Dr. Joycelyn Elders and Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Remarks Concluding the Conference

Dr. Elders and Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche gave concluding remarks after the end of the fourth panel, “The Challenge of Famine and Pandemics—The Coincidence of Opposites, or Mass Extinction,” of the Schiller Institute conference, “The World at a Crossroad—Two Months into the Biden Administration.”

Moderator: I see that Dr. Elders is back. We’re just taking any summary remarks or any observations that you’d like to give us.

Dr. Elders: I felt this has been a very excellent conference, and it’s covered several areas, and several things we had to talk about. Obviously if you’re hungry, and don’t have adequate nutrition, there’s no way in the world to be healthy. We can talk about all the good doctoring and talk about having community health workers, and we can have the best scientists, the best everything in the world—but if you don’t take care of nutrition, then there’s no way that you can keep people healthy. And I think that more and more, we have been made to think about and talk about the social determinants of health. We’ve also got to talk about some of the social determinants of health, as well as all of the other factors that go to make up health.

We’re beginning to look at the mineral aspects of health. We’ve got to also look at all the other things that are going on, that go to make up a healthy world. We can train young people from the beginning, and we’ve got to change some of our attitudes. That’s a part of some of the problems we are having, and it starts early, and we can make a difference. I think that’s what we’ve heard some of today.

I really have enjoyed and felt that it was very good, what we heard from the farmers. Many of us certainly grew up on the farm: I worked from sunup to sundown, and I spent my whole life, trying to get out of the cotton patch. I was very pleased to make it out of the cotton patch. I think I’ve done some things that have made a difference, but I still feel that there are a lot of things that you can learn on the farm: A lot of things about working together, helping one another, helping other people, helping the community.

When I look and think about what this COVID virus has taught us. I think most of us came in with many and different kinds of ideas and unusual things that we were thinking about, looking at. But I think COVID has exposed our weak underbelly, and has really given us, and made us aware that we need 20/20 vision.

We’ve got to have everybody, the whole world, involved! We can’t get rid of this virus alone. No country can get rid of this virus alone, no cities, or state: We’re all involved. We’ve got to all work to make sure that we reach this important destination. And I think this conference has helped some of us open our eyes, to really see that there are many people involved….

Just mentioning our churches, that’s helped in the distribution of vaccines! Certainly in many of our rural areas, even in many of our low-income city areas: Some of the big churches have gotten involved. And so, I think this has made us think about that.

We’ve all got to be involved. Our whole nation, and other nations, all over this world, have got to be involved. And the only way we’re going to beat this virus, is to make sure it’s eradicated for everybody.

Thank you: I’ve enjoyed being a part of this conference.

Moderator: We thank you. One other thing I wanted to say was, that in an earlier incarnation, I would have said to you, figuratively at least, we are still trying to get this entire country out of the cotton patch!

Dr. Elders: Well, we are! [laughter]

Moderator: So, we’re at the end of our session and at the end of our conference, and so Helga, we’d like to hear what you’ve got to say to us all, and what we should be doing.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I was really reminded, in a certain shocking way, when you, Dr. [Khadijah] Lang were talking about these waivers and the triage—because this is something which is not by accident. If you look at what we published in the last 30, 40 years. Before the Schiller Institute, I had initiated the so-called “Club of Life,” which was to counter the idea that there are limits to growth, and that there is such a thing as unworthy life. There are these “health economists,” who have written books which say that in the last half-year of somebody’s life, the medical costs are the highest, so therefore if you can reduce these costs, the medical costs for the whole population goes down. So, these waivers and the so-called “holes in the system,” which become acute when you have a pandemic, that is not an accident. This has been going on for a very, very long time.

Today, in the other panel about Southwest Asia [Panel 3], this came up, because of the absolute negligence in terms of what happens to the people in Yemen. There are 20 million people in Yemen who are food insecure; 400,000 children are immediately threatened with death. [World Food Program Executive Director] Dr. Beasley was in Yemen, and he said that he saw children dying in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t do anything about it because there was no material there, he could not do anything—that their skin looked like parchment, so thin, and they only weighed a few kilos, only a third of what they should weigh for their age.

This is known! It’s not a secret! And there is such an indifference, and that has a method. What came up in this discussion, was a reminder of the Nuremberg Tribunal, where Dr. Leo Alexander, who was the main medical advisor to the judges, said [that] the way how euthanasia started was with only a very slight change, a slight shift in the way how people respected the sacredness of life. And that once you started, even in the slightest, to say that there is such a thing as “unworthy life” because somebody is sick, or somebody has dementia, or is a drug addict—that you start to go on the slippery slope, which ended up exactly where the Nazis ended up.

And I think that that is going on right now! I mean, sure, you can say there has to be triage because there are not enough ICU units, and not enough beds and so forth—but why do you think they are closing down hospitals, in the middle of the pandemic? Because that’s going on in Germany, right now! which does not make sense at all.

I think that one can—and that’s what I tried to say before—one cannot take what is happening in each field, like the medical field, or agriculture, out of the context that the world is run right now by Wall Street, by the City of London, by Silicon Valley, and that these people could not care less about human life. They are in only for their profit and the consolidation of their power.

Obviously, you have to take all of these factors into account, which should not discourage us. I think the work of this Committee is very valuable, and the only reason why one can hope that we will get out of this crisis, is because there are good people like you! All of you who spoke, are the kind of humanity which needs to be protected, and it’s only with good people like you that there is any hope to get mankind out of this crisis. So, I feel very much encouraged by what you have been saying, and I would like to make this work a little bit more, let’s say, outcome oriented; for example, what Mike Callicrate said about local commerce.

Teaching Videos to Be Made

I think what we need to do, is we need to produce a video, where you, Mike, basically develop this concept, maybe together with Marcia and Bob Baker: Why the cartels are doing what they’re doing, and why this is the death of the farm sector. The reason why the German farmers go into the streets with their tractors, and they get no support from the media. They go with tractor caravans of 500 tractors all the way to Berlin, they occupy the capital of Germany for a whole week, and they keep doing it, because they know they’re fighting for their existence, and once you destroy food—no farmers, no food: no food, no people. So, it’s an existential fight.

So, let’s make a video, where you, together with Marcia and Bob produce a video which I think will be extremely attractive for many people who are fighting the same issue.

The same I think on the question of community health education for young people. Because if you look at the four panels we had in this conference: We have people in Latin America, who are absolutely concerned about young people. And for whatever reason, I feel embarrassed to say this, but the people in Latin America right now are in a much more revolutionary spirit than the people of Europe, and it’s much easier to mobilize people than even in the United States, where people are not really mobilized in the way they should be.

The Schiller Institute has international connections. You saw in the panel about Southwest Asia that we have people on a minister level, people on the level of very important institutions, who all want to learn, like this idea of tele-education. What Hussein Askary is saying [is] that he is teaching economics via the Internet. I think we can professionalize this teaching, much more. The discussion today has given me a whole bunch of new ideas of how that can be really made more effective.

I think we are coming out of this conference with—on the one side, richness of knowledge about what are the problems, and a platform in which you can look at the problems in their totality. Because that is really what is needed. The oligarchy likes us to think in terms of segments, in terms of compartmentalization, and that way, we are manipulable. But once you start to take a different view, you can also communicate this knowledge in a better way.

I want to thank all of you, and really, I think we have a very powerful message to go out with.

Moderator: Bob Baker, Dr. Walter Faggett, Dr. Shirley Evers-Manly, Dr. Khadijah Lang, Mike Callicrate, Marcia Baker, Doctor and Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders—General Joycelyn Elders—and five-star general Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I want to thank you all for being with us today. And I want to invite everybody that heard this panel—and there are many people who are asking what they can do—just get in touch with the Schiller Institute. We have work to do, and you just heard about part of it.

On behalf of the Schiller Institute and all of the people who participated in the conference, we want to thank all of you for being involved, both today, and for what you’re about to be involved in, in the future.