Time to Restore Medical Freedom (opinion)

RESTORE MEDICAL FREEDOM

by Alan Stang
July 17, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

One positive thing I certainly can say about the recently departed White House press secretary and network commentator is that, as far as I know, he wasn’t a hypocrite, unlike so many others, with regard to the medical treatment he took. He did himself what he would have had the rest of us do.

Recently, we have seen a spate of celebrity deaths. In 2005, ABC anchorman Peter Jennings died of lung cancer, despite a regimen of what his obituary called “aggressive chemotherapy.” Peter was only 67. Actor Heath Ledger, still in his twenties, died more recently from misuse of immensely profitable prescriiption drugs.

Next was the sudden demise of Tim Russert. A blood clot did him in. No doubt all these celebrities enjoyed the best, most expensive attention the nation’s official medical industry can offer. Tim was only 58 and was taking heart medications when he died. Apparently they did nothing for his clots.

And now Tony Snow is gone. Like all these others, he was young, only 53. I heard Tony on the air during his illness. He was guesting on a radio talk show, explaining his problem and his treatment. On that program, Tony Snow said he was using the orthodox therapies prescribed by the official, government medical industry. He took the time to speak with contempt of so-called “alternative” methods. If I recall correctly, he specifically ridiculed things like aloe vera.

Why he chose aloe vera to contemn I don’t know. Maybe he mentioned it simply because it was something he had heard of. Maybe someone had recommended it. He used it as an example of the dietary supplements he was denouncing. I put the word “alternative” in quotes because such medicine isn’t alternative at all; it is traditional, with a three thousand year history. It is the original western medicine.

On the contrary, so-called “orthodox” treatment, so-called “approved” medicine, which uses immensely profitable drugs and procedures that unfortunately destroy the immune system – without which the body cannot heal itself – is the real, unproved alternative. It has been around for little more than a hundred years, contemporaneous with the development of the petroleum industry.

So Tony Snow was not a hypocrite. But he is dead. And there is no evading the fact that in his case and in the cases of all the celebrities cited above, orthodox industrial medicine failed. Yes, in specialties like orthopedics, surgery, ophthalmology, emergency medicine, we enjoy by far the best in the world.

But wouldn’t you think after a while somebody up there would recognize that what we are offered to treat chronic, degenerative disease, with some happy exceptions, is mostly a failure? Why else do people flock to “alternative” practitioners? Do you look elsewhere after you are cured? No, you go home to celebrate. You don’t look for other doctors.

Some years ago, a New Jersey friend who was not a doctor but had been trained in the use of an “alternative” regimen, told me of a successful cardiologist who suffered a heart attack himself while enjoying a session of “horizontal recreation” in Vegas on vacation. The cardiologist quickly returned home so he could visit my friend, rather than use the same regimen he himself prescribed.

Answering my friend’s bemused question, he explained that he certainly would not use these “alternative” techniques in his practice. He didn’t need to explain that, had he done so, the state medical authorities would have threatened to yank his license, and he would have run the risk of considerable, financial loss. He returned to his practice, withholding the methods he knew were effective because they had worked for him.

When I was young, Americans would boast that this was the freest country on earth. It was true. Then! The sad fact is that today there is more medical freedom in many other countries – Germany, for instance – than there is here. I used to think we fought Germany because we hated Hitlerism. I was wrong. We love Nazism so much we wanted a monopoly. We went to war with Hitler because we didn’t want anyone else to enjoy it.

Another dear friend recently flew to Germany for colon cancer treatment. The therapies he wanted are not available here. It is not an exaggeration to say that the fate of some modalities is determined by how much they cost. After World War II, chelation, developed in pre-war Germany, was on its way to being the accepted therapy for clots. Then the coronary bypass was developed. Because chelation is relatively inexpensive – $3,000 versus $50,000 and more – it became suspicious, “unethical,” even “illegal.”

Along these lines, Harry Schwartz for years was medical correspondent for the New York Times. In his book, The Case for American Medicine (New York, D. McKay, 1973) Schwartz makes clear with government statistics that medical costs exploded only after the introduction of Medicare. Typically, the government created a “crisis,” and then started screaming about the need for a “solution.”

So bad is the situation that der medical industry will not allow patients to try something else, even when doctors admit to the family that they can do nothing more; that the only thing they can do is keep the patient comfortable. What could be the harm whatever a family does for someone who is terminal? The danger is that if it isn’t “approved,” by “consensus,” etc., it could work. If it works, the “traditional” therapy could be in trouble, which could break the monopoly and endanger the take.

Recently, a lady in Oklahoma suddenly presented with metastatic bone cancer. At the hospital, her family was required to sign a form pledging that they would not bring anything in to help her. In other, freer countries that lack our Nazi spirit of monopoly, doctors don’t care what you bring in, if it could help.

Despite their solemn promise, the family smuggled something in and used it on the victim – imagine the effrontery! – after doctors told them the cancer was everywhere and the only thing they could do was keep her comfortable. The item the family used was the Guardian, manufactured by Eagle Research, which restores balance to the body’s electronic frequencies so it can heal itself.

They were able to get it past hospital security in the daughter’s bag, one of the huge receptacles women carry that contain food many weeks old, lingerie, cosmetics, books and other research materials, spare shoes, first aid supplies, and other items better left uncatalogued, the advantage of which is that only the proprietor of the bag has any hope of finding something therein, and it usually takes her twenty minutes to do so.

A lady sitting beside me at lunch some years ago began rooting around in her bag. When she withdrew her hand, a finger was gushing blood like Spindletop. She had forgotten about the raw razor blade installed long before. She held the hand up, marveling, while her tablemates scattered. Never get into a lady’s bag, even if she tells you to. Bring it to her instead; let her do it. That way you will be there to help, in case she needs a tourniquet.

In the hospital room, daughter administered the Eagle Guardian seven or eight times a day, while dad stood guard at the door. When someone tried to come in, the dad would go into his bumbling act, which was easy to do because he is blind. By the time the intruder had gotten around the dad and gained access to the room, the daughter had dismantled the Guardian and replaced it in her bag. The intruder, usually a nurse, would invariably be suspicious but nothing could be proved.

Two weeks later, the lady walked out of the hospital and returned to work. The doctors could find no cancer. She was “clean.” A real doctor would be eaten up with curiosity. How did this happen? What did you do? Not here. American doctors don’t want to know. Indeed, they are irritated. They don’t want to talk about it. As minions of the medical industry, they are embarrassed.

At the recent Health Freedom Expo in Chicago, a gentleman in my audience reported that he had tried the same thing to help his mother, but was caught. His mistake was neglecting to employ the services of a lady with one of those bags. His unit was confiscated and never returned. From then on, when he visited his mother, a hospital official never left his side. Of course, she died. “They killed my mother!”

It sounds like the scriipt of a horror movie, but it is today’s Nazi medical industry in action. In another paradox, notice that a pregnant lady can kill her baby with impunity because “a woman has the unalienable right to make decisions about her own body.” But the same woman has no right to decide which treatments to take for her cancer. There, she must do as she is told. It really is not a paradox, when you add up the bucks.

By the way, I certainly do not argue that Big Pharma should be closed down. It has produced many helpful, even life-saving products. I do not believe its profits should be restricted. I hold the modest belief that its overwhelming success grants it no power to control the media and government, and use them to impose its monopoly and will. The Fascist Drug Administration today is in large part a division of Big Pharma. What we have is not Free Enterprise; it is Fascism.

Nazi corporate medicine has done everything it can to ban so-called “alternative” medicine. Sensible Americans do not respond in kind. If chemo and radiation are what you want, go ahead and get it. The same should be true for any other treatment. Restore the traditional American level playing field. Restore medical freedom. Stop throwing doctors into jail.