Out of © Kurt Eggenstein: 'The Prophet J. Lorber Predicts Coming Catastrophies and the True Christianity'"

Increasing Ill Health Due to Environmental Toxins and Other Factors


   The consequences of environmental damage are already much more serious than is generally assumed. The full effect will only show itself as the years go on. Many diseases are already widely present in latent form, and will only become manifest later, when symptoms develop. The present situation is nevertheless alarming. "Statistics show that every fourth German citizen will die of cancer." 84 According to Professor Grundmann in Munich, 700 carcinogens (substances liable to cause cancer) are present in the environment. - An even higher figure was given at an international Cancer Symposium. 85 Children are increasingly developing diseases (including cancer) that formerly were seen only in adults. Fifty years ago, childhood cancer was considered a rarity in medicine. Today, cancer is the second most common cause of childhood death, after traffic accidents. 86
    Recent researches suggest that the nitrosamines are the most dangerous of the carcinogens. They occur in the environment wherever nitro acids form chemical compounds with amines. Nitro acids evolve from nitrates (e.g., from artificial fertilizers) and from nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide (e.g., car exhaust fumes and waste gases from power stations). Nitrosamines may be found in the base materials used in industry, in plant protectives, in drugs, in foods, etc. They produced cancer each time they were used in animal experiments, and "much more powerfully than any other substance." According to a statement by D. Shapley in Science (January 23, 1976), concentrations are dangerously high in parts, particularly in cities." 87
    In their book Epidemiology of Stomach Cancer in Chile. The Role of Nitrogen Fertilizers, two Chilean scientists, R. Armijo and A. H. Coulson, referred to statistically significant connections between the user of nitrate-based fertilizers and stomach cancer. 88
    At a German cancer congress held in Hamburg in February 1976, Professor Carl Gottfried Schmidt stated that 80 percent of all cancers developed by citizens of the Federal German Republic were due to environmental factors. American scientists arrived at the same conclusion for their country. Professor Schmidt predicted that in twenty or thirty years every third person would fall victim to the 'scourge of mankind'. 89 According to Professor D. J. Tilgner, our food constantly contains about 430 substances with carcinogenic properties, in concentrations of 0.0002-0.05 ppm and that there "was a gradual summation of their effects". 90
    Children and unborn babies are most at risk. They are enormously susceptible to the effects both of chemical poisons and of radioactive radiation. The nitrosamines reach the embryo in the womb by passing through the placenta. 91 Today, there are 360,000 physically and mentally handicapped children in Germany., and their numbers increase by 40,000 every year. 92 lt is more or less impossible to estimate the problems, the cost and the suffering this will bring for mankind in the future. Professor Gerhard Wendt of the Department of Human Genetics at Marburg, G. , estimates the cost for children presently suffering from congenital diseases, to cover their lifetime, to be in the region of 38 thousand million (U.S. billion, = approx. ten thousand million pounds Sterling). 93 lt should be noted - and this is a little known fact - that the legal limits for radiation emitted from nuclear power stations in Germany relate to "individuals above the age of 18". Infants and embryos are, however, 100 to 600 times more sensitive than adults; this is agreed on by both protagonists and objectors to nuclear power stations. The law does make reference to this fact, but nevertheless takes no account of the risks for embryos and infants. This throws a completely new light on the constant references to the extraordinarily low risks from nuclear power stations.
    A report published by the Department of Statistics in Germany in October 1972 stated that then, about every seventh citizen suffered from chronic illness. 94
    Susceptibility is constantly increasing due to the strain imposed by environmentally damaged food, excess calories in a diet containing too much meat, fat, white flour and sugar, and not enough vitamins and minerals, added to which is the stress of life, excess noise, and lack of exercise. The Max Planck Institute for Nutritional Physiology at Dortmund, G., has established that between 50 and 60 percent of the population are suffering from hidden vitamin deficiencies. The consequence is said to be reduced resistance. The same applies to inadequate intake of minerals. Professor Schlierf (Clinical Institute for Research into Myocardial Infarction, Heidelberg University) has written that 10 to 20 percent of citizens in G. are today suffering from nutritional diseases, and that the cost of this to the government was around 17 thousand million Deutschmarks per annum. 95
    Particularly harmful - in many different respects - are sweets and confectionery made with white flour, sugar and chocolate. The citizens of G. spend 15 thousand million Deutschmarks per annum on such products which were harmful to the teeth, 96 and this had an appreciable effect on the 8 thousand million Deutschmark spent on dental treatment and on dentures. 97 Considering the avalanche - like increase in costs, a dentists' association in G. demanded a special tax on sweets of all kinds in July 1976. 98
    The constant increase in diseases due to civilization can only be brought to a halt, in the view of medical experts, by a change in dietary habits and consumer restraint. 99 That is exactly what the Lord advises people of today's industrial nations to do in New Revelation: "Be moderate as regards food and drink, and do not crave artful dainties. In this way, you will keep the health of your bodies for a long time." (Gr VIII 82, 11) "For anyone whose heart is full of all kinds of worldly things, it is of course difficult to cleanse himself of these. " (Gr X 98, 9)
    This being so, obesity caused by overeating has become a worrying health problem, next to cancer and serious infections. The Third Nutrition Report by the Federal German Government (1976) established that 56 percent of the population in G. were. In the First Report (1969), high sugar consumption amounting to 90 g per person daily was criticized, and a reduction to 60 g per day recommended. It is reported that by 1975 sugar consumption had risen to 100 g. To quote from the Report: "Increasing sugar abuse is responsible for about 15 million dental cavities per annum just in the population of about 5 million school children."
    According to information given at a surgeon's congress at Aachen (G. ) in June 1975 by Professor Reifferscheid, every fourth person in western Europe will die early from the consequences of obesity, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. 100
    Another factor that may seriously affect our health are the antibiotics, hormones etc., present in meat, meat products and milk today. The situation has reached such a point that veterinary surgeons demanded that serious steps should at last be taken to stop the 'grey drug market' (Baden-Wuerttemberg Veterinary Congress, Constance, June 1975). Veterinary surgeons - it was said - could no longer look on "as large quantities of controlled drugs were given in uncontrolled amounts to farm animals, so that residues in meat and milk presented a health risk for the population." 101
    It seemed that right into the '70s there was no hope to get any restriction on the illegal use of hormones, antibiotics etc., for, according to the experts, the regulation issued in July 1975 meant that illegal activities could be prosecuted even less than before. "Veterinary surgeons are actually encouraged to enter into unlimited drug deals on the basis of this regulation." 102" In the 1976 Nutrition Report of the German Government, the authors escaped "into hints and minimization", according to a comment made on the Report." 103
    In 1979, the Federal Criminal Investigation Department demanded more stringent controls because of the health risk to the population, but still no steps were taken. In October 1980, some inspectors exposed the callous attitude of the people involved in the illegal veterinary drugs market. The cases they dealt with are, however, only the tip of the iceberg. The inspection department lacked both personnel and equipment. In addition, the fines imposed by the courts were ridiculously low in relation to the profits made. Similar cases were uncovered in Italy and France at the same time. 104 According to the Bavarian Veterinary Association, about 70 percent of veterinary drugs will continue to be sold illegally or on the 'grey market' in 1983. 104
    In addition to the health risks imposed on the population, which the individual is unable to escape, there are the consequences of alcohol, smoking and drug abuse. In the G. , about 100,000 people have to take early retirement each year because of nicotine abuse." 105 Added to this there are 20,000 smokers per annum who have to have a leg amputated, and 25,000 with lung cancer. 106 In its Pamphlet No. 7/ 2070, the Federal Government stated that 140,000 smokers per annum die prematurely. The Federal Department of Health added that 40 percent of cancers in men could be avoided by not smoking.
    Alcohol abuse and drug addiction are responsible for a high percentage of cases of drink and driving, industrial accidents, acts of violence, and people being committed to prison and medical institutions. The Federal Department of Health has calculated that the consequences of alcohol and nicotine abuse and of overeating cost the huge sum of 54 thousand million Deutschmarks per annum. 107
    Other diseases are also showing a rapid increase in the population. The number of rheumatic cases is 10 million in the G. , half of them people under the age of 25.108 The number of those unable to work because of rheumatic disease has risen to 200,000, with 20,000 more swelling the ranks year by year. 109 Rheumatologists estimate the loss to the economy due to lost working hours in G. to be 14 thousand million Deutschmarks per annum. 110
    Diabetes is also becoming more widespread in industrial nations. Since the end of the Second World War it has increased tenfold, to 2.3 million. Another metabolic disease, gout, has also become very common. 111
    These diseases arise from the dietary habits of industrialized nations. The same applies to their drinking habits which have changed a great deal. In April 1976, the Federal Department of Health in North-Rhine Westphalia presented the balance sheet: Currently the number of alcoholics is more than 2 million in G. The number of people at risk for alcoholism, according to the medical journal Selecta, is put at between 3 and 4 million. Government spokesmen have referred to the rising numbers as "a threat" 112. In the opinion of Professor Volker Faust, Freiburg i. Br., every second young person will in the future run the risk of suffering liver damage through excessive alcohol consumption. 113 At present, 37 percent of those invalided out early already suffer from liver damage. 114
    Twenty percent of the population suffer from mycosis (fungus disease), so that one may justifiably speak of an "epidemic". 115 The same also holds true for allergies, which are increasing worldwide, the consequence of the 'chemization' of our world. Opportunities for developing an allergy are unlimited, because the number of allergens in the air, in our food, in detergents, drugs, plastics etc., is indeed vast. At a German Congress for Dermatologists, the President, Professor G. Stuttgen, stated that our industrial society frequently went to the limits of what was tolerable in changing the environment, and that steps would have to be taken when aggressivity reached a level that was no longer compatible with the maintenance of life. 116
    The side effects of drugs are equally serious. In the journal Diagnostik, Professor Klaus Dietrich Bock reported that the problem of drug side effects had now reached the same order of magnitude as the infectious diseases, and that only the tip of the iceberg was visible. 117
    The number of cases of food poisoningalso shows an alarming increase. This applies particularly to Salmonella infections, which number in the thousands. Effective import controls were no longer feasible, according to the Institute of Hygiene and Microbiology at Wuerzburg University.118
    Apart from the above-mentioned diseases, there has also been a tremendous increase in cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, neuralgia, metabolic disorders and intervertebral disc lesions. These complete the picture of misery in industrial society. Almost 80 percent of all diseases have to be classified as due to civilization. 119 They have increased beyond anything ever known and continue to advance towards their culmination. The degenerative conditions arising from this will only become fully apparent in the next generation.
    Citizens of the rich nations are increasingly facing the risk of becoming addicted in one way or another, and becoming invalids as a result of a life style that knows no bounds. Among the addicted we must include not only those with drug addiction, but also alcoholics, people smoking too many cigarettes, drug abuse, and finally overeating. The enormous rise in costs for medical services, from 23.8 thousand million Deutschmarks in 1970 to 85.7 in 1980, i.e., by 260 percent in ten years in G., must be seen as related to the facts stated above. 120
    That is the opposite side of the coin to the much acclaimed great advances made, and the promised increase in wealth which politicians of all parties said would never cease. At present, just the beginnings are apparent of the as yet unknown consequences of dismaying progress and a glittering path leading to perdition.
    New Revelation speaks not only of "many terrible illnesses", but also of "plagues and epidemics". And it is added, so that we shall not miss it, that "natural disasters and epidemics shall carry off people in huge numbers." (Pr 319) Again the risks are already becoming apparent, among other things, in the increasing danger of bacteria and viruses becoming resistant. 121 The most serious form of malaria, falciparum malaria, has flared up again worldwide, because both the insects transmitting the disease and the pathogenic organism itself have grown resistant to the classical malaria drugs. In Sri Lanka, where ten years ago only 25 cases of malaria were recorded, two million people are now again suffering from the disease. All in all, 200 million people are once again suffering from malaria today. 122 In Africa alone, a million children are once again dying of malaria each year. 123
    The latest problems are bacteria and viruses that have grown resistant, something every hospital fears. About six percent of all hospital patients in Germany will get infected with these hospital germs. Eighty percent of deaths occuring in the hospital are said to be due to them. At the same time, people are showing an alarming decrease in natural immunity. 124 The constant increase in resistant bacteria and viruses in German hospitals has induced the Department of Health to introduce measures to get the situation under control. 125
    The present position as concerns the health of the population in G. was described by the former President of the Federal Health Department in Berlin, Professor Georg Fuellgraf, to the effect that the incidence of disease was rising rather than falling. Fuellgraf made it clear beyond doubt that "the expenditure on highly sophisticated technological medicine is in sharp contradistinction to the results it achieves." 126
    The majority view among experts today is that we are moving towards a disaster as regards health and therefore also economics. One day a point will be reached where not only treatment costs will be so high that they can no longer be met, but loss of working hours will also result in an unprecedented reduction in national product and accordingly, a similar reduction in prosperity. The consequences of the unrestrained civilizatory life style of industrial nations may well become a problem in the not too distant future that may bring governments to their knees. Parallel to physical illness the graph for mental illness is rising in all industrial countries, another alarming feature. Thirty million US. citizens see their doctors for psychological problems. Three million suffer from neurosis. 127 Dr. Masakatsu Shiozaki, Chief Psychiatrist at Tokyo's Aisei hospital, has expressed himself able to make the definite statement that one-third of all white-collar workers in Japan are in the early stage of active neurosis. 128
    The corresponding situation in Germany has been revealed in Bericht ueber die Lage der Psychiatrie (Report on the Position in Psychiatry), an authoritative document published by the Federal Government in 1975. Experts call the situation disastrous. 600,000 G. citizens per annum receive treatment from nerve specialists because of mental crises. In fact, however, about a million are urgently in need of psychiatric treatment or psychotherapy. Eleven million people in G. have already had to face mental illness. 129
    The percentage of children who are sick or show behavior disorders is alarmingly high. Twenty percent of children are hyperactive, unable to concentrate, and therefore not prepared to learn. 130 A number of causes have been put forward for this form of hyperkinesis: synthetic food additives, lead, neon light in classrooms (experiments have shown this to be harmful to the children 131), and often also, absence of a proper mother-child relationship particularly in the early years. 132 The children are also flooded with sense impressions, particularly in the cities, and in addition are exposed to too much television.
    The number of suicides among 6-15 year-olds has greatly increased, proof that today's children are more and more exposed to intolerable stresses at home and in school. In the '50s, 45 child suicides were recorded annually; during the '70s and in 1980 and 1981 the figure rose to 92, and in 1981 it went for the first time above 100. Added to this is the unknown number of suicide attempts which runs into thousands. 133 It is the expert opinion that this increase in child suicides by a hundred percent since the '50s, gives cause for alarm. The comparative figure for all other age groups is around 41 percent. Increasing mental illness among young people is obviously becoming a collective epidemic, a threat to the existence of mankind. 134
    Studies done by a German health insurance firm for whitecollar workers and published in June 1975, showed that 25 percent of all young people are already suffering from cardiovascular disorders. 135 Children with behavior disorders later tend to develop aggression, unsocial behavior and partly also vandalism. 136 This development represents an alarming, worldwide problem. The WHO journal World Health has presented a dreadful outlook for the future. 137
    In all countries, misdirected energies are released with increasing intensity, and society as a whole is gradually coming to feel under threat. Scientists hold the view that too high a number of neurotics may establish a state of anarchy for society one day. 138 That may seem an exaggeratedly pessimistic view to some, but the following report published in Deutsche Zeitung on the behavior of school-age youngsters in the U.S.A. suggests otherwise, raising questions also for the people of Europe.
    In 1974, primary and secondary school children in the U.S.A. committed "12,000 armed robberies, 204,000 armed attacks on people, 9,000 rapes, and 270,000 break-ins in American schools. These figures do, however, represent only a fraction of the actual crimes." "Every year, about 100 murders are committed in American primary and secondary schools, and at least 70,000 physical attacks on teachers." 139 The aggressiveness of the young people has reached such proportions that Los Angeles teachers had to be equipped with personal transmitters, to call for immediate police assistance. Vandalizing school children caused damage to school buildings amounting to more than a thousand million Deutschmarks per annum. "A revolver can be bought for ten dollars somewhere near the schoolyard. lt has become the children's favorite weapon.' 140
    The German magazine Die Zeit described conditions in German primary schools as follows (May 20, 1983): "Not only in the U.S.A. and Great Britain, but here, too, aggression is on the increase in schools, and teachers are involved more and more frequently. Will there be a time soon when German teachers will have to take out special risk insurance, like their British colleagues?" "Behavior disorders and aggression are becoming more and more of a problem for teachers." The magazine illustrated this with examples that would have been unthinkable in the past.
    With the seed of hatred for the 'establishment' and with the promotion of anti-authoritarian education to "create a free people" 141, the wind was sown to reap a whirlwind. A young generation grown up in a society living in superabundance and beyond its means, seeing prosperity presented as the only ideal by those around them, has been left without standards, has failed to see the meaning of life, and has therefore ended up with nihilistic attitudes.
    The Lord predicted these developments in New Revelation, for young people brought up in the wrong way and bereft of ideals. "The main reason for the perdition of human souls lies above all in an early training that is indulgent. The young tree is left to grow as it will, and untimely leniency will contribute in every way to the growth of a crooked tree." (anti-authoritarian upbringing). "Once the wood has hardened, however, all attempts at straightening the tree will have little or no effect. Once a soul has grown crooked it will hardly ever develop into a perfectly straight tree. Straighten your children while they are young, therefore, and easily guided." "If on the other hand you give in too easily to your children's desires, you will also open the door wide with such gratification to all vices, a new door through which they will enter into the world in great hordes, bringing perdition. And once they are there, you will try in vain to militate against them with all kinds of weapons, and will achieve nothing in the face of their strength and power." (Gr IV 124, 2, 3 and 8)


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© Text: Kurt Eggenstein; © EDV-Bearbtg.by Gerd Gutemann