Healing the Planet One Patient at a Time

Healing the Planet One Patient at a Time

Introduction | Preface | Reviews | Order Now

Introduction

Why This Medicine
is Important

“In the middle of the twentieth century, we saw our planet from space for the first time. Historians may eventually find that this vision had a greater impact on thought than did the Copernican revolution of the sixteenth century, which upset the human self-image by revealing that the earth is not the center of the universe. From space, we see a small and fragile ball dominated not by human activity and edifice, but by patterns of clouds, oceans, greenery, and soils. Humanity’s inability to fit its doings into that pattern is changing planetary systems fundamentally. Many such changes are accompanied by life-threatening hazards. This new reality, from which there is no escape, must be recognized—and managed.”1

This is the opening statement from the Brundtland Commission’s report, Our Common Future, the world commission report on environment and development published in 1987. All the nations of the world presented their concerns to this commission. I was among those who spoke as one representative from Canada on behalf of medicine. I spoke before the commission in 1985 about my fears as a doctor, namely that “we discuss forests, agricultural land, plant and animal life, but virtually ignore the real threat to the very existence of the human species.”2

In 1985, those were strong words; today, neither scientists nor politicians can deny the seriousness of our situation. Indeed, the future of the human race is most clearly visible in our children. How threatened our future is becomes clear when contemplating just three instances among the many disturbing known facts:

Since 1950, the human sperm count in the industrial world has gone down by 50%, primarily due to the sudden increase in pesticide use.3
Over the last decade, cancer in children has increased by 200%, also primarily due to pesticide use.4
Studies following several generations of children over two decades have shown that pregnant mothers exposed to low doses of pesticides give birth to children with irreversible and profound intellectual deficits.5

In 1996, Theo Colborn’s Our Stolen Future 6 was published, with a foreword by then Vice-President Al Gore, providing the whole range of scientific evidence of this threat to human survival. In 1997, then US President Clinton issued an executive order in which he officially recognized the scientific basis for this threat and ordered as “a high priority” that pesticides and all endocrine-disrupting substances be identified and that all “environmental health risks affecting children” be assessed.7 A long list of specifics followed, which resulted in all pesticides being brought under review, and some were taken out of circulation within months, others will no longer be produced, again others can only be used in low concentrations. Because of their different metabolisms, children are especially vulnerable to the effects of such toxins. In 2002, Canada’s federal Health Minister incorporated the same protections for children in the new Pest Control Products Act. Many more initiatives, involving people at every stage of life, are underway throughout the world, among them environmental and orthomolecular medicine.

Environmental medicine treats those recently arisen illnesses caused by the contamination of air, water, and soil, and by food that is depleted of nutrients and contaminated by toxic additives. These new illnesses, such as Sick Building Syndrome and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, have also come about through unhealthy workplaces and home environments. Well-known illnesses, such as cancer, asthma, diabetes and autoimmune disorders have increased to epidemic levels for the same reasons. The hallmark of environmentally mediated illness is that it appears at first totally mysterious, but almost always yields to a very simple explanation. It would be nice if one could add that these kinds of patients are a small minority. The fact is that, to a greater or lesser degree, this describes all of us.

Environmental medicine, like all good medicine, has an inescapable political component because that “very simple explanation” points always to the need for public action, political intervention, and the acknowledgement that we are almost always the authors of our own misfortunes. The history of public health measures supports this statement. Angry gods do not capriciously visit illness upon us. There is a rational explanation for human illness. We can understand the causes and we can respond intelligently to treat and prevent illness. How totally human health is dependent upon human behavior, nutritional choices, and anthropogenic environmental changes can be learned from the research in medical anthropology, which traces the origin and history of disease. This research has shown that this interdependent process can be traced back all the way into the paleolithic. Our current problems with cancer and chronic disease, caused by the sudden proliferation of toxic chemicals, is but the latest dramatic chapter in a long history.8

In the past, toxicology (which is an exact science like physics) was based on the dictum “the dose makes the poison,” meaning that most substances an organism encountered were benign and became toxic only when reaching a critical strength. A tiny amount of poison, it was thought, was no problem; a large amount would kill you. Following the introduction of some 600,000 new synthetic chemicals since World War II, and the classic research by Rachel Carson 9 and other scientists, the principles of toxicology have fundamentally changed. We now know that frequent exposures to small amounts of toxins often have much more serious and deadly effects than a one-time big exposure. Tiny amounts of formaldehyde seeping into your home environment through insulation materials and furniture can ruin the lives of the entire family. The daily low-dose vapor of mercury coming from your “silver” amalgam tooth fillings can give you Alzheimer’s disease years later.10 A low-dose exposure to pesticides, or walking barefoot on pressure-treated wood during the critical early period of pregnancy, may cause your baby to be born with serious central nervous system defects.5,11 These are just three examples. Therefore:

Environmental medicine is the clinical application of modern toxicology.12
Environmental medicine is the clinical application of environmental biochemistry.
Environmental doctors find the environmental sources of disease and develop non-toxic treatments and strategies for prevention.
Environmental physicians use standard medical drugs whenever appropriate, but usually only as emergency measures because of the known toxicity of synthetic drugs; they favour biocompatible therapies, provide the patient with the knowledge of how to control the personal environment, cure the condition, or, at the very least, stabilize symptoms.13
Environmental medicine works on solutions to general problems in medicine, such as antibiotic resistance and how to treat bacterial infections in patients who cannot tolerate antibiotics.
Environmental medicine is not so much interested in categorizing a group of symptoms (i.e., a “diagnosis” for which a pharmaceutical agent is then usually targeted) as it is in assessing and correcting the numerous factors which have led an individual to feel pain, weakness, discomfort or disability, which are the definitions of illness, the reversal or alleviation of which is the goal of medicine.
Because of its critical attitude, environmental medicine is especially interested in looking at well-known diseases such as arthritis, inflammatory bowel conditions, and autoimmune illnesses and often finds causes never before suspected—such as mycoplasma bacteria, which can cause classic lupus erythematosis, arthritis and scleroderma and are treatable by new, and often dramatically successful, protocols using standard antibiotics.
Environmental medicine is also an international social movement, because physicians practicing it feel it is their inescapable responsibility to demand that the world should become once again fit for people to live in.

One Doctor's Prescription for Every-Day Rebillion

When you decide to take charge of your health, you stop functioning on automatic pilot. You no longer blindly trust your doctor because you suspect he or she can’t know everything, either; you doubt the government’s assurances on health matters because it is the nature of power to be in conflicts of interest; you question the advertisements on drugs because you realize that their aim is to sell drugs and not to cure you and thus lose a customer.14 You listen to your body because it knows best; you are not a statistic or a population average, but a unique person with an individual genetic endowment and a very personal health history requiring personalized attention.15 The health care industry, being as geared to mass production as the car industry, understandably finds that an inconvenience. Living things are characterized by diversity; even our sufferings are not created equal.

Without the birth of fundamental doubt and the growth of critical thinking, health is not possible, nor is advance in medicine. Doubt is the beginning of the cure. Trusting yourself is the first step on the road to recovery.16 I would consider the effort of producing this book well worth it if it causes you to check for yourself the basis for the claims the health industry and doctors make (including myself!). That is why I hope this book will enable you to do two things for yourself and your loved ones:

Learn that your environment causes or triggers specific health problems and what you can do to treat such problems and prevent them.
Have scientific and clinical ammunition with which to approach your doctors to help educate them.

We need to know that human beings on planet earth are like fish in a tank of finite dimensions. As the Greek master physician, Hippocrates, taught 2,500 years ago, our health is determined by the air we breathe, the food we eat, the soil in which we grow it, the water we drink, and the way we feel and behave towards others. All illness and all health is ultimately a function of our physical and emotional environment. Even most genetically mediated illnesses are triggered by unhealthy environments and are ultimately preventable.

Second, modern medicine, ecology and biochemistry have provided us with the answers to the prevention of illness. Medical science has gone well beyond telling us not to smoke. We now know that we have to break the lethal dependence on toxic chemicals not only in ourselves, but also for our lawns, our agricultural practices, and our industrial economy. We can prevent cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and many more illnesses. What’s more, we can improve and very often even cure these illnesses. To foster your healthy doubt, I have provided an extensive bibliography, research and treatment resources, and even information on how doctors can obtain training in environmental medicine.

When you no longer blindly follow advice, but engage in a critical search for verifiable and workable solutions, you also begin the task of saving planet earth and human life. Like a stone thrown into a pool, the stone is small, but the ripples go on and on, covering immense distances for a very long time. In fact, what you actually do is to become politically engaged on behalf of life itself when you assume responsibility for what you eat and drink, what you permit to be in your surroundings, and what you will expose others to. You begin to make choices that have an effect on everything around you: your supermarket, your pharmacy, your local school, your garbage disposal, the way you furnish your home, the recreations you pursue, the car you buy, the information you spread among your friends and relatives.

Of course, you will always act on incomplete information (we all do, all of the time), but if you are in charge and engage your doctor in a critical dialogue and partnership, the result will always be better than whatever you got on automatic pilot.

The truth does make us free.

How I Became an Environmental Physician

I was born in Poland and grew up on a farm. My family was poor, but we had enough to eat. As a child, I observed the brutalities of the Communist regime. Stalin’s Soviet Union, which controlled Poland like a colony, ensured social “equality” in many cruel and absurd ways. When I was still a young boy, the “authorities” walked into our old farm house one day and removed everything we owned—not a stick of furniture was left, and they even took my mother’s foot-treadle sewing machine, on which most of our clothes were made. The reasons for this action are as mysterious today as they were then. I can still remember the death of “Papa” Stalin in 1953. Loudspeakers in cars announced his death everywhere. The traffic stopped as if touched by a magic wand, and all pedestrians stood to attention, as did I. I was nine years old.

When I was fourteen, I contracted the Asiatic Flu and had a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius for several days. I recovered, but only temporarily, as the fever kept returning. The doctor assured my mother that I would be all right, but a mother’s instinct often tends to be superior to a doctor’s judgement, and she took me to a homeopath. He happened to be trained in iridology. He looked into my eyes and said, “There is something wrong with this boy’s left lung.” My mother took me at once to a tuberculosis hospital, where the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis was confirmed. The recovery took the better part of a year, and during that time, I became very impressed with the doctors who took care of me. I promised myself that, if I recovered from this illness, I would become a doctor.

The ancient Greeks believed that the prerequisite for the practice of medicine was the experience of illness. The god of medicine, Asclepios, was known as the “wounded healer,” because he had been struck by lightning and limped as a result. This prerequisite seems to hold true today especially for practitioners of environmental medicine. A medical journalist recently told me that a survey of the attending doctors at a recent American Academy of Environmental Medicine convention showed that most of them had themselves been seriously ill (or had a family member fall ill) with an environmentally-mediated condition for which their standard medical training had not prepared them.

In medical school, I soon discovered that nothing in life, least of all science, was free from the contamination of politics. University students were made to be part of the extensive spy system through which the Communist regimes supported their power. Students were expected to spy on their professors and report back to the Party on anything and everything “suspicious.” To my horror, my favourite professor, who taught pediatrics, was assigned to me for surveillance when I became an assistant in pediatrics during my residency. The resulting emotional conflict was totally unbearable, and one day I decided I could not and would not do this, no matter what the consequences. I went straight to my professor and told him what I had been asked to do and that I would not do it. To my total surprise (and immeasurable relief), my professor smiled and said, “Oh, I know. I have known all along.” That was the end of my involvement in the political spying business, and I somehow coasted through university politics in Communist Poland until 1972, when I completed my medical specialization in pediatrics — and escaped to Canada.

What precipitated this decision to escape was the following event. Early on in my pediatric training, in the early 1970s, I became interested in growth hormone research that had begun in the 1950s and which eventually led to its synthetic form. As I was a young pediatrician, the practical importance of this research for children whose growth is stunted, was clear. My first co-publications in peer-reviewed medical journals deal with growth hormone. I was in the university lab often seven days a week till the wee hours in the morning. One day I was working in the lab with a close friend of mine at about midnight, when we heard footsteps in the hall. To my speechless astonishment, my friend urged me to disappear as fast as possible into the men’s room and stay there until he would come to fetch me. I did as he told me and waited, wondering what this could possibly be all about. After some time, he told me I could come out now. “What happened?” I asked. “Oh, I didn’t want the head of the department to see you once again in the lab so late,” he replied. Then I found out—and this was confirmed by others—that the department had become increasingly irritated with my enthusiasm for research. The word was out to “slow down Krop,” as my performance was putting demands on the other department members that interfered with their more comfortable pace. Any serious hint of a desire for personal excellence was not encouraged in a collectivized society. That night, I knew I had to get out of Communist Poland.

In Canada, I needed to re-qualify. I was able to obtain an internship at Saskatoon City Hospital, where I worked from 1975 to 1976. By serendipity, I was assigned to Dr. Abram Hoffer for my rotation in psychiatry. Those three months totally transformed my approach to medicine. It was nothing less than a revolution for me. Here I saw people with severe psychiatric disorders being hospitalized and Dr. Hoffer—instead of prescribing tranquilizers and various psychotropic medication—gave them niacin (vitamin B3), zinc and various other vitamins and minerals, as well as prescribing fundamental changes in their diets.17 Their delusions disappeared, and they were returned to a normal life.

I could not believe it! Here I saw for the first time orthomolecular medicine in action—a branch of medicine I knew nothing about. All my training in Poland, then later at Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto, and in Saskatoon, up to this point, had been radically different and followed standard allopathic medicine. Dr. Hoffer also kept detailed patient charts. The descriptions of the patient’s condition before and after treatment were very dramatic. His results were terrific, but he never pushed anything on his interns. It was simply through observation that one’s eyes were opened to completely new possibilities in medicine. At the end of my internship with him, I asked him how I could learn more about orthomolecular medicine. “Well, if you are interested,” he said in his typical low-key manner, “there are some books I would suggest.” And so I began to read the work, among others, of Drs. H.L. Newbold, Carl C. Pfeiffer and Linus Pauling.18

After starting my own practice in 1977, I applied orthomolecular principles with great success for some time. However, I began to notice that some patients did not respond well enough. Vitamins, minerals and diet were simply not enough.

In 1979, one of my patients mentioned to me that there was a doctor in Hamilton, Ontario, who treated asthma successfully, not with steroids, but with sublingual desensitization drops. That was Dr. George John MacLennan. He was one of the founders of the Society for Clinical Ecology, now known as the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM), the study of which began with Dr. Theron Randolph of Chicago University in the 1940s.19 Their observations and initial research laid a foundation through which environmental medicine spread throughout the world and became part of modern medical research. Dr. McLennan suggested that I attend the upcoming annual conference, which I did. At that conference, I was exposed to a new perspective on health and health problems and to the most generous and genuine physicians I had ever met. At that conference, I also saw a videotape of provocation-neutralization testing for food sensitivities done in Dr. Doris Rapp’s medical office.20

Dr. Rapp was testing a child for food sensitivities, and when she tested for oats, the child had a dramatic reaction. This food actually had a neurotoxic effect and the child began to scream and thrash about. When Dr. Rapp finally established and administered the neutralizing dose, the child rapidly and totally recovered. Then Dr. Rapp asked the patient, “Do you remember anything that happened during the past two hours?” The child, genuinely bewildered, said, “No, I don’t.”

Well, at that point I got goosebumps and I knew, deep down and without any doubt, that this was the medicine I had to practice. Whatever I had learned in standard medicine did not even consider the neurotoxicity of ordinary foods—I had only been taught about IgE mediated allergies (regular hay fever and the like). What I had just seen was something completely different, and even if the biological pathways were not yet fully understood (as they are in the case of IgE-mediated allergies), here was the opportunity to understand and treat conditions otherwise simply discarded as “psychiatric”—unfair to psychiatry and brutally neglectful of the patient’s real needs. The notion that such reactions could be treated with neutralizing doses of the offending substance, rather than with symptom-controlling drugs, was revolutionary. What’s more, the same approach, I learned, could be taken in treating the toxic effects of environmental chemicals. The key point was that the offending cause could be found, eliminated if possible and/or treated. Standard medicine teaches how to classify symptoms, what drugs to use to control them, and how to use them cautiously to prevent their toxicity from killing the patient.

I went to Hamilton and took Dr. MacLennan’s training course in environmental medicine. He also suggested I read a 700-page book by Lawrence Dickie entitled Clinical Ecology (C. Thomas Publications, Springfield, Ill. 1976). After reading about thirty pages of Dickie’s book, I was overwhelmed and laid it aside and said to myself, “I won’t be able to go through with this.” I realized that I would be striking out in a 180-degree opposite direction to where all my colleagues were going. Dr. Theron Randolph used to warn young doctors, eager to learn the techniques of environmental medicine, saying ,”You realize this is a one-way street. There is no turning back.” Not that the training I had had so far was useless—standard bacterial infection and trauma are perfectly treated by the standard medicine I had learned. However, chronic disease, which has become the subject of most of medicine, is dealt with primarily by symptom control, not finding causes and trying for a cure. I was devastated and actually rather scared.

It was clear to me that, if the findings and treatments of environmental and nutritional medicine would be taken seriously, the whole hefty bi-annually updated tome on internal medicine—the bible of the discipline—Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, would have to be fundamentally rewritten. Harrison’s is like the huge descriptive treatises by the eighteenth and early ninteenth-century naturalists, who classified and described the natural world in every minute detail without being able to explain any of that diversity and how it all hangs together, until Charles Darwin in 1859 provided a dynamic explanation for evolution, and modern genetics proved that it all does hang together as one huge web of life.

It was an intense— but not a very long—war that I waged within myself. It was the patients that decided it in the end. Whenever I looked at them with the search frame of standard medicine, and then again with that of environmental medicine, I quickly knew what I had to do. The patient’s environmental exposure and nutritional history generally explained the causes of the observed signs and symptoms often quite elegantly and rationally. Symptom-control became intolerably frustrating. So, I returned to the study of Dickie’s book and took every available course, including one intense one with Dr. Theron Randolph himself. I am still taking courses every year. The treatment protocols environmental physicians use are regularly adjusted to take advantage of new research and information. Unfortunately, however, there are powerful forces opposing this progress.

The Hazards of Being an Environmental Physican

Not only do we have to detoxify on a daily basis the carcinogenic and hormone-disrupting chemicals and synthetic materials we ingest through water, air, and food—we also have to deal with the dead weight of outdated and intellectually toxic ideas which make the birth of the new always so difficult and even outright prevent good medicine from reaching patients. I knew from my teachers in environmental medicine that doing medicine in this new and revolutionary manner could be dangerous to one’s professional health. After all, identifying pesticides, petrochemicals, many symptom-controlling drugs, and processed foods (to name just a few serious health hazards) as the causes of cancer and chronic diseases is not going to make a doctor very popular with the captains of industry. The findings of environmental medicine, and the demonstration that avoiding all these toxic substances can restore people’s health, constitute a most formidable critique of our modern world and its commercial values.

Medical regulatory bodies today are slow to tolerate new approaches, not only because bureaucracies have always been slow to accept any sort of progress, but because the values dominant in a bureaucracy are far removed from the values that guide a doctor in his real-life relationship to the patient. Medical regulatory bodies are as conflicted in their interests as they were 150 years ago, when bacteria were the heresy of the day and washing one’s hands, before examining a patient or performing surgery, was an affront to professional pride. Finally, while ethics demands that medicine should be free of commercial interests, the fact is that symptom control is a multi-billion dollar business and not likely to take the back seat without a fight. Symptom control is the market, and wealth is measured in this market, as in any other, by growth, not by the diminishing returns cures would generate.

Indeed, we have become so used to the priority of all commercial concerns—to the rights of every “stakeholder,” with the patient being merely the consumer—that we have effectively ceased to even question something as ethically incomprehensible as the following fact: the very councils of Canada’s Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, which control medical practice and standards, have on them non-elected, appointed members who directly come from, or are associated with, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Those non-medical members are even permitted to sit on disciplinary committees. Even the elected members have their research funded by those same companies—nobody is free. The standard of medicine is determined by forces that have little to do with curing sick people.21

As for the practicing doctor, the fact also is that most learn new information primarily from the drug company representatives who visit their offices regularly (see endnote 14). An astonishing 80% of all Canadian physicians have some financial tie to the pharmaceutical industry (Globe & Mail, Feb. 6, 2002), which a recent editorial in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association described as a relationship akin to “dancing with the porcupine.”22 One Canadian doctor published the total number of visits and personalized mailings he received from drug companies in The Medical Post (Feb.9, 1999): the total was 452 promotional encounters in one year.

As for medical research, it is hardly surprising that research capable of generating patentable high-tech treatments, promising the dependence of large numbers of people, gets the grant money, almost all of which comes from the pharmaceutical companies. (In continental Europe, most research is paid for by governments and, therefore, truly independent and not so drug-oriented.) Following the recent revelations about how Dr. Nancy Olivieri 23 was ordered by a drug company to remain silent about the dangers of one of their drugs she was researching, Doctors for Research Integrity was created to protect researchers from drug companies’ commercial priorities. Indeed, the concept of “research integrity” is in danger of becoming as much an oxymoron at Canada’s “health protection branch.” Drs. Shiv Chopra and Margaret Haydon had to take the Canadian government to court in order to establish their right and scientific duty to warn the Canadian public of the dangers to their food supply from unlawfully introduced carcinogens and hormone disrupting chemicals. They won that precedent-setting case in a federal court decision in 2000.24

The environmental physician is also pitted against much government policy on a national and international level. Speaking the truth about what we see in our patients on a daily basis—carcinogens and neurotoxins in their blood, pesticides in their fat biopsies, heavy metals in their urine and stools—is nothing less than a total indictment of governments that have ceased to be regulators and protectors of society and become publicly funded butlers serving the big corporations.

The history of medicine is full of martyrs, and I had no intention of joining their ranks. In fact, I am cursed with an enthusiasm for stuff that works, and I became entangled in the politics of medicine despite my best efforts to stay out of politics! When scientific paradigms clash, it is much like a tectonic shift: one gets caught in a huge social upheaval and does one’s best to defend the facts and basic principles. And so I fought a thirteen-year battle with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), the body that licenses doctors in this province. This disciplinary ordeal was not based on patient complaints—on the contrary, my trial was energetically opposed by my patients, my colleagues, the general public, and even politicians. See www.jkropmd.com.

Th CPSO formally charged me with suggesting to patients they drink uncontaminated water, have air filters installed to alleviate asthma, eat organically grown foods free of carcinogenic pesticides, utilize detoxification protocols for solvents and pesticides, etc. The treatments used by environmental doctors, such as the provocation-neutralization technique described above, the various detoxification and diet-centered therapies, the use of vitamins and minerals as therapies, and the diagnoses of illnesses such as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Sick Building Syndrome and Candidiasis—all were formulated as charges, and I was, after a four-year trial, found “guilty” of their use. The entire body of scientific evidence from the world’s leading medical journals and the World Health Organization, which I provided through my lawyers, was rejected, as were my defence witnesses, even though they came from Johns Hopkins Medical School, the medical schools of the Universities of Toronto, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Stanford, and from the various government-sponsored environmental health clinics of Canada, the US and Europe. I am now asking the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal the absurdity of having an entire branch of medicine arbitrarily condemned. (For more information, also on other physicians, see www.collegeofphysicianswatchdog.com.)

All this took place in spite of the fact that the patient charts showed that patients had greatly benefited from these treatments—a fact even the CPSO tribunal acknowledged in their decision! Most of the very patients whose charts had been used to formulate the charges protested and testified on my behalf at the end of the trial. The purpose of this trial—possibly the longest disciplinary investigation in medical history—was made very clear in the official Sentence handed down by the CPSO in 1999:

“Dr. Krop must make it clear to his patients that the diagnoses and therapies…are unsupported by scientifically acceptable evidence.”

“Members of the profession at large—a profession whose integrity rests on the practice of scientifically based medicine—must know why and how Dr. Krop’s practice fails the standard.”

“The public…must be protected from practitioners who lack that credibility.”

The motives for rejecting all of the defence’s scientific evidence supporting environmental medicine’s treatment and diagnostic modalities can only be guessed at. Just how far out of touch with medical reality the CPSO Decision is becomes clear when considering the following:

The United Nations Environment Programme issued its GEO-3 Report, to which more than a thousand scientists contributed (Nature, May 30th, 2002, p. 475). It states that “the benefits of some environmentally friendly policies will not be apparent until decades after they have been enacted.” The report states that “even if environmentally friendly approaches were adopted now, carbon dioxide concentrations would continue to rise until 2050. Water shortages would continue and coastal pollution would increase slightly.” The cartoon that went with it showed a speedboat named “Human Behavior” cruising full speed ahead towards the edge of an abyss. Its pilot, a skeleton, said with his head turned to the terrified passengers, “Brakes? What brakes?”

I wrote this primer to enable you to find out what environmental medicine can do for you and to introduce you to the excellent science on which these therapies are based. I have also provided in its appendix the treatment protocols for some of the most serious environmentally-mediated conditions. They are intended for you to research and to use for the purpose of making an informed decision. In medicine, everything ultimately originates in patient experience, so you need to judge for yourself how much of what you read applies to you and how much does not.

Medicine, The House of Many Mansions

Paraphrasing the saying by Jesus, “In my father’s house are many mansions,” it is vital to understand that there are many ways by which an illness can be cured, and new approaches are being discovered and will continue to be developed. Only fools and those with a vested interest believe they control and have the one and only answer.

I was trained in twentieth-century medicine, and it is my conviction that the focus of environmental medicine is the natural evolution of medical science at its best. Environmental medicine developed in response to the devastation of our planetary life-support systems, just as bacteriological medicine developed as a response to the objective findings that bacteria and dirt can cause disease. Both these advances were stimulated by the tremendous breakthroughs in technology which enabled scientists and doctors to see what was previously mysterious. Similarly, the possibilities now open to doctors with regard to early detection of pathology, the analyses of a person’s biological material enabling one to see what is happening on the cellular level—all this is a fabulous tool bag the previous generation of physicians merely dreamed of as science fiction. As a physician, I am amazed by and grateful for the use of all of these diagnostic and therapeutic modalities.

Environmental medicine depends upon and arises out of the discoveries being made in endocrinology, immunology, biochemistry and cell biology as much as it does on the research results in all the ecological sciences, toxicology, and especially epidemiology. All of life is interdependent in sickness and in health. Environmental medicine differs from traditional medicine only in that it can—in the face of the overwhelming evidence—no longer look at patients and their presenting pathology and complaints isolated from the air, water, soil, food, workplace, home environment, and emotional life of that person’s environment. Environmental medicine broadens the perspective of medicine as a whole. It vastly increases our understanding of everything in medicine and increases our options dramatically. Consider how the various medical specialities can benefit and improve patient outcome by adding these new insights to all that is already known and found to be beneficial through long experience:

The surgeon can have better results in wound healing if the knowledge of vitamins and other vital nutrients is incorporated in the treatment of trauma; 25 long-term problems are prevented by ensuring that the intravenous delivery system (tubes, bags, etc.) do not contain endocrine-disrupting phthalates (now beginning to be phased out in hospitals).

The pediatrician treating childhood asthma need no longer worry about the long-term detrimental effects of steroid inhalers when it is so often possible to eliminate the cause, such as food intolerance or toxic chemicals in the home or school environment.26

The gerontologist can help restore a considerable measure of independence to many Alzheimer’s patient by eliminating the causal dental mercury amalgam and by chelating a lifetime’s stored body burden of toxic metals.27

The urologist, frustrated by the lack of success with antibiotics in patients plagued by recurrent cystitis and urinary tract infections, can cure most of these patients by dealing with the generally underlying candidiasis or e-coli infection through the use of probiotics, various friendly bacteria and dietary adjustments. 28

The rheumatologist can expand treatment options dramatically by looking for mycoplasma as the cause in many cases of arthritis and scleroderma, both of which will respond to the old standby—antibiotics used in new treatment protocols; alternatively, many arthritis patients respond well to the elimination of certain foods they are unknowingly sensitive to, such as coffee and the deadly nightshade family of plants (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers etc.) 29

• The neurologist, usually helpless when facing terrible diseases such as multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, or Parkinson’s, can with environmental toxins in mind turn to detoxification and subsequent restorative nutrient enhancement protocols that often not only arrest the progress of these diseases, but actually can cure them.30

• The gynecologist familiar with natural hormone therapy can treat everything from endometriosis to menopause and not be concerned about potential deadly side effects in the long run. The revelations about the carcinogicity of synthetic hormones, currently dominating the news, are nothing new to the environmentally trained physician: we have known this for at least two decades and have avoided their use in our patients.31

For the oncologist, the tedious writing of death certificates is beginning to give way to a whole new world of healing and prevention opened up by orthomolecular and nutritional medicine as their success, with even the most virulent cancers, achieved by the Gerson Institute, the work of Dr. Nicholas Gonzales and other researchers in this area is now finally being taken seriously by medical research.32

The physician treating heart cardiovascular disease can more often than not avoid bypass surgery through chelation therapy, dietary and lifestyle adjustments and the dramatic healing effects of vitamin E and niacin, as well as other nutrients. (This treatment is now protected by law in Alberta since 1997.) (See endnote 27)

The psychiatrist, as I learned from Dr. Abraham Hoffer in the early 1970s, can offer control over some of the most debilitating mental conditions with the new knowledge nutritional biochemistry has made available about the role of essential fatty acids, minerals and vitamins (e.g., niacin) and herbal medicines (e.g., St. John’s Wort) in mental disease.33

All this information comes from the world’s most prestigious medical research institutions and is found in the international medical journals available to all doctors (and patients) through the Internet search engines that access medical libraries.

As for drugs, used appropriately and in pharmacological doses, they are most certainly at times miraculous and indispensable. I certainly use antibiotics, drugs that control fungi and parasites, various steroids and hormones and pain medication in my practice. The art of medicine, however, is to help the patient back to a normal, productive life, such that the person is hopefully no longer dependent on the doctor or on any drugs! Used long-term, and without regard for the bioindividuality of the patient, modern drugs can be deadly. In 1998, the University of Toronto and the American FDA published the results of a large meta-analysis which showed that the side effects of properly prescribed drugs taken as prescribed are the fourth leading cause of death in North America.34 Dr. Jay Cohen, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of California in San Diego, published an astounding book, Overdose. His survey of the medical literature shows—and his own clinical experience confirmed—that just about every drug is basically overdose and hence dangerous and even lethal. In fact, the rate of death from apparently properly prescribed medication would, according to his research, be much higher than previously thought (see endnote 35). The reason is, he writes, that the drug companies create one-size-fits-all drugs to make them easier to market and inflate effectiveness statistics. Coming from the orthodox medical community, this is a very serious condemnation indeed.35

What sets environmentally trained doctors apart is the way we take a patient history, because we see human beings embedded in the whole of Nature. When we take a history, we listen, and listen, and listen, and listen—and visualize our patient in their personal environment. No detail is too trivial and will include the carpeting, the method of heating, the location of the garage, the possible fungi in the bathroom, the foods most frequently eaten, a recent change of location, the air-conditioning, the windows (or lack thereof) in the office, the brand of shampoo, etc., and our questionnaires are very long—exhaustive and exhausting!

As I stated before the Brundtland Commission, medicine needs to get out of the eighteenth-century philosophy that sees the body as a machine, the paradigm that caused medical science to split into specialties and sub-specialties such that nothing hangs together anymore. A machine is not dependent upon Nature. Hippocrates taught us about the effects of food, occupation, and the quality of water and air, on health. His book entitled Air, Water and Places provided 2,500 years ago the basic concepts of what today we call ecology. That extreme specialization has brought much knowledge, to be sure; but organisms are dynamic functioning totalities, not parts. When something goes wrong, always the totality is affected. A headache can ruin your day completely, even though the rest of your body works fine. Cancer, no matter where it is located, is a systemic disease, not a partial malfunction.

The word “doctor” comes from the Latin “docere,” meaning “to teach.” Teaching health should once again be central to the job description of every physician. It is important, but not sufficient, to tell people to stop smoking, eat more vegetables and take more exercise. What is the point of eating more vegetables if they are loaded with carcinogenic pesticides? It is the aim of every environmental doctor to equip patients with knowledge they can use to make their own homes, gardens and workplaces supportive of life and teach their family, friends and employers what can be done to prevent illness.

Cause For Cautious Optimism

As doctors and patients, we have our work cut out for us. Health has become the number one political and economic issue worldwide. Currently, in Canada, the Romanow Commission is understandably primarily concerned about how to make universal health care work when its cost is out of control. It is, therefore, extremely important to understand that an environmentally oriented approach to medicine is infinitely cheaper than the high-tech symptom-control approach so popular in standard medicine, primarily because it does not need patentable therapies to achieve results.

• In 1981, the prestigious mainstream medical journal, Annals of Allergy, published the results of a five-year follow-up on two sets of patients suffering from thrombophlebitis. There were ten patients in each group. The group treated by conventional methods had more than two hundred flare-ups during that five-year period. The group treated by environmental medicine methods (nutrition, vitamins etc.) only reported two flare-ups. The first group had a total of 114 hospitalizations to report, while those treated according to environmental medicine techniques did not have a single hospitalization to report. Only one of the conventionally treated patients was able to return to work, while all ten of the other group returned to work. Costs for the conventional group was a total of US $300,000 during that period, while the environmental medicine patients spent a total of US $2,500.36

In 1998, the German government published the results of a government-funded pilot project: a hospital specializing in environmental medicine, located in Bredsted. The results were so impressive, the German government decided to build four more such hospitals.37
I take comfort in the fact that over the past decade, virtually every university in the industrialized world has begun to offer some courses in environmentally oriented medicine.
The agricultural departments of the European Union, led by Denmark, have made organic agriculture their top priority.
The international POP’s Treaty (on persistent organic pesticides) was ratified.
The US National Institutes of Health is funding the research into Dr. Nicholas Gonzales’ successful alternative cancer therapy.
Through the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the US National Center for Environmental Health, the US government in 2000 started an ambitious program of testing thousands of people annually for all the various toxic substances in their blood and establishing a government registry to trace their sources and effects—a fundamental necessity if we are ever to clean up the human organism. (According to Johns Hopkins Medical School, of the 3,000 most frequently used chemicals, only 7% have safety screening data.)
In the UK, the House of Lords commissioned major research into pesticides and has taken a proactive stance in protective legislation.
Following the recent “Hudson Decision” by the Canadian Supreme Court, city after city is banning the use of pesticides and pressure-treated wood in Canada. Similar efforts have begun in the US.
I already mentioned the successful efforts by scientists such as Drs. Chopra, Haydon and Olivieri. Due to their determined refusal to bow to vested interests and political pressure, dangerous drugs are being kept from entering our food supply. Bovine growth hormone (a known carcinogen and endocrine disrupter) was not only forbidden in Canada due to Drs. Chopra and Haydon’s efforts at Health Canada, but the facts about BGH thus became available to the European Union, where this synthetic hormone was also banned. Furthermore, Dr. Olivieri has taken up the battle against unsafe drugs with court action in the European Union as well.
The national medical associations of North America and Europe not only give full study credits for doctors pursuing environmental medicine education, but are working on new guidelines to get control over the rampant conflict of interest in medical research.
Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Lynn Marshall at the Environmental Health Clinic at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, the Canadian Medical Association Journal recently published a six-part series on environmental medicine, introducing doctors to its protocols and diagnoses.38
It is a pleasure to recall that Canada led the way for North America in focusing on the seriousness of the environmentally mediated health
problems, first through the Thomson Commission in 1985 (for which my practice was chosen to serve as a major source of information), and then through a series of workshops, symposia and research projects funded by Health Canada and the universities of Toronto and Dalhousie.39
• Most heartening is the voluntary initiative to clean up this polluted earth coming from industry. David Suzuki, in his latest book, Good News for a Change: Hope for a Troubled Planet (David Suzuki; Holly Dressel, Stoddart, 2002) describes these developments.

I am personally encouraged by the increasing number of “pesky” patients everywhere! Most of my patients have slogged, on average, through at least seven doctors’ offices (the last one was usually a psychiatrist) and persevered until they were finally taken seriously. I was amused to learn that in June 2002 the same observation was troubling the delegates attending the international convention of medical regulatory agencies, hosted by my very own CPSO. They agreed that patients today no longer just accept what they are told. They come to their doctors having researched their health problems and wish to engage their physicians in discussion. One of the speakers from the UK lamented that control is just not what it used to be. Thank God for that!

Most amazing of all, I never cease to be astonished by the resilience of the human body—Nature’s stubborn urge to heal that cooperates with the doctor’s efforts and keeps the patient going with tireless patience. Nature’s determination to restore what is injured is the constant source of hope and courage for patient and doctor.

Jozef J. Krop
Mississauga, Ontario, August 2002

Endnotes

World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, Oxford, 1987
My submission was later published in Clinical Ecology, Vol. IV, No.3, 1986
Web site for the World Health Organization: www.who.int/whr/1997/exsum97e.htm
Statistics presented at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 1999, by Dr. S. Epstein at Everyday Carcinogens: Stopping Cancer Before it Starts, transcripts available through Canadian Environmental Law Association, Suite 401, 517 College Street, Toronto, ON, M6G 4A2, or download from www.stopcancer.org.
For pesticides and fetal development: S. Steingraber, Having Faith, Perseus, Cambridge Mass., 2001.
T. Colborn et al, Our Stolen Future, Plume-Penguin, New York, 1997
The text of this presidential order of April 21, 1997, can be downloaded from the US government site: www.health.gov/environment/TaskForce/whouseprenv.html
M.N. Cohen, Health and the Rise of Civilization, Yale University Press, 1989
R. Carson, Silent Spring, (1962), Houghton Mifflin, Co., New York, 25th anniversary edition, 1987
S. Khatoon et al. “Aberrant Guanosine Triphosphate-Beta-Tubulin Interaction in Alzheimer’s Disease” in Annals of Neurology, vol. 26, no. 2, 1989. The most comprehensive source for primary research and clinical applications in this area is the International Academy for Oral and Medical Toxicology at www.IAOMT.org or tel. 407-298-2450
For pressure-treated wood hazards: www3.sympatico.ca/pbarrie or e-mail: deborahbarrie@hotmail.com
T. G. Randolf, M.D., Human Ecology and Susceptibility to the Chemical Environment, 7th printing, Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Ill., 1980. The most comprehensive treatment of the subject is the 4-volume work by W. J. Rae, M.D., Chemical Sensitivity, Volumes 1-4, Lewis Publishers, 1992-1996
According to the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association 41:192-99, 2001, for every US $1.11 spent on a prescription drug, another US $1.77 needs to be spent to treat the harmful side effects of that drug.
J. Robinson, Prescription Games, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., Toronto, 2001
R. J. Williams, Biochemical Individuality, (1956), Keats, New Canaan, Ct., 1998
One of my colleagues observed, in summing up a lecture comparing the poor outcomes of standard cancer treatment (chemotherapy and radiation) with the excellent results obtained by using vitamins, minerals, amino-acids, enzymes, specialized diets, and detoxification protocols: “… and so the results show that if you take conventional treatment, you die a conventional death.” Dr. Michael Gonzales at the 30th Annual International Conference, Toronto, May 2001
A. Hoffer, M.D., Vitamin B-3 & Schizophrenia: Discovery, Recovery, Controversy, Quarry Health Books, Kingston, ON, Canada, 1998 (this is the new and updated edition of the research published in the 1950s–1970s). A comprehensive overview of orthomolecular medicine, also for patients is in A. Hoffer, Orthomolecular Medicine for Physicians, Keats, New Canaan, Ct., 1989
The many publications by Linus Pauling and complete access to the worldwide research on vitamins and orthomolecular medicine is available through the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, 571 Weniger Hall, Corvallis, Oregon, 97331-6512, or www.http://lpi.orst.edu.
T. Randolph, M.D., Environmental Medicine: Beginnings & Bibliographies of Clinical Ecology, Clinical Ecology Publications Inc., Fort Collins, CO, 1987
D. Rapp, M.D., Is This Your Child?, Quill-William Morrow, New York, 1991. The video tapes of Dr. Rapp’s clinical work and other information for parents can be obtained from: Practical Allergy Research Foundation, P.O. Box 60, Buffalo, New York, 14223-0060. The classic in this field is T. Randolf, M.D., An Alternative Approach to Allergies, Revised Edition, Harper & Row, New York, 1990
An affidavit filed by my defence lawyers on December 3, 1995, with the CPSO disciplinary tribunal, outlined how the expert witnesses, whom the prosecution was going to call, were compromised by conflicts of interest. For example, the 16-page affidavit stated with regard to two of these witnesses: “Drs. S. and M. have a personal stake in the outcome of the Disciplinary Committee’s decision by reason of their financial ties to those drug companies whose interest lies in opposition to Dr. Krop. Dr.M. has, from 1985 to 1995, received over one million, three hundred thousand dollars in grants from drug manufacturers Sandoz, Upjohn, Fisons, Schering, Astra, Ciba-Geigy, Janssen Glaxo and Abbott.” The reason this situation represented a conflict of interest was because the drugs researched by these prosecution witnesses were of the kind that the treatment modalities of environmental medicine render unnecessary. These treatment modalities were what I was defending.
CMAJ editorial, Sept. 18, 2001
J. Thompson et al, The Olivieri Report, Canadian Association of University Teachers, 2001
On the Internet, you will find more than 400 references and informational items about the efforts of Dr. Shiv Chopra and his colleagues at Health Canada to inform the public about the dangers posed to our food supply by carcinogens and endocrine disrupters. Search under “Shiv-Chopra.”
A.Davis, Let’s Get Well, Signet, New York, 1972
R. Firshein, Reversing Asthma, Warner Books, New York, 1998.
M. Walker, et al. The Chelation Answer, Second Opinion Publishing, Atlanta, Georgia, 1994. As chelation is an excellent therapy also for diabetic neuropathy, heart and cardiovascular disease, good sources of information are the Alternative Medicine Guide volume Heart Disease, Stroke & High Blood Pressure by the Burton Goldberg Group, Future Medicine Publishing, 1998 and cardiothoracic surgeon M. Oz’s Healing from the Heart, Plume Books, New York, 1998.
Alternative Medicine Guide, Women’s Health Series vol. 1, Burton Goldberg Group, Future Medicine Publishing, New York, 1998. W.G. Crook, M.D., The Yeast Connection Handbook, Professional Books Inc., Jackson, Tennessee, 1998
Alternative Medicine Guide, Arthritis, Burton Goldberg Group, Alternative Medicine Books, 1999. J.B. Irwin, M.D., Arthritis Be Gone!, Keats Publishing, New Canaan, Ct., 1997. S.A. Rogers M.D., Pain Free in Six Weeks, Sandkeye Co. Sarasota, FL., 2001
The Klenner Protocol (after Dr. F.R. Klenner) for Multiple Sclerosis and Myasthenia gravis was originally published in the Journal of Applied Nutrition in 1973 and is available through The Towensend Letter for Doctors and Patients at 360-385-6021 or http://www.tldp.com
U. Reiss, M.D., Natural Hormone Balance for Women, Pocket Books New York, 2001. D.L. BERKSON, Hormone Deception, Contemporary Books, New York, 2000
The research papers and treatment information by Dr. N. Gonzales can be downloaded from his web site at www.dr-gonzalez.com. The currently ongoing research at the National Institutes of health into the Gonzales treatment can be downloaded for free from the web site of the US National Cancer Institute at www.cancer.gov
M. Peet, I. Glen, D.F. Horrobin, Phospholipid Spectrum Disorder in Psychiatry, Marius Press, UK, 199:, contains the medical scientific research for the specialist. For the general reader are recommended: A. Hoffer, M.D., Putting It All Together: The New Orthomolecular Nutrition, Keats, New Canaan, CT., 1996
J. Lazarou, B.H. Pomeranz, P.N. Corey, “Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients,” Journal of the American Medical Association, April 15, 1998, vol. 279, no. 15. For an overview on specific dangerous drugs see CBC Ideas, transcript of “Naked in the Pharmaceutical Marketplace,” 2001, www.radio.cbc.ca/programs/ideas/
J.S. Cohen, M.D., Overdose: The Case Against the Drug Companies, Tarcher-Putnam, New York, 2001
W.J. Rae et al. “Recurrent environmentally triggered thrombophlebitis: a five-year followup.” Annals of Allergy 47:338-44, 1981
The German Government’s report on the Bredstedt environmental medicine clinic is entitled Abschlussbericht: Umweltmedizinische Ambulanz Bredstedt, published by the University of Luebeck, available through Institut fur Sozialmedizin, Beckergrube 43-47, 23552 Luebeck, Germany
Canadian Medical Association Journal series on environmental medicine is published in vol. 166, no. 8 (April 16, 2002), no. 9 (April 30), no. 10 (May 14), no. 11 (May 28), no. 12 (June 11), no. 13 (June 25)
See historical overview regarding the impact of the 1985 Thomson Report to the Ontario Ministry of Health in N. Ashford & C. Miller, Chemical Exposure: Low Levels and High Stakes, second edition, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1998

Healing the Planet One Patient at a Time

Publisher’s Preface to the Second Printing

The first printing of this book, November 2002, was quickly sold out, making a second printing necessary eight months later. It is a matter of special satisfaction to me personally, that while sold in major bookstores everywhere, most were sold in doctors’ offices. This means that this book is primarily in the hands of patients whose doctors work with them.

For more than two decades, Dr. Krop’s name has been associated in North America with the politics of medicine. He is best known for his role in helping to launch the popularly known “Kwinter Bill” (after Ontario’s Liberal MPP Monte Kwinter), which enshrined patient’s freedom of choice in the Medicine Act of Ontario in 2000 (see Ontario Hansard of August 28, 1991). Dr. Krop also contributed, in the early 1980’s to the World Commission on the Environment (the Brundtland Report), and his practice was used by the Ontario government to begin the process of establishing guidelines for dealing with environmental causes of illness (the 1985 Thomson Report). He also participated in various university and federal government –sponsored efforts to raise awareness of the environment’s impact on population health. In the 1980’s he was a co-founder, and for many years served as the secretary of the Canadian Society for Environmental Medicine.

As is the fate of many pioneers, he spent more than a decade defending environmental medicine in a disciplinary trial initiated against him by the Ontario medical licensing authority, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The CPSO based their prosecution not on patient complaints (there were none), adverse treatment outcome (they admitted all files studied showed the patients had improved), but alleged that practicing environmental medicine “lacked acceptable scientific evidence” 1. The CPSO then ensured that such scientific evidence appeared indeed to be missing by totally ignoring its existence when handing down their final 1999 Decision. Many of those hundreds of scientific articles, all from the mainstream medical journals, provided by the defense lawyers during the trial, are now part of the reference section in this book. Of course, this throwback to medieval doctrinal wars and its legal instrument, the Inquisition, begins to make some sense when one realizes that the majority of CPSO council members are either directly or indirectly connected to the pharmaceutical and pesticide industry.

Dr. Krop’s trial is legally, politically, and medically one of the great scandals in medical history. His patients and supporters fortunately believed in this cause and footed most of the defense bill which, over that long decade of the trial, reached almost Can. $ 2 million. However, due this immense effort and the involvement of so many first class lawyers, the legal profession became sensitized to the abuse of process and law the CPSO and other regulatory bodies committed without ever being checked. Today there are many lawyers working for many more innovative doctors and defending medicine properly. Before the Krop case few lawyers and judges knew just how deep the rot ran. Those who want to know more about this story and the world-wide battle for Environmental Medicine, may want to read Malice in Medicine – The 14-Year Trial of Environmental Medicine Physician Dr. Jozef Krop written by me and due to be published in 2004.

This book is a primer in environmental medicine. It is unique among the many excellent books currently available on many aspects of health and environment because this one is meant for both patients and doctors. Knowing that patients are intelligent people who can understand anything in medicine if the courtesy of full explanation is offered, Dr. Krop includes in this book the complete treatment protocols which the reader can take to his or her doctor to study. These protocols are supported by an exhaustive medical bibliography intended especially for those Doubting Thomases who are willing to examine widely-held prejudices against environmental medicine and are willing to consider seriously its claim to be able to help those many illnesses standard medicine calls idiopathic, i.e. cause unknown. Every year more and more research is published showing; that what was once considered an idiopathic illness is now well understood as environmentally and nutritionally mediated. Water, air and soil polluted with neuro-toxins and carcinogens, and nutrient-deficient processed food laced with endocrine disrupters and pesticides cause or trigger virtually all modern epidemics, such as asthma, chronic fatigue, most neurological diseases, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, allergies, osteoporosis, attention deficit disorder and many psychiatric conditions, cardiovascular disease, depression, and the greatest scourge of our time – cancer. 2

Since Healing The Planet Once Patient At A Time appeared last year, Dr. Krop was reprimanded in September 2003 for practicing medicine lacking scientific proof - as interpreted by Ontario’s medical licensing authorities. Dr. Krop is free to practice; the CPSO’s “victory” is more of an embarrassment than a triumph and will serve to help spread the word about environmental medicine rather than deter its practice. For purposes of comparison, the reader may be interested in how the CPSO’s monumental ignorance and arrogance measure up to current developments in environmental and nutritional medicine. This is merely a sample – a complete list is beyond the scope of this preface. Indeed, a great shift in understanding is taking place in medicine, which will, no doubt, eventually leave the corporately contaminated regulatory authorities and medical practitioners in the dust.

The December 2000 health-freedom amendment to the Ontario Medicine Act sponsored by Liberal MPP Monte Kwinter and whose wording he took from the 1988 international Helsinki Accord on Human Rights, has taken on a lifer of its own. Similar bills are now being sponsored by provincial legislators in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec. It already exists in British Columbia; Alberta was the first to make it law.

Following the Canadian Supreme Court’s Hudson Decision of 2002 on the right to pass local by-laws against pesticide use, an immense public campaign brought about in March this year the passage of an anti-pesticide law for the whole Province of Quebec where its cosmetic use will be phased out completely. Within a decade we may have epidemiological evidence that in Quebec population health has markedly improved, compared to the rest of Canada.

The World Health Organization recently published a consensus report on the need to reduce drastically the use of refined sugar, remove vending pop machines from school cafeterias, and reduce the amount of sugar in processed foods. The sugar industry was infuriated and demanded from the WHO’s Director General, Gro Brundtland, that this report be withdrawn, threatening that otherwise the industry would see to it that the WHO’s annual financial contribution from the United States government would be withheld. Dr. Brundtland responded by publishing both the report and the threats. 3 Incidentally, in 1993 the CPSO reprimanded Toronto’s Dr. Carolyn Dean for warning against the intake of too much sugar while being interviewed on the Dini Petti television show - the warning was specific to diabetic patients and warned also against high sugar intake as causing diabetes. A complaint by Canada’s Sugar Institute had initiated this disciplinary investigation on the grounds that there was “no scientific basis” for such a claim against refined sugar. This casts an interesting light on where the CPSO gets its scientific advice. 4 (For in formation on Dr. Dean’s and many other such physicians’ cases before the CPSO visit: www.collegeofphysicianswatchdog.com

Commencing in April of 2002, the Canadian Medical Association’s official journal, the CMAJ, published a six-part series on environment and health covering the proper way to take an exposure history (April 16), the effects of outdoor pollution (April 30), recognizing and treating lead exposure (May 14), management and prevention regarding pesticides (May 28), the health effects of persistent organic pollutants (June 11), and understanding carbon monoxide poisoning (June 25). The authors are leading experts in those areas and teach at Canada’s medical school. Most noteworthy is the fact that the references and research sources provided in those articles were almost all also those Dr. Krop’s defense lawyers had given to the CPSO during his trial. 5

In October 2003 the Ontario College of Family Physicians hosted its first medical conference on Environmental Medicine and participating physicians received full continuing study credits from the Ontario Medical Association.

At the beginning of this year, Canada’s Ministry of Human Resources responded to requests for help from advocacy groups working with victims of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS). RAINET (Research, Advocacy.) approached the Minister, the Hon. Jane Stewart and provided case histories of individuals who were totally disabled by exposure to certain toxic chemicals, but were denied CPP and other applicable benefits solely on the basis of an MCS diagnosis. A review was initiated and MCS is now in the process of being included for CPP benefits. The core problem in the case of Dr. Krop before the CPSO was the diagnosis of MCS which was rejected as being “scientifically invalid” the same month, June 1999, when the international consensus statement on MCS as a valid diagnosis was published by the National Institutes of Health in the USA. 6

One of the treatments for which the CPSO condemned Dr. Krop is a desensitization procedure for environmental and food allergies through the use of sub-lingual drops. (See footnote no. 1 for Internet access to the CPSO decision). In April 2002, 4 months after the CPSO verdict, the World Health Organization published a report, based on the review by 34 internationally recruited allergists, stating that this treatment should be considered the treatment of choice. 7

The Ontario Human Rights Commission wrote in April of this year to Ontario’s Minister of Health, the Hon. Tony Clement, instructing him that in the event of spraying for West Nile Virus being considered, the Minister has the obligation to protect people with chemical sensitivities and to ensure they receive medical care if affected by the spraying. The federal government made a similar statement. 8

A few years ago, the American Preventive Medical Association (APMA) sued the United Stated Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because of that agency’s persecution of anybody making any health claims for vitamins and other neutraceuticals. The case was decided in favor of the APMA, but in clear defiance of the court order, the FDA continued to harass doctors and neutraceutical companies. This year in May, another court case was decided once again in favor of the APMA, and now the FDA obeyed the court. Health claims for all antioxidants (such as Vitamins C and E), Folic Acid, various fiber supplements and Saw Palmetto are now appearing on supplement bottles.

In an abrupt turn-around only comparable to a conversion experience, one of the world’s leading experts in nutrition and health, Bruce Ames of the University of California at Berkeley published a comprehensive review article in April 2002 in which he asserts that Linus Pauling was right all along. Coming from Bruce Ames, that’s a bit like the leader of the Alliance Party joining the NDP. Shortly thereafter, the Journal of the American Medical Association published in June 2002 two articles, which conclude that everybody needs to take vitamin and mineral supplements to prevent chronic disease, and that no diet provides enough of the nutrients needed for basic good health and to prevent chronic illness later in life. 9

One of the sections in Dr. Krop’s book deals with autism, its causes and treatment for which he provides the appropriate protocols. Due to the efforts of Congressman Dan Burton in the USA, whose grandson became autistic after being vaccinated for Mumps Measles and Rubella, the vaccine industry has been forced this spring to remove the offending mercury used as a preservative in vaccines. 10

All these developments in such a short period of time led Dr. Krop to observe jokingly, “If we wait long enough, they’ll make intravenous vitamin C the standard of treatment for SARS.”

While all these shifts in understanding are very encouraging indeed, this is not the time for complacency. Nutritional and environmental medicine is still under attack because its claims, research and success are a fundamental threat to the pharmaceutical and pesticide industry. As Cornell University’s ecologist and cancer expert Sandra Steingraber has pointed out, the world’s economy is “chemically addicted”, 11 and that the health of the world is endangered by nothing as much as by that “toxic trespass”12 committed without our knowledge, and often against our will, by a chemical industry in conscious disregard of the biological requirements and biochemical integrity of humanity. Similarly, the drug industry’s products are now, due to their serious adverse “side”-effects, considered to be the second most frequent cause of death 13. Clearly, we have a long way to go before doctors and patients become free from quick-fix delusions and understand that health is a matter of prevention, proper nutrition, and therapies that work with nature.

The fact that a book such as this one sells well and that all of the above (and much more) is published by the mainstream medical journals, and supported by standard national and international medical organizations, indicates that a big change is happening. People are taking charge and thinking critically. Fortunately, the Internet ensures that information cannot be buried as it used to be and high-speed communication has created something of a level playing field for health activists.

Yet, there are many actions still ongoing which are of grave importance and require our determined support. For example, the international battle being waged against CODEX, the international regulatory body controlled by the pharmaceutical companies; it seeks to make all neutraceuticals available by prescription only . Another important and parallel cause is that championed by Canadian federal MPP Dr. J. Lunney’s and his courageous and timely effort (Bill C 420) which seeks to prevent Health Canada from gaining control over food supplements; in view of Health Canada’s track record with regard to drug approval and its efforts to prevent information on food safety from becoming publicly known, they certainly don’t need to control neutraceuticals as well. 14

In antiquity it was believed that the source of medical knowledge was divine and that the ability to practice medicine was a gift granted by the god of medicine himself, Asklepios. By definition gods are immortal and divine truth cannot be destroyed and, therefore, will once again make us free.

Helke Ferrie,
Publisher, KOS Publishing Inc.,
Books on Medicine that Works!
Alton, Ontario, Canada
August 2003

Endnotes:

CPSO Decision on Dr. Krop, December 23, 1998, available on their website: www.cpso.on.ca
One of the best sources for information on the environmental component or cause of any disease is found in Environmental Health Perspectives, a medical journal published monthly by the National Institutes of Health and Harvard University’s School of Public Health; available on-line.
The Medical Post, May 13, 2003.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario reprimanded Dr. Carolyn Dean on April 29, 1993, based on a complaint filed by Sandra Marsden of the Sugar Institute of Canada; the complaint was filed, as stated in the admonishment document, because Dr. Dean had spoken about the dangers of refined sugar intake by diabetics on a television show aired on December 11, 1990. The reprimand states: “The respondent made inaccurate and misleading statements addressing health issues related to sugar and sugar substitutes .. which tended to potentially arouse concern in the viewing public . The Committee believes the respondent expressed opinions which appeared to be exaggerated with respect to the relationship between sugar and diabetes, infection, osteoporosis, hyperactivity and addiction.” This amazing nonsense, unsupported by any published medical evidence, was signed by Dr. D.M.C. Walker, then the CPSO president and now the Dean of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In her defence, prior to this admonishment, Dr. Dean had submitted more than 200 citations from the then current, standard, peer-reviewed medical literature on sugar and sugar substitutes upon which her remark on television had been based. This material is not even mentioned in the admonishment.
CMAJ, Vol. 166, April 16 through June 25, 2002
Archives of Environmental Health, vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 147-149, June 1999
See summary in Scientific American, April 2002, p. 26, “Drink Your Shots” by B. Goodman
Letter from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, dated April 16, 2003, signed by Chief Commissioner Keith C. Norton, addressed to the Hon. Tony Clement, Ontario’s Minister of Health; the legal basis cited is the Ontario Human Rights Code, Section 29 and the Policy and Guidelines on Disability and the Duty to Accommodate
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, April 2002 and Journal of the American Medical Association, June 19, 2002
For a copy of my article on autism contact Vitality magazine at 416-964-0528; it provides the historical, legal and treatment information. See also Autism Canada Foundation, P.O. Box 1998, Burlington, Ontario, L7R 4L8, call 905-332-4766 or 905-331-4480, visit www.autismcanada.org. Dr. J. B radstreet’s institute can be reached via www.icdrc.org and www.autismresearchinstitute.com
S. Steingraber, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer, 2nd ed. 1999
S. Steingraber in the upcoming documentary, If You Love Our Children, sponsored by The National Film Board of Canada.
J.S. Cohen, Overdose: The Case Against the Drug Companies, Tarcher-Putnam, 2001. J. Robinson, Prescription Games, McLelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2001. T.J. Moore, Prescription for Disaster, Simon & Schuster, 1998. J. Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, Touchstone Books, 2000. Canadian Assoctaion of University teachers, The Olivieri Report, Lorimer, 20021.
To help stop the international efforts under the United nations’ CODEX ALIMENTARIUS to restrict the availability of vitamins and supplements, contact the worldwide effort being coordinated by Dr. Matthias Rath in Germany at www.4.dr-rath-foundation.org. In Canada, Dr. James Lunney introduced Bill C 420 for the same purpose, to maintain freedom of choice for Canadians. The bill is available on www.parl.gc.ca/37/2parlbus/chambus/house/bills/private/C-420I/C-420cover-E.html and you can contact your own MP and express your support for this bill.

Healing the Planet One Patient at a Time

Alive Magazine April 2003
Simone Gabbay, RNCP

Heating the Planet One Patient at a Time: A Primer in Environmental Medicine by Dr. Jozef J. Krop

Dr. Jozef J. Krop, a physician well known to many alive readers, has written a book about environmental medicine-a discipline that he has successfully practised for 20 years and has been forced to defend in the courts of Ontario, and now in the Supreme Court of Canada.

Healing the Planet One Patient at a Time is a revolutionary book and an eye-opener to the fact that many chronic health conditions and modern-day environmental illnesses are clearly the products of our own actions-of the chemical pollution of our water, soil and air; of depleted soils rendered mineral-deficient by intensive agriculture; of pesticidesprayed farm crops; of poor dietary habits and lifestyle; and of our indiscriminate use of synthetic hormones, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals that interfere with the body's metabolism and natural healing processes. Several such factors result in an abnormal immune response that can take the form of many conditions ranging from allergies and asthma to chemical sensitivities and even cancer.

Environmental medicine offers real hope for patients afflicted with disease. Dr. Krop's book provides a comprehensive outline of the protocol used by environmental physicians to not only identify the factors underlying illness, but also to develop an effective treatment plan. The reader will also find information on optimal nutrition and cancer prevention, as well as practical tips on how to decrease toxic load at home, work and school. The book also offers natural treatment options for autism and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) in children and adults, as well as suggestions for the prevention of food sensitivities in newborns and infants. There is also surprising information on "stealth infections" that reveals that many of today's degenerative diseases are often caused by chronic low-level infections.

For everyone interested in improving health naturally, Healing the Planet One Patient at a Time is a most valuable resource. It may yet be a lifesaver for those suffering from severe environmental illness who have failed to get help from conventional treatment.

Above all, this book is Dr. Krop's gift to humanity, given in appreciation for the support he has received from many individuals during his long and arduous fight for the right of Canadians to have access to natural health care.

Simone Gabbay is a registered nutritional consultant in Toronto.
She is the author of Nourishing the Body Temple (A.R.E. Press 19991 and Visionary Medicine. Real Hope for Total Healing (A.R.E. Press 2003).

The Medical Post May 27, 2003
Practising Environmental Medicine
Dr. Josef Krop’s book examines the relatively new specialty
By Edward Leyton

Everywhere you look, there it is. Contamination, pollution, toxins-call them what you may, our 21st century is full of them. You would think we, as physicians, would understand how these environmental factors interweave in the diseases of this century and most of the last century Alas, no! You will not find references to these kinds of things in the medical texts, and you will not find this to be a significant part, or perhaps even any part, of the medical school curriculum.

That is why Healing the Planet-One Patient at a Time, by Dr. Jozef Krop, is a book worth reading. It is worth reading if you are a physician whose patients present with long lists of symptoms, for which nobody has been able to find a reason and you are curious about what may be causing them. This is environmental medicine.

Environmental medicine is a "specialty" of complementary and alternative medicine. What is special about it particularly is there is a large body of evidence (truly scientific evidence) to support this, which is eloquently outlined in this environmental medicine primer.

Dr. Krop was born in Poland almost 60 years ago. Trained in Poland with a specialty in pediatrics, he "escaped to Canada" in 1972. As a result of his need to requalify, he was serendipitously assigned to do an internship with Dr. Abram Hoffer for his rotation in psychiatry. Dr. Hoffer, a B.C. psychiatrist known for his work in nutrition and schizophrenia, was a huge influence on Dr. Krop's later exploration into alternative and then environmental medicine. The science of environmental medicine was in its infancy in the early 1980s.

His successful environmental medicine practice continues today in Mississauga, Ont. This is despite the fact that he has been the subject of an intensive investigation by his peers at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario; a questionable trial that lasted off and on for 13 years, and, of course, resulted in a finding of guilt that he "fell below the standard of practice." Ironically, the standard (of general physicians) he supposedly "fell below" is itself too low to be of benefit to patients. There is a mountain of information that must be accessed in order for a good environmental medicine physician to deal with his patients. A part of the philosophy of environmental medicine is the patient must be fully informed of the treatments and diagnostic elements provided. Over the years, Dr. Krop produced a patient guidebook that patients automatically received when at his office. This would teach patients about their symptoms and how they can arise from foods, chemicals, and other environmental toxins. This present book was born out of that patient primer. It has all that information and more--outlining the principles of environmental medicine, the effect of fungi and moulds, the influence of food and nutrition and "how-to" chapters on management of ecological illness. How particular toxins create particular symptoms or syndromes are outlined in the main body of the book as the author goes through each of the above groupings. I was pleasantly surprised to see references to Web pages for much of the research on toxins, which the reader can pursue further if they wish.

The book is full of surprising and sometimes shocking facts such as:

The average apple is sprayed with pesticides up to 17 times, from the early stage in the spring until harvest time.
Organic foods have anywhere from 10% to 100% more minerals than non-organic.
The foods we eat every day are often the ones causing allergy or intolerance.
The potency of pesticides in humans requires that they be present only in parts per trillion (that's like one drop of gin in 660 rail tank cars filled with tonic) to affect our endocrine system.

The book also carefully explains many of the complex ecological contamination events happening around us with clear and easy to understand diagrams, as well as providing an extensive resource and bibliography section. This is probably not a book YOU will want to read from cover to cover, since many chapters are concentrated with much information. It is more of a reference book for those interested in learning more about environmental medicine.

Edward Leyton is a family physician in Kingston, Ont.

Vitality Oct. 2002
Helke Ferrie

Dr. J. Krop publishes a book on Environmental Medicine

The five thousand year old Chinese oracle text known as the I Ching advises in Hexagram 18 that “work on what has been spoiled has supreme success”, adding that people of real worth “stir up the people and strengthen their spirit.” We live in a time in which the physical environment, on which our survival depends, is seriously spoiled by toxicants, and the human spirit very badly needs strengthening by having our courage and healthy rebellion stirred up. Dr. Jozef Krop, the environmental medicine physician from Mississauga, a medical rebel of skill and worth, takes this challenge to work on our spoiled world very seriously. His book, Healing the Planet – One Patient At A Time: A Primer on Environmental Medicine will appear on October 18th . You can catch him personally at a book signing at the HEALTH EXPO in Toronto on November 22-24. (See details at end of this article.)

For years Dr. Krop used a small booklet he had compiled for his patients, the Ecology Guide, to teach them how to make their homes, gardens and workplaces safe, how to avoid environmental toxins, and what to do to become healthy again in partnership with their doctor. Starting in 1988, Dr. Krop became the subject of the longest known disciplinary investigation initiated by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), the medical regulatory body that licenses doctors. Dr. Krop was charged with prescribing clean water, air filters, using vitamins and mineral supplements in his treatment of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) and Candidiasis - which the CPSO charged him with diagnosing.

The CPSO used the Ecology Guide, along with the charts of especially successfu