Criminon Successes with
The Way to Happiness Course

"This course called The Way to Happiness has helped me come to realize no matter what I do in my life I have to make the right choices, and that will make me more happy. If I have a conflict when dealing with others, I can fall back on the virtues as explained in this course. This gives me humility and to always have a willing hand to help others — not to hurt them.

"I also know that to live a healthy life I can eat properly and stay away from drugs. I can live a happier life! This course has also taught me to become more patient, a real desire to set a good example instead of destroying peoples lives by selling them drugs.

"I know that these things are true. As my days go by as I have peace in my heart and do the right things in my life now. This booklet has given me the tools to give myself respect and others too. I know they work because I'm living them daily in prison.

"Thank you."

— S. T.
Idaho Falls Correctional Facility

"I definitely noticed a change in my thinking and processing of ideas and interrelationships with others. I realize that it is totally up to me how others view me as an inmate or a person with potential with a purpose. I realize that the "Golden Rule" is as every bit as important now as it ever could be.

"For life is truly spiritual and what energy you sow so shall that same energy reap. Today I choose to place importance on life and to treat everyone as I would want them to treat me. I place high value on my inner self. I learned from these lessons that there exists a flow of action. A word turns into a thought, a thought (thinking) turns out actions and continued action becomes a habit and from these habits a person develops a character and then a destiny. My destiny. Today I focus on integrity and The Way to Happiness is a success shared with all."

— N. W.
Waiawa Correctional Facility
Hawaii

One could easily and suspiciously decide that these are either fake from the get-go, or that the inmate is "shining it on" in order to curry favor.

At a higher level of administration, however, the recidivism rate is lower for those who do this course.

I get messages back from my students -- none as glowing as any of these, but a friend of mine, course supervising for some years, has showed me the pencil, hand-written two page letters she has gotten -- I am convinced that we are making real changes in the morality of the inmates taking this course.

Again, the course consists of nothing more than the very same book coming to you. The correspondence course includes a set of questions to be answered after each of the 21 codes in the book.

There is so much more!

Jet, I'd like to revitalize your interest in "saving the world."  You can do something about it.

Take a look HERE: 

http://www.happinessonline.org/Members/index.htm

Let me hear back from you.

Let's both of us get some morality started?

Cordially,

Karl Loren

September 10, 2002
Dear Karl,
I had lunch today with an MD friend. We talked EDTA up State & down Madison. I am still sold on oral EDTA and want to push a bit further. Can you refer me to a laboratory method for measuring EDTA [in any form] in urine? My reference books are a little stale, like me. Does it matter what form the EDTA is in when taken orally? That is, Tri-K, Tri-Na, Tri-Ca or some other combination. Does chelation by EDTA follow the electro scale where one ion displaces another depending on position on the periodic table? I hate being so darned dumb about these things and I know that you make a point of being well informed.

73,
John E. Thompson, Ph.D. [AKA JET]
 

Flossmoor IL 02-09-03 @ 2312 CDT

K. L.:

Did you note the short article in Science 16 August issue? NIH is planning to spend $30 million to evaluate the efficacy of chelation.  This is good if well handled and very bad if handled in the customary government manner. If you have not taken care of it already, I think the NIH and NCCAM need your input.

Also, Congress should be stimulated to take an interest. Methinks many Congressmen and women are at the age and physical condition that are vitally interested in cardiac disease. They should be alerted to the importance to them, personally, of the outcome of a fair trial . . . with no log-rolling or pork barrel involvement.

For one thing, the article I read does not distinguish between IV and Oral chelation. I feel we need a serious trial of oral chelation with EDTA. Granted, the mode of metabolism of EDTA in relation to chelation and the removal of calcium from atherosclerotic plaques is not clear. Elucidation of the physiology and biochemistry can follow demonstrating the effectiveness of EDTA in treating heart disease; that will take years and more $ millions.

73,
JET, Ph.D.

August 23, 2002
Dear Karl,

Don't like to keep bothering you, but, you are one of the few people I have come in contact with who takes alternative medicine seriously and tries to keep the peddlers honest -- insofar as that is possible.

My subject now is tocotrienols. I have been interested since I encountered a firm selling Ricotrienol. They sent me an interesting tape almost promising to bring back the dead. A bit of investigation revealed that they were pushing a tocotrienol product extracted from rice bran.

I just read an article in INFORM about tocotrienols extracted from PFAD [These authors cannot resist acronyms] which stands for palm fatty acid distillate. These folks appear most interested in Vitamin E.

The rice folks emphasize that rice bran spoils very quickly if it is not promptly processed to stabilize it by their proprietary process. They then make an extract concentrating all of the wonderful properties of fresh rice bran. On their tape they confuse me talking about their "food" product and their "capsule" without saying which they are talking about.

A bit of investigation reveals that there are a couple of plants in Texas making the stuff for sale to anybody who wants to buy enough of it. These plants are affiliated with the Riceland people.

Palm oil is not processed in this country as I understand it. The primary product of the industry is the oil in RBD form [Another cute acronym for insiders to use: Refined, bleached and deodorized] for food and industrial use.

The authors are from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. They are interested in making something profitable from the "gook" they get from producing RBD palm oil, their primary product.

Apparently tocophenols and tocotrienols are present in all sorts of seed oils but are removed in the process of making RBD oil for sale. The "gook" has all sorts of goodies in it if someone wants to work out the process. One clue would certainly be to have a market for enough of it to make the effort worth while. That gets us back to the usefulness of tocotrienols. Making gel caps and selling a few bottles at $50 a bottle will not build much of a plant. The trick for the alternative medicine man [no pun] is to find some of the stuff that is already being made for some other purpose and bottling some of it.

Knowing that you are interested in things that can help folks live longer and healthier, I am assuming that you have looked at the anti-oxidant and anti free radical properties of tocotrienols. What can you report?

If there is any way I can be of assistance in any of your ventures, let me know. I am not an investment capitalist but I am toting around a lot of human capital that I would like to put to work.

73,
John E. Thompson, Ph.D. AKA JET
 

August 20, 2002
Dear Karl,
I have read, quickly, your very interesting piece on amino acids. I may have missed some points and will study it in greater detail. It is disappointing to note the lack of interest in current nutritional literature in amino acids in food and the attainment of amino acid balance. The emphasis seems to be more on avoiding excess protein in the diet for fear of overtaxing the liver, particularly in elder persons. I have not seen an up to date analysis of the amino acid content of modern foods. Does such a publication exist? My antique reference was Handbook #7. I did quite a bit of experimental work with protein in animal feeds, particularly pigs and poultry. Turkeys had a quite high requirement. I did a lot of nitrogen balance experiments with Wistar rats including the messy job of adjusting "metabolism cages" to keep urine and feces seprate. In my day, soymeal was just coming into prominence. It was short of tryptophane in particular. Farmers were still being warned not to feed raw beans to their livestock because of a toxic [anti tryptic factor] in unccoked beans. My firm had a special source of "meat scraps" containing an unusual level of muscle meat as opposed to ordinary meat scraps or tankage which were heavy on connective tissue. Laboratory analysis for amino acids was very expensive and we did not do a lot of it. As your article mentioned, we depended heavily on animal growth and gain of weight experiments. My medicare memory does not recall many of the names of researchers I corresponded with. One was Clive McCay at Cornell. A Cornell man that was one of my professors at the University of Chicago went on to become editor of the Journal of Nutrition. I participated in several Gordon Conferences on nutrition. At that time there was much emphasis on protein malnutrition world wide and what might be done to improve the efficiency of available protein by, perhaps, adding amino acids. I can't even spell Kwashiorcor or Merasmus any more. You correct me.

73,
John E. Thoompson, PhD
AKA JET
You are one of the few writers that I have encountered in recent years who pays much attention to amino acid balance.
 

August 20, 2002
Dear Karl,
We have corresponded before. I am sold on oral chelation using EDTA and have placed an order just now for a bottle of your product. Concerning other EDTA products on the market; why do you suppose they are so timid about the quantity of EDTA they use? My present concern is the use of Pysillium and Bentonite, taken together, as a cleanser of the GI tract. Suppose the patient is already "loose", not wattery diarrheic? . . . and does not want to aggrevate the situation.

My assumption is that the function in the gut is entirely independent of whatever may be causing loose bowels and that cleansing may remove or ameliorate the basic cause. I don't want to fall into the promotional trap that some snake oil salesmen may be peddling.

I am familliar with the use of Bentonite as a bleaching agent for fats and oils and its use as a fining agent for wine and its use as a yeast settling agent in brewing. Been there, done those things. . . they work. My interest here is in the use of Bentonite [maybe, more accurately, Montmorillonite] as a GI cleanser and its possible interaction, if any, with EDTA. Do you have any information or suggestions? 73, JET
 

August 8, 2002
Dear Karl,
Thanks for the article on "Life," It certainly gives me something to think about. . . and I will have to think about it for a while to come up with an understanding that I can comment intelligently about.

Things certainly do go wrong in cells and the cells [the living items] change the way they act. I would tend to accept the idea that I read into your article that the cells either took in something incompatable with their normal activity [life?] or something that they require for continued normal activity is lacking in their environment.

Not everything that a cell takes in that is not normal to its usual activity is necessarily harmful but it is quite likely to change the cell. The cell may, as a result of taking in something unusual, find that it is able to better cope with its environment. It might also suffer some non-lethal change.

A favorable change in the cell might be the once upon a time entrance of a poorly developed cell that set up housekeeping with permission of the senior cell. In turn the "guest" paid for its room and board by helping the "landlord" function more efficiently. The guest became a mitochondrion.

Far more numerous are the harmful things a living cell might take in that disturb the cell's normal routine. This might be something foreign to the environment or just an excess or imbalance of something usually taken in.

Cells can also make mistakes in the way it uses the things it takes in [nutrients?]. The complex machinery of a normal cell has ways of correcting some mistakes but it can make fatal mistakes that start it on a downhill path toward the point where the "essence" leaves [aging?]

Some cells are a part of an organ or system or individual plant, animal or person. Such organisms provide additional means of providing a suitable environment for their cells and for coping with the death of some cells; while they are, at the same time, dependent on the proper function of some critical fraction of their composit cells to enable the organism to function normally.

I do not have any special explanation for the "first" living cell in the world or if the process was unique to this planet. The mud hypothesis is as good as any if we don't take any unprovable idea too seriously.

I look at man as an organism composed of body, mind and spirit. I have not touched on the concept of mind here but look upon it as the manager or director, the entrepreneur if you will. Man is one kind of organism that makes up the conglomerate of all living things [biomass]. Everything we call living might well be part of a larger system of entities. We do comprehend Earth as a minor planet of a very minor star in one of almost an infinite number of galaxies. What's beyond what we call space?

There does seem to be some sort of overall organization [I will not say of "things" here because the concept is so much greater]. For convenience we might call this God without having any notion of what we are talking about. Who runs God? What's beyond God? Why not? Does the hierarchy have to end?

Thnaks for the opportunity to rant from my soapbox. Right now I feel the need to take care of some other activities that my person condsiders normal.

73,
JET

August 6, 2002
Dear Karl,

Please excuse me for writing twice in one day. Your writings are stimulating and keep my gray cells active. As I read, comments and questions occur.

One of my pets is a differentiation I make between a hypothesis [tentative truth] and a theory, which I define as a hypothesis that has been repeatedly tested and not found wrong.

Further, most theories are not found wrong even with the passage of time and improved information. Rather they are found to be incomplete. Consider the ancient theory that everything was made of soil, water and air. This was replaced by the theory that all matter was composed of elements as the ultimate material. MMe Curie, among others, blew this one by finding the transition of one element to another. Out here at Fermi Laboratory they are still finding pieces of atoms. Maybe quarks are not the ultimate yet.

73,
JET, PhD [only to emphasize, not MD}
 

August 6, 2002
Dear Karl,
I like your site and have learned from it. I agree with most of what you say in areas where I am familiar.

I have a question. Dr. Gordon suggests calcium EDTA for oral chelation. My EDTA is in the sodium form. If EDTA is in the calcium form, is it not already saturated with calcium and unable to chelate any more? I can see where a heavier ion, like lead, might displace the lighter calcium. Why doesn't sodium EDTA work even better? [This is a serious inquiry. I am not trying to pick an argument.]

Also, if EDTA is taken in any form and there are minerals in the gut, why doesn't the EDTA chelate these and the complex pass out with the feces?

If there a reasonable clinical or labortory test for EDTA in urine or feces: Can it detect the form the EDTA is in; i.e. what ion is chelated?

The literature says that only 5% to 15% of oral EDTA ever enters the bloodstream. Is the balance "spent" chelating what it find in the GI tract and passing out with the feces? What, otherwise, inhibits the absorbtion of oral EDTA?

I know that EDTA is an anti coagulant. We used it to treat laboratory rat blood when heparin was undesirable. Is it possible that some of the circulatory improvement seen with IV EDTA [or oral] is due to this action?

I have personally used EDTA [Versene} to test tap water for hardness. A color indicator detects Calcium and Magnesium. One then titrates with EDTA to the disappearance of the color to estimate the amount of hardness. Can the reverse of this be used in some way to test for calcium in urine? If the urine calcium is chelated with EDTA, I presume that the hardness test reagent would not work. What might?

Enough prattle.

73,
JET PhD

I am an old timer who worked with EDTA in food and feed some 40 years ago. We did not know much about it then and my Medicare memory has lost most of whatever I did know.