Body Language. First of all Do No Harm

Constance Studer uses her family's story to illustrate larger ethical dilemmas in which modem medical professionals find themselves. The history of why prefrontal lobotomies were performed on patients is explored and why only a few physicians raised dissenting voices to this mutilating surgery. Both the author and her father were injured by medical treatments that were intended to help. Her father's lobotomy caused irreversible brain damage. Connie's vaccine-related illness caused systemic lupus. She cites an article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. which investigates the US government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal. Thimerosal, the ethylmercury preservative used in vaccine preparation, appears to be responsible for the epidemic of autism and other neurological disorders among our children. In 2007, one child out of 150 suffers from autism or other neurological-cognitive disabilities. This book is a plea to the medical-pharmaceutical-government complex to ban the use of thimerosal in the production of vaccines and to re-evaluate the number of vaccines administered to infants and children. Body Language is a testament to survival, to the healing power of nature. Connie built a home by the shores of Grand Lake, the lake the Indians called 'Spirit Lake'. Watching the river fill up the lake year after year renewed her faith in the sense of continuity and progression. Grand Lake, with its bird calls and bombastic waves, was a magic marriage between the visible and invisible, a landscape that refreshed the eye, cleansed the heart, recharged the spirit. Sometimes the body sings hymns, sometimes the blues but always the body hums along. Healing is a process, a journey toward balance, connectedness, meaning, wholeness, rather than an outcome.