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The Plot Against Asthma & Allergy Patients

Overview of The Plot Against Asthma & Allergy Patients:

OVERVIEW

The key differentiator between The Plot Against Asthma & Allergy Patients and other books on this subject is that this book outlines the underlying mechanisms for allergies and related diseases. Other books dwell on various triggers that provoke the symptoms and stop short of explaining what specific defects differ allergy patients from those who do not have them. Accordingly, these books center on the elimination of the triggers. Books by doctors suggest symptomatic drugs; books by lay authors stress the need of vitamins, minerals, and a healthy way of life. Neither advice goes as far as is necessary, while the defects --- left unrepaired --- grow and the disease progresses. The Plot Against Asthma & Allergy Patients spells out how to correct the causative defects and thus, cure patients or greatly improve their condition.

There is a great paradox in today's medicine: although allergies are recognized to be among the most reversible chronic diseases in the western world, the allergies are getting more and more resistant to all medications, while asthma mortality is rising fast. The main reason for this paradox is concealment of the pivotal knowledge on the substance that lies at the root of these diseases histamine. Histamine is the key mediator of all allergic diseases, the omnipresent mediator of all immune processes, and a major neurotransmitter. The body's histamine actively participates in and regulates numerous vital functions. Among them are hormonal production; production of other neurotransmitters (including such important ones as serotonin, endorphins and noradrenalin); locomotor activity; vascular tone; bowel motility; pain; libido; thirst and appetite. This makes it clear why an imbalanced production of histamine may produce varied symptoms. Its excessive release is the cause of allergic diseases. Medicine knows this, and continuously develops antihistamines and other much more powerful (and much more hazardous) medications to block histamine release. What allergy medicine hides, is the fact that histamine is an autacoid, a self-remedy, and can thus rectify its own production. Histamine was synthesized almost a century ago. Similar to the body's histamine, the man-made substance possesses regulatory and remedial properties. Therefore, the whole body responds to therapy with synthetic histamine. The fact that synthetic histamine can replace a lot of medications has become the central reason for the willful effort by the medical establishment to draw attention away from it.

This book traces the activity of histamine in all of its multiplicity both in health and disease, and in that, it is a breakthrough in the field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), a 20+year-old medical science that views the body on a holistic level. PNI is rarely taught in medical schools, and in the rare cases when it is, attention is given mainly to the effects of the psyche on the immune system. In contrast, this book provides the scientifically based practical approach, which allows the correction of numerous chemical imbalances in the body, including neurologic disturbances, by targeting specific ailing immune mechanisms responsible for histamine production.

Allergies are genetically predetermined, with the genes being, as a rule, structurally normal. They only malfunction (unlike the changed genes that are found in conditions such as Down's Syndrome) when allergic symptoms are experienced. Histamine, both cellular and synthetic, has a unique ability to reach the genes and correct their functioning. This process is nothing less than genomodulation or, indeed, natural genetic engineering. The book shows the biochemical pathway, through which histamine reaches the faulty genes and rectifies their work, thus making the effect long-lasting.

The repair of the underlying immune mechanisms frees allergy patients from dependence on medications, allows them the enjoyment of being outside at any season, having pets, eating their favorite foods, and partaking in physical/recreational activity --- all of which would not have been possible under conventional treatments. Besides, histamine therapy rids patients of migraine and other vascular headaches. It can greatly help or even cure those who have chronic fatigue syndrome, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, irritable bowel syndrome, and certain non-specific symptoms --- ailments that are poorly diagnosed and considered as untreatable.

Histamine treatment cannot be classified under the category of alternative medicine.It is completely based on findings that have come from mainstream scientific research, but have not been systematized and cohesively collated into something greater than the sum of all of the fragmented data on the topic. Histamine has empirically been used worldwide for almost a century with only limited success. If at the dawn of its employment, there was not enough theoretical information to make the therapy successful, the accumulated findings indicate that histamine's far-reaching medicinal properties can replace numerous medications. The danger of shrinking the drug market prompted the concealment of the knowledge on histamine, which has been skillfully completed by now.

This is the first book that has assembled the collective research on the positive effects of histamine. The author has advanced his own theory on the effects of this substance in disease and recovery not only in allergies and asthma, but also in numerous related chronic diseases. His work is substantiated by the works of the leading scientists in the field of allergy and his own practice in the field.

Efforts to suppress the use of histamine became evident when the author --- following an 8-year battle with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the governing medical body in Canada's largest province --- was reprimanded and forbidden to employ histamine in the treatment of his patients. The ban on histamine is sinister as it deprived the doctor's patients of the only therapy that was helping them. It is also unprecedented, since histamine research and usage have a track record of nearly 100 years. The fact that the doctor was prohibited to use it, despite having submitted a wealth of scientific information on histamine's efficacy and having enabled the improvement/recovery of about 2,500 of his patients, makes the ban even viler.

Whether you are a sufferer, know of someone who is, or you're a medical practitioner, The Plot Against Asthma & Allergy Patients is a must-read to understand not only the truth behind these widespread diseases and the way to combat them, but also the concerted efforts by the Medical Establishment to obliterate and distort all information related to histamine in order to serve vested interests of its corporate 'sponsors' within the drug industry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Felix Ravikovich obtained his medical degree and specialized in Internal Medicine in the former Soviet Union. Since 1985, he has practiced in Toronto specializing in allergy and asthma. His presentations at international conferences on the effective treatment with histamine were published in leading medical journals. This is his first book for the general public and medical colleagues.

Dr. Ravikovich describes his clinical experience with histamine a synthetic version of the body's substance that stimulates the body to heal itself. His histamine therapy freed hundreds of asthma, allergy, and migraine sufferers from drugs that have disastrous effects on patients' health and the course of the diseases, for which these drugs are prescribed.

Unlike other books that concentrate on triggers, this book spells out the primary cellular and genetic defects in patients with allergies, asthma, and related diseases and shows how to repair these defects. The author substantiates this through the theoretical works of the world's leading scientists.

Dr. Ravikovich undertook an extensive detective search of literature on molecular biology, immunopharmacology, genetics, and clinical medicine. This led him to unprecedented revelations. The scientific foundation for the treatment that could save millions from suffering and dying, has been concealed by the medical elite to enable the pharmaceutical industry to develop only those drugs that do not cure and ensure indefinite patient dependence.

Dr. Ravikovich tells the story of his own battle with the medical regulatory authorities, which work actively to suppress effective, scientifically grounded medicine to protect not patients', but corporate interests.

Dr. Ravikovich resides in Toronto, Canada where he continues to practice medicine.

Email: fravik@rogers.com

BOOK REVIEW

Renovating Medicine

by Helke Ferrie

“Practicing medicine without knowledge of biochemistry and physiology is merely pop-gun pharmacy.”

Sir William Osler 1891

“Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is today controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science.”

Sir William Osler 1909

As the publisher and editor of this book it is an exceptional pleasure to be asked to write an introduction to this most unusual work. Many readers who know me from my regular articles on the politics of medicine published in Vitality Magazine, Alive and others, share my conviction that the greatest problem modern medicine faces in our time is the perverting influence of political and corporate power on good medical practice and medical research. To make medicine once again patient-centered, not patent-centered, and to free medical research from corporate priorities, is the task of our time as surely as it was the task in the 18th century to remove political power from kings and put it into the hands of the people.

Indeed, the most profound insight I have experienced first as a medical science writer, and now as a publisher of “Books on Medicine that Works”, is the discovery that in virtually all areas of medicine the basic scientific breakthroughs achieved in the leading research institutions are rarely communicated to people, are very often not even taught to medical students, and are not readily available to practicing doctors.

What IS readily available to everybody is information on yet another supposedly miraculous drug which promises to alleviate the symptoms of any known disease. Pick up any recent edition of Macleans Magazine, for example, and attached to its outside you will find, courtesy of GlaxoSmithKline, in dramatically colored red, white, and black a folder stating: “IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR PEOPLE WITH ASTHMA ENCLOSED.” A handy little quiz inside allows the reader to be sure in seconds that he or she may suffer from asthma more seriously than previously thought and that their “asthma is not under control.” This message comes to you courtesy of GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s largest producer of steroid puffers.

You are holding in your hands a book that, unlike the above advertisement, really does contain important information for people suffering from asthma. Dr. Ravikovich is fully familiar with the world-wide basic science research on allergic diseases, successfully used a cure and reported on his results at international conferences. He also tells you why that cure is not generally known or available. Here is the story of a doctor who fought for his patients.

This book provides the reader with a political revelation, a medical tour de force, and a scientific detective story. It will take you into the world of the immune system and its biochemistry and you will become thoroughly familiar with the world’s leading medical journals and the elegant medical research into the bio-chemistry of the causes of asthma and allergic disease.

But this is also a shocking detective story: you will learn how those very same medical researchers, who to this day are celebrated leaders in the community of immunologists, mysteriously disavowed their own findings and effectively betrayed patients worldwide as they bowed to corporate agendas - for reasons best known to themselves. Although this seems unbelievable at first, it is not without precedent.

The same developments have been published with regard to cancer and psychiatric illnesses. There, too, some of the leading researchers who had discovered the underlying mechanisms of both areas of illness with the potential cures for both, and had published their findings in the world’s most prestigious science journals, What is significant here is to understand clearly, that none of that research in allergy, cancer and psychiatry was superceded by new findings, or in any way proven incorrect, or found to be a dead end for scientific research. The astonishing revelations contained in this book are supported by what happened in cancer and psychiatric research because in those areas, the revival of all that useful medical research is beginning to happen now. It is my fervent hope that this outstanding book will start the same process of revival for asthma and allergy.

Today, the sell-out of medical practice to agendas that have nothing to do with curing the sick, is nearly total. Patients are now referred to as “consumers” who are encouraged to believe that they have “choices” of treatment offered in that enormous market of modern medicine run as a business. It is as if illness has become an accepted life-style choice - right after the car industry. After all, Pfizer is not only the world’s largest pharmaceutical corporation, but also the world’s second largest corporation. The representatives of the drug companies are accepted as “stake-holders” in medicine to the point where they are part of determining standards of practice, sit on the councils of the medical licensing authorities, virtually control all medical research in the absence of publicly funded research (but not in most of continental Europe), and act as policy and fundraising staff for our political leaders.

As for the business mantra of “consumer choice”, for the asthma and allergy patient it’s basically steroids or steroids or steroids: mint flavored syrups for kids, or laced with antibiotics (to cover all bases), or as shots, as creams, and usually as the ever present puffer shaped as a toy for kids, handy and pretty like a lipstick for the ladies. As for the cure, “profits can only be harvested from chronic disease” a CEO of a pharmaceutical giant observed in a recent shareholder’s meeting.

But whose responsibility is it to fix this situation? Consider this then: The world’s most prestigious science journal, Nature (March 28, 2002), ran an article entitled “Can you believe what you read?” showing how the editors of the most respected medical journals have begun to do some radical housecleaning when it became overwhelmingly apparent that published research too often reflects corporate interests o the point of distorting the observed facts. On June 27th 2002 Nature reported that even medical bio-ethicists are now “being offered stock board positions, consulting contracts, research grants, and even stock options” by pharmaceutical companies - and they accept these goodies! Two international conferences were held in 2002 on conflicts of interest in medicine (Atlanta and Warsaw). The former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, justly famous for her fearless scrutiny of corruption in medicine, now works closely with the Center for Science in the Public Interest (www.csip.org), a watchdog exposing unethical behavior of doctors selling out to industry and industry’s false or self-servingly incomplete product claims.

Just how bad things have become can be measured by the fact that on February 5 2002 the prestigious journal, Annals of Internal Medicine (vol. 136, no. 3) and the UK’s famous Lancet simultaneously published the “Physicians Charter” as a new manifesto to guide medicine (www.professionalism.org). The charter asserts that it is time doctors get back to the basics. The Charter reads like the Hippocratic Oath of 2,500 years ago translated in modern English. The message is simple and blunt: don’t abuse your patients financially or sexually, don’t hurt them, let them chose among available treatments, and treat them properly even if they are black, Jews, poor, retarded, dying, just plain old, or don’t have any money, and don’t blab about them to others without their consent. Central among all these ancient basics of medical ethics was the admonishment that a doctor must not lie when you do research because somebody offers to pay you for it. (The immunologists whose work is discussed in this book would do well to read this Charter.) Wow! This document was prepared by an international team of medical ethicists for the international effort called the “Medical Professionalism Project”. It states at the outset: “We share the view that medicine’s commitment to the patient is being challenged by external forces of change” which “tempt physicians to forsake their traditional commitment to the primacy of patients’ interests.”

So, that is what the international medical community admits, Dr. Ravikovich provides in this book evidence in support of this urgent need for a major renovation of the House of Medicine and why that renovation must start with doctors, after which the pharmaceutical industry is easily tamed.

This book is not simple. But neither is living with asthma, hives, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, constantly itchy skin, the annual round of hay fever, or potentially fatal food allergies. The information in it is not “alternative” – the research is entirely mainstream. Here you will learn why you are sick, why your standard treatments don’t work very well and make you sicker through so-called side effects, how you could become healthy, or at the very least greatly improved and get off drugs, and what you can do to help make this healing treatment available.

This is no ordinary self-help book - indeed I wish it was. This book is a crash course in asthma and allergy medicine designed to empower you with knowledge and hopefully inspire you with a holy rage and the determination to help bring out these facts so they become generally known to doctors and patients alike.

A good book like this does not need my recommendation, but a quick guided tour might help the reader who is new to this material. Thus, Part 1 provides the technical detail of how the immune system works, as is generally agreed upon by scientists in this field. For the beginner Part 2 may serve as a useful beginning; Part 5 will help patients understand why they are not improving and what is known in mainstream pharmacology about these drugs and their serious limitations and dangers. Part 4 has the provocative title “Histaminegate” which refers intentionally to the Watergate scandal of the 1970’s. This chapter deserves the reader’s closest attention and is worth reading with the greatest attention to detail. The remaining chapters provide information on the various allergic diseases which will be of special interest to different readers.

The Epilogue is something of a bombshell because it describes the most recent publication on allergy research that came out only two weeks before this book was submitted in its manuscript form to me. This research paper fully validates everything you read in this book and returns to the research that was more and more successfully hidden over the past two decades. The politically significant fact of this development is that this was published by the Swiss government’s research institution funded by tax money, not drug companies. The equally important medical historical facts are that now “the truth which was denied entrance through the door has forced its way in by the window” - as the Russian proverb puts it and as Dr. Ravikovich is fond of reminding us.

The Appendix contains documentation on the terrible struggle Dr. Ravikovich became involved in when his life-saving treatment was attacked by the medical licensing authorities, and suggestions are included on what you, as the reader or friend of an asthma and allergy patient, can do to change the current situation. (See especially the excerpt in the Appendix from the 2001 Glasnost Report to the Ontario government.)

Treating asthma, allergy and related diseases successfully, at a fraction of the current cost of mere limited symptom control, is an art and a science easily learned by any interested doctor. There is currently a great deal of interest in therapies that cure and are not merely symptom control methods generally employed by the majority of physicians. What suffering patients often don’t realize is how terrible the frustration of doctors is who wish to help but often are prevented by the regulatory systems from employing new methods.

If we want this scientifically validated treatment approach to become available for doctors to use, it could be learned within a week or two. It is founded on basic science and as a treatment validated through experience. However, here in Ontario the use of histamine to treat asthma is literally forbidden since 1996 even though blocking medical innovation and overruling patient choice is contrary to the Medicine Act of Ontario and the Helsinki Accord on Human Rights which Canada signed in 1988. This ban was ordered without a single item of supporting scientific evidence and bypassed all mandatory debate required for the formulation of medical standards of practice. You can change that. Read this book and consider the information given in the Appendix and exercise your rights as a citizen and as a patient.

Helke Ferrie is a Canadian medical science writer who specializes in the politics of medicine.  She runs Kos Publishing Inc, a company dedicated to books on nutritional and environmental medicine by doctors and health practitioners. Visit www.kospublishing.com.