Milk Is Poison:Thats Why I Don't Drink It

THE MILK LETTER : A MESSAGE TO MY PATIENTS
Robert M. Kradjian, MD
Breast Surgery Chief Division of General Surgery,
Seton Medical Centre #302 - 1800 Sullivan Ave.
Daly City, CA 94015 USA

"MILK" Just the word itself sounds comforting! "How about a nice cup of
hot milk?" The last time you heard that question it was from someone who
cared for you--and you appreciated their effort.

The entire matter of food and especially that of milk is surrounded with
emotional and cultural importance. Milk was our very first food. If we
were fortunate it was our mother's milk. A loving link, given and taken.
It was the only path to survival. If not mother's milk it was cow's milk
or soy milk "formula"--rarely it was goat, camel or water buffalo milk.

Now, we are a nation of milk drinkers. Nearly all of us. Infants, the
young, adolescents, adults and even the aged. We drink dozens or even
several hundred gallons a year and add to that many pounds of "dairy
products" such as cheese, butter, and yogurt.

Can there be anything wrong with this? We see reassuring images of
healthy, beautiful people on our television screens and hear messages
that assure us that, "Milk is good for your body." Our dieticians insist
that: "You've got to have milk, or where will you get your calcium?"
School lunches always include milk and nearly every hospital meal will
have milk added. And if that isn't enough, our nutritionists told us for
years that dairy products make up an "essential food group." Industry
spokesmen made sure that colourful charts proclaiming the necessity of
milk and other essential nutrients were made available at no cost for
schools. Cow's milk became "normal."

You may be surprised to learn that most of the human beings that live on
planet Earth today do not drink or use cow's milk. Further, most of them
can't drink milk because it makes them ill.

There are students of human nutrition who are not supportive of milk use
for adults. Here is a quotation from the March/April 1991 Utne Reader:

If you really want to play it safe, you may decide to join the growing
number of Americans who are eliminating dairy products from their diets
altogether. Although this sounds radical to those of us weaned on milk
and the five basic food groups, it is eminently viable. Indeed, of all
the mammals, only humans--and then only a minority, principally
Caucasians--continue to drink milk beyond babyhood.

Who is right? Why the confusion? Where best to get our answers? Can we
trust milk industry spokesmen? Can you trust any industry spokesmen? Are
nutritionists up to date or are they simply repeating what their
professors learned years ago? What about the new voices urging caution?

I believe that there are three reliable sources of information. The
first, and probably the best, is a study of nature. The second is to
study the history of our own species. Finally we need to look at the
world's scientific literature on the subject of milk.

Let's look at the scientific literature first. From 1988 to 1993 there
were over 2,700 articles dealing with milk recorded in the 'Medicine'
archives. Fifteen hundred of theses had milk as the main focus of the
article. There is no lack of scientific information on this subject. I
reviewed over 500 of the 1,500 articles, discarding articles that dealt
exclusively with animals, esoteric research and inconclusive studies.

How would I summarize the articles? They were only slightly less than
horrifying. First of all, none of the authors spoke of cow's milk as an
excellent food, free of side effects and the 'perfect food' as we have
been led to believe by the industry. The main focus of the published
reports seems to be on intestinal colic, intestinal irritation,
intestinal bleeding, anemia, allergic reactions in infants and children
as well as infections such as salmonella. More ominous is the fear of
viral infection with bovine leukemia virus or an AIDS-like virus as well
as concern for childhood diabetes. Contamination of milk by blood and
white (pus) cells as well as a variety of chemicals and insecticides was
also discussed. Among children the problems were allergy, ear and
tonsillar infections, bedwetting, asthma, intestinal bleeding, colic and
childhood diabetes. In adults the problems seemed centered more around
heart disease and arthritis, allergy, sinusitis, and the more serious
questions of leukemia, lymphoma and cancer. Read the rest of the letter here: http://www.notmilk.com/kradjian.html