INTERESTING TIMES

"The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol. In a community lacking pure-water supplies, the closest thing to "pure" fluid was alcohol. Whatever health risks were posed by beer (and later wine) in the early days of agrarian settlements were more than offset by alcohol's antibacterial properties. Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties. Many genetically minded historians believe that the confluence of urban living and the discovery of alcohol created a massive selection pressure on the genes of all humans who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Alcohol, after all, is a deadly poison and notoriously addictive. To digest large quantities of it, you need to be able to boost production of enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases, a trait regulated by a set of genes on chromosome four in human DNA. Many early agrarians lacked that trait, and thus were genetically incapable of "holding their liquor." Consequently, many of them died childless at an early age, either from alcohol abuse or from waterborne diseases. Over generations, the gene pool of the first farmers became increasingly dominated by individuals who could drink beer on a regular basis. Most of the world population today is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol. (The same is true of lactose tolerance, which went from a rare genetic trait to the mainstream among descendants of the herders, thanks to domestication of livestock.) The descendants of hunter gatherers--like many Native Americans or Australian Aborigines--were never forced through this genetic bottleneck, and so today they show disproportionate rates of alcoholism. The chronic drinking problem in Native American populations has been blamed on everything from the weak "Indian constitution" to the humiliating abuses of the U.S. reservation system. But their alcohol intolerance most likely has another explanation: their ancestors didn't live in towns."
--Steven Johnson, in The Ghost Map, pages 103-4.

The letter behind the cut has been circulating for years. It helps.
( With Deep Gratitude to our Native Elders. )

The tribes of the land are on the ball; they have added Naturopathic Medicine to the official definition of health profession in this bill. This will allow NDs to provide care to their communities at a fraction of the cost of "modern" medicine. The bill up to bat is HR 2708, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. It would give NDs a slot in a federal health program and set us up for participating in a federal loan repayment program. This is good news to me. I was already thinking that I might be working for a tribe somewhere. I appreciate the ferociousness of many natives I have known. Help naturopathy get a foothold where people already know the value of traditional and natural medicine, on the reservations! Contact your representative!

SGA welcomes Julia Ross!
Author of The Diet Cure & The Mood Cure
Monday March 31st
9am-1pm
Mood & Alternatives to Antidepressants
This is FREE
for NCNM students!
( so I went )

A Cherokee Indian elder was teaching his grandchildren about life.
( the story )

OK, I confess, I didn't like him at first because he's fat. Yep. I admit it, I'm a skinny bigot. But on further study this guy is good. New Mexico two term governor who was elected the second time with 69% of the votes. SIXTY NINE PERCENT. Since when have you seen a state full of people approve of someone's work that much? And New Mexico is racially mixed--the Latinos, the Tribes, and the whites all support him. He's half Mexican.
( More )

In the last 2 days I have been barraged by the suggestion of Barack Obama running for president in 2008. The International Herald Tribune headlines that he admits that he inhaled (as a "confused" teenager). One republican pundit called him "the most dangerous man in America", fueling the hype. Obama is half Kenyan with roots in Hawaii, and he's young and culturally adept. At present he is a junior Democratic Senator for Illinois. He is against the war in Iraq, and gives that as his main difference from Hillary Clinton. There's a notion that they could be running mates. What a combo that would be.
( more )