Silent Enemy

Author: Faye Hueston
Paperback: 283 pages
Publisher: Infinity Publishing, first edition, March 2010
Language: English

Some years ago, while living in London, Faye Hueston became mysteriously ill.  Unable to find a cause for her peculiar symptoms, doctors dismissed them as psychosomatic.  Eventually, tests by a clinical ecology doctor proved the cause to be pesticide poisoning.  Silent Enemy refers to the chemicals that are polluting our bodies as well as the environment.  Based on the diaries Faye Hueston kept at the time, it chronicles her experience of environmental illness, and her long, often frustrating search for a cure.

Faye Hueston's engrossing story, written with passion, wit, and grace, advances two themes, one personal, the other universal.  The first tells of her struggle with a mysterious illness that defied medical diagnosis, until it was proved, ultimately, to be pesticide poisoning.  The long search that followed to rid her body of the toxic chemicals led, eventually, to the unorthodox therapy that saved her life.  The second theme concerns the environment, and the many victims of environmental illness that she met along the way -- all of whom had encountered the same disbelief or dismissal by the orthodox medical practitioners to whom they had turned for help.  Her story merits a wide and attentive audience.
Sydney Hyman
Founding editor, Aspen Institute Quarterly