We also know with certainty that land which was deep under the oceans is now the tops of some of the highest mountains.

   The planet and life on the planet are in constant flux. Species that had existed in the past are no longer here and their absence is not because of man but because they either could not adapt in their present form or they adapted by changing their physiology to conform to the new conditions.

   A couple of days ago it was reported that more than usual dead baby penguins were washing up on the shores of Brazil. The article stated that biologist Erli Costa of Rio de Janeiro’s Federal University feels that this is the result of changing weather patterns around Antarctica caused by global warming which is causing rougher seas and stronger currents than the baby penguins are able to cope with.

    A food scarcity caused by over-fishing may be forcing the young penguins to swim further from shore and they are unable to out-swim the currents.

   What will be the consequences of this situation?

The stronger young penguins will survive and contribute to the gene pool of the remaining penguins. Antarctic penguins will evolve into a stronger breed.

   There is historical evidence of this rapid evolution as is seen in the Hawaiian people. The indigenous Hawaiian was a very powerful and large person of great endurance and very acute eyesight.

   Those were the characteristics necessary for survival by paddling a canoe across great distances of open ocean. To get to Hawaii these people had to paddle against the Pacific North Equatorial Current, had to travel long distances without food and had to be able to see the tiny specks of clouds in the distance that formed over islands.

   The open ocean traveler without those characteristics perished just as the weaker Antarctic penguin of today.

   That is the way of life. If the Earth warms, those people who can survive the climate change will survive and reproduce. When the Earth cools again, the process will reverse itself. This has always been the pattern and will continue to be so in the future.

   Humanity will not simply disappear.

   There is one cold hard fact that alters the natural selection of those who contribute to the gene pool. Today, through emotion, humanity is interfering with the process.

   We are promoting “survival of the weakest” by spending millions of dollars keeping babies alive who are too weak to survive on their own.

   That may sound like a cruel and insensitive statement but it is nevertheless true.

   These infants, who are too unsuited for life on the planet, will be contributing to the gene pool and eventually we may be the cause of our own extinction rather than climate change.

   I know that this is a cold statement but it is true.

   Remember, that is the reason why I write these articles.

Truth– rather than emotion, politics or prejudice–will ensure our economic, cultural and physical survival.

I have just read an article that appeared January 22nd, on NEWSMAX HEALTH.

I feel that it is important to spread this information because many home remedies from Latin American countries and India use incredibly high levels of lead in their preparation.
The CDC reported 12 cases of lead poisoning in 2004 from using ayurvedic remedies in Texas, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and California.

High levels of lead have been found in ayurvedic medicines, which are used in India and in South Asian immigrant communities in New York, Chicago and Houston. These medicines include ghasard, a brown powder given to relieve constipation in babies, and mahayogaraj gugullu, for high blood pressure.

Lead poisoning can cause lethargy, confusion, learning problems and convulsions. Too much lead can cause irreversible brain damage and death.

The article stated:
“Traditional medicines may account for up to 30 percent of all childhood lead poisoning cases in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 240,000 U.S. children were diagnosed with high blood lead levels in 2004 to 2006.”

“Mexican remedies such as greta, azarcon and rueda – powders that are given to treat constipation in children and contain as much as 90 percent lead. In New York City and Rhode Island, high lead levels in the blood have been tied to litargirio, a powder containing up to 79 percent lead. It is used by Dominican immigrants for such ills as foot fungus and body odor.”

“In Harris County, which includes Houston, traditional medicines are blamed for nearly one-fifth of all cases in which children were found to have high levels of lead. In Arizona, home remedies account for one-fourth of childhood lead poisoning cases.”

How many high lead level cases are not reported if the child doesn’t become ill enough for the parents to become aware that it is their home medication that is causing problems?
If there are minute traces of lead in paint on toys, I wondered when I wrote the previous article, how many toys that have minute traces of lead in their paint must a child eat to cause the levels of lead absorbed and detected?
My point is that before we make drastic and costly decisions we should not make assumptions. The scientific approach of ‘cause and effect’ seems to have been forgotten recently. Opinion and emotion seems to prevail over solid scientific fact.

We see toddlers in diapers on the beach playing in the sand which contains billions of small stones and shells but no one seems concerned that they are a choking threat. What about our pennies and dimes? Does this too require a US Government recall? There are all sorts of questions raised about specific holiday plants at this time of year and their toxicity but parents seem unconcerned about the house plants that are in the home all year or the outside plants where their children play. Why does it seem that is there no sensible way to deal with our everyday environment? Why do some parents initiate lawsuits because of a button that can be pulled from a doll yet are totally unconcerned about the pebbles in their child’s sandbox? I’m afraid this has nothing to do with protecting children but it has everything to do with greed and the possibility of financial gain from a lawsuit.

Can we believe that manufacturers have just recently started to use lead paint on toys or had they always done so.?

Think about this a bit.

I am quite certain that the hundreds of millions of us adults have played with toys with as much, and certainly more, lead in painted toys than exists today. All toys were painted before plastic was invented. Many toys themselves were made of lead. I, and all the boys I knew, played with lead soldiers and lead cars.

If one considers the technological, scientific, literary and art achievements that have been made in the last 70 years it is obvious that our minds have not been hampered by that lead.

We are only aware of its presence today because we are testing for it.

If a child becomes unruly in a classroom one of the first things that is suggested is testing for chemicals in the blood, specifically for lead. How about the rest of the children in that classroom? They may have as much or more lead in their bodies but they act ‘normally’ so they are not tested.

If one considers the extreme cases of the lead miners or the battery workers and how much exposure it takes to create biological problems and analyzes the duration of exposure and quantity of lead involved then a reasonable attitude might evolve.

We ingest a lot of unsavory material that really has little or no effect on us. If anyone were to look at a drop of water with a microscope from their favorite lake or river where they swim or boat they would never go into that water again.

We are comfortable with our food, water and objects that we handle as long as we don’t know the specifics.

We have out-performed and outlived our great grandparents who played with stones, and sand and unpainted wooden toys.

In spite of our sharp sticks, marbles, buttons, dangling strings and lead paint, we have lived long enough to become a burden to our Social Security System to an extent never anticipated by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In short, if you look hard enough for problems you will find them whether it’s toys, water, food or your neighbor.

When I read something by Ben Stein I feel that it is not simply someone’s opinion but information that has been well considered.

While chasing another subject, I recently ran across an article that Stein wrote last year regarding the cost of Medicare that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I was pursuing the trend of the Euro against the Dollar and wondered if crude oil was really increasing in price or whether the US dollar was becoming worth less.

If the trend continues the dollar will not only be worth less, it will be worthless!

Today it takes $1.48 US to buy 1 Euro. Six years ago a Euro could be bought for $0.835. That’s a 77% increase in the value of the Euro over the dollar.

Crude oil was selling for $51.80 in January of this year. This week it’s around $99 a barrel. That’s a 91% increase in less than a year. An oil barrel contains 42 gallons so at $99 a barrel that means crude oil costs $2.36 a gallon before any refining.

The following is a quote from Stein’s article of July 2006 entitled “Your Golden Years Don’t Have to be Tarnished”.

“Inevitably, barring some strange turn of events, this means that foreigners will want to hold less of our currency and bonds. This will lower the value of the dollar and raise the value of the currencies of other nations that export more then we do. This, in turn, will mean that oil and gasoline and other commodities will be more expensive in dollars.”

He was correct in forecasting what we are experiencing today. I mentioned in a previous article that there is pressure within OPEC to no longer accept US dollars.

Getting back to Medicare, it was in this same article by Stein that he forecast where the costs were heading.

Stein projects that the cost of Medicare alone will total or exceed the assets of the entire United States during the coming century.  That may or not be correct but at the present rate of medical cost increase it will certainly be an amount that the present tax structure of the country can not support.

In “the old days” people would put away money to pay their own medical bills. People took a great deal of pride in their self-sufficiency. They were ‘conservative’. People generally had too much pride to live beyond their means and find themselves having to ask for a hand-out.

That was a reasonable way of life in a realistic world. That was when a hospital room cost twenty to thirty dollars a day. Today, a visit to an “Emergency Room” can cost a person $1800 to have a foot X-rayed. People cannot be expected to have that kind of cash on hand particularly when the price of heating oil and gasoline has risen to such a high percentage of the average worker’s paycheck.

One of his solutions is for Americans to save more than they are presently doing and to consider investing in stocks of emerging countries like India, China, and other Southeast Asian countries.

That sounds like a sensible thing to do but the average person has nothing left over at the end of the month to either save or invest.

The future doesn’t look very bright. Perhaps we should consider that’s it’s a lot less expensive to maintain rather than repair, whether it’s a house, a car or a body.

A return to “the good days” might be a reasonable partial solution to the cost of medical treatment by reconsidering “natural healing” and “home remedies”.

It apparently kept our ancestors alive long enough as evidenced by our being here today.

The large pharmaceutical companies are still investigating the tropical forests for potential cures so perhaps we might start to apply what we have already proven.

If the herb doesn’t work then we still have the option of the high-priced high-tech pill.