Alliance Programme for
Health, Peace and Social Justice
1. Health Is A Human Right
Health is a human right. Every person has the right to life, freedom from bodily harm and optimum health.
Exploding health costs and rising ancillary wage costs are the most important reasons for mass unemployment and economic stagnation. From this it is clear that fundamental restructuring of the health system is the precondition for solving modern social problems, in particular for tackling mass unemployment. To remedy this problem it is essential to undertake a careful analysis of the existing deficiencies of today’s health systems.
1.1. The pharmaceutical industry’s “business with disease”
While the most important domains of society are subject to public control, the realm decisive for every community – that of health - is withdrawn from this control. Largely unnoticed by the public, and in a creeping process that has continued for decades, an investment industry has appropriated a worldwide monopoly on health and illness, and made the earth’s people literally dependent on it. This is the pharmaceutical industry.
This branch of industry is commercially underpinned by the continuation and spread of diseases as billion-dollar markets for patented, synthetic pharmaceutical drugs. Usually treating symptoms alone, these drugs are almost invariably associated with severe side effects. Prevention and eradication of disease, above all through effective natural remedies, is endangering the survival of the pharmaceutical “business with disease”, which is therefore fighting such remedies with all the means at its disposal.
Through its “business with disease” the pharmaceutical industry has become one of the world’s biggest speculative investment industries. Via its billion-dollar profits this industry has gradually made almost every country in the world dependent on it, purchasing itself influence in key areas of society such as the media, social welfare and politics.
Millions of people have paid with their lives for the failure to prevent this appropriation of the health sector by the pharmaceutical industry, and the world’s countries have sacrificed their economies to it and are now faced with the threat of financial ruin. The most significant political and social development at the beginning of the 21 st century is, arguably, the unmasking of the pharmaceutical “business with disease” as the biggest and bloodiest fraud in human history. Disseminating awareness of this throughout the world is a condition for making health a human right.
1. 2. Fundamental restructuring of health systems is needed
The most important measures involved in this restructuring are:
1. Public control of health systems. Health systems must be brought under public control immediately and irrevocably. Only by ending the investment “business with disease” will it be possible to eradicate today’s endemic diseases, saving millions of human lives and relieving public and private economies on a long-term and enduring basis.
- The new health systems will be focused on prevention and eradication of diseases. The goal of these new health systems is effective prevention of diseases and their long-term eradication. These new health systems are thus in direct contrast to the pharmaceutical investment “business with disease”, which is founded on the perpetuation and spread of diseases as long-term retail markets.
- Public control of basic health care for the whole population. The public purse – national government, regional and local administrations – will be responsible for comprehensive health care of the population using essential dietary supplements and other natural remedies for the prevention and adjuvant treatment of endemic diseases. Supplying the populace with the few useful pharmaceutical products will also gradually be brought under public control. Medicines that cannot be shown to have a preventive or curative effect – as is the case with most pharmaceutical drugs – will be prohibited.
- Public control of patient care. The key areas of patient care, in particular in-patient care – from district hospitals to university clinics – will be brought under public control. This is the only way of ensuring that the overall strategy of healthcare focused on prevention and eradication of illnesses is not sabotaged by the “business with disease”. The conversion of existing public hospitals into private companies with a profit mentality, in which patients are made into “clients”, must end forthwith.
- Public control of health insurance providers. Health insurers will become subject to public control. They will reimburse the costs of treatment procedures whose preventive or therapeutic use has been proven – in particular scientifically founded traditional and natural remedies. Persons representing the interests of the pharmaceutical industry will be excluded from health insurance monitoring and supervisory bodies. In such bodies, patient representatives elected by policy holders themselves will be in the majority. This is the only means of guaranteeing that health insurance premiums cease being misused to finance the pharmaceutical “business with disease”.
- Public control of new medicines registration. Registration of new medicines will also be subject to strict public control. Alongside representatives from the healing professions, registration committees will also be composed of patient representatives and democratically elected citizens. This is the only way to ensure that the pharmaceutical industry’s previous influence on registration and approval of their mostly useless and almost invariably harmful products is halted.
- Public control of medical research. Scientific medical research will be subject to public control, thus serving the development of effective medicines for preventing and eradicating diseases. Public funds will be used exclusively for this patient-focused research at universities and other public institutions. Distribution of tax funds to the pharmaceutical industry will no longer occur. This is the only way to ensure an end to the wastage of tax billions on pharmaceutical research, which does not eradicate diseases but perpetuates them as a commercial base.
- Public control of medical training. The training of doctors and all other health professionals will take place under public control. The previous practice, in which so-called third party funds from the pharmaceutical industry are a precondition for obtaining a professorship at a medical faculty, will cease immediately. Exclusive criteria for the appointment of teaching staff in all health professions will be their professional qualifications – and not their financial dependency on pharmaceutical groups. This is the only sure way to end the dire commercial influence which the pharmaceutical industry has exerted for decades on medical training and courses leading to other health profession qualifications.
- Health education a compulsory subject in schools. Health education, in particular knowledge about healthy nutrition and other measures for preventing disease, will become a compulsory subject in all primary and secondary schools. Already, at nursery age, children will learn that the human body cannot produce its own vitamin C and is dependent throughout life on an optimum supply of micronutrients. The further training of the populace in health matters will intensify at all levels, including through public media.
- Creation of new health professions. In order to swiftly disseminate knowledge of the importance to health of cellular nutrients and other natural remedies and to guarantee basic health care that meets the needs of the population, new health professions will be accorded state recognition. These include professions such as “nutritional adviser” or “adviser for Cellular Medicine”, with a focus on health advice and prevention. This will break the monopoly of a medicine based on pharmaceuticals and high-tech treatment.
Public control of the health system is the precondition for ending the business with disease, for eradicating endemic diseases and for saving billions. This fundamental restructuring of the health service is therefore a vital precondition for solving all other social problems, above all mass unemployment.
1.3. Programme for eradicating endemic diseases
Public control of the health system is an important precondition for eradicating TB, malaria, AIDS, heart attacks, stroke, disbetes and cancer as endemic diseases. Only when the financial imperative to make money from the perpetuation of diseases falls away, can consistent efforts be made to eradicate them. If this does not happen, every programme to eradicate endemic diseases will be opposed by those interest groups, in particular the pharmaceutical industry, which stand to make billions from the perpetuation of diseases.
The scientific basis for eradicating diseases
Open any textbook on biology and biochemistry and you will read about the importance of vitamins and other micronutrients for the prevention of illnesses. The fact that the vital health significance of these micronutrients has never become public knowledge and has not been used for effective prevention of endemic diseases throughout the world, is due to a clearly discernible cause. For decades, the pharmaceutical industry targeted medical universities, medical training courses, the mass media and politics, purchasing influence in all these domains. Knowledge about micronutrients and their importance to health was kept out of medical textbooks, and even fiercely opposed in the interests of the billion-dollar business with patentable pharmaceutical drugs.
This intentional withholding of vital information on vitamins and other micronutrients is unacceptable and must cease immediately for the sake of millions of people. Hundreds of thousands of people pay with their lives each year for this intentional disinformation in regard to people’s basic physical functions. No delay can be allowed in remedying this situation.
We regard it as our task to actively break down this ‘wall of ignorance’ for the sake of the health of millions of people. We will not rest until this wall of ignorance – like the Berlin wall before it – has been brought down. The free flow of information and the realisation in medical practice of basic biological knowledge will smooth the way for today’s endemic diseases to be largely unknown in future generations. We regard this ‘health emancipation’ in the interests of millions of people as the prime focus of our work.
The end of AIDS, heart attacks, cancer and other endemic diseases is in sight
We are a worldwide movement whose goal is to reduce today’s endemic diseases, including AIDS, cardiovascular diseases and cancer, to a fraction of their current extent.
- AIDS. Currently, 42 million people around the world are affected by HIV/AIDS, 29.4 million of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent pioneering scientific research into the control of cancer by natural means indicates that, through the use of micronutrients alone (a combination of certain vitamins, minerals and other natural substances) the course of AIDS can be reversed naturally, without any recourse to toxic anti-retroviral pharmaceutical drugs.
- Heart attack and stroke. Today we know that hardening of the arteries, the main cause of cardiovascular disease, is largely preventable. This is an early stage of the old sailor’s disease of scurvy, and is characterised by vitamin deficiency in millions of the body’s blood vessels, leading to their instability. Optimum supply of vitamins and micronutrients relieves this cellular deficiency, strengthens blood vessel walls and thus prevents heart attacks and strokes. Through consistent implementation of this programme, it will be possible to save many hundreds of thousands of human lives.
- Cancer. The endemic disease of cancer is responsible for the deaths of over 6 million people worldwide each year. Just as with AIDS and cardiovascular diseases, a breakthrough in research can now facilitate reduction of cancer to a fraction of current numbers. Cancer cells spread with the aid of enzymes (biocatalysts) which are able to cut through the surrounding connective tissue and diffuse throughout the body. The use of certain micronutrients makes it possible to block these enzymes and thus also the spread of cancer cells. Consistent implementation of this knowledge in a health policy programme can save the lives of thousands of cancer patients. These are just three examples of illnesses that can be combated through the targeted use of recent scientific findings in natural health research.
- Other endemic diseases. Diseases arise at a cellular level and by far the most important cause of malfunctions in our body’s cells is a deficiency of vitamins and micronutrients. We will implement a global programme to eradicate endemic diseases, with two important prongs of attack: firstly, extensive nutritional advice; and secondly, comprehensive provision to the population of scientifically researched dietary supplementation programmes.
This health programme requires collaboration from everyone, and has the following specific goals: during the next 15 years, up to the year 2020, we will do all in our power to reduce the following endemic diseases to below ten percent of their current extent: heart attack, stroke, cardiac insufficiency, high blood pressure, heart arrhythmia, circulatory disorders in diabetes, various types of cancer, osteoporosis, immune deficiency diseases including AIDS, and others.
No patenting of foods, health and life
Patents are the key tools of the pharmaceutical business with disease. Patent fees, artificially fixed at a high level by pharmaceutical groups, have made the pharmaceutical industry the most profitable speculative business in world trade. And for the same reason patent fees are the chief reason for health costs that can barely be funded any longer.
- Abolishing patents for medicines and other health products. Pharmaceutical companies patent not only their own synthetic products, but also combinations of effective natural remedies – not in order to use them, but rather to intentionally block their use. For this reason independent research institutes which develop scientifically founded natural remedies, are compelled to have these remedies patented as well. Only through such protective patents to safeguard against take-over by pharmaceutical companies can these independent institutions ensure that natural remedies remain available to people. This is an unsustainable state of affairs.
Health is not a commodity for speculative commerce. That is why we will work at an international level to abolish patents on health products of all kinds, thus invalidating the key tool used in the unscrupulous business with disease.
- Abolishing patents on DNA. Currently there is global competition between multinational companies to patent the inherited substance (genes) of human beings and other living creatures. The aim is to subsume ‘life’ into the private property of these company groups. If these monstrous plans are not halted, then in the near future the big pharmaceutical companies will appropriate the organs of the human body as their ‘possessions’. Life is intrinsically non-patentable! We will introduce laws to prohibit the patenting of genes, and work at any international level to ban patents on life.
- No patenting of foods. After appropriation of the human body and diseases by the pharmaceutical industry, this branch of commerce has opened up a further big investment market: our daily food. Genetically altered food means that fruits, vegetables, grains and other foodstuffs can be patented for the first time. Based on these patents, fruits and vegetables are systematically being appropriated as the private property of big company groups, forming the basis for an investment industry worth billions. Although the health risks of this technology cannot be dismissed, genetically altered foods are already being marketed in large quantities. We will prohibit this irresponsible business with our food and health, and also draft laws to forbid the patenting of foodstuffs.
Abolition of the patent principle as applied to health, life and food is an international task of top priority. The multinational character of this patenting business requires an equally international approach to ending it, based on a worldwide education campaign. Wherever people understand the devastating consequences for their own health of the ‘patenting of life’, they will work with us to attain these goals.
Education and the development of a new health system
Medical and scientific preconditions for extensive control of the major endemic diseases already exist. What is missing is a health policy programme to implement them. With the support of affected patients and the population, and with the collaboration of those in the healing and nursing professions, we will implement national health programmes. These programmes have the following emphases:
- Health education work. Knowledge of the importance of micronutrients for maintaining the body’s health and preventing endemic diseases must become available to all as quickly as possible. The current health care structures are inadequate for this. In addition we must expect opposition to this national task from representatives of pharmaceutically based medicine. For this reason, such education work must primarily be sustained by the population itself.
- Development of new health systems. Development of new patient-orientated health systems focused on the prevention and eradication of diseases is a priority. New structures will be established for this purpose alongside health care bodies already in place. The emphasis here is on offering advice on nutrition and health questions. At every locality, self-managed health advisory centres will be established with the collaboration of the population, and with support from regional and town councils. Health education will become a compulsory subject in schools.
- Participation of all people. Knowledge of the importance to health of nutrition and micronutrients is something all people can understand. This information can therefore also be passed on by everyone. The new health systems will then no longer serve the profit interests of a handful of pharmaceutical shareholders, but the health interests of millions of human beings. In order to overcome resistance from the field of established, pharmaceutically based medicine, this development of new health systems requires broad participation. Nurseries, schools, businesses, old people’s homes, churches, unions and other social groups and community associations will help establish this new, people-focused health system. To qualify as many people as possible as health and nutrition advisers, the drafting of training materials will be actively promoted.
With the aid of training measures, this programme will be supported in all areas of education and adult education. The goal is to radically improve the population’s knowledge of the function of the human body, and measures necessary for preventing illnesses. Health care and medical knowledge about the human body’s basic functions is no longer a privilege of the few but will become a universal and inalienable human right.
1.4. Overcoming opposition from the representatives of an outmoded medicine
In this programme to eradicate endemic diseases, our longer-term aim is to save millions of human lives. Application of this medical knowledge to relieve suffering and avoid the premature death of millions of people is, as stated above, an international task in which populations can fully participate through training measures. Resistance to implementation of this programme can be expected from the pharmaceutical industry and its representatives in certain media, and amongst certain government medical officers.
Such resistance and opposition, irrespective of the grounds, endangers human life and is thus unlawful. We will hold all those to account who impede the eradication of endemic diseases and thus the saving of human life. For this purpose we have submitted a suit to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which will be expanded in each new instance to include individuals or organisations against whom action is brought.
This action before the International Criminal Court does not address mere trifles but crimes against humanity. In a similar way, after the second world war, the Nuremberg trials charged and sentenced the directors of pharmaceutical groups (IG Farben) and also doctors who took part in corresponding research projects, with crimes against humanity. Knowingly combating and impeding the new possibility of eradicating endemic diseases is an equally grave crime and must be punished accordingly. In the interests of millions of patients we will do all in our power to advance these criminal proceedings as swiftly as possible, and to hold to account those who share responsibility for the premature death of millions of people.
Cornerstones of a new health system
The goals of a new health system can be summarised as follows:
- Prevention instead of treating symptoms
- Eradication instead of perpetuating and spreading disease
- Treating causes not symptoms
- Patients not profits
- Responsibility not dependency
- Education not disenfranchisement
The fundamental restructuring of health systems is a prime focus of our programme, and for good reason. Only when the unscrupulous pharmaceutical ‘business with disease’ is ended, can illnesses be overcome. Only by these means can private and public expenditure, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars per annum, be saved, and only then can great social problems be remedied in the long term.
The ending of the ‘business with disease’ is such a fundamental precondition for solving these social challenges of our time that every political programme which does not address these palpable root causes will inevitably fail.