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E.O. - Plague

The Coming Plague Is This For Real?
By Jim Lynn

The Cell From Hell: After breathing the fumes from a tank of dying fish, JoAnn Burkholder's mind dulled and her motor skills slowed. Burkholder, a research scientist at North Carolina State University, had recently discovered the algae-like parasite responsible for killing millions of fish in North Carolina's estuaries. She was in her lab doing research on the organism when the attack occurred.

Unaware of her sluggishness, JoAnn kept working for four more hours until, barely able to walk, colleagues helped her out. Burkholder had inadvertently exposed herself to Pfiesteria, the name she had given to the parasite that caused her illness. After suffering from stomach cramps, labored breathing and acute short term memory loss that lasted for eight days, she recovered... somewhat. In the past four years she's been hospitalized with pneumonia eight times, and cannot exercise without triggering some sort of respiratory illness. Two other researchers working on the case suffered similar symptoms.

Based on physician reports of patients with open sores and other strange symptoms, Burkholder estimates Pfiesteria has already struck more than one hundred fisherman. Because of its ability to attack the human immune system, Pfiesteria has been dubbed "the cell from hell," and "Pfiesteria AIDS," by scientists studying it. Failing to chemically characterize Pfiesteria in human blood samples, researchers are unable to develop a test for Pfiesteria in humans. What's worse, there is no known cure.

Pfiesteria is just one of many new strains of super bugs that has the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) worried about what humanity fears the most, an uncontrolled disease outbreak commonly referred to as "the plague." But is an outbreak likely in an age when technology has come so far?

The Plague of 1918: In 1918, an outbreak of a strange influenza virus killed more than 20 million people world-wide, making it the worse infectious disease episode ever. But it wasn't until 1997 that a genetic analysis of the virus, taken from lung tissue at autopsy 79 years ago, revealed its face. Scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology who performed the analysis, concluded the virus was unique, though closely related to "Swine flu." While the disease that caused the plague of 1918 is called "Spanish flu," the virus apparently is a mutation that evolved in American pigs from pig farms located in South Carolina. U.S. soldiers spread the virus world-wide when they were mobilized for World War I.

What is so scary about Phiesteria is that researchers have attributed its sudden growth from sewage and run-off from pig farms that dot the North Carolina landscape. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology warns that such a plague could happen again. In light of Pfiesteria, that warning needs to be shouted loud and clear.

When a pandemic occurs, it is without doubt, the most devastating of all human experiences. Entire families and even whole communities can be erased within a few short weeks. Society itself can be threatened as death, that great separator, visits household after household.

Why Doctors Can't Help: Even the tiniest of life forms fight for survival. As doctors throw antibiotics up against life threatening pathogens, they will mutate, or change their genetic make-up to beat the drug used against them. This evolutionary process is relentless. So much so, there are few, if any, drugs on the market that can effectively stop a pandemic, should one occur. Killer viruses mutate with at times lightning speeds, rendering the most potent and newest antibiotics useless.

In NEW York City, health professionals are fighting a mutant strain of a disease long thought conquered...a multi-drug resistant form of Tuberculosis (TB). To make matters worse, there appears to be several different strains erupting that are resistant to ALL known drugs. TB in its third stage of development is highly contagious and can be passed from a simple sneeze. World-wide, three million people died of TB in 1996.

In Africa, it's Malaria. In South America, it's Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. In Pakistan, it's Congo Virus. In all of these places, modern drugs are coming up short as killer pathogens find ways to resist.

As another example. The death rate from people contracting hepatitis C is expected to triple within 20 years. That's because there is a "large reservoir of people with chronic infection," according to D.W. Powell of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. An estimated 4 million people infected with hepatitis C can expect major health problems, such as cirrhosis or liver cancer. Currently, the only treatment available is Interferon, but it is only effective in 25% to 30% of patients. Again, the microbe that causes hepatitis is finding ways to resist...to live.

We live in an age of super bugs, an era of strange diseases brought on, in part, by the very drugs used to eradicate them. It should be obvious that using drugs to fight these diseases is the wrong path to follow. There must be a better answer.

Behold The Human Body: The Psalmist wrote, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." The human body is one of the most perfectly designed forms in all creation. We were created with an immune system so powerful, it is fully capable of defeating any disease causing organism that invades our body.

But to insure its virility, we must SUPPORT our immune system through a variety of means, including proper nutrition and exercise. We must AVOID introducing unnatural substances into our bodies like man-made toxic chemical drugs. Easy enough to say, quite another to achieve. With over 100 million Americans suffering from chronic forms of illnesses, all attributable to having low immune systems, we must NOT be doing something right.

Each time we shampoo our hair, brush our teeth, apply under arm deodorant, eat an antacid, take medication, draw a breath of air, or eat processed food, we are ingesting or absorbing harmful chemical drugs into our bodies. Drugs are everywhere, but especially in our food and personal care products. Given time, like drops of water filling a jar, our once strong immune system becomes compromised, unable to function at it's God given best.

As our immune systems become compromised, we open the door for disease causing organisms to gain a foothold. Early warning signs that our immune system has been compromised are allergies, indigestion, constipation, hemorrhoids, high blood pressure, weight gain, sinus infections, colds and flu.

Eating refined or processed food only deprives the body of needed nutrients the immune system depends on. Such foods are so depleted that U.S. federal law requires that a few artificial vitamins and minerals be added back. Such foods are labeled "enriched" or "fortified." You should know whenever you see those words on a food package, it means important nutrients are missing.
In an age of drugs and depleted food value, it is not enough to simply eat and groom ourselves. We must deliberately ADD or SUPPLEMENT our diet with those ESSENTIAL missing ingredients and find ways to make up for harmful chemicals that continually invade our bodies.

ENTER ESSENTIAL OILS: Essential Oils are the healing life-force of plants. They contain virtually all of the plants healing nutrients, oxygenating molecules, amino acid precursors, coenzyme A factors, trace minerals, enzymes, vitamins, hormones and more. That is why a growing number of health professionals consider essential oils to be medicine...a medicine no known pathogen can survive.

Dr. Jean Valnet, a well known French medical researcher points out that the essential oil from Thyme literally destroys the anthrax bacillus, the glanders bacillus, staphylococcus, the diphtheria bacillus, meningococcus, and Kock's bacillus, which is the bacteria responsible for tuberculous lesions.

Dr. Valnet adds that the works of Morel and Rochaix have demonstrated the vapors of Lemon oil alone will neutralize the typhus bacillus and staphylococcus in only five minutes and the diphtheric bacillus in just twenty minutes.
Moreover, infectious pathogens have yet to find a way to become resistant to essential oils, as they do with antibiotics. Dr Valnet states, " Infectious microbes do not appear to become accustomed to the essential oils as they do to the many forms of treatment using antibiotics. This is very important. Antibiotics are certainly powerful weapons, but they can be dangerous and are easily and often misused. Indeed, quite apart from the abusive use of antibiotics, the dramatic increase recently in the resistance of pathogenic microorganisms to all types of antibiotics, sometimes even the latest ones, is well known. However, we are finding that the effects of the same oils remain almost unchanged..." Recent testing in the U.S. has shown the essential oil of Clove, Oregano and Thyme to be even more powerful than penicillin, the medical community's mainline defense for fighting these "strange" diseases. The results of this study will be soon published in a well-known medical journal.

From a scientific viewpoint, there is much more to learn about essential oils before they are endorsed on a public level as a defense against disease. However, from an anecdotal perspective, essential oils have long been known to save lives.
Essential Oils and The Plague: Plagues are nothing new to mankind. They have occurred over the past millennia, killing many millions of people. History records that essential oils have played a major role in saving the lives of those people who understood their value, and used them as a means of self protection.

Housed in the Royal English Archives is the record of thieves who robbed the dead of valuables during the Black Plague of the 17th century. Although contact with diseased bodies spelled certain death, the thieves boldly went from house to house without ever coming down with the plague. It turns out they were members of a family of perfumers, Because of their intimate knowledge of certain essential oils they rubbed on their bodies, they had no fear of this deadly disease.

History also shows the entire town of Bucklersbury, England escaped the plague, while residents of other towns were dying in large numbers. It is believed because this town was the center of the European Lavender trade that the oil derived from this plant protected the towns residents. We now know that the essential oil of lavender has microbial properties that rivals many modern antibiotic drugs.

From earliest recorded history, essential oils have played an active role in commerce. The record is there for any to research. From Holy Scripture to secular writings, essential oils are recorded as mankind's first known medicine. That we have forgotten them does not mean they are worthless, only that we need to find them again.

Truth or Consequences: That a full blown, world-wide plague could strike again seems impossible to many people. Yet, we live in an age when just one infected person could trigger a world-wide pandemic.

Consider the effect of just one infected person aboard an enclosed passenger plane. As passengers breathe the same air over and over, it is feasible, one person could infect hundreds of passengers before landing. The spread of such a deadly disease would be impossible to stop. As the newly infected passengers go their separate ways, they could be carrying death with them, infecting anyone they came in contact with.
If the immune system of those infected is virile and operating at full strength, there would be nothing to fear. Such a human body would attack and defeat the invader. But what happens to the body whose immune system is impaired, lacking the ability to defend against invasion? This is why it is so important we take responsibility for our own health. Unless we are willing to learn what constitutes good health and then practice it, we are exposing ourselves to constant threats of disease.

The knowledge to live a healthy, disease-free life is freely available. Yet if we ignore that knowledge, we will suffer the consequences, as surely as night follows day. Essential Oils are not a "magic bullet." But they do represent one rung on a ladder that can bring you to the health you were meant to have.

Is the coming plague real? No one can say with certainty. Yet all the signs point to such an event in the near future. In spite of all advances in technology, nature still rules over our lives. It is a wise person who understands this and relies on nature, rather than the wisdom of man, to seek out truth and health. Essential oils are part of that truth. They embody that essential missing link in our good health. -Georgiana Duncan