The Antibiotic Crisis
by Kurt Schnaubelt, Ph.D.

The following extract is taken from Medical Aromatherapy:
Healing with Essential Oils by Kurt Schnaubelt, 1999, Frog, Ltd.
North Atlantic Books Berkeley CA. ISBN 1-883319-62-2. Kurt
Schnaubelt, Ph.D., is Director of the Pacific Institute of
Aromatherapy, P.O. Box 6723, San Rafael, California, 94903
(415) 479-9121. He offers courses on aromatherapy in San
Rafael as well as by correspondence. His books are available
through bookstores and at www.Amazon.com. This excerpt
is in Chapter 5, pp. 72-74.

"There is conclusive evidence on the destructive consequences
of the overuse of antibiotics (and also how to avoid it).
Antibiotic pressure on an organism can be a cofactor in immune
deficiency conditions. Antibiotics were originally prescribed to
fight bacterial diseases. But once these drugs became major
moneymakers, their marketing took on a life of its own. Economic
interests dictates finding more uses for a product that is already
selling well, because sales increase without new development costs.
Research to find additional uses for products is eagerly
sponsored and eventually research and sales create a new reality.
Unaware of the link to mass destruction of their immune systems,
an unsuspecting generation upped its antibiotic intake.
"Antibiotics taken by small children often create the diseases
they aim to cure. Premature antibiotic use during the onset of
a childhood disease will deprive the immune system of the
opportunities to interact with the pathogen. An inactivated immune
system does not learn to recognize intruding microorganisms,
nor does it learn to build antibodies. The result? A child will quickly
relapse with the same disease and the cycle repeats. A
reoccurring disease becomes chronic and leads to an overall
debilitation of the body.

"Another potentially even greater problem is the seemingly
unstoppable advance of resistant bacteria. Bacteria, resistant
to most or all of the known antibiotics, are menacing hospitals
and their patients. The development of these "super germs"
was brought on by the reckless use of antibiotics in the meat
industry as well as their over prescription by doctors. In his
sanely radical book, Spontaneous Healing, (1995, Alfred Knoph)
Andrew Weil comments: 'Doctors must bear much of the responsibility
for getting us into our growing predicament with aggressive
bacteria; by over prescribing and mis-prescribing antibiotics,
they have brought on the coming catastrophe.'

"Antibiotics are still widely prescribed by doctors for viral conditions
such as the common cold or the flu despite the fact that they are
not effective in these cases. The depth of the conditioning
becomes obvious when antibiotics display placebo effects.
"Workers in an office struggle with the flu for a week or two and,
at some point, a few take antibiotics with the following results.

"Outcome 1: No obvious differences are observed between those
who take the antibiotics and those who don't. The flu comes and
goes."

"Outcome 2: Some of those who took antibiotics recover quickly.

A typical belief is that the antibiotics ultimately cured the flu.
"Outcome 2 is extremely puzzling. Influenza is a viral infection
and antibiotics are not effective against viruses. Still, these
individuals claim that they worked. There are two possible explanations:

1. The immune status of some individuals is so compromised from
antibiotics overuse or other causes that a flu virus will automatically
trigger bacterial secondary infections of such severity that relief from
an accompanying symptoms is perceived as the antibiotics being
effective against the flu itself. 2. Our deep conditioning to believe
in the effectiveness of antibiotics triggers improvement. The
antibiotics were a placebo!"

"The antibiotics crisis is an example of the fact that commerce is
not concerned about the consequences it creates for human life.
All aspects of modern existence are penetrated by the goal to
maximize profits. Sadly, this has been most successful in
medicine."

"Approximately two decades ago the projections for worldwide
sales of pharmaceuticals for the year 2000 were estimated
to reach about $250 billion. This number was a gross under-
estimation; the health -care industry currently grosses almost
a thousand billion dollars and the biggest-selling pharmaceutical
drugs each generate one billion dollars annually in the United
States alone. Potential pharmacological breakthroughs
generate corresponding changes in stock prices and make
headlines in the business sections. The profit motive
permeates the medical world completely."

"As a result, diseases are essentially classified according
to the availability of drugs, which are the only form of therapy
that can be produced on an industrial scale. The drug
companies have an ideal partner in scientific medicine,
which ignores (for the most part) social and psychological
causes of disease. The mechanic "physician" is offered a
tool that can be reproduced without limit."