Welcome Page : Satish Kumar
HEALTHY PLANET,
HEALTHY PEOPLE
IT WOULD BE more accurate to call the National Health Service the National Sickness Service. The nhs comes to our aid when we are sick. It does not promote health, it does not prevent sickness and it does not treat the causes of sickness be they personal, social or environmental. On the contrary, in alleviating the symptoms through drugs, there are often side effects and sometimes new sickness is created.
So in spite of billions of pounds being spent every year there is never enough money to treat the ever-increasing 'ill' population of Britain. Hospitals are bursting at the seams. If we were to design a truly national 'health' service, we would be concerned about the health of people and the health of the Earth itself before any illness erupted. Officials talk about "joined-up thinking", which in essence should be holistic and integrated thinking, but in practice the NHS functions through departments, compartments, fragments, segments and specialisation.
Health has become a commodity to buy and sell, to make money, to make profit, to build vested interests. We can hardly say that drug companies are interested in health: they are interested in how to sell more and more drugs. The profiteering of drug companies is a scandal. The way they prey on the vulnerability of the sick is nothing less than a matter of shame. That illness should be a way of making profit defies any concept of civilisation. Mahatma Gandhi was once asked by a journalist, "What do you think of western civilisation?" He replied, "It would be a good idea!"
Many of our diseases are caused by this so-called civilisation. Cancer, obesity, coronary heart disease and many others have their origins in polluted food, polluted air, polluted water, work-related stress, loneliness, break- down of communities, and so on.
In this issue we feature a number of health-related articles. We begin with the sickness of the Earth itself: Mark Lynas explains how global warming is the fever of Gaia; unless we have a healthy planet we cannot have healthy people. Then we consider the health of animals; the idea that we can obtain human health by inflicting suffering on animals is simply preposterous. We can be healthy only when we are kind, and we can be kind only when we are healthy. Ray Greek shows that testing medicines on animals has nothing to do with finding cures and everything to do with finding profits.
All personal health flows from the fact that the body is not separate from the mind: if we are psychologically depressed and deprived then no amount of drugs can make us healthy. Charles Montagu and Mary-Jayne Rust point out that personal pain and mental suffering lead to physical and social breakdown. All is connected. That is the message of the ancient healing tradition from India called Ayurveda. Dr Raman asks, "How can you have good personal health if you are suffering from poverty, injustice and environmental pollution?" Our dependence on harsh modern medicine can only bring negative results at great financial, personal and social cost. We need more subtle approaches, like homeopathy, naturopathy, good food, good exercise, fulfilling lives and even prayer. This is the wisdom that Misha Norland and Larry Dossey share in their articles. I hope you, the reader, find this issue challenging, informative and helpful.
Satish Kumar
Keywords: holistic healthcare, alternative medicine
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