The Hazards Of Being Alive Today
The least expected and hence the most insidious dangers to life come on silent wings - in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. When we are in a car crash or explosion, at least we know where the the broken limbs or burns were sustained. However, silent deadly killers like heavy metals (mercury, lead, cadmium) and radiation (atmospheric fallout, industrial waste, medical and dental procedures), exert a cumulative toxicity upon living organisms.
Thanks to considerable pressure exerted by environmental groups upon governmental bodies, there has been a growing awareness in all sectors of society of the dangers to life and health caused by heavy metal and radioactive contamination. The pollutants are myriad in numbers - carcinogenic organic chemicals, acid-rain causing fuel stacks, teratogenic (causing deformities to embryos) chemicals in the plastics industry, leaching of phosphates from fertilizer application, lead from automobile exhausts, mercury in fish and algae, radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, to name but a very few.
The industrial workplace can be exceedingly hazardous in many occupations - coal and asbestos mining, chemistry laboratories, dental practices and nuclear medicine departments. Awareness of the dangers of these substances has led to greater safety precautions - the wearing of gas masks, lead aprons, clinical monitoring of blood and urine. However, it would be naive to think that we can escape these silent but lethal poisons anywhere on this industrialized planet. Simply being alive and breathing, we are inevitably exposed to numerous toxic substances.
The Dangers Of Heavy Metal Poisoning
One of the most lethal poisons known is mercury, which is put into our mouths as dental amalgam for fillings (97,119) and is found in common household products, such as thermometers and batteries. Some of the the toxic effects caused by mercury poisoning include headaches, limb tremors, tingling, depression, heart and other organ problems, which sometimes appear decades after exposure to the poisonous substance. Lead, also a lethal poison ever-present in paints, pipes, automobile and industrial exhausts, has been insinuated as a factor in the decline of the Roman Empire, and more recently, as a source of poisoning of slaves and slave owners in sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Cadmium, also found in batteries, is yet another toxic heavy metal.Heavy metals, such as mercury, lead and cadmium, are not easily discharged from the body - they linger and accumulate while exerting their toxic effects.
No Safe Limit Of Radiation
The threat posed to our very existence by radiation is widely known and reported; fear of nuclear war is considered to be a major factor in the psychological profile of a signficant number of young people alive today. Yet, leaving aside the gross dangers posed by threat of nuclear war, or the melt down of a nuclear power plant, there are still the exposures that result from simply living in today's world - atmospheric fallout, medical and dental procedures, and industrial uses of radioactive products, such as the irradiation of food to prolong its shelf-life (112).
Recently, a programme aired on British television documented the radioactive contamination of drinking water in the Southeast, including London region, by Amersham, a manufacturer of radioactive isotopes for medical and research purposes. Once radioactivity, or any other poison, gets into the atmosphere, the water or the earth, it enters the food chain, and affects a myriad of organisms, including microbes, insects, plant life, animals and humans. Radioactivity decays; however, some isotopes have half lives of hundreds of years or longer, contaminating a site for many generations.
There have been standards established by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) of a so-called "acceptable" dose of radiation exposure. In 1957 this was set at 5 rem per year for a worker or 0.5 rem for a member of the general public. Also, dose levels for each organ part of the body have been established. Since that time, it has been realized that this is an unacceptable level of risk, and that "acceptable" doses should be below 1 rem. These risk levels have been calculated on a probability that 1 in 10,000 workers will die each year, or that over a lifetime, 1 in 200 workers will die from an radiation-related accident at work. These risks do not take into account non-fatal damage such as cancer, damage to developing foetuses and the general debilitating effects of exposure to radiation. It is a generally accepted working premise by most informed researchers that there is no risk free dose of radiation; we just may not be able to quantify the damage which occurs over an extended period of exposure to radiation (112).
Awareness And Personal Commitment
What can be done to maintain optimum health is to minimize, as far as is practically possible, our exposure to industrial toxins and atmospheric pollutants, by carefully choosing where we live, refusing to permit aerial spraying of toxic substances such as insecticides, the building of polluting power-generating stations and by taking measures which enhance the body's natural mechanisms for dealing with poisons - the immune system, anti-oxidants and other natural detoxifiers found in various herbs, seaweeds and minerals (16).
Japan - Natural Choice For Mercury And Radiation Research
Organic Germanium was first developed and tested in Japan, where the first atomic bomb was exploded at Hiroshima, and where thousands of people suffered the hideous effects of eating fish poisoned with mercury, a disease called Minamata disease. Out of the horrors and misery of radiation and mercury poisoning has come awareness and, hopefully, more alertness to the consequences of our actions upon our environment. For example, when I was a graduate student, the best methods available for analysing the structure of nucleic acids was electrophoresis with methyl mercury. Because of the known toxicity of methyl mercury, and indeed, most of the other chemicals we were using, great attention was paid to safety measures to prevent exposure to such substances. However, great vigilance is required to safeguard our health. It was because of the shocking reports from the Minamata sufferers in the Japanese population that Dr. Asai undertook some research into organic Germanium's effects upon mercury in the body.
Organic Germanium Captures And Discharges Mercury (2)
In one experiment, mercury chloride was intravenously injected into a rat and induced the formation of a calcareous deposit in the cortex and medulla regions of the kidney. After ten days' treatment with organic Germanium, most of the calcareous deposits had disappeared, and within a further twenty days, no trace of calcium could be observed. Dead cells were found to be dispersed, in the tissue interstices. After thirty days of organic Germanium treatment, the dead cells had been replaced by healthy cells.
Another experiment, again in rats, described how the administration of organic Germanium at the same time as mercury protected against the development of any toxic symptoms, thus apparently preventing mercury poisoning.
Similar types of experiments were also performed using cadmium, another heavy metal toxin, which indicated that organic Germanium could discharge this poison from the body.
How Organic Germanium Discharges Heavy Metals
The toxicity from mercury is thought to arise from the interaction of mercury with free organic radicals, causing electromagnetic disturbances, affecting cells and organs possibly quite distanct from the port of entry (97). The most effective way of avoiding mercury poisoning is to prevent its accumulation, through discharging. Dr. Asai has theorized how organic Germanium may accomplish this - again, through the unique structure of this molecule.
"The organic Germanium compound has a cubic structure with three negative oxygen ions around Germanium. The negative oxygen ions are at the base of the cubic triangle. Two cubic triangles whose bases face each other make a molecule. (See diagram). Any heavy metal accumulated in a living body is in a state of positive ions which would jump into and be trapped in the mesh structure of the negatively-charged oxygen ions of the organic Germanium compound taken into the body."
This would explain organic Germanium's apparently beneficial effect of "capturing" other heavy metals, such as cadmium. Although there are no published data on Sanumgerman or Spirogermanium's application in this regard, since they also have lattice structures, extensively oxygen bonded, it could be predicted they would act in a similar way. Other trace minerals such as selenium have been shown to enhance the discharge of heavy metals; however the mechanisms may be quite distinct. This is certainly an area open to research, not only for mercury, but for lead, cadmium and other toxic heavy metals.
Organic Germanium: Antimutagen Against Radiation & Chemicals
Japanese researchers Kado et al have published the results of microbial genetic research documenting Germanium's potent ability to protect bacterial cells from mutation due to gamma irradiation and to a known chemical mutagen Trp-P-2 (3-amino-1-methyl-5H-pyrido(4.3-b)indole). In carefully controlled experiments subject to rigorous controls, Ge-132 was shown to reduce mutations in E. coli due to gamma radiation by twenty-fold (73). In a discussion of the possible mechanisms for this antimutagencity, it was suggested that Ge-132 may improve the fidelity, during DNA synthesis, of DNA polymerase III, a DNA-replicating enzyme. This has been shown to be the case with cobaltous antimutagen. Germanium oxide was shown to reduce the mutation rate in Salmonella typhimurium induced by Trp-P-2, by 40-67 fold (45). The mechanism for this mutation protection was also suggested to occur through amplifying the fidelity of DNA repair systems of the cell, not resident on a plasmid (extrachromosomal DNA).
These experiments at the molecular level offer solid evidence of organic and inorganic Germanium's ability to significantly protect against genetic mutations from gamma radiation and a known chemical mutagen.
Organic Germanium Protects Against Radiation Damage In Humans
The administration of Spirogermanium to rats induces the production of radiation resistant (2000 Rad) T suppressor cells, as described in Chapter . Administration of organic Germanium to patients undergoing radiation therapy for cancer offers protection against radiation-induced killing of white and red blood cells. What is needed most to fight cancer is a strong immune system; chemotherapy and radiation therapy are often toxic to "normal" and cancerous cells alike, thereby wiping out the white cells of the immune cells, leaving the patient extremely vulnerable to infection. The ability to irradiate and kill cancer cells while leaving the immune system intact would offer a significant advantage to any cancer patient, and would provide a magnificent example of using holistic and allopathic medicine in a complementary manner for the optimum health of the patient.
An excerpted case history illustrating the radiation-protecting effects of organic Germanium follows, summarized from Dr. Asai's book (2):
The patient, male, age not disclosed, had suffered amputation of the lower left leg, due to a cartilage tumour in the left heel. Several years later, due to the development of a cartilagenous tumour in the right lung, a lobectomy of the middle and lower lobes of the lung was performed. However, a thumb-sized tumour had started to develop in the remaining portion of the lung.
The man then started to avail himself of various natural medicine therapies - herbs, cold and hot stimulation therapy, Demiger therapy, fasting, photo-therapy, finger-pressure therapy, electric vibrator and a strict macrobiotic diet. He then tried ozone therapy, acupuncture and vacuum blood purification therapy, but the tumour continued to grow.
At this point the man began taking organic Germanium - 120 ml liquid solution and 200 mg powder per day. At the advice of the doctors of the Germanium clinic, cobalt radiation to kill the malignant cells was initiated. A large dose of 1000 mg organic Germanium was administered to reduce the damaging effects of the radiation.
During 47 almost consecutive daily cobalt radiation treatments, the man's physical strength and growing appetite was sustained. There were hardly any changes to the blood data as is shown in the following table:
