Books (December 2007)

Elizabeth Johnson Taylor. What Do I Say? Talking with patients about spirituality. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press 2007

This book is an excellent introduction for health care practitioners in dealing with spiritual issues common in clinical practice. Elizabeth Johnston Taylor presents the subject clearly, enhanced with quotes, cartoons and pointers towards further reading. I particularly like her exercises for readers to explore and examine their own spiritual beliefs and awarenesses, and to practice varieties of ways they can respond to patients’ spiritual issues.

This book addresses the question of how to form healing verbal responses to patients’ expressions of spiritual pain. Although offering healing verbal responses is a fundamental skill for health care professionals, it is not the only approach for nurturing the spirit. Being silently present, reading inspirational materials, offering prayer, and encouraging journal writing or dream analysis are examples of other approaches. (p. 5)

Thoughtful discussions and quotes help the reader consider these issues.

  (See more in IJHC, September 2007)

GENETIC ENGINEERING AND THE MAN-MADE DESTRUCTION OF THE EVOLUTIONARY WISDOM OF THE AGES

Jeffrey M. Smith. Seeds of Deception:  Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating, Fairfield IO: Yes! Books 2003.

Denise Caruso. Intervention:  Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet, San Francisco:  The Hybrid Vigor Press 2006.

Jeffrey M. Smith. Genetic Roulette:  The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Fairfield IO: Yes! Books 2007.

When the structure of DNA was discovered and the existence of genes established, a group of adult children pounced on this discovery as a whole new game of Leggo.  Genes code for proteins, and it was assumed that one gene = one protein = one trait or result, and so if you switched genes early enough in the development of an embryo, you’d get a new kind of organism with different traits.  Better traits, of course,  as human intellect so clearly can improve over the development of organisms that simply evolved through the natural order.

Immediately, the new technology was brought to bear on the food industry.  The advantage of the food industry  as a testing ground for genetic engineering of foods is that its products are consumed by all human beings, that supplies need to be replenished regularly, and that once a product is consumed one would have great difficulty proving what happened as a result of its ingestion.  Under the guise of solving world hunger, the biotechnology industry set out to change the genes of the food supply.  Interestingly, the first thing they did was not to make sure certain foods grew more abundantly to help feed people;  no, the first thing was the development of a strain of soybeans that would not die when sprayed with Monsanto’s herbicide “Roundup.”  This strain of soybeans is called “Roundup Ready,” and it means it could be sprayed morning, noon and night with herbicides and it wouldn’t die, while all plants around the soybeans (weeds, the lot) would wither and disappear.

In Europe, the new technology did not go over so well.  Farmers and consumers rebelled;  there were riots and the genetically modified (GMO) plants were ripped out of the ground.  In the US, which once had been called “A Nation of Sheep,” (Lederer, 1962) nothing much happened except for the few who complained and were labeled as health nuts and ignored by the media.  Fortunately, the official Organic Standards preclude the use of GMO foods in products labeled “organic,” so for those of us who don’t want them, there is still a way to find GMO-free foods.  Otherwise, one is not allowed to say anything is “GMO-free” because the position of the authorities is that GMO foods are substantially equivalent to non-GMO, which is patently untrue…

Genetic engineering book reviews by Annemarie Colbin, PhD, a well known lecturer and consultant, founder of the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City (www.naturalgourmetschool.com), and author of "Food and Healing" (Ballantine Books, 1996).  Website: www.foodandhealing.com  Video blog: www.holisticanarchy.com

  (See more in IJHC, September 2007)