PART I

Yes, we, the people are beginning to wonder. Why are all the horrible things happening in our country?

A Mercury News editorial of January 19, 1990 on "Nonchalant Killers" referred to the 10 boys who beat and killed another boy with apparent nonchalance. The writer uses the words "horrifying" and "barbarity" and asks; "Where is the Outrage?" He calls on us all "to reflect: What is lacking in our family, our education, our religion, our society today that we can produce 10 boys who feel no compunction... ?"

In a column the following day on " The numbing of America," by Richard Reeves, he bemoans the lack of "Shock and outrage" of an uncaring society that sees "the most honored officials... financiers... entertainers... revealed as liars, thieves, and junkies..." Reeves blames journalism, print and electronic media for numbing the American mind and heart. But journalism, even with its embellishments, is only reporting happenings, however increasingly shocking in severity and frequency they be. Hence society is numbed because "In increments you can get used to most anything." And he asks, "Why is this so?"

Well, the first step toward any solution is to ask questions and those two, "What is lacking?" and "Why is it so?" are certainly pertinent. They must not be answered superficially but thoughtfully analyzed.

These opening paragraphs were written over a year and a half ago. There was no response to the call for "outrage."

The San Jose Mercury News continues to report increasing numbers of actual horror stories and hopelessness. Only the names and numbers have changed. Now its "serial killer" Dahmer (17 deaths), multiple murderer Farley (7 deaths). State legislators prostitute themselves for tobacco dollars, shooting gallery tactics in our neighborhoods increase. The Teen Report says kids are "to the point of frightened confusion", Joe McNamara (former police chief, San Jose, CA) says "we've lost the drug war" and on ad infinitum.

It is , therefore, imperative that we ask, what is the cause, why is it happening and what can we do about it?

These three studies are intended to research these questions and provide answers. I urge my fellow citizens to save and seriously consider these articles.

A recent article in an Academy of Family Physicians paper on patient education said we generally regard the major health threats as heart disease, stroke and injuries - in that order. But, a better way the author said, was to identify the actual cause, not just the pathological diagnoses. Thus tobacco is the number one killer of Americans, 390,000 deaths per year (20% of all). Dietary excess is number two, 350,000 deaths annually due to Cardio-vascular disease, stroke, diabetes, and other related problems. Alcohol is the number three, killing 100,000 per year, mostly through injuries, but also from alcoholism and cirrhosis. He listed other causes. Then he noted all of these are "related to behavior." So patient education must begin here.

The importance of the above is to note the necessity to search for the actual cause, then ask why and then what can be done about it. In Medical school the embryo doctor is taught that when a patient presents himself with a variety of symptoms it is wise to seek a single, common cause.

A patient tells me he has a cough, aches all over, feels terrible, has chills , a bloody sputum and pain in the right side of his chest. These are his symptoms. My examination reveals he has pneumonia. Now I must treat his symptoms with cough syrup, aspirin, bed rest, etc. but if I do not treat the cause, the pneumonia, the patient may die. Therefore, I give him an appropriate antibiotic. I must treat the cause.

In our society today, there are many symptoms of sickness. Consider the markedly increase incidence of all of these:

• Child abuse and molestation
• Rape by stealth, date or gang
• Premarital teenage sex, pregnancies and abortion (one per minute)
• Teenage suicide (one every 90 minutes)
• Wilding, vandalism and property destruction
• The drug scene with its sales, use and violence - including alcohol abuse
• Robbery, burglary, murder with its progressing casualness, viciousness, sadism and multiplicity- also leading to the overcrowding of our prisons
• Satan worship and human sacrifices
• Prostitution, both male and female, including pederasty
• Sodomy
• Aids and several other venereal diseases
• Violence, foul language, explicit and adulterous sex as a part of the entertainment faire offered on movies, stage, television, videotapes and magazines
• Racism - individual and subtle or organized and vicious
• Scandal in high places as Congress, local governments, financial institutions and even the military
• "Trial marriages" and family breakdown with scattering of children
• Gang warfare in our cities
• Pornography - adult and child

Yes, these are the things we read and hear about daily; and the usual solutions offered are nothing more than the treatment of symptoms without attacking the cause. It is like putting a band-aid on a cancer. For example:

GOD BLESS AMERICA