Don't blame diseases

A commenter on Amazon.com says we shouldn't blame diseases for killing most of the Indians after Columbus. He claims European policies destroyed the Indians' livelihood and thus made epidemics inevitable.

Smallpox genocide and native population figuresIt wasn't the introduction of foreign diseases that caused the epidemics, it was the destruction of the normal sources of food for the natives, thereby causing massive near starvation. The introduction of alien food types, the change from a mostly meat to a mostly grains diet that unbalanced and weakened the bodies of the natives and destroyed their immune systems. After that any kind of illness, whether foreign or local would have had the same results.

It's the same process going on today, we have more diseases and death because our immune systems have been compromised from eating a constant diet of high sugar, high carbohydrate, largely processed and nutrient depleted foods. We no longer have access to the wide variety of locally grown fresh foods that our grandparents did. The majority of our foods are genetically modified, artificially adultrated with all manner of chemicals and pesticides, and then those foods are processed into foodstuffs that fill the belly but don't nourish the body.Comment:  This is another reason why it's correct to call the death of Indians "genocide." For more on the subject, see Genocide by Any Other Name....