What should be done to fix the problem?
[National Institutes of Health] allocates almost $600 million for autoimmune disease research every year. That contrasts with $5 billion annually for cancer, which afflicts 9 million Americans. The other thing that we need to do is to make autoimmune disease a reportable disease. If your aunt goes in to see the doctor tomorrow and is told she has breast cancer, that must be reported by law to the federal government. Autoimmune diseases are not reportable diseases. Therefore, we really have no idea how big the problem is. Many scientists believe that the 24 million figure is vastly underreported.
How has Europe responded to the proliferation of untested chemicals?
Europe operates by what is called the precautionary principle, which says that if you have enough evidence to show that a product is probably doing harm, it behooves us to take that product off the market and do more studies before we bring it back on.
Europe has established a program called REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals), and over the next 10 years, 30,000 chemicals will undergo safety testing. Guess who's paying for it? Not the taxpayer, the chemical companies. In this country, we are light years behind Europe in terms of public policy. We know that certain agents damage the immune system, but we keep saying, "We need more studies to prove it." Until it's harmed enough people like tobacco, we're just not going to do anything about it.
What can the average person do in daily life to reduce the threat?
If you think of the problem like a barrel that's too full, you can make small changes without feeling totally overwhelmed. One of the easiest things to get rid of are chemical cleaners. There are so many different nonchemical cleaners on the market now, there is almost no excuse not to clean green. Or make your own: Take one part vinegar, two parts water and a dash of lemon, you've got a pretty good cleaner. Shop for nontoxic cosmetics and use alternatives to pesticides.
We also know that diet can have a profound effect on the immune system. If you clean up your diet, your body has fewer foreign agents to assess. So eat fewer processed foods, fewer packaged foods, more organic fruits and vegetables. And we know that stress hormones play a key role in the onset of many autoimmune diseases. So lessening stress is crucial.
david.kohn@baltsun.com
Autoimmune disease
*In these ailments, the body mistakenly attacks its own tissues.
*Key autoimmune diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, Type 1 diabetes, thyroiditis, Guillain-Barre syndrome and celiac disease.
*Twenty-four million Americans have an autoimmune disease, more than double the number with cancer.
*Diseases strike women more often; four of five patients in this country are women.
[Source: The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World out of Balance and the Cutting-Edge Science that Promises Hope]
