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Page 37
| year-old daughter, Heidi Rose, who has never had so much as an aspirin or antibiotic. This is not because she has never gotten sick or because we are adamantly opposed to conventional drugs: it is because we have used herbs, most notably echinacea, to stimulate her body's own defenses to manage illness. In our community there are many children, mostly of herbalists, who have likewise been able to manage the majority of childhood illnesses without the use of conventional drugs. Echinacea is by far one of the most relied-upon herbs in the botanical kingdom used as an alternative to conventional antibiotics in adults and children. |
| In addition to those which are prescribed, large amounts of antibiotics are consumed when we eat commercial animal products. In fact, the majority of antibiotics produced in this country go to treating disease in commercially raised animals. In most of the commercial farms the animals are packed so tightly together that they are continually exposed to fecal contamination and develop a high incidence of disease. Large numbers of animals then share the same feed and water and so disease spreads, necessitating a continual ingestion of antibiotics. The antibiotics are consumed; pathogens begin to mutate in a manner that resists the effects of the antibiotics; we ingest the animal products; and a vicious cycle is generated that is leading to the reintroduction of many of the diseases that antibiotics once combated. |
| We begin the process of compromising our children's immune systems early on in their lives 1) by not breastfeeding which provides the baby with antibodies, and the "seeds" necessary for generating the healthy intestinal flora needed for a healthy immune system; 2) by vaccinating too early before their im- |
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