The Book: Politics In Healing - Chapter 1

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Chapter 1WHAT'S WRONG WITH AMERICA'S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

Politics and healing might be thought of as a contradiction in terms. Surely

there can't be politics in cancer and healing; surely when breakthroughs are

made, the medical profession puts them to use. That's the way it is, isn't it?

It would be nice if it were that simple.

 

In most fields, competition usually arranges for the best product to prevail -

not always, but usually. In ten stories, Politics in Healing shows that a free

market in health products does not exist in the U.S. Effective and non-toxic

products (many for cancer) have been shoved aside during most of the 20th

century. Pushed forward in their stead have been " approved " therapies, usually

extremely toxic, which did not win their spurs in the open competition of a free

market.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead, approval was dictated and administered from the top down by " Official

Medicine " . Official Medicine consists of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

(FDA), the American Medical Association (AMA), the National Institutes of Health

(NIH), which contain the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In addition, there are

the American Cancer Society (ACS), the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, the

Mayo Clinic, the M.D. Anderson in Houston, Roswell Park in Buffalo, N.Y., and

others. These organizations constitute Official Medicine, the American medical

establishment. It decides, yes, pontificates what medicines and therapies will

be available to Americans, and harshly disciplines doctors who venture outside

its guidelines.

 

This book is a collection of stories which should not have happened, stories

which will not be heard from Official Medicine, stories about dark undercurrents

in American medicine. Political patterns of misuse of both public and private

power are seen through what happened to ten little-known healers of the 20th

century. Many of them produced breakthroughs of Nobel Prize quality. Most of

these therapies are no longer available to help with our numerous health

challenges as we begin the new millennium - not because they didn't work, but

for political reasons. These stories show how governmental and prestigious

private institutions have deliberately misrepresented, held back, discouraged,

ignored, and suppressed important inexpensive and non-toxic healing

breakthroughs. While government can be expected to be inept, the decisions and

actions described in this book were intentional and deliberate, and many people

have died as a result.

 

This book puts it as a postulate that there is a war going on (of which the

public is largely unaware) between toxic and non-toxic therapies, and that the

non-toxic ones have been getting clobbered. There has been a long attempt to

sell a bill of goods that the only real medicine is strong, toxic medicine,

almost always patented, produced by pharmaceutical companies, and that only this

should be used by doctors or paid for by health insurance programs either public

or private. Key to maintaining this status quo is the FDA, which tilts

predictably and continuously against nontoxic medicines. Created in 1906 by the

visionary Dr. Harvey Wiley, the FDA throughout most of the 20th century had

little in common with what Dr. Wiley intended. Its original purpose was to make

sure that foods are pure and drugs are safe, but it has drifted way off course.

The FDA frequently appears less interested in protecting Americans from harmful

drugs than from harmless ones, especially those capable of

competing with prescription drugs.

 

 

 

 

Indeed, as we enter the 21st century, the fourth leading cause of death in the

U.S. is from reactions to FDA-approved drugs. On April 14, 1998, the JAMA

(Journal of the American Medical Association) published a shocking report, a

painstaking analysis of 39 studies conducted over 30 years. The study showed

that an average of 106,000 people die in hospitals each year - that's one every

five minutes - from drugs approved by the FDA. The study does not include cases

where drugs were misprescribed. When considering deaths from the same cause

outside hospitals, i.e., at home, the number rises to around 140,000 a year,

according to Centers for Disease Control statistics. These are not deaths from

illegal street drugs; those cause only a small fraction of the deaths from

FDA-approved drugs, which kill three times the number dying each year from

automobile accidents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there's more. The fourth leading cause of hospital admissions in the U.S. is

from reactions to prescription drugs. About 2.2 million Americans suffer such

severe side effects from FDA-approved drugs that some are permanently disabled

or require long hospital stays, reported USA Today on April 24, 1998. These side

effects were estimated to have cost $78 billion in 1997.

 

When ABC News Director Peter Jennings announced the JAMA study, he presented a

doctor whose wife had complained that her pain medication was not taking effect.

" My words have come back to haunt me " , he told Jennings. " `Take another pill', I

told her. `It won't kill you " '. But it did; the next morning she didn't wake up.

Only then did the doctor learn that the drug was capable of causing heart

problems.

 

The cost of the American healthcare system has passed one trillion dollars per

year - about 1/5 of the U.S. gross domestic product. We spend more per capita on

health care than any country on earth. Despite that, some of our statistics are

embarrassing: the infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher than that in Cuba.

The number of infants who died before their first birthday is 13.3 per 1000

births in New York City but 10.9 in Shanghai (Townsend Letter, May 1998).

 

A study issued in June, 2000, by the United Nations World Health Organization

(WHO) measured a new concept: healthy life expectancy. The WHO found Japan

leading the world with the U.S. at #20, falling behind every country in Europe

as well as Canada, Australia, and Israel. The WHO also ranked national health

systems for overall quality. The WHO found that the U.S. system places a heavier

financial burden on individuals than do other developed countries, and so rated

the U.S. #37. France was ranked #l.

 

Perhaps its costliness results from the fact that the U.S. has one of the most

bureaucratically controlled and over-regulated medical systems in the world.

Manufacturers are not free to produce effective non-toxic products or to inform

the public on what their products can do. Doctors are only free to prescribe for

their patients what has been approved or accepted by Official Medicine.

 

Because of overuse of antibiotics, many strains of bacteria have developed

resistance against any of them. When Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, lay

dying from just such a bacteria, Official Medicine had nothing for him. In Texas

in early 1998, eight people were suddenly dead from a new strain of Strep A, and

doctors were helpless to save them. Old types of bacteria have mutated; new

strains of the tuberculosis bacillus do not respond to existing antibiotics. Of

those who go into hospitals, 14% come out with infections they did not have when

they were admitted. Some don't come out - 21,000 die each year from such

infections (USA Today, April 14, 1998). Do effective medicines for such

situations exist which could never make it out of the closet in the current

over-regulated environment?

 

 

 

The FDA tries to control more than it needs to. It claims regulatory authority

over drugs, but defines a drug as anything that affects the body. Carried to the

logical extreme, prune juice could be considered a drug, since it definitely

affects the body. A 1997 study by Tufts University found that the cost of

getting FDA approval for a new drug costs upwards of $200,000,000 and may take

ten years or longer. In May, 2000, an article in the New England Journal of

Medicine stated that getting a new drug approved could cost between $300 and 600

million. The pharmaceutical industry is the richest in the world - yes, richer

than the oil industry. However, given such rules, even the richest drug company

cannot afford to introduce a new medicine without patent protection.

Consequently, more than ever before we live in the era of Patent Medicine, once

not a very complimentary term.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Securing FDA approval allows a manufacturer to advertise what the approved

product will do - i.e., to make health claims, which are forbidden without FDA

approval. For instance, it is well established through clinical studies that the

saw palmetto herb is more effective - and safer - at shrinking a swollen male

prostate gland than the " approved " brands whose advertisements are everywhere

(Health and Healing, June 1999). If a manufacturer of saw palmetto wished to

state this known truth on its label, the FDA would haul that manufacturer into

court in short order for having committed the sin of making health claims. The

fact that they might be true is beside the point, for the FDA has arrogated unto

itself the right to censor them. In a nation which finds it cannot censor

pornography under the free speech right of the First Amendment, the FDA finds it

can censor a manufacturer and prevent it from telling the public the truth about

a product. On January 15, 1999, the U.S. District of

Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals held that the FDA had violated the First

Amendment of the Constitution by denying four health claims conveying

information; the Court also held that the FDA cannot constitutionally deny a

health claim conveying information. Paying no attention to the Constitution or

the Court, on November 30, 1999, the FDA denied a health claim concerning the

herb saw palmetto's ability to reduce a swollen prostate, stating that it

considered the claim to be one requiring the filing of a new drug application.

Congressman Peter DeFazio wrote the FDA a stern letter protesting its

unconstitutional acts. For the FDA, if you want to make health claims, the

solution is simple: get in line, spend your $200,000,000 +, and in ten years or

so perhaps you can do so. Since the saw palmetto herb cannot be patented, the

American male consumer is out of luck at learning about that effective,

harmless, and far cheaper product, unless someone can persuade the FDA to obey

the Court

of Appeals.

 

In many countries, people think that if they want the best medicine in the

world, they need to come to the United States. This is certainly the case for

catastrophic injuries. If you're broken to pieces, you've got a much better

chance of being put back together properly in the U.S. However, most Americans

do not die of accidents but of degenerative diseases. One American dies of

cancer every minute, 1,500 a day, 10,000 a week, 500,000 a year. This is the

equivalent of three fully loaded 747's crashing and killing everyone aboard

every day, all year long. An American Cancer Society study of cancer mortality

rates in 46 countries shows the U.S. as #25, just a little below the middle.

 

Pretty regularly, someone makes an appeal for more money for medical research.

But what about the effective, non-toxic therapies already discovered which have

been suppressed, discouraged, outlawed or driven out of the U.S. by Official

Medicine? This book deals with those medicines, all non-toxic and mostly not

available - not because they didn't work, but for political reasons. But if

something is non-toxic, why should the government (FDA) need to " protect " us

from it? Or is the protection for companies who do not want competition from

inexpensive, effective, non-toxic therapies? The FDA spent eight years of effort

and untold millions trying to jail Dr. Burzynski (Chapter 11), discoverer of an

effective and NON-toxic cancer therapy.

 

 

 

The FDA's involvement with pharmaceutical companies has been called the most

notorious " revolving door " in Washington; upon retirement, about 65% of FDA

employees go to work for drug companies. Upon hearing this, one person

commented, " What's wrong with this picture? "

 

Eight of the stories in this book deal with cancer therapies. These may be of

interest to many, since one American dies of cancer every minute. Money for

cancer research goes to those trying to perfect " approved " therapies such as

chemotherapy and radiation, but both are very harmful. Those researching such

therapies might be out of business and have to find another way to pay the

mortgage if an effective, non-toxic therapy were to come on the market. As will

be seen in these stories, a great deal of effort has been made to make sure that

doesn't happen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The possible loss of Health Freedom in the U.S. was foreseen by one of the

signers of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia,

one of the most famous doctors in colonial America. Rush wrote:

 

The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical

freedom as well as religious freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one

class of men and deny equal privilege to others will constitute the Bastille of

medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic.

 

While every other kind of freedom is fought for by both liberals and

conservatives, there's strange silence when one brings up Health Freedom -

freedom for anyone to consult the doctor of one's choice, to obtain any therapy

of one's choice, toxic or nontoxic, and to have it paid for by one's health

insurance. Our talk and preaching about free markets helped to bring down the

Soviet Union. But we don't practice what we preach, for we have no free market

in non-toxic therapies in the U.S. - in things which by definition can't hurt

us.

 

For a layman, it is hard to conceive that some of the most basic organizations

in our health establishment would lie and cheat, but lie and cheat they have.

Political pounding befell some very remarkable medicines and their proponents,

with both governmental and nongovernmental institutions brazenly lying as they

squelched them. The late Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois declared on the Senate

floor on December 6, 1963, " It's a terrible thing that we cannot really trust

either the FDA or the NCI! " He was talking about Krebiozen (Chapter 5), one of

the most shocking stories of all. People picketed the Kennedy White House in

1963 demanding to retain access to Krebiozen, lest they die. Having bemoaned

listening to the " experts " after the Cuban missile crisis, the President

apparently was still listening to them, for Krebiozen was lost and forgotten,

and shouldn't have been. And people died.

 

Then there is the story of Dr. William F. Koch of Detroit (Chapter 3). From the

1920's to the 1950's, he was curing cancer with one shot of Glyoxylide, a

substance he discovered. While the cancer epidemic rages on, Dr. Koch is

virtually forgotten.

 

Persecuted relentlessly by the FDA in two trials in the 1940's, he was

repeatedly denounced as a quack by the editor of the AMA's JAMA after he refused

to sell his discovery to the AMA. Yet there are people still alive at the

beginning of the 21st century who were expected to die momentarily until treated

with ONE Koch shot. With one American dying of cancer every minute, many might

wish that Official Medicine had not thrown away the Koch therapy and the

brilliant science that produced it.

 

 

 

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) steadfastly refused to test the Koch

therapy, or the Hoxsey therapy, or Krebiozen, but did test hydrazine sulfate

(HS), a very cheap non-toxic chemical which cured many terminal patients after

conventional therapy had failed to do so. It might have been better if NCI had

not tested hydrazine sulfate, for it cheated in the trials. Dr. Joseph Gold, the

chief proponent of HS, has warned for years that certain substances - alcohol,

tranquilizers, and barbiturates - were incompatible with HS and would cancel its

effect - or even make a harmful combination with it. In the Soviet Union and in

four trials within the U.S., Dr. Gold's warnings were scrupulously observed, and

the average results were 40-50% success in terminal cancer patients - people got

better. However, the NCI maintained that the " incompatibles " were a " non-issue "

and gave barbiturates to 94% of the 600 patients it treated with HS from 1989 to

1993. Instead of a 40-50% recovery, there were

more survivors of the Titanic than

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

there were of the NCI's trials, where no one got better, all died. Penthouse

magazine blew the whistle on the scandal and suggested that the families of the

deceased patients should sue the NCI for genocide. As a cancer treatment,

hydrazine sulfate costs about 60 cents a day. Dr. Gold estimates that the cost

of one session of chemotherapy would pay for a year's supply of HS (Chapter 10).

 

Chapter 7 on colostrum (a mother's first milk) tells how former Congressman

Berkley Bedell of Iowa was cured of Lyme disease, after antibiotics proved

ineffective, by a colostrum " targeted " against the spirochete which causes Lyme

disease. This was achieved by injecting a killed lyme spirochete into the udder

of a cow three weeks before her calf was born. The cow's colostrum then

contained antibodies against the lyme spirochete, and this cured the

Congressman. There is no known limit to what can be produced by the targeted

colostrum method; it presumably could provide a cure for TB, or for various

bacteria - even protection against anthrax. It has been used successfully

against cancer in animals. The NCI and the NIH have shown no interest in this

method, and the FDA discourages the private sector from developing it. When a

colostrum drink was shown to be effective against arthritis, the FDA squelched

it. The trial of the Minnesota farmer who helped Congressman Bedell to recover

is

described.

 

In fact, there is a trial in almost every chapter of the book, as the stories

tell what befell the protagonists of various non-toxic, non-pharmaceutical

therapies.

 

The lessons of the ten stories show that there are two principal impediments to

non-toxic health breakthroughs: 1) the FDA, and 2) doctors' fear of losing their

licenses for using unapproved medicines. There are two simple solutions: 1)

remove the FDA's regulatory authority over anything no more toxic than aspirin

(everything in this book would pass that test) and 2) pass the Access to Medical

Treatment Act, which is already introduced in both houses of Congress. This bill

was conceived by Congressman Berkley Bedell so that all Americans might have

access to the sorts of unconventional therapies which he believes saved his life

twice; Lyme disease, as noted, and then from a threatened recurrence of prostate

cancer, described in Chapter 8. The " Access " Act provides a procedure for

putting on the market medicines not approved by the FDA and protects from

prosecution doctors who use them. Doctors would need to obtain the " informed

consent " of a patient, who signs a statement that he/she

realizes the treatment to be given is not approved by the FDA.

 

Had these two changes been the law of the land, this book would not have been

written, for the stories that follow would not have happened. Legislating these

two simple changes would permit the return of most of the therapies described

except for those which have been lost. Since all were inexpensive, with their

return and the appearance of other breakthroughs waiting in the wings, the costs

of American healthcare would plummet.

 

 

 

These changes would permit open competition and a free market in NON-toxic

therapies. The U.S. has had a rigidly controlled market in health products,

including non-toxic ones, (to " protect " us) for most of the past century. The

results are a high death toll from cancer, the absence of effective medicine

against viral diseases such as AIDS and against many bacterial infections, and

the most costly health system on the planet. How could we do worse with Health

Freedom? While American emergency medicine is indeed the best in the world, most

Americans do not die from accidents, but from degenerative disease. Many

treatments for the latter are excluded from the market, or their capabilities

censored by the FDA, which has usurped for itself the right to dictate to

manufacturers what they can say about their products. Gradually, before anyone

realized it was happening, the FDA clamped upon the U.S. a harsh regime of

censorship and repression of anything that could compete with the giant

drug companies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prescription drugs have become so expensive that it has been proposed that the

government pay for them, instead of forcing the drug companies to reduce prices

to the level charged in other countries such as Mexico and Canada. But there's a

better idea; let's give the drug companies some real competition by removing all

governmental controls over anything non-toxic. Since this would permit truthful

advertising of what non-toxic medicines (nutritional supplements, herbs, etc.)

can do, it would not be surprising to see the cost of prescription drugs come

down, way down, corrected in the way that free markets and open competition

regularly do.

 

We have been warned many times about socialized medicine. The problem, we're

told, is that its overly centralized control stifles innovation. With too much

dictation from the top down, with over-regulation by the FDA, with doctors not

free to use effective non-toxic therapies, a form of socialized medicine is just

what we have, functioning just as badly as we were warned to expect.

 

While the computer industry is free to make breakthroughs that are the envy of

the world, and which happen so rapidly as to leave people breathless, no such

freedom exists in the medical field. Instead, such discoveries as the

antineoplaston cancer treatment of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski in Houston are

discouraged; the FDA tried very hard to put him in jail. In contrast to so many

FDA-approved drugs, antineoplastons never hurt anyone, but instead put many

cancers in remission. In addition, here too, the NCI cheated in trials of

antineoplastons, diluting them to the point of ineffectiveness. NCI even filed

for and obtained a patent on one of Dr. Burzynski's compounds when it discovered

he had not patented it (Chapter 11).

 

Open competition and a free market in non-toxic health products will solve a

multitude of problems. In such a market, wondrous things can and will appear,

many returning from the oblivion in to which they have been cast. How could

there be politics in cancer and healing? Surely, one presumes, the best medical

discoveries are adopted and the doctors use them. The tragic truth is that it is

not that simple.

 

 

Buy the book or tell your library to get it. Frank