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Allergist Sees Dangers in Chemical Additives
Published in the Times-Advocate, The Region, November 23, 1979. Author: Kathlyn Russell.
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Dr. Granville F. Knight, an allergist whose expertise is in recognizing and treating illness caused by sensitivity to environmental additives, believes we are in great danger from chemicals in the food, water and air, and he’s working to do something about it.
“If we’re going to survive, we’ll eventually have to go back to the soil,” said Knight, who moved here to retire earlier this year but soon found himself setting up a new practice near Pomerado Hospital. But going back to the soil is impossible under present circumstances because virtually every populated and cultivated part of the continent is contaminated with pesticides and other chemicals, used for food crops.
The recent furor over the safety of pesticides used on North County tomatoes is of keen interest to Knight, who is heartened by the caution taken by officials and by the public awareness promoted by reports in the press.
Although these are different pesticides than Knight has personally tested, he recalls a Rancho Santa Fe family he treated a few months ago. The 10-year-old son was suffering from severe convulsions. The parents had respiratory infections with frequent nausea and diarrhea. They had been tested for every possible cause, with no lasting relief found.
They were referred to Knight, who suspected pesticides because of hundreds of cases he had treated during the course of his practice, especially in Santa Barbara. It turned out that the family home was seven miles from tomato fields which had been sprayed every two or three days with as many as nine different pesticides.
Knight’s treatment of such problems is as revolutionary as his diagnosis–revolutionary because it is too simple for many of his colleagues to accept. His answer is that megadoses of vitamins, especially Vitamin C, along with minerals and a careful diet, can turn the problem around even though, as with the Rancho Santa Fe family, prolonged suffering requires prolonged therapy.
Knight has evidence from blood and urine samples that many persons react to tiny quantities of pesticides or any other chemical additives which are not present in a natural state. A percentage of any population is highly sensitive to such elements and will react with various symptoms ranging from discomfort to desperate illness. Vitamin C detoxifies if it is used in large enough quantities, and Knight said he has in 35 years never seen an adverse reaction other than occasional diarrhea from a really huge intake.
To treat persons with severe allergic reactions, Knight administers 10, to 20,000 milligrams of Vitamin C daily, giving it intravenously in a hospital at first. He has been criticized by colleagues, including some at Pomerado HospitalI for using intravenous feeding for something as simple as Vitamin C. The provable fact of the effect on patients seems to go unnoticed by many physicians, who find the treatment too simple to be accepted. “If it were a complicated drug, it would be accepted at once,” Knight said.
But he has seen enough in his medical practice to convince him that some persons react to even a ten thousandth of the permitted dose of certain chemicals, and that though “people who make and sell pesticides believe they’re safe if used according to directions, a significant proportion will become ill from even tiny quantities.”
A woman he knew in Globe, Ariz., was outdoors one day in 1965 and was accidentally doused directly with spray from a helicopter. She suffered from a succession of illnesses and died of metastatic cancer in 1977.
A family in Fallbrook was sick for 18 months with a variety of “very serious problems” after their citrus groves were sprayed from a helicopter. Knight has seen more than 200 such cases over the years.
A person’s resistance to chemicals in the body depends on an adequate Vitamin C intake, Knight firmly believes. Under stress, we need even larger amounts, but he will prescribe 10,000 to 20,000 mgs, daily plus B Complex, Vitamin A, and minerals, especially calcium and magnesium. In his work as president of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation and as a specialist in forensic medicine, testifying before dozens of government bodies on the effects of chemicals, Knight has had unusual opportunities to test and prove the efficacy of correcting bodily imbalance with vitamins–the substances nature manufactured for defense of the physical plant.
He has seen a measles rash disappear in 12 hours after massive injections of Vitamin C; viral pneumonia and encephalitis cured, snakebite and overdoses of barbiturate neutralized. He has successfully treated 14 persons with polio with 40 to 70 grams of Vitamin C a day, and seen the paralysis get better. His colleagues have cured 150 cases of polio.
He has seen veterinarians use Vitamin C successfully to cure distemper, and has had detoxified persons with overdoses of heroin in the same way.
Knight opposes all chemical additives, including fluoride in water, because statistics show that one percent of every population will become ill from ingesting them. Control studies have shown also that otherwise unexplainable illnesses, resembling viral infections and producing rashes, disappear when fluoride toothpaste is no longer used.
The symptoms of chemical-sensitive persons include pain, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, neurotic afflictions, fear and panic. Diagnosis is extremely difficult, since the same symptoms are caused by many other forms of illness and “people can’t believe such a small exposure will do that.”
But chemicals are slowly undermining the human body, Knight said. The protein content of wheat is down from 24 percent to 10 percent.