Jan. 1, 2026
Dear Old Friends,
I have reach what I can only call an existential crisis in the long natural health journey I have shared with some of you for more than 25 years.
I am, and I hope I always have been, a staunch advocate of integrative medicine.
“Integrative” does not mean “alternative.” I believe modern Western medicine has its place. As Dr. Andrew Weil, perhaps one of the foremost experts in integrative medicine, has famously said, “If I’m in a car accident and I have a traumatic brain injury, don’t take me to an herbalist.”
I couldn’t agree more!
So what is this “existential crisis?” I have wrestled with what could only be called rage against the politicization of natural medicine. Politics should have no place in health care decisions, but in the past year, it has become so. This incomprehensible to me.
I have written and ghost written dozens of natural health books. Every single one of them is based on scientific validation. Every. Single. One.
That is as it should be for those of us who presume to offer guidance to others.
Yet today, several states are experiencing measles and whooping cough epidemics. Our government, in a flagrant display of ignorance from leadership that has long rejected the efficacy and safety of vaccines, has sown distrust based on faulty scientific evidence or no evidence at all, in the minds of many parents.
These are parents who have historically trusted the government to give them the truth. They are not receiving it and that distrust has caused the deaths of some children. It has also caused needless exposure for immune compromised children, who may themselves be vaccinated but unable to resist the viruses for serious and sometimes fatal illnesses. There will almost certainly be more illnesses and deaths to come.
I was in first grade when the polio vaccines first became available in 1955 (yes, I’m THAT old!). I remember it very well. There were two boys in my class who had already contracted polio, who wore braces on their legs and would do so for the rest of their lives. Many kids were not permitted to go to public swimming pools in the summer because of the fear the virus would be transmitted there. We were all lined up in the school gym and given three jabs spaced a few weeks apart. The oral vaccines only became available sometime later.
A few years later, my father remarried a woman who was a widow whose husband and son had both died of polio.
When I was a child, there were no MMR vaccines. Kids routinely got measles, mumps, whooping cough and other viruses. Most of us survived. Some did not.
When I was in 8th grade, I got whooping cough. There was no real treatment. I suffered along with wracking coughing spells that caused me to vomit everything I ate for three months. I lost 15% of my body weight and I gave the virus to several classmates.
Sometime a year or so later, the school nurse diagnosed me with “three day” measles because I had a rash. I stayed home from school for the requisite five days. I wasn’t sick and I thought it was fun.
When I was 35, I really got the measles (probably a variant since I was living in the Philippines) and was seriously ill and unable to work for a month.
“Childhood diseases” are no joke. One friend who contract mumps when he was in his 30s suffered with grand mal epilepsy for the rest of his life.
When the vaccines became available and mandatory in many school systems, we thought we were free of those highly contagious disease, but that is no longer true, as we can see with the recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough in many states and even in Canada.
The global struggle against polio was almost won, until now, when a misguided, misinformed and misappropriated American government theorizes it should make all vaccines “at the discretion of parents.”
It’s not just vaccines.
The defunding of vast swaths of government funded scientific research puts all of us at risk, not just for contagious diseases like the almost inevitable bird flu epidemic, research into many types of cancer and the development of a wide range of mRNA-based drugs.
Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cancelled $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research and development. This decision will have devastating consequences for public health.
Yes, my friends, there absolutely is a place for natural medicines and for preventive health protocols that I have been advocating to you for more than two decades. As I’ve repeatedly told you, it’s far better to prevent illness rather than try to treat it.
I’m still here. This is what I pledge to you: I will always give you information based on scientifically validated information. My New Year’s resolution is to peruse all of my previous posts and be sure that I haven’t misled you.
I wish you all a happy and healthy and informed New Year,
Kathleen
Thank you for speaking out!
this was very confusing as i am not sure what you are trying to tell me, Do you believe in vacines or not?
“No.” I don’t “believe” in vaccines. I trust the science that shows they are generally safe and effective. Is anything totally safe and effective? No, but vaccines have proven their worth over and over by saving lives and especially by helping protect people with weakened immune systems who might be infected by unvaccinated people.