Death by Cheerios

I suppose it’s possible, but not likely. However, if even one child died from eating Cheerios, the public response would be swift. The news media would blast this around the country for several days. Lawyers would organize seminars on how to prosecute other cereal deaths. Congress might even intervene on behalf of the public at large and children everywhere. The executives of General Mills would have to explain how this could happen and why nothing was done to see that it never happened in the first place.

So why is the hospitalization of thousands of children and deaths of hundreds of them from the side effects of drugs not worthy of the same attention and response? Why is the permanent disability of even one child from medications not worthy of ongoing media attention. Again, if a child entered into a coma from eating Cheerios, the media would follow his day to day progress for quite a while until some final resolution was reached.

Okay, so Cheerios is generally considered to be a safe choice, and drugs have inherent risks. Are these risks worth any child’s life. How about your life? Don’t we use medications believing that they are basically safe and benefit us? You probably wouldn’t feel too good knowing that no doctor knows how drugs do what they do, or that no one does. That also means that no one can predict what they will do to you, good or bad, or what the long-term results of using them will be. The Physician’s Desk Reference lists most drugs that are available, and is a resource for doctors to use. There is however, no information on how the drugs work inside the body, because no one knows and it states this for almost all drugs listed in there.

Drugs are prescribed based on risk-reward. I have never understood how the risk of death or permanent disability was worth any reward, yet most drugs carry this risk. Drug companies should be required to provide more assurances and research that proves the safety of the drugs they sell. As it is, the drug companies have now switched to spending more money on advertising and marketing than they do on research.

So where does this leave us and our children? I believe that it places us exactly where we need to be, in a position of assuming personal responsibility for how we take care of our health and the health of our children. The drug companies are going to continue to do what they need to do to make profits, so we need to do what is in our best interests. We need to make the hard choices between commitment and popularity. We need to choose what is best for our bodies, and those of our children, if any of us is going to have a chance of living in a drug-free world, even if it is just our own little corner of the world.

To lead a healthy life, is to lead a life out of the ordinary. It is an extra-ordinary life!

Dr. Jeffrey S. McCombs, DC, is a 3^rd generation Doctor of Chiropractic, author of the book: LifeForce, and developer of the Life Force Plan. His 25 years of ongoing research and practice emphasizes addressing the nutritional, environmental, emotional, structural, and biochemical aspects of acute and chronic health conditions in his patients. An innovative forerunner in the continuously evolving fields of advanced healing arts, Dr. McCombs has worked with Olympic and Professional athletes, dancers, CEO’s, and people from all walks of life. He currently consults with people from around the world.

He can be contacted at www.mccombsplan.com, 888.236.7780.