Helke Ferrie 'courageous' with her publishing choices

Helke Ferrie

Caledon's Helke Ferrie has made it her life's work to tackle ethical issues, head-on

in medicine. Although she is not questioning Canadian medicine, she believes there

is no such thing. According to her, "medicine is a worldwide enterprise and she questions standard medicine because so much of its practice is contradicted by published mainstream medical research. My critique of medicine, as it is practiced, stems from research published in the leading medical journals."

Through her company, KOS Publishing Inc., she has become known as a "trail blazer" within the medical publishing industry, one who isn't afraid to tread where others fear to go. Her mission statement says it all: "KOS shares with its authors the ideal, enunciated in the Hippocratic Oath, that the practice of medicine, medical research and the availability of public health ought to serve humanity, not commercial imperatives."

Trained in physical anthropology, her special area of interest is the evolution and history of disease and prevention. Her investigative research into the politics of medicine is regularly published in Canada and in the U.S. She is a sought-after speaker for her keynote talks. Currently, her topic of choice is disease prevention.

She indicates that "all diseases, even the genetically anchored ones, are now known to science to be promoted or caused by environmental factors. It is evident that everything comes down to the cause and effect syndrome. From increased malaria incidents due to global warming which causes mosquitoes to proliferate and increase their territorial range, to increase in bacterial diseases due to antibiotic resistance, which itself is due to increased pesticide use. This situation is primarily caused by the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, to cancer increase due to carcinogens.

The Canadian Cancer Society was quick to substantiate this fact in their 2005 report. This assertion is totally mainstream and not original. Every World Health Organization report tells us this, as do the leading medical journals. What is original is that KOS Publishing Inc., focuses on this issue and offers solutions, all culled from mainstream scientific research.

According to Ferrie, "statistics don't lie. The 2006 Canadian Cancer statistics tell the story. Since 1976 of the age-adjusted incidence of cancer among men has increased 27.7% and among women it's increased by 17.8%."

She is an advocate for banning the cosmetic use of pesticides. That's due to the fact that the world medical community provided the evidence that they are causes or the links to all cancers, and to most birth defects.

Through KOS she has published six books. There are three more in the works, including the memoirs by Health Canada's Dr. Shiv Chopra. He was the individual credited with stopping the use of bovine growth hormone in Canada, then in the European Union and finally in the U.S. The introduction for this book is provided by Ralph Nader.

Two books she has published recently are not political in nature. Her newest book is entitled We Can't Have A Baby, written by Toronto-based doctor Patrick Hewlett. This most recent title serves as a howto reference book for couples who are experiencing fertility problems.

Another title, The Gift of The Earth to Medicine, is co-authored by Dr. KlausGeorge Wenzel, an M.D. who practices in the field of neurology and psychiatry in Limburg, Germany, and by Dr. Raymond Pataracchia, who is trained in neuroscience, who currently practices in Toronto. The subject matter of this book is in the field of nutritional medicine and the book focuses on the role that minerals play in health and with disease.

Adventures in Psychiatry is written by Dr. Abram Hoffer. When doctors Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmoond discovered in the 1950s that high doses of vitamins B3 and C were an excellent treatment for schizophrenia and that Niacin lowered cholesterol, they were undermining the reigning medical paradigms for psychiatry and cardiovascular disease. However, their research has been consistently supported ever since. He did all of his work with the support of Tommy Douglas, who served as the catalyst for the revival of nutritional medicine and this book is dedicated to him.

Healing The Planet is by Dr. Jozef Krop, who practices environmental medicine. He has been a leading activist in North America on behalf of patients made ill by toxic chemicals in their environment. In his book he offers strategies of prevention and treatment in a language everyone can

understand and this backs his twenty-years experience with scientific proof that nobody can afford to ignore.

The Plot Against Asthma and Allergy Patients by Dr. Felix Ravikovich is another book published by KOS. Dr. Ravikovich has practiced in Toronto specializing with allergy and asthma. His presentations at international conferences on the effective treatment with histamine were published in leading medical journals.

Helke Ferrie is an author herself and has written a book called Dispatches, which advocates that

medicine has unfortunately become contaminated with agendas other than patient care. Her book was given a glowing endorsement from Dr. Peter Rothbart, a chair of the Canadian Medical Association. This testimonial is important to her as she does not simply advocate some sort of "back to nature" and ancient medical practice, but wants to convey to patients that business/pharmaceutical interests have railroaded medical practice but she indicates that excellent research continues and does exist and that this research

surfaces more often than not what works. Hence the slogan for KOS "Books On Medicine that Works."

"These are not your typical self-help books but rather similar to a map to orient and educate the reader on what to question and what to explore and why. KOS books will hopefully open the mind and provide courses in critical thinking."

For more information contact Helke Ferrie at KOS Publishing Inc., 519-9271049, by e-mail: helke@sympatico.ca or log on to her Web site, www.kospublishing.com.