This post is in response to someone who has forwarded to me William Campbell Douglass II’s newsletter. I won’t go into any specifics of William Campbell Douglass II’s truth claims. While there are certainly many aspects and claims made by William Campbell Douglass II that need to be put into question, these nitty-gritty specifics detract from the overall problems with the information he provides on his website (www.douglassreport.com) and his promotional e-mail newsletters. For that reason I would like to draw your attention to the underlying problems with the information presented by him and the potential threats to your optimal functioning. So here we go.

His website, to be found at www.douglassreport.com provides very little actual advice. Most pages go on and on providing nothing more than teasers until they end with either advising the reader to buy one of his books or subscribing to his monthly publication. Note, both are either written or edited by him and are not peer-reviewed or subjected to the necessary scientific rigor that is needed for quality control. In other words it is up to William Campbell Douglass II’s digression and good will to present so called facts, which does not cut it in science.

Furthermore I also would like to note that most of the information presented is not referenced or in any other indicated way based on facts. Unfortunately, more commonly, what is stated by Dr. Douglass is information that the reader is unable to verify. It may very well be current scientific understanding or it could be a misrepresented construed to fit his arguments. We simply cannot know from the information he provides.

In the June edition of Dr. Douglass’ newsletter that someone I know has forwarded to me, only contains promotional information about Dr. Douglass’ book The RAW TRUTH About MILK. You can see for yourself as I have reproduced the entire newsletter at the bottom of this article. From the provided information, this book is a marketing strategy of presenting the the milk industry as the “ultimate evil” and then drawing the reader into the author’s argument so that we as the reader will side with the author and against the milk industry. It is important that while one can and arguable should side against the milk industry, is still a long way off from agreeing with Dr. Douglass. What was further irritating was that the author places in this newsletter cleverly added page numbers just before he provides the answers and solutions to his profound claims and promises to the problems he claims to have the answers to. Worst of all there are no references to support his claims within this promotional email, not even one. The best the author can do is quote some well chosen supporters or refer back to his allegedly supporting readers. Also notice how no explanations or supporting references are provided for the few health claims that are mentioned in-favor of raw milk consumption.

In the form and shape this newsletter about his book is presented, it is a personal opinion piece or a personal vendetta but it is otherwise clearly unsubstantiated. In the end it is not about being for or against the milk industry or Dr. Douglass’ claims. Rather it is about being a reader and continuously questioning the information one is presented with as well as its sources.

Personally I advice against all milk consumption and against all milk products. For a brief explanation for why it is best to avoid all milk products read Dr. McDougall’s March, 2007 newsletter. For the optimal functioning of our bodies, a well rounded low-fat whole plant based food diet without any animal products has the most health promoting features.

_________REPLICATION of Dr. Dougall’s newsletter_________

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Agora Health Books <ahb@healthiernews.com>
Date: 2008/7/12
Subject: Agora Health Books – Before you touch your next glass of milk
To: XXXXXXX@gmail.com

July 12, 2008

****************************************************
You are receiving this e-mail because you have expressed an interest in alternative health care by purchasing a book from Agora Health Books and providing us with your e-mail address. If you wish to permanently remove yourself from this mailing list, please follow the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of this page.
****************************************************

****************************************************
Please note: We sent this e-mail to:
XXXXXXX@gmail.com
because you subscribed to this service.

Manage your subscription:

To end your Agora Health Books e-mail subscription…visit this address:

http://www.youreletters.com/u?id=XXXXXXXX=http://www.agorahealthbooks.com&l=ahb

To change your e-mail address…visit this address:

http://www.agoramail.net/changeEmail.cfm?id=XXXXXXXXXX

To manage your subscription by mail or for any other subscription issues, write us at:

Order Processing Center
Attn: Customer Service
P.O. Box 925
Frederick, MD 21705 USA

_________REPLICATION of Dr. Dougall’s newsletter_________

Let us know what you think about this news letter and Dr.. Douglass’ website.

No related posts.

For many third world countries a stable food supply keeps death at bay, but when shortages occur, it puts millions of people’s lives at risk. We are currently facing a major food crisis, where prices have risen due to an increased demand, which is expected to double by 2030. There are ongoing

The Surreptitious Origins of the Current Food Crisis

In China the government wants people to drink more milk. Their target is for every child to have access to half a liter per day. This has led to a threefold increase in milk consumption over the last eight years. The Chinese government maintains domestic milk prices low by the use of tax incentives, in order to meet their goal of increased consumption. This is not to say that the Chinese corporations have not figured out how to increase demand themselves. One example is the Chinese dairy company Mengniu Group who increased their sales five-fold after sponsoring “Supergirl” a blockbuster show with 20 million viewers. The company managed to change Chinese pop culture by introducing milk to a whole new generation. The Chinese trend is also increasing prices of milk around the world, because milk is traded globally in powder form. This trend is also perpetuated by Chinese citizens considering milk as a path to the Western lifestyle, as well as milk being more convenient than making rice porridge. This might also have major negative implications to health-care cost in China, since studies have shown that the benefit of milk might not be as plausible as the majority of us believe it to be. Switching from diseases of poverty to diseases of affluence is hardly the right way to go. But going back to our topic, this increase in demand for milk depicts one example of how food prices are increased. In this case, the demand for milk increases the amount of livestock, which need grain to fulfill their purpose, and also result in increased carbon emissions. Hedge funds are also getting blamed for fueling the food crisis by taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into more secure food and raw materials. Wall Street calls it the “commodities super-cycle” and it could assist in starvation on an epic scale.

Bio-fuels Join the Battle

Another reason for the increase in demand for food is the increased usage of bio-fuels. Finding new fuels with lower carbon emissions has long been a struggle, whereas this problem seems now to have been replaced by efforts of finding efficient ways of producing environmentally friendly fuels. This is also the case for bio-diesel most commonly marketed as E85. The current methods used in many countries to produce bio-fuels, or ethanol to be more specific, are by the use of food crops, such as corn or soybeans. Production of corn ethanol in the U.S. has soared from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to 6.5 billion in 2007, helped along by federal subsidies. Even if the entire U.S. corn crop had been converted to ethanol, it would only replace 12 percent of their gasoline consumption. There are also critics who argue that ethanol takes more energy to produce than it delivers and that using ethanol as a fuel would lead to lower air qualities due to an increase of ozone, a prime ingredient of smog, in the atmosphere. It has also been shown that biofuels are very inefficient in terms of water usage during production.

Even at this early stage the U.S.’s ethanol production accounts for half of the world wide increase in the demand for corn and increasingly more grain is being used to fuel first world countries. The U.S. fuel corn consumption is greater than the import necessity of the 82 U.N. classified low income countries would need to feed all of their people. In many ways the wealthy nations are taking food away from third world countries to support their consumption, the interests of car manufacturers, and their economic prosperity. The cost of food is increasing and aid organizations are unable to afford the needed supply amounts.

As a small sidestep, you might think that the increased demand for bio-fuels are caused by the hefty focus there has been on environment lately, which is not the case. The contemporary environmental attention has not helped much in terms of increasing people’s commitment to environment, in the U.S. at least, as shown by the graph below. Ethanol is actually mixed into normal gasoline in small doeses, without consumers being aware of it. In the UK the plan is to add bio-fuels to regular petrol and over time increase the amount of regular petrol it will be replacing. This movement is attributed to the car manufacturers who allegedly lobbied against high fuel-taxes and also against higher fuel economy standards. Instead they promoted bio-fuels as a viable alternative. This way people’s stagnant commitment to the environment is not an obstacle in increasing sales of bio-fuels. There are some recent positive advancements though, which might make bio-fuels more viable.

Although scientists are working on creating both alternatives to the bio-fuel itself as well as its methods of production, the focus in this article will be on the latter of these. As a response to this issue Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. at the University of Texas at Austin have created a new microbe which produces cellulose, which can be turned into ethanol or other bio-fuels. “The cyanobacterium is potentially a very inexpensive source for sugars to use for ethanol and designer fuels,” says Nobles. This new cyanobacteri, also known as blue-green algae (picture), could potentially increase productivity of ethanol a 17 fold. This could therefore be one potential solution for ethanol as a fuel.

The Connection to Pollution

In order for the continuance of this discussion to be coherent, pollution and especially the process of CO₂ capture and storage has to be brought into the picture. This is normally known as a relatively expensive process, which is not yet viable for most potential users. It has to be mentioned though that Michael North at Newcastle University has recently made a breakthrough in this area with a technology which can efficiently convert waste CO₂ into chemical compounds known as cyclic carbonates. This has the potential to use up to 48 million tonnes of waste CO₂ per year, reducing the UK’s emissions by about four per cent. A problem arises when it comes to capturing CO₂ from livestock, which is also a serious source of pollution. The worldwide increase in meat consumption we are currently experiencing further increases the contributions from this sector.

Isaac Berzin, founder and chief science advisor at GreenFuel Technologies, have come up with another way of solving both the problem of pollution and crops usage for producing bio-fuels altogether. His revolutionary technology combines the CO₂ capturing technology with growing algae. You might ask what algae have to do with anything, well; CO₂ is a delicacy for hungry algae. Berzin attempts to set up a process in which CO₂ emissions, such as from a coal plant, could be fed directly to algae. This would be done by piping emissions into GreenFuel’s bioreactor which grows the algae and turn it into biomass that can be utilized to produce bio-fuels. Essentially this process is recycling CO₂ emissions, rendering CO₂ capture and storage obsolete, and offering a better method of producing ethanol for bio-fuels.

A Whole Plant-Based Diet Offering a Solution

The required increase of donations is, as can be seen through the riots and upheavals, not being met and people are starving and dying. Bush made a meager donation of $200 million for the food crisis. Bio-fuels in addition to all the other contributing factors to the food crisis may be called a crime to humanity, as stated in the New Statesman: “Bio-fuels are not a ‘necessary but painful’ way of saving the climate; they are a calamitous mistake by almost every criterion, whether social, ethical or environmental”.

Those in immediate food supply shortage need donations by first world countries, but sustainable solutions will not come about from monetary donations. For that, first world governments need to reduce or eliminate their subsidies for farmers and food products. Basically the WTO needs to come to an agreement, which will probably be difficult considering the sentiment most have to domestic farmers in developed nations. Shifting the food production away from animal products to vegetables and other plants in favor of a vegetarian or vegan diet would make more food available than humans could possibly consume. This also offers a solution to what individuals can do to contribute to resolving the food crisis. Switching to a whole plant-based diet offers an initiative viable to everyone. It would drive down food prices because of fewer intermediates in the food production and make the global situation easier to resolve, regretfully there is evidence that the contrary is occurring, as described with China who is working to increase their milk consumption.

There are large amounts of evidence available that strengthen the importance of a vegetarian diet in fighting global warming. There’s been focus lately on buying food locally in order to reduce the amount of transportation and thereby also reduce carbon emissions. A recent study suggests that what you eat is more important in relations to carbon emissions than where the food is from. Buying all your food from local sources would reduce emissions per year by the same as 1,000 miles of driving. One day less of eating meat per week would cut greenhouse gas emissions by the same amount. The researchers estimate that going from an average American diet to a vegetarian diet would reduce emissions per year the equivalent of 8,000 miles of driving. “Where you get your food from is a relevant factor in family food decisions, but what you are eating, and the processes needed to make it, is much more important from a climate change perspective” said Matthews, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon.

Maybe the problems we are experiencing with both pollution and food demand will aid in promoting vegetarianism, but it seems unlikely that people will change their diet for any external factor when they won’t do it to improve their own health. I still believe though, that vegetarianism should be promoted as one of the main initiatives to resolve global warming (as does Paul McCartney), the food crisis, and why not add the economic recession in there as well. Still, it seems like forced regulations are the only way to go to get the majority to change their dietary habits. Maybe a real tax increase on meat would do the trick; at least then vegetarians would have a financial benefit. This could make up for the fact that vegetarians have to pay the same amount of tax, although they obviously incur a lower cost to public health-care systems than carnivores. Maybe the solution will emerge from the recent developments in producing fake, in vitro meat from stem cells, combined with stem cells collected from a newly discovered multi-potential source; menstrual blood.

Related posts:

1. Ted Prize Winner Jamie Oliver share his wish: Teach every child about food
2. Livestock Accounts for 51% of Climate Change