MOLD WARRIORS PREFACE
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The magnitude of the mold problem in the U.S. will stun you.

Fortunately, there is treatment for mold illness, if the illness is caught in time. And I offer multiple areas of research that hold hope for those who get a diagnosis too late.

Ultimately, Mold Warriors is a book about people. You’ll meet them in their own words as they tell their own stories.

T he Mold Wars involve physicians who don’t truly and fully listen to their patients. It’s about making sloppy diagnoses, like, “You must have a bad case of fibromyalgia, Mr. Mold Victim. Here’s a prescription for some antidepressants. Have a nice life.”

But the Mold Wars also involve physicians who want to help, but who don’t know how; they can do the wrong things, things that don’t help and that may hurt.

The Mold Wars attract attorneys on both sides of the battle, each with their entourage of experts and aides. You’ll meet some unattractive people when we tell you about the legal cases. And you’ll meet the Mold Warriors, people who win justice despite being opposed by the huge financial reserves and often the political power of their adversaries.

So Mold Warriors is about political issues too. In September 2 004 Rep. John Conyers of Michigan introduced House Resolution 1 268, a bill that has the potential to help many people injured by mold.

When huge corporations, many fueled by investment money fr om insurance companies, are threatened by mold laws and mold litigation, what do you think they’ll do? Will corporate America use its vast resources to lobby Congress to support the rights of its citizens to live, work and learn in a toxic mold-free environment? D oing so might mean that those insurance companies would have to pay out many millions—perhaps billions—of dollars in loss claims.

I don’t hold out too much hope, and neither should you.

Toxic molds grow indoors wherever we give them what they n eed: water, food and cover. Rapidly growing molds make spores. Mold spores spread colonies wherever air, your clothes, furniture or papers take them. Spores carry hundreds of toxin molecules that make those of us with a certain genetic make-up, called HLA DR, sick. And 25 percent of us carry those susceptible HLA genes!

Schools with flat roofs and reduced air circulation, possibly w ith defects in plumbing and leaky roofs or walls that collect condensation, are a threat to our children. Wherever moisture indoors lets molds grow, remediation is needed, but what school system has all of the money they need for proper maintenance and repairs?

Mold Warriors are no different from you, but they’ve learned that in their cases, countless health problems—fatigue, obesity, memory problems, chronic respiratory symptoms, unusual seizure-like activity, chronic joint pains, chronic abdominal pains and many more—are not caused by allergy, stress, depression or fibromyalgia.

They’ve learned about new uses for established blood tests that prove in clearly measurable ways what exposure to toxin-forming molds does to our bodies. They know that mold illness is chronic and can be progressive.

But there’s good news too. Mold illness, once detected, is treatable for nearly all sufferers. Sadly, some victims don’t respond to proper treatment; then the illness is disabling, robbing sufferers of vitality without bringing rapid, merciful death. It’s for those small groups of patients that Mold Warriors fight the ultimate battle of life and death.

If mold illness can be diagnosed and treated early and effectively, why do Mold Warriors need to fight? Why aren’t mold illnesses as controversial as the common cold? After all, we’ve known mold makes people sick since Biblical times. Are there forces at work trying to suppress the truth about mold? Who and why?

The list of enemies of truth about mold illness is long because mold illness is acquired from flaws in the indoor environment. If there is a flaw, then someone has caused the flaw. And that means liability. With liability, someone might have to pay to correct the flaw and the illness. Given the number of people in buildings with too much moisture, there is a staggering number of dollars potentially involved.

Do you think powerful insurance companies or construction companies, building owners or even governments would always volunteer to pay up? Would they admit responsibility for illness and property damage because that would be the morally and ethically correct thing to do?

Not in the USA.

C onsidering the influence of massive corporations with a vested interest in the status quo, how can Mold Warriors get past C ongressional lobbyists who want to bar funding for scientific research on mold illness? Do powerful medical groups turn their backs on mold illness because it’s in their economic interest to do so?

Where is the public demand for effective screening of children for mold illness? Screening only takes five minutes!

Where is the demand for mold health screening for adults in “annual physicals?” It only takes a few minutes and a few tubes of blood. Where is the media in all this? AWOL.

When will owners of stale-air buildings wake up to establish baseline health measures and serial monitoring as a risk management tool? It takes less time than their weekly waiting time for elevators.

One of the biggest barriers to truth in mold illness comes from “corporate medicine” groups.

A s you will see, there are physicians—opinion leaders in influential medical societies—who are part of an entrenched “damage c ontrol” consortium. They see themselves as conservators of proven truths, whereas in fact they are truth suppressors. We have and will meet the same physicians repeatedly in court cases and consensus panels. They come, equipped with academic appointments a nd long résumés, to deny the health effects of mold, creating smokescreens of abstraction and diversion. A few of those physicians are also the willing pawns of vested interests, essentially selling their opinions for large sums, while at the same time receiving public funding. They are in the “expert-for-hire” business.

These physician enemies of the Mold Warriors never see patients i n any meaningful way, spending much of their professional time rendering “expert opinions” on mold when they have yet to lay their “caring” hands on their first mold patient. That these physicians form an unholy alliance with defense attorneys will not be a surprise to mold patients.

One such esteemed professor has made his career testifying for the tobacco industry, for corporations accused of poisoning the Love Canal in New York, for the asbestos industry, for the manganese industry, for fungicide manufacturers and, now for insurance carriers in mold cases. His opinion never varies: he sa ys that the toxic chemicals in these cases have never been proven to harm anyone. And this man sounds so authoritative, some people even believe him!

When the defense needs a phalanx of locked-step medical opinion—and those lawyers are well funded and resourceful—there’s a stable of medical school graduates volunteering to chime in.

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