helped us so nicely. She, it turns out, is a health activist, a UK ans Asian radio and print advocate for clean healthy food and all the other things we believe in so strongly. She is also a devote of a powerful and influential guru here in India so we wrote to him in the middle of the night. We also bonded.
You will be hearing more about our work together in the near future.
I stayed up all night getting our work together shaped while General Stubblebine was in our rooms the whole time I was downstairs. He was packing and getting ready to leave at 4:30AM to take another plane, this time to Chennai, on the SE coast of Southern India.
Day 30, November 30, 2005
Flight to Chennai. Arrival in Chennai, trip to hotel, dinner with IT (Information technology) guy from Chennai and arrangements for Monday’s experiment in Chennai. Sleep.
Day 31, December 1, 2005
We are working with one of the world’s great diabetologists. He and his doctor wife run a private health clinic for poor children. They give medicine to, feed (the whole family if necessary, clothe, pay school tuition, buy books, etc. nearly 600 children. Out of their own pocket with the help of a few friends. Anything that will help these children is what they want.
So we brought our equipment along and showed what we could do to the doctor and his associates when we used our equipment and what it could do for diabetic children. We then agreed upon a very small scale, very preliminary study on Monday coming to see what would happen if we used our technology on people who have the biological issues we characterize as “diabetes.”
Day 32, December 2, 3, 2006
We continued to get ready for the small experiment using technological means to control blood sugar. Saturday we had a visit from a rather amazing innovator who is creating energy-based devices for wellness based in ancient, modern and esoteric information. His presentation was very detailed and very impressive. We will meet him again in Delhi later this week to collaborate further.
Dinner on Saturday night was at the posh (and delicious) restaurant at the Park Hotel in Chennai with the diabetologist and his IT person (who is now our IT person). As it turns out, we need to acquire a more robust system to handle all of our new activity (such as the brand, spanking new internet website selling only pure, organic products which we will launch within the next couple of weeks, we anticipate).
On Sunday we were visited by a completely remarkable industrialist who believes what we do and is on our side. He does, however, have some serious medical problems which allopathic medicine could not cure and found that his childhood playmate, the noted diabetologist, was very important on putting him on the road to health.
Since he had already been to allopathic doctors of the conventional stripe, once he came to the diabetologist and learned that he was not, in fact, incurable and about to die, his whole framework of thought changed and his interest in methods other than allopathic medicine grew at a rapid pace until today he has a farm for organically grown Ayurveda medicinal herbs.
The industrialist came to our hotel room specifically to tell us about what Indian legal structures are the best choices for us so we can move foreward here in India. We listened very carefully, of course, and will follow his advice in the construction of a parallel organization here in India with the same goals and objectives as the Natural Solutions Foundation “mother ship”. A lot of passionate brainstorming took place, you can be sure.
He left after giving us the information: we tried to absorb it all and see how we fit with the legal structure we were told is going to be the best for us to use here in India.
Of course we did not go to the same hotel for dinner on Sunday as on Saturday. When we met with the diabetologist for dinner on Sunday at the famed Gymkhana Club in Chennai we had lovely, lovely food and equally delightful ambiance and company. What we talked most about, of course, was health freedom and health innovation so the food supported the conversation and the quality of the conversation was supported by the excellence of the dinner!
No internet, by the way, in the Chennai hotel except for peculiar spots at weird times using cards that we could not get and did not work when we could. For those of you who have been trying to reach me by email please be patient. We are trying to dig out from under nearly 3000 emails!
Day 33, December 4, 2006
Today we arrived at the diabetes clinic and tested 4 patients using blood glucose meters to determine their fasting blood sugars, then giving them energy input to correct their blood sugar levels, testing again with the glucose meters and repeating the process as their condition warranted. The results were very interesting: there was no question that we impacted their blood sugars using the energy. There was also no question that we were interacting with the liver as well as their pancreas, which will make perfect sense to those of you who are involved with the physiology of diabetes which is a much more profound disease than simply a sugar dis-regulation one. The results that we got suggested strongly that more clinical work is needed and that the possibilities of energy regulation, as opposed to drug regulation, is a very real one. A real one, that is, which will take some work to develop.
Now I want to remind you that there is a law pending which would make this type of intervention illegal here in India. How different is that from the innovation-hostile position of the FDA toward anything which does not serve its pharmaceutical masters? Not very.
Day 34, December 5, 2006
Early in the morning we had breakfast and left for the Chennai airport to come to Delhi. Of course, we had fixed and appointment for noon with a very important man in government and our plane tickets got changed: we missed the appointment. Happily, the man who made it and another person were calling frantically on our behalf to let him know that we would not make the meeting today.
When we got to the Delhi airport, there was a car arranged for us with a sign saying “Dr. Rima” to take us to the lovely hotel that had been booked by the inventor of the wellness device. We called the important man whose meeting we missed and he graciously gave us another appointment time. Then we hooked up with the inventor who was here in Delhi to serve as a critic in a film festival on the disabled in India.
It is a very impressive festival, indeed, and it looks like I may be given the opportunity to make a brief (+/- 5 min?) address to the press and the dignitaries tomorrow on health freedom. YES! Let’s hope so.
Then dinner (“Octopus Oriental” — that is really its name!) and on to the computer!
I’ll keep you posted as we go, now that we have email and internet!
November 25 and 26 were work days, pure and simple. Lacey Banks, General Stubblebine and I did not go sightseeing, did not go shopping, and did not go wandering the streets of Delhi. We spent the weekend closeted in the hotel working on a Power Point presentation for the Secretary of the Ministry of Food Production Industries and his staff. The presentation will be mounted on the website shortly. It focuses on several related items:
1. The degraded food supply (a big problem in the US, India, EU, etc. Create food using too much farming on exhausted land with too many synthetic fertilizers to compensate for its exhaustion followed by too much processing with too many toxins and damaging treatments and the result is inevitable: food with less and less nutrition and more and more toxicity built in. Sick food equals sick people. Here in India there is the additional problem of large numbers of people who are just plain hungry or very hungry)
2. Codex’ impact on degrading and damaging the food supply including its history and origin. If you have not already watched the video clip on this at http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Nutricide please do so now and email it to everyone you know. The importance of this issue is hard to overstate. Just life and death, that’s all.
3. The power and potential of the new Indian Food Safety and Standards Law which is the second food law in the world which classifies nutrients as foods! The first, DSHEA, our US law, is under attack and has been targeted by the drug-only folks inside and outside the FDA. This law, modeled on DSHEA is a powerful step in the right direction and represents India’s having decided to take the second step in our Codex two step process: they have passed the law which makes nutrients foods. Now they need to articulate a science-based position on why their nutrient strategy is superior to Codex’ nutrient strategy.
4. How their new law could be used by India to support high density nutrient feeding consistent with the International Decade of Nutrition to use what the new law allows — and what we already know about disease and nutrition — to lift India’s desperately undernourished population from cellular hunger through a 5 year high potency nutrient feeding program. This would place India in a position of leadership in the developed world which would be of great service both to India’s trade and to the people whose nutritional status would be improved on the basis of the data generated, to say nothing of those nourished during the 5 year program!
5. How the Natural Solutions Foundation could be of service in assisting with the process of generating the regulations which can allow this potentially outstanding law to become a regulatory reality serving health and nutrition here in this country of 1.2 billion people.
Once we finished, we did go to dinner on Sunday night at a Korean restaurant at the State-run Ashok Hotel. It was really good and quite different than the Indian food which is our daily fare. Now don’t get me wrong: the Indian food is marvelous, but we were really intrigued to know what Korean food in India would taste like. It was delicious and pretty similar to the Korean food we have had in the US.
Of course, that was a great improvement over the Russian restaurant we tried a while back in the same hotel. Take my advice: skip the Russian on and go with the Korean place at the Ashok next time you are in Delhi!
November 27, 2006
Our presentation was scheduled for 3 PM but we needed to meet a friend for some administrative business there at 2. (We were guests of the Minister at a State Guest House for the first 3 days we were in Delhi but we had been charged for the stay. There was no way, given our non-existent Hindi and the proprietor’s similar English) that we could get it across to him that we were guests of the minister. It was just easier to pay him. However, our friends here were upset when we told them that and arranged for the payment to be returned to us which, of course, we really appreciated.)
Then we went up to the nicely appointed conference room and discovered that our laptop would not mate with their projector. Not to worry: I had a flash drive. Nope. They preferred copying our Power Point onto their computer and showing it that way.
Success!
When the Secretary of the Ministry (the man who runs things) came in and I was about to begin he asked very directly why an American doctor, General and lawyer had come half way around the world to concern themselves with the things that our preliminary material said we were going to talk about. We explained that what happens in India is important to us because we are committed to global health and health freedom and were committed to making a difference at a global level. He seemed to like that and we went on.
I was partway into my talk about Codex when the Secretary interrupted me and said that they understood this well, that I was preaching to the converted and asked me what we could bring to India that would help her. This was, essentially, the same thing the Minister said last Thursday! These folks have no blinders on about Codex and want to know what they can do to fix the situation. We, of course, were happy to share our views on the topic and did so.
At the end, we were invited to participate in the development of regulations for this new law! And so we shall.
This is an unprecedented opportunity for health freedom advocates and we will certainly take it, and take it very seriously. We regard this as a real forward movement: India is now the second country in the world with a nutrients-are-foods law allowing for high potency nutrients. Properly put into regulation, this means that India has decided to deviate from Codex and, given India’s size and economic power (current and potential), and given her ability to develop programs and protocols which will also serve countries which are also burdened by gross under-nutrition, she could become a shining beacon of ways to end world hunger and promote world health through nutrition.
And the relevant ministry has asked us to help. “Yes, sir, thank you sir, we would be glad to, sir!”
Thursday, November 23 was a fascinating day. At home it was Thanksgiving. Here we had a great deal to be thankful for by the end of the day but there was nothing like an American Thanksgiving going on. You may remember that we had been asked to make contact with the President of the association we addressed on Monday who is the Minister for Food Processing Industries and is also the Codex Contact Point here in India. And you may remember that at that meeting he said that he wanted us to meet with his people to discuss our information. But the phone fates were not on our side. All during the day yesterday we were telephonically finding and loosing him. He would call us, we would call him, he would call us, and we would call him. The phone would not connect or, if it did, we would loose each other after a minute or two.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, November 22 we were in a day-long meeting with some of the organizer of the meeting and his friends planning our next stages. Clearly, the phone thing was not working! We were advised by our friends here to go to the Minister’s house early the next day (today) and just hang out in his living room to make the appointment. Now, that is a little unusual for us, but we were advised that it was the best way to do things and that his living room was going to be full of people like us trying to make appointments with his secretary.
Not.
We showed up at his house and obviously caused some significant scurrying back and forth. We were ushered into an anteroom for a while and offered some water. We waited. Then we were shown into, yes, the Minister’s house and into his living room where were offered tea and we waited. There were no other people there and, in fact, the secretaries and so on who interacted with us were quite surprised that we were there. We were, however, treated very courteously indeed while it was explained to us that today was a very busy day for the Minister since every Minister had to answer questions in Parliament on a particular day and today was his day. Bad day to see us. Yet, when we explained that we were there to make an appointment for the Minister’s convenience and what our mission was, the very busy Minister came out to see us himself.
He is a direct man and asked us what we wanted. We explained and he cut me off saying (well, yelling, really) that America had ruined its own health with its food and now it wanted to ruin the health of the world. “Now you are concerned?” he roared at me. I firmly (not roaringly) said that I was not content with ruining America’s health or the rest of the world’s and that I had been fighting it my entire career. In fact, that was why I was here now. Let me tell you, I have never appreciated being yelled at so much in my life.
The Minister’s outrage and anger is absolutely appropriate and welcome! Yes, that is what we have done and yes, it is time to stop it at home and abroad! And, yes, that is part of the message we are carrying to the countries of the world that have an interest in listening. India appears to be one of them.
The Minister said that his people were busy but that we would fix an appointment for the next day. And so we did.
And, oh, by the way, we ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant (sort of a fast food place) which specialized in steamed momo or dim sum. Cheap, tasty, wholesome, and, at least for one variety, HOT! HOT! HOT! Take the warning, “This one is hot.” very seriously here. We are talking HOT!
November 24, 2006
Today we had breakfast and made our way to the Ministry of the Minister. We met as planned with his Private Secretary. I could not imagine a more receptive audience than he and the Codex specialist with whom we met. They listened, they questioned and then they asked us if we would be available to meet with more members of their staff. You bet!
So instead of heading to Mumbai (Bombay) on Sunday (which is where we expected to be heading) we will be staying here for a meeting on Monday to discuss optimal health and nutrition through a variety of pathways, all of which are impacted directly by Codex. What a perfect opportunity to make our points and bring health and health freedom some new strength from this remarkable and potent source of positive policy and change. At the same time, we will be bringing information and options to India which could help lift the burden of ill health through the application of nutrition in some ways which are consistent with high potency nutritional strategies. After all, India has just passed into law the world’s second nutrients-are-food law and that offers her a spectacular opportunity to use nutrients.
Safe, efficient and low cost, nutrients are of immense importance in promoting and creating health. Now India has the law to allow it. We are pleased to offer the help that we can.
If you remember the two step process we advocate for countries, a guideline or strategy must be adopted to replace the one promulgated by Codex and a law must be passed making it the law of the land to implement that strategy. India has passed such a law.
We will be spending the weekend working on the presentation, you may be sure. I had wanted to attend a performance of traditional dance and music and was disappointed that we would be working tonight (Friday). However, that is what we are here for.
When we packed, it was in great haste and I left all of my barrettes home so I wanted to go out to a cart on the street near our hotel to buy some. Lacey Banks, one of the attorneys on our team, was with us and she and I walked out to look at them. As we were wandering down the street, we stopped for a procession of about 120 people dancing in the street behind a shrine being transported on the shoulders of worshippers. Singing, dancing, beating cymbals, they filled the street until they were right in front of us. I looked across the street and was facing the open first floor of a lavishly decorated 3 storey building. The first floor had about 7 statues of Krishna with garlands of orange marigolds draped around them. Priests welcomed the devotees who danced and sang, draped the shrine with a fine red and gold cloth, swayed and prayed to the chanting of the priests and then, after about 20 minutes, calmly moved on.
They filled the street with no concern for the traffic. A few policemen showed up and created some sort of traffic flow while they worshipped in the street and then, with the speakers in a Pedi cab in the middle of the crowd, when they were finished with their devotions at this temple, the mass of worshippers moved on.
So I got my wish after all! We are working on the presentation and I did get to some traditional dancing and singing, too. I did not get a barrette, but who cares!
“Recognition is everything”
Before we got to day 25, we had to finish day 24. Leaving Bangkok on November 19 was pretty interesting. First, of course, we had another opportunity to meet with our Thai friends who are helping to put all the good stuff in place in Thailand. Another meal and another meeting to summarize what we had done during the past two weeks, how we would pursue the opportunities and then off to the airport. With bags. Lots of bags, especially a heavy one filled with books and DVDs for India.
It was very, very heavy and the Air India check in gal told us that the cost would be over $300 for excess baggage. We just looked at her and then asked if she was sure that was the cost. She said she was and then a whole flurry of excitement took place in Thai. We sort of just stood there while 3 people were very busy with our luggage and forms, phone calls and conferencing with each other and other people, too, for about 15 minutes. I finally asked what the next step was and one of the three people giggled and said that because we had been nice they had reduced the excess charge to about $125. She said that if we had been unpleasant they would not have done it, but since we did not raise our voices or get mean, they had worked with the supervisor and “solved” some of the charges. What a great way to finish our visit to Thailand, a country where living in harmony is valued greatly and making sure that no one looses face for any reason is a social obligation.
So we got on the plane feeling that the fact that we are nice people had been recognized by other people who were also nice.
Then we arrived in Mumbai (Bombay) and found that the car sent by our hotel in Mumbai (promised in our internet booking earlier that day for our hotel in which to spend the night before heading off to Delhi) was not at the airport. It is a big hotel so we located the driver who was there for another passenger, told him we were booked in the hotel and waited while he arranged our transportation.
When we got to the hotel, we found that the reason there was no car there was that it takes 24-48 hours for an online booking to get to the hotel’s front desk. There was no such notice on the website and it did accept our booking that morning. The hotel, we were told, was fully booked but the manager was working on the problem.
While we waited we noticed a poster from the hotel chain that said, “Recognition is everything”. The hotel had not recognized us electronically but, lo and behold, suddenly there was a voice saying, “Dr Laibow. How nice to see you. Hello, General Stubblebine!”
We turned around and there was a man who was at our lectures at the Yoga Institute in Mumbai last July who happened to be picking up a business associate. How nice to be recognized, if not by the hotel, then by a friendly face!
The hotel found us a room; we spent the night and were off the next morning to the domestic airport to go on to Delhi.
Day 25: November 20, 2006
Today we arrived in Delhi on Kingfisher Airlines (spectacular meal in coach class, simply spectacular!) and found that there were 3 uniformed men waiting to ask us if I was Dr. Laibow. I was. They said that there was a lady looking for me outside the arrival area and that she did not know what I looked like, nor would I recognize her so they would escort us to her.
They did. She was a perfectly lovely lady who is the wife of the organizer of the meeting I was to address the next day, Venita.
She drove us, along with part of our luggage (the rest was in another car thoughtfully provided for the occasion) to the Indian Guest House where our accommodation had been provided for us by the Minister of Food Production who is also the Codex Contact Point and the President of the All India Panchayat Parishad [AIPP] which is the apex body of elected representatives of local authorities at District, Block and Village levels in India. It represents 257,000 Village councils, over 5,500 Intermediate councils [called “Samittee”] and 575 districts [out of the 602 districts in India]. It has establishments in 23 states.
It is a simple, clean facility with an air conditioner (which we did not need at this season), a double bed and a private bathroom. It was really all we needed.
After a delightful meal in the home of the organizer, Arun Shrivastava, and Vanita. Her mother, a famous OB-GYN doctor was there, too, since she was also addressing the meeting the next day.
We went back to the Guest House knowing that Lacey Banks, our associate and friend, would be picked up by the driver assigned to take care of all of us.
Day 26: November 21, 2006
Breakfast was the first order of business so we went to the breakfast room where the choices were limited to toasted white bread and butter or untoasted white bread and butter. After some negotiation we managed to get some jam into the picture. Lacey’s Aunt Dot (baker extraordinaire) saved the day because Lacey came equipped with a loaf of raisin bread which saved the day!
Then dressing. I had decided to wear a sari as a mark of respect for the culture of the farmers of India. I have saris. I know how to wear saris. Wrapping one properly is a bit shaky, though. I asked Vanita to help me get dressed and she did. She had obviously done this sort of thing before! So off we went to the meeting.
This is a tremendously important group of people. 70% of Indians are farmers. They are being driven off the land just like subsistence farmers everywhere by the multinational corporate drive to industrialize the food supply. Codex is a huge part of that. What happens to people who cannot afford GM seeds or expensive (and dangerous) pesticides, who loose their land and have no urban skill base? Here in India they kill themselves because they have no options for themselves and their families and there are no safety nets for them. Oh, by the way, they are doing the same in Europe. Farmers are committing suicide at about 1 per week in central Europe because they are being squeeze into destruction by the same policies and have nowhere to go according to Arun.
So we got to the fairgrounds where several thousand farmers and their political representatives from the local structure to the community to the regional (Village, Block, Grahm) had gathered. Numerous Ministers and Members of Parliament, lawyers, judges, scientists and rural development specialists were present. Leis were presented, an oil lamp with many wicks was lit, traditional musicians performed and the meeting began. It was conducted totally in Hindi. General Stubblebine, Lacey and I between us speak not one word of Hindi. Politicians spoke, and spoke and spoke and spoke. In Hindi.
Finally, Arun’s mother in law said that she wanted us to go have lunch because this would go on for a long time and we would not speak until after lunch anyway.
We wandered off to a toilet area which was clean, odorless, had dozens of toilets for men and women and which I did not use. They were porcelain rims on which your feet occupy the widening on either side and you squat. In a silk sari? I think not.
Lunch was served on newly washed plates and eaten with newly washed spoons in a system designed to server thousands of meals for several days. The food was delicious. During our stand-around meal, I was introduced to the Minister of Food Production (aka Codex Point of Contact for India). We talked about Codex and I gave him our book and DVD. Waving around a crisp (and greasy) papadam which someone had stuck into my hand while I was talking, I made the points to him about the new Indian Food Safety Law and its shortcomings and our concern with Codex. He invited us to talk to him to add our perspective to the development of regulations for the law and about our perspectives on Codex. You bet! What a great opportunity!
Lunch over, we went back to the tent to address the meeting. To my horror I realized that we were supposed to take off our shoes and mount a sheet-covered set of steel stairs, sit on a sheet covered set of mattresses until (and after) it was our turn to talk, do so and sit down again. Why horror, because I know how to wear a sari, stand and sit on a chair in a sari, but I was envisioning what it would be like to get up from sitting on the floor in one and, if I stepped on the wrong part, what it would be like to come unwrapped in front of thousands of people in (or out) of one.
However, I managed the draperies and when it was time to talk, did not deliver my address called “Farmers hold up more than half the sky” (which will be available on our website shortly since that was printed in the program. Instead, using an interpreter, I held up a magazine which a beggar child had held up to sell to us on the drive to the meeting. We bought it from her. It was the Indian Sunday Times: the cover story was “The Death of the Farmer” and talked about the suicides of the Indian farmers, over a thousand of them in one particular province, since July 2005. And in the same issue was an article about the pharmaceutical industry and their price gouging on medications, the fact that India was forbidden by its agreement with the WTO to manufacture any medication patented in India after 1995 and the need for new medications to deal with new ills in India.
I used the juxtaposition of the two articles to make it clear that food, not drugs, are the basis of health but that farmers are being driven off the land by a system called “Codex”. After my talk, the Minister responded by thanking me for it and by saying that India was aware of the issues we were raising and that that they were committed to solving them. He again, this time publicly, invited us to visit his office to begin the dialogue on what should be done!
Hot, tired and very, very dusty, we headed back to the Guest House where we changed clothes after showering off the dust.
We had dinner in a stunningly good kebab house and plunged into sleep.
Day 27: November 22, 2006
We had a full day of meetings with Arun and his colleagues to bring our joint vision for clean food for India into being. We had a home made Indian breakfast and lunch during the day while people came in and out and added to our discussions.
Along the way, we made contact with the Minister mentioned above and the Health Minister and will see them tomorrow! Not bad for two days.
Oh, by the way, I have been asked to write an article for the Delhi Medical Society journal on nutrition in medicine and Codex. You bet