BPA is an ingredient in hard plastics, such as #7 polycarbonate baby bottles, sippy cups and reusable sports water bottles, in the resins that line canned foods and soft-drink cans, in PVC pipes, even in dental sealants. BPA is one of the many chemicals, now a constant feature of today's world, that disrupt the way our hormonal systems work. Among all these chemicals, BPA tops the list in volume, at 6.4 billon pounds a year. It generates $6 billion a year for its manufacturers which include Dow and GE Plastic. Soda makers such as Coca-Cola and canned food companies such as Del Monte rely on BPA. These companies sent representatives to the spring meeting and their trade groups will foot the bill for the PR campaign.

BPA leaches into water even from new polycarbonate and resins at room temperature, accelerating with wear or heat. It shows up in the urine of 93 percent of all Americans and, just a few months ago, research found that it doesn't leave the body as easily as previously thought but seems to linger in our fatty tissues.

If it hadn't been for the Big Macs that Joannie ate pretty much three times a week, she wouldn't have gotten fat. If she hadn't been exposed while in her mother's womb to chemicals x, y and z, Joannie wouldn't have had the propensity to get fat. And if Joannie's mom had eaten more sensibly, both waistlines would be slimmer.

Fat people most likely are programmed to become fat before taking their first sip of milk. Today's news is that pesticides are among the chemicals responsible for this reprogramming.

Two of three U.S. adults are now classified as overweight. Type II diabetes has increased in like measure over the same decades, and so has heart disease. This is not a coincidence. These illnesses share common characteristics: they are triggered while in the womb by exposure to the same kinds of chemicals and the outcomes show up in adulthood. Scientists now call this pattern "the fetal origins of adult diseases."

Randi Allaire was an Information Management Specialist in the military for almost four years. Three and one-half years were spent with the Air National Guard as Information Management, the previous five and half was with the Army Guard as a Flight Operations Specialist.

As part of the military's program to protect their troops from chemical and biological weapons, Randi was required to take the anthrax vaccine. On March 14, 1999 she was given her fourth anthrax vaccine. It was after that shot that she has suffered chronic fatigue, memory lapses, migraines, pain in the forearms, and other aches and pains. She received no help with her condition and only denials that the anthrax vaccine could cause any of these problems and that the cause of her problems was likely the "flu" or too much "stress". She was eventually thrown out of the military because she refused to take the fifth anthrax vaccine shot in fear for her own personal health.

Aluminum is the most commonly licensed adjuvant that is added to a large number of vaccines. An adjuvant is a substance added to a vaccine to amplify the immune response. Aluminum compounds, which were identified over 90 years ago as adjuvants, are considered by the pharmaceutical industry and various government agencies as safe. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has continued to approve the use of aluminum as an additive to vaccines for many years.

Despite these assurances that aluminum and all vaccine ingredients are safe, large numbers of military veterans who suffer from Gulf War Syndrome as well as parents of children who suffer from various neurologic conditions including Autism strongly believe that the vaccines were often at least in part a cause of their health problems.

Three years ago a film came out of Hollywood that was conceptually great even if the execution was fatally flawed. Called Idiocracy, this comedy follows the mishaps of a character named Joe Bowers who is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but who, through a government hibernation experiment gone wrong, awakens to a society in the year 2505 that has become so stupid because of mass commercialism that Joe shines as a genius in comparison. After a predictable series of mishaps, the point is clear: We are on the wrong track in pushing dumbed-down, ‘me too' concepts and products. Society will only worsen, not improve.

Organic vs. Artificial

It is a lesson that modern-day fighters for individual liberty learned decades ago. In ensuring and protecting freedom for the individual, we create a better society. On a pragmatic level, individual liberty is a concept that sees the health and happiness of the parts as leading to the health of the whole - not the reverse. Put another way, individual liberty is organic - when not blocked artificially, it flows naturally and creates healthy relationships in an ever-expanding web of mutually-beneficial interactions among people.

On the other hand, much of today's political and economic structure is not organic but artificial. It comes from the Top down, not the bottom up. It does not flow naturally, easily, and quickly but with artificial constraints that are marked by dissension, delays, and waste. It is, by nature, coercive. ‘You do what we say because you have to and at the ultimate point of a gun. You do not do it voluntarily.'

photo by Julia Smith

If your baby were suffering from colic, would you treat him with artificially dyed and sweetened simethicone (the chemical in drugs such as Mylanta and Mylicon) or first try an emulsion of fennel seed oil? If your young daughter developed a persistent rash, would prefer the doctor to prescribe antihistamines or a diet rich in omega fatty acids?

More and more, it's likely you'd give the second choice a try. The big news is that mind-body pediatrics has come of age over the past generation. (Focus on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Volume XIV, No. 1: Winter 2007.) It's a trend that seems very appropriate for a generation of parents looking for foods without pesticides and cosmetics without solvents.

A major symptom of its acceptance is the publication of the first textbook book on Integrative Pediatrics, edited by the avuncular and reassuring Dr. Andrew Weil, the U.S.'s best known nonconventional medicine practitioner and spokesperson (Integrative Pediatrics, Oxford University Press, 2009). The august National Institutes of Health has set up a center devoted to its study (www.nccam.nih.gov/health) while the American Academy of Pediatrics has formed a practitioners' Section. And you can now find pediatricians across the nation who will use integrative practices to care for your children (www.aap.org/sections/CHIM/ParentResources.html, click on hyperlink to members, select Section on Complementary and Alternative, for a listing by zip code.; also, www.aaemonline.org).