The best reference on this is Vilhjalmur Stefansson's book "Cancer Disease of Civilization".  The
leading sources of death in both the advanced and developing countries lack any connection to a
pathogens or parasites and are believed to involve the immune system.  These include heart
attacks and strokes (the leading cause of death everywhere), cancer (which occures at higher
rates in developing countries), diabetes, etc. Because of modern medicine's ability to prevent
deaths by infectious diseases and trauma, these disorders account for a much larger % of dearths
in developted countries than in places where antibiotics and other modern miracles are less
available.  A recent article in the Lancet by Dr. Christopher Murry and Alan Lopez will provide
you with the numeric breakdown of their occurence in different types of countries.

Stefanssons book documents the search for these "diseases of civilization" among hunter-gatherers
that began in 1843 when Stanislaw Tanchou first grouped these disorders together.  One of the
characteristics he listed for inclusion in this group was that these disorders never occured in
wild animal populations or in hunter-gatherers.  During this search (which lasted well into the
20th century)no cases of these disorders were ever found in people eating a paleolithic diet
despite looking at many thousands of individuals in a wide variety of hunter-gatherer cultures.

Stefansson was the father of Paleolithic Nutrition.  He adopted the Inuit diet(no vegetables) in
1906 and continued to eat this way (mostly) until his death in the early 1960s. His autobiography
"Discovery" documents his own experence with  "stone-age diet".  He also authored an article
titled "Adventures in Diet" (3 parts Harpers Magazine-also published as a pamphlet by a meat
foundation)that reviews the scientific work he did to promote this way of eating (Dean Esmay has
promised to post this as soon as he can find someone to type it in and he receives permission
from Stefansson's widow).  I highly recommend his works.

Ray Audette
Author"NeanderThin:A Caveman's Guide to Nutrition"
http://www.sofdesign.com/neander





Andrew S. Bonci, BA, DC, DAAPM wrote:
 There are
> some assertions Audette makes that I'd like to have some hard support
> for, namely:
>
> "These forbidden fruits are the source of 99 percent of the alien
> proteins which produce the immune system diseases responsible for 95
> percent of all deaths in America." p32
>
> If anyone can help narrow this search down for me, it would be greatly
> appreciated ;-)