My name is Dr. Marcia Smith. I have four children, and I have been a health consultant for over 20 years. During that time I have watched a frightening situation emerge–the acceleration of children’s health problems. I have had to be extremely vigilant to keep my children healthy. Many assumed that as infectious childhood diseases (measles, mumps, and polio) virtually disappeared, the reduction in mortality from those diseases would assure a bright future for our children and future generations. The emergence of ADD/ADHD, as well as the increased incidence of asthma, diabetes and cancer in our children, has dimmed the view of that bright future.

I was impressed by the following article written by my mentor, Dwight McKee, MD. It was published in Natural Food and Farming, April 1986. The title was “Pottenger Effect: Deterioration of Children’s Bodies.” The situation has worsened since this article was written 19 years ago!

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“Chronic diseases, the most alarming of which is cancer, are indeed on the rise amongst young people. One study recently said cancer is now the leading cause of death in children under the age of 15. For many years traumatic accident was the major cause of death in this age group. In fact, 50 years ago [i.e. 50 years prior to this 1986 article] a case of malignant disease in childhood was such a rarity that it was generally written about in medical journals. Now we see large numbers of our young succumbing to leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, other lymphomas, and osteogenic sarcomas, to name a few of the most common childhood cancers. Nearly everyone has experienced a case of childhood cancer within his or her family or group of friends and acquaintances.

Something is obviously very wrong.

Several decades ago an experiment of many years duration was carried out by a medical doctor named Frances M. Pottenger, Jr. He became interested in the effects of diet on laboratory animals, particularly cats. In the wild the cat’s natural diet consists of small animals, insects, frogs, birds, etc.–all of which are eaten not only raw, but also very recently alive. For his experiment Pottenger chose to study the effects of raw versus cooked diet. Starting with healthy cats, he fed half of them raw milk and raw meat and the other half were fed cooked meat and pasteurized milk. Dr. Pottenger observed rapid deterioration in the group fed cooked meat and milk, whereas the other group continued to flourish. The first evidence of problems in the cooked-diet group was a rising incidence of problems with reproduction, such as miscarriages. The coats of the animals became rough and dull, and the mothering behavior began to deteriorate. By the second generation the kittens in the cooked-food group were so high-strung and vicious that they had to be handled with protective equipment, which is what the teachers in our schools are beginning to need. The kittens began to show skeletal malformations, and BY THE THIRD GENERATION, THE CATS WERE UNABLE TO REPRODUCE AND DIED.

As you can see, the nutritional damage was evident in the second generation, and there were NO cats after the third generation. That’s what makes the results of Dr. Pottenger’s research so chilling– one generation of processed foods can make such a dramatic, obvious difference.

Dr. Pottenger further observed that foliage growing in the outdoor pens which had housed all of these generations of cats was much richer in the pen where the raw food had been provided. He planted beans in both pens, and they grew luxuriantly in the soil which had raw food recycled into it, but very poorly in the soil which had the cooked meat and pasteurized milk as its fertilizer–thus demonstrating an important ecological principle.

Many people have interpreted this experiment to mean that raw food is the proper diet for human beings. Obviously there are major differences between the metabolisms of cats and people–people have been cooking food since the discovery of fire.

What Pottenger’s study does demonstrate is that the quality of nutrition in one generation has powerful effects on following generations.
What we are witnessing in our present civilization is Pottenger’s experiment being done on a large scale with human beings as the animals being experimented on. There are no precedents for current agricultural, dietary, and ecological practices–we are all indeed “guinea pigs” in a vast experiment on the effects of highly industrialized living.

Since the post-World War II discovery that nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, left over in large quantities from the wartime explosive industries, could be used as fertilizer to produce enormous crop yields, agriculture has departed radically from traditional practices.

At the same time these decisions were made, nutritional scientists were unaware of the critical role of micronutrients in human nutrition. For the past 30 years [prior to 1986] our topsoil has become progressively more depleted of chromium, manganese, nickel, molybdenum, germanium, selenium, and iron, to name only a few minerals which we now know are vital to human metabolism. In addition, it was found necessary to create more and more hybrid strains of plants which would adapt to chemical fertilization. Constitutionally weaker than the original strain, these food plants became more and more susceptible to insect, fungus and weed overgrowth. Man’s inventive mind responded, not by using time honored methods of “organic” crop-destruction control, but by creating powerful insecticides, fungicides and herbicides, all synthesized from petroleum, all toxic to animal and human life. The chemicals have wiped out the earthworms and many of the necessary soil bacteria, thus shattering the delicate ecological balance of our topsoil. We have become the only species of animals on the planet who does not recycle food to the soil. Instead, we flush it down the toilets, filter it out of the water, treat our water with chlorine and other chemicals and then recycle it for washing, drinking, cooking and flush away even more of the precious organic matter out of our exhausted soils.

Having grown empty, toxic plants and animals on empty, toxic soils, the food industries make their dubious chemical magic, creating these “foods” with a shelf life of months to years. The ancient Egyptians perfected the embalming of the human body; modern corporate scientists have perfected the embalming of human food.

One of the first warnings about modern agribusiness came in the early ‘50’s from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Beatrice Trim Hunter gave us a horrifying inside look at food processing in her classic Consumer Beware. And yet the destructive practices of agribusiness continue to wreak havoc with our health.

Superimposed on these nutritional disasters, we suffer the wholesale pollution of our air and water. Heavy metal toxicity alone is a major metabolic stress, as documented in Henry Schroeder, MD’s The Poisons Around Us. A recent [recent to 1986] study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that each one of us is carrying around an average of 400 times more lead than our distant ancestors did. A geological survey done at the North Pole showed an increase in lead levels of 1000 times over the pre-Industrial Revolution level. One can only imagine what that means about the levels of lead in any major city in the Western world. Daily we experience fumes and air-born particulants.

Why, we might ask, given these alarming circumstances, are not more people doing something about our collective condition? One reason is the manipulation of mass consciousness via controlled media and the potent psychological techniques of the Madison Avenue advertisers. Another is that the effects of our rapidly changing ecology on human health are subtle and long term. Our physiological mechanisms are so well-designed that in many cases they seem able to run on just about any sort of fuel for 40 to 60 years, until our accumulated health insults are manifested as one of the degenerative diseases, which increasingly are being accepted as the logical, unavoidable ending to life. What is harder to see, and potentially most devastating to Western culture, is what we can appropriately term the “Pottenger Effect.” Clearly it is accelerating– we are now seeing babies born with malignancies and cardiovascular diseases. Birth defects have almost tripled in the last 25 years [prior to 1986]. What we can do about this situation is to individually take responsibility for the quality of our food and water, where we live, the levels of stress we choose to live with, and the types of work we choose to do, both in terms of its personal effects and its contribution to the direction of society.

Action follows awareness; energy follows thought. We as individuals can have the greatest impact by quietly living with awareness. This, in the long run will be more efficient and powerful than trying to convert an enormous society that is not ready to listen. Chronic illness is a powerful teacher if one is open to the lesson. Those of us who have become aware of the serious problems that our generation and our future generations face must become quietly available to those who truly seek to learn.”

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Since Dr. McKee’s article was published in 1986, there has been an acceleration of the problem as well as an acceleration in individuals “ready to listen.” My hope for our children is that You will work on your own diet and lifestyle and that you will find those who are ready now, share this information with them and offer them hope. Share how you are protecting your health and the health of your family. If they show interest in knowing more about “The Pottenger Effect,” tell them that they can order the video entitled The Pottenger Cat Studies by calling Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation at (800) 366-3748.

Dr. Marcia Smith

Marcia Smith holds three degrees–a Masters degree and PhD in Holistic Nutrition and Doctor of Naturopathy degree. She currently teaches throughout the U.S. and Canada.

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