TWMRF is essentially the result of the vision and
determination of one person: its Founder/President Valerie Palmer.
Her own early life surrounded by disease and
hopelessness in a remote corner of South Africa called Zululand provided
the motivation to marshal the medical, scientific, and organizational
resources to take the fight to disease. Disease and conditions
which, neglected by Western science, would galvanize the West if
encountered here on the scales and in the forms endemic in the Third
World.
TWMRF exists to sponsor scientific study of
nutritional, toxic and other environmental diseases that not only affect
large numbers in underdeveloped parts of the world but which, in a single,
interdependent, interactive global system cannot fail to affect us in the
West in a variety of ways.
Tackling these problems at source does not only mean
defeating disease 'over there'; it also means raising the funds to do so
from among the compassionate, the aware- even the purely self interested-
right here.
The organization is unique in its self-appointed task,
undertaking direct research using its own limited resources; motivating
and coordinating others, including government agencies, to engage in
laboratory and field projects; and not least, sponsoring debate in centers
of learning and research world wide.
TWMRF's philosophy involves bringing together
those two often-separated activities of debate and action in sustained
programs of research and implementation. It also stresses the need
to train local medical, healthcare, and scientific personnel in the fight
against the diseases of their own developing countries.
