1. Health is a basic human right
Every person is entitled to make use of this right without any restriction. Public institutions and private organizations are to be held accountable for providing life-saving health information to the people of the world. The obstruction of the right to essential health information for everyone constitutes a crime against humanity.

2. Today, health is not available to every human being -- for good reasons
These include social injustice, military conflicts and others. Another significant reason is the fact that the most profitable industry on earth, the pharmaceutical industry, is an investment industry based upon the existence and continuation of diseases - despite declarations to the contrary. Low-cost prevention, treatment and elimination of diseases threaten this multi-trillion dollar "business with disease".

3. Most efforts to improve health on a global scale have failed thus far
The World Health Organization's effort "Health for All by the Year 2000" could not reach its goals because it did not distinctly separate itself from the global "business with disease." It focused instead on administrative healthcare changes, rather than taking advantage of global advances in medicine.

4. Advances in the field of natural medicine have been made over recent years
That will reduce the incidence of common diseases in the industrialized countries as well as in the developing world, to a fraction of their current frequency. The primary cause of the world's most common health conditions is a chronic deficiency of micronutrients, essential for optimum cellular energy metabolism as well as optimum connective tissue stability.

5. In the industrialized world, the leading causes of death are heart attacks, cancer, strokes, diabetes and high blood pressure. Using the available knowledge in nutritional research and cellular medicine, these health conditions can be significantly reduced and hundreds of millions of lives can be saved.

6. In the developing world, two billion people suffer from deficiencies in micronutrients, according to United Nations Organizations. Avitaminosis is a leading cause of disease resulting in blindness in millions and promoting infectious diseases in hundreds of millions by compromising cellular defense mechanisms in their bodies. By taking advantage of the knowledge of nutritional medicine already available today, billions of lives can be saved in the developing world.

7. The eradication of today's most common health problems is dependent on one factor only:
how fast the information about this breakthrough in natural health can be spread While the scientific knowledge to combat these diseases effectively is available and the essential nutrients to prevent these health conditions can be produced at low costs, in any quantity, anywhere in the world, the dissemination of this life-saving information to the people of the world is being obstructed.

8. The Pharmaceutical industry tries to protect its global drug markets by outlawing natural remedies
Effective, non-patentable and affordable natural health approaches threaten the very existence of the pharmaceutical industry. The multi-trillion dollar global pharmaceutical market is dependent on synthetic drugs that allow an excessively high return on investment based on the patentability of those drugs. To secure the continued existence of the pharmaceutical industry as the most profitable industry on earth, large corporations embarked on a global battle to outlaw the dissemination of natural health information. To that effect the pharmaceutical industry abuses the United Nations "Codex Alimentarius Commission" and other national and international bodies.

9. The people of the world face one of the largest challenges in human history
The right to health and life for billions of people is being threatened by the profit interests of a few shareholders. The goals of these two interest groups are incompatible by their very nature. Similarly, in the battle to save human lives against the profits from patented drugs, every government, every public and private institution has to take a decision on which side they stand. And they will be held accountable by history.

10. The goal "Health for All by the Year 2020" is in sight
What is needed immediately is a worldwide effort to promote the dissemination of natural health benefits in every country.

I call upon

• The United Nations Organizations and other international organizations to promote natural health policies by all means available;
• Politicians in every country to implement natural health as an integral part of national health policies;
• Health professionals to utilize natural health approaches to improve the health of your patients.
• I call upon every man and woman to spread this life-saving information in order to protect your life and that of millions of others.

Johannesburg, August 2002

Matthias Rath, M.D