The operation of the aluminum trust has given rise to a new epidemic in the United States. Two and one half million Americans are currently afflicted with a strange, incurable disease called Alzheimer’s disease. Its victims now require more than $50 billion worth of medical care each year, and the prognosis always grows darker, due to the progressive nature of this illness. It strikes the neurotransmitters of the brain, which, as has already been noted, are adversely affected by fluoride; however, the principal agent seems to be the accumulation of aluminum deposits on the principal nerves of the brain. About 70% of the costs of this illness is borne by the families of the afflicted, because most Medicare and private health insurance programs refuse to pay it. The Medical Monopoly has been frantically trying to find some other agent in this disease, spending millions to study such factors as genetic predisposition, slow virus, environmental toxins, and immunologic changes, despite the fact that its origins have been traced to the large amounts of aluminum which most Americans began ingesting with their food since the 1920s. Alzheimers is now causing more than 100,000 deaths annually, and is the fourth leading cause of adult death in the United States, yet, significantly, there has been no national foundation such as the American Cancer Society or the Arthritis Foundation to investigate its causes, because the Medical Monopoly already knows the answer.

Alzheimer’s growing incidence was at first dismissed as “growing old”; later it was diagnosed as “premature senility” (it often strikes in the mid fifties). These were the men and women who had grown up in America during the 1920s, a period when the traditional cast iron and earthenware cooking vessels were almost universally replaced by the more modern, and seemingly more convenient, aluminum cookware. The present writer’s parents both grew up on farms in rural areas of Virginia. Their food, almost entirely home grown, was prepared in iron pots over wood-fueled cookstoves. Those Americans born after 1920 had their food prepared in aluminum pots, which were usually heated over gas flames, later electric. This writer’s mother often remarked that food cooked over gas flame never tasted like food cooked over wood fires. The reason is that the combustion of poisonous fuel inevitably releases some toxins into the air, and into the food. Electric heat is also said to materially affect food, because of the electric vibrations given off by the heat.

By the 1930s, American housewives had learned that it was potentially dangerous to leave many foods in aluminum pots for more than a few minutes. Greens, tomatoes, and other vegetables, were known to discolor and became poisonous in a short time. Tomatoes could actually pit and corrode the interior of the aluminum pots in a short time; many foods turned the pots black. Strangely enough, no one took these obvious warning signs as an indication that cooking food in aluminum pots even for a few minutes might produce unfortunate results. It is now known that cooking any food in an aluminum pot, particularly with fluoridated water, quickly forms a highly poisonous compound. Dr. McGuigan’s testimony in a famous court hearing on aluminum effects, the Royal Baking Powder case, revealed that extensive research had shown that boiling water in aluminum pots produced hydro-oxide poisons; boiling vegetables in aluminum also produced a hydro-oxide poison; boiling an egg in aluminum produced a phosphate poison; boiling meat in an aluminum pot produced a chloride poison. Any food cooked in aluminum containers would neutralize the digestive juices, produce acidosis, and ulcers. Perhaps the use of aluminum pots produced the widespread indigestion in America, which then necessitated the ingesting of large amounts of antacids containing even more aluminum!

After consuming food cooked in aluminum pots over a period from twenty to forty years, many Americans began to experience serious memory loss; their mental capacities then deteriorated rapidly, until they were totally unable to fend for themselves or to recognize their spouses of many years. It was then found that concentrations of aluminum in certain areas of the brain had caused permanent deterioration of brain cells and nerve connections; the damage was not only incurable; it was also progressive and not responsive to any known treatment. This epidemic was soon known as Alzheimer’s disease. Seven per cent of all Americans over 65 have now been diagnosed as having this disease. Many others have not been diagnosed; they are simply dismissed as senile, incompetent or mentally ill.

Dr. Michael Weiner and other physicians have found that the epidemic has been caused, not only by the aluminum cookware, but by the daily increasing ingestion of aluminum from many products in common household usage. The insatiable marketers of aluminum have annually expanded its use in many products, whose consumers have no idea that they are ingesting any type of aluminum. Women’s douches now contain solutions of aluminum, which introduces it directly into the system. The most widely used painkillers such as buffered aspirin contain impressive quantities of aluminum; Ascriptin A/D (Rorer) has 44 mg. of aluminum per tablet; Cama (Dorsey) has 44 mg. of aluminum per tablet. However, the largest single source of aluminum occurs with the daily ingestion of widely prescribed and nonprescription antacid products for stomach upsets.

Amphojel (Wyeth) has 174 mg per dose of aluminum hydroxide; Alternagel (Stuart) has 174 mg of aluminum hydroxide per dose; Delcid (Merrel National) 174 mg aluminum per dose; Estomil-M (Riker) 265 mg of aluminum per dose; Mylanta II (Stuart) 116 mg aluminum per dose. A study of current victims of Alzheimer’s would probably find that most of them, on their physicians’ advice, had been ingesting large amounts of these antacids daily for years.

Nonprescription antidiarrhoeal drugs also contain significant amounts of aluminum; Essilad (Central) has 370 mg of aluminum salts per ml; Kaopectate Concentrate (Upjohn) has 290 mg aluminum per ml.

Aluminum ammonium sulfate is widely used as a buffer and neutralizing agent by manufacturers of cereals and baking powder. Aluminum Potassium Sulfate, known as aluminum flour or aluminum meal, is widely used in baking powder and clarifying sugar.

The annual use of sodium aluminum phosphate has now reached the amount of f 9 million kilograms per year; it is used in large amounts in cake mixes, frozen dough, self-rising flour, and processed foods, in an average amount per product of from three to three and one-half per cent. Some 300,000 kg. of sodium aluminum sulfates are used in household baking powders each year, averaging from twenty-one to twenty-six per cent of the bulk of these products.

Aluminum wrap is now everywhere; toothpaste is packaged in tubes lined with aluminum; there are aluminum seals on many food and drink products; and soft drinks everywhere are now packaged in aluminum cans. While the amount of aluminum ingested on any given day from all of these sources may be infinitesimal, the parade of products coated with or mixed with aluminum available on a daily basis is frightening. Its effects are the equivalent to that of a slow virus, as the metal accumulates at vital points in the system, particularly in the human brain. Thus the number of Alzheimer’s victims is probably outnumbered by the number of potential victims, who will later be afflicted with its terrible symptoms.