The Medical Racket

Disclaimer: I am a layman, and do not give medical advice. Please do not take my word, or anybody else's, regarding your health. Take responsibility for your health, and do not give it to "experts" or anybody else. Your life is your life, and giving the responsibility for your health to others is a dangerous path. Talk to your doctor, read this essay, research the areas presented here if you feel inclined, but in the end, please make your own decisions. Doctors only know what they are taught, and if they are taught incorrectly, their advice can be less than helpful, and their treatments can kill you. Please do nothing simply because an "expert" or other authority figure tells you to.

This essay is overflowing with names, dates and events, and takes an iconoclastic look at today’s medical establishment and how it came to be, while also arguing that legitimate alternative paradigms exist, and far preferable to today’s. Early readers informed me that it could be an overwhelming amount of information to digest, as well as emotionally trying. This timeline is designed to make the reading experience easier, so readers can refer to names, dates and events in the larger scheme of this essay. The early human data is controversial in many quarters, and this timeline hews more toward today’s orthodox theories. The early population estimates, until the modern age, are probably within 25% of the actual population, at least as far as orthodoxy is concerned. The timeline is broken into two pieces, to 1491, directly below, and from 1492 onward. There are far more links to this medical essay from the 1492 onward piece. This timeline is an abbreviated version of the site timeline.

	This timeline relates to the rise of today’s Western/American medical establishment and its prevailing paradigm
Date	Event	Human Population Statistics
> 4 million BC	First erect protohumans appear in Africa, differentiating from their great ape cousins.	Human population = 0
> 2 million BC	Large-brained bipedal hominids, of the genus homo, appear in Africa.
< 2 million BC	Homo erectus begins migrating from Africa, and fire was first used as a tool. The African ape diet was partly abandoned as fruit, blossoms, seeds and leaves were less available beyond the tropics, meaning more meat eating.	Human population <100,000
c. 400,000 BC	Fire consistently used. First regular food processing practiced – cooking.	>100,000
c. 130,000 - 100,000 BC	First anatomically modern humans appear in Africa and migrate across Asia, eventually displacing other hominid species.
c. 40,000 BC	Advances in hunting skill and technology allow humans to hunt larger animals. Boats invented. Modern humans first appear in Europe and Australia.
c. 30,000 BC	Extinction of most large animals in Australia possibly caused by human over-hunting. Humans probably first appear in North and South America. Cave murals are first drawn, in European caves. One of the earliest artistic works, and possibly a religious artifact, the Venus of Willendorf, is made in central Europe. It, and many works like it, is evidence that goddess-based religion flourished from humanity’s earliest days.
c. 25,000 BC	Pottery first appears, in Europe.
c. 23,000 BC	Bow and arrow invented, probably in Europe.
c. 11,000 BC	Methods for processing and storing food appear in Fertile Crescent.
c. 10,000 BC	Extinction of most large mammals in the Americas, also possibly caused by human over-hunting, probably also influenced by climate changes. Dogs are the first domestic animals, appearing in the Fertile Crescent region.
c. 8500 - 8000 BC	Hunter-gatherer lifestyle is increasingly unsustainable. Domestication revolution begins in Fertile Crescent and the Americas. Wheat, peas and olives domesticated in Fertile Crescent. Squash and pumpkins first domesticated in Mesoamerica.	4 million
c. 7500 BC	Domestication revolution begins in east Asia.
c. 7000 BC	Sheep and goats begin domestication in Fertile Crescent region.
c. 6500 BC	First large human communities, such as Catal Huyuk, appear in present-day Turkey. The clearing of forest to make farm fields, and the resultant puddles, led to the spread of malaria, probably originating in Africa.
c. 6000 BC	Cattle and pigs begin domestication in Fertile Crescent region. Chicken and rice begin domestication in east Asia.
c. 5500 BC	Agricultural communities appear along the Nile river.
c. 5000 BC	Civilization begins forming in the Fertile Crescent. Early societies are egalitarian. The agricultural societies have goddess-based religions, while the pastoral, herd-tending societies develop male-based religions. The mobile pastoral societies begin invading the sedentary agricultural societies. Irrigation is first used in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and in Nile river valley. Metallurgy first practiced near mountains of Eastern Europe. Copper weapons developed by herder societies of steppe regions. People of Greece and the southern Balkans adopt agricultural practices.	5 million
c. 4500 BC	First large religious facilities built at site of today’s Iraq. Stratification of early society begins, with elites - priest class, craftsmen, rulers and probably the first medical doctors.
c. 4000 BC	Horse domesticated in steppe region north of Black Sea. Llama and Alpaca domesticated in South America. Camel first domesticated near Fertile Crescent. Invasions from steppe regions wash across Europe, Fertile Crescent and Middle East. Warfare practiced on large scale.
c. 3500 BC	Migrating farmers from Fertile Crescent settle Indus valley in present day Pakistan. Bronze age begins in Fertile Crescent, and plow agriculture begins there. Soil salination begins affecting Mesopotamian agriculture, and salt resistant barley is raised in place of wheat, comprising half of southern Mesopotamian grain production. Siltation of river water from upstream deforestation also contributes to environmental degradation. The wheel is invented in Mesopotamia. By this time, corn, potatoes, manioc, beans and turkeys are domesticated in the Americas.
c. 3000 BC	Sumeria becomes the world’s first literate society. History begins. State bureaucracy and military establishment are developed. The earth-based Mother Goddess begins being replaced by thunderous, male, sky gods in Middle Eastern mythology.	14 million
c. 2600 BC	Imhotep is credited with building the world’s first large stone building, a step pyramid in Egypt. Imhotep was also a physician. He was later deified, and was probably the model for the Greek god of medicine, Asclepius.
c. 2400 BC	Crop yields continue declining in Sumerian fields. Wheat yields decline by 42% between 2400 and 2100 BC.
c. 2100 BC	Ur abandons wheat cultivation. Wheat comprises only 2% of Sumerian crops.
c. 2000 BC	Great migration wave of pastoral societies from steppe regions (generally between the Caspian and Black Seas) into the Fertile Crescent, India and Europe. Third Dynasty of Ur collapses. Violent, male, sky-god religion accompanies the invaders. Feminine, earth-based religion and mythology in the Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean region and Europe are eventually overthrown by the invaders, replaced with male, sky-god religions. Helen of Troy becomes a famous female healer and mythological figure, but female healers begin disappearing from medicine at this time. Intense deforestation of the region from Morocco to Afghanistan commences. Today, only about 10% of that forest remains; much has turned to desert.
c. 1900 BC	Indus valley society collapses. Declining food production due to soil salination probably led to population decline and internal collapse, combined with foreign invasion.
c. 1700 BC	Wheat yields in Sumeria decline by 65% since 2400 BC. Fields turn white from salt. Sumer declines as a power, and the center of Mesopotamian civilization shifts north.
c. 1500 BC	A four hundred year period of chaos and warfare begins to sweep Europe, the Fertile Crescent and Mediterranean region. The violent, male sky-gods come to dominate religion, including one named Jehovah.	38 million
c. 1400 BC	Iron first smelted by Hittite civilization in present-day Turkey. Agriculture begins in Japan.
c. 1200 BC	Iron made into weaponry. Iron weapons rapidly replace bronze and become common throughout Europe, the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and elsewhere. The feminine-friendly Minoan civilization on Crete collapses, as does Mycenaean civilization.
c. 1000 BC	Agriculture collapses in central Mesopotamia due to soil salination. In 1990, Iraq imported 70% of its food. The anti-feminine culture of ancient Greece develops, known as Greece’s “dark age.” Women are gradually excluded from public life. Although male gods dominated Greek mythology, women were also present, if subservient.	50 million
c. 900 BC	Asclepius lives at this time, and eventually became “sainted” in Greek culture and became the Greek god of healing during its classical period. The mythological Asclepius was the son of Apollo, who was the son of Zeus. Hygeia and Panacea were Asclepius’ daughters.
c. 700 BC	A village that began with shepherd’s huts, eventually known as Rome, is growing.
c. 650 BC	Expanding Greek settlements begin causing noticeable environmental degradation.
590 BC	Solon argues against agriculture on steep slopes in Greece because of rapid erosion.
560 BC	Peisistratus becomes tyrant of Athens, and pays bounty for farmers to plant olive trees, as they can survive on the badly eroded land, and put down roots to penetrate the exposed rock.
c. 500 BC	Celts begin invading the British Isles, absorbing the Iberians. Women enter the healing profession in Danish Celtic culture. Pythagoras, the world’s first mathematician and the West’s first vegetarian, dies. His followers taught that the earth orbited the sun. Etruscan civilization is at its peak influence, to eventually fall to neighboring states.
432 BC	Peak of the Greek classic period. Hippocrates, Socrates, Thucydides and Aristophanes are alive. During Peloponnesian War (begun in 431 BC), war-crowded Athens is afflicted with a plague (probably smallpox or typhus) in 430 that lasts three years, killing about a third of the population and leading to Athens’ decline.
c. 400 BC	Centuries of Greek deforestation and agricultural practices devastate the environment and soils, remarked upon by Plato and other observers. The degraded environment led to falling crop yields and Greece’s decline, as had been happening to other empires for thousands of years. Rome begins rising as a power, eventually defeating the Etruscans of today’s northern Italy, and incorporate Etruria’s cultural and technical achievements. By the time of Jesus, Etruscan culture was almost entirely absorbed into Roman culture.
334 BC	Alexander the Great of Macedonia conquers Persia and tries uniting East and West. The short-lived Macedonian Empire helps pave the way for the Roman Empire. Alexander supposedly said that he “died by the help of too many physicians.”
264 BC	After subduing Italy, Rome engages in its first war against Carthage. Italy and Sicily are rapidly deforested to meet Rome’s needs.
202 BC	Rome defeats the forces of Carthaginian general Hannibal, ending the second Punic War.
197 BC	Rome invades Greece and conquers them. Rome would incorporate much of Greek culture into its own, borrowing its gods and technology, although denigration of Greek physicians and medicine was typical.
146 BC	Greek resistance to Roman rule leads to the complete destruction of Corinth and the sale of its inhabitants into slavery. That same year, Rome does the same to Carthage. The Roman Republic begins expanding across Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East.
58 BC	Rome begins handing out free food. Eventually, hundred of thousands of Rome’s citizens received free food for political reasons. Intensive agricultural exploitation of imperial lands are undertaken to feed the empire. Places such as today’s Libya are forced to become farms for Rome, with the agricultural practices eventually turning Libya into the desert nation it is today.
1 AD	Jesus is alive. Much of Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and surrounding regions are deforested by Rome, eventually turning it into desert.	World population: 170 million.
C. 30 AD	Roman writer Celsus translates works of Hippocrates, writes a mammoth series of books, and the eight devoted to medicine have survived.	Roman Empire’s population: 50 million
66 AD	First Jewish revolt against Roman rule. Rome responds with typical brutality, the revolt ending with the mass suicide at Masada in 73 AD. Jews begin their dispersal from Palestine.
132 AD	Jews revolt against Roman rule again. Rome responds in standard fashion, completely destroying the Jewish state in 135 AD and laying waste to the entire region. Hundreds of thousands of Jews die, the survivors sold into slavery, and dispersed across the Roman Empire and beyond.
165 AD	The Antonine plague, probably smallpox, sweeps through the Roman Empire, brought back by returning soldiers from Syria. It rages for 15 years, killing about five million people, or about a quarter to a third of all of those exposed to the disease, including Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180, as it did his predecessor in 169.
c. 169 AD	Marcus Aurelius appoints Galen to be personal physician to his heir, Commodus. Galen writes prodigiously, his work guiding Western medicine until the 1500s.
c. 200 AD		200 million
251 AD	An epidemic again sweeps through the Roman Empire until 270, killing 5000 of Rome’s citizens each day during the epidemic’s peak, including the Emperor Claudius in 270. Rome was forced by the population loss to recruit barbarian troops. The first mass conversions to Christianity were apparently a consequence of the epidemic.
476 AD	Western Roman Empire falls. Germanic peoples invade the Roman Empire’s lands in Europe during the late 400s, including the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. The Eastern Roman Empire lasts nearly continually for the next 1000 years, with Constantinople (earlier named Byzantium and later Istanbul) as its capital city. Europe, however, fell into its Dark Ages. Ancient Greek texts were burned as pagan, including Hippocrates’ works. The Roman Catholic Church largely took over medicine, and Galen’s work became dogmatized by the Church. That situation would dominate Western medicine for more than 1000 years.
541	First recorded instance of bubonic plague, beginning in Egypt and racing to Constantinople, where it killed off as many as 10,000 people per day and 40% of the population. Epidemic diseases would periodically sweep Europe and Asia, with cites such as Rome suffering greatly.
562	32-year drought begins to afflict the Moche culture in South America. El Niño cycles regularly affect South American civilization, and elaborate food production and storage systems are designed to cope with them, as well as other environmental challenges. That region’s people become the world’s greatest agricultural experimenters.	250 million
711	Islamic armies invade the Iberian Peninsula. Jews live under Moorish rule in Iberia, and it is their golden age in Europe, lasting for 300 years. Learning was an Islamic ideal, and Islamic scholars kept the teachings of the ancient Greeks alive in the West. Influential doctors such as Abu’l Qasim (936-1013) and Maimonides (1135-1204) came from Moorish Iberia.
C. 800	Mayan civilization begins its collapse. It attained a peak population of several million, before its overtaxed environment failed to support the population. Famine, war and disease accompanied the collapse of the Mayan population to perhaps a million before 1000 AD, similar to Fertile Crescent dynamics. The forest recovers and covers the Mayan ruins.
c. 1050	Northern and central Europe, especially the Germanic lands, engage in great age of deforestation, making way for civilization, clearing about a third of the forest in a couple of centuries. By 1900, about 25% of the forest remains.
1056	Ferdinand I, who proclaimed himself the Emperor of Spain, undertakes “Reconquest” of the Iberian peninsula.
1066	William the Conqueror leads the Norman invasion of Britain.
1096	Christian Europe makes its first united act: the first Crusade to Palestine. The first wide-scaled Jew slaughters in Europe take place as a warm-up for the first Crusade, in France and Germany. Jews would no longer be safe in Europe, and warfare would be the European way of life until World War II ended.
c. 1200	Polynesian people begin colonizing New Zealand. The Islamic culture attains the world’s highest standard of living.
1244	Massacre at Montségur, the last stronghold of the Cathars. The Catholic Church eliminates the greatest threat to its religious monopoly, until Martin Luther posts his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517.	360 million
1314	Europe is gripped by major famine that lasts until 1317.
1346	The Black Death probably originated in China. In 1347 it swept across Asia to Europe. The death toll for Europe and Asia was about 50 million people by 1351, wiping out one quarter to one-third of Europe’s population, and periodically recurring for the next three centuries. Epidemiology being what it was in those days, Jews were accused throughout Europe of causing the plague, and 50,000 Jews were consequently killed. War and death imagery would become prevalent in European art.	Europe’s population declines from about 75 million to 50 million. It would not regain 1345 levels until the 16^th century.
c. 1385	Turkish ruler Tamerlane’s armies catapult plague victims into cities they are besieging, in perhaps history’s first instance of biological warfare.
Late 1300s	Beginning in northern Italy’s city-states, a multifaceted phenomenon begins which is now called the Renaissance. Humanism takes root, which eventually undermines the Catholic Church’s influence.
1399	The Black Death makes a final visit to Europe, and then disappears for many years.
1400	After a century of unrelenting epidemics, warfare and calamity, Europe’s population is about half of what it had been in 1300.	400 million.
1418	Portugal begins colonizing the Madeira Islands, the Azores in 1427 and the Cape Verde Islands in 1450. The prominent cash crop is sugar, which played to the biological predisposition of humans to sweet food, reflecting the distant ape past in Africa, when fruit comprised most of the diet. Settlers to Madeiran island of Santo Porto introduce two rabbits, and soon they rapidly reproduce and denude the entire island.
1444	Portugal enters the African slave trade.
c. 1450	“Little Ice Age” begins, and runs for four centuries, until about 1850.
1453	Ottoman armies capture Constantinople, which puts an end to the Eastern Roman Empire, controls Europe’s trade route to the Orient, and inspires effort to find another European route.
1474	Paolo Toscanelli of Florence suggests to Prince Alfonso V of Portugal that the quickest way to the Indies (spice trade) is sailing across the Atlantic. Toscanelli was wrong. Christopher Columbus eventually obtains the letter from Toscanelli that makes the suggestion.
1479	Portugal cedes Canary Islands to Castile, and Queen Isabella I mounts their invasion. The conquest of the Guanche was complete in 1496, and the Guanche became an extinct culture by 1600.
1488	Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias rounds the southern tip of Africa, and Portugal abandons the idea of reaching Asia by crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus, who made a living in the Portuguese slave trade, takes his plan to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to Castile, which the experts thought was an impossible plan because the distance to Asia would be too great. Columbus had badly miscalculated the earth’s circumference. His early attempts to convince the Castilian court fail.


1492	The Spanish “Reconquest” of the Iberian peninsula ends in January with the conquest of Granada, the last city held by the Moors. Jews are given the options of conversion, expulsion or death. In April, Columbus finally gets authorization for his doomed plan to reach Asia via the Atlantic Ocean. He stumbles into the New World in October, enslaving the first humans he meets.	World population: 470 million, at least half in East Asia and India. Population in the Americas: 50 to 100 million (this site uses 80). Europe’s population: 70 to 80 million. Taino population: 2 to 10 million. At least one million on Española (this site uses 2)
1496	The genocide of the Taino is well underway on Española.
1497	Vasco da Gama sails from Portugal to India around Africa; Arab traders cure his crew of scurvy in 1498, and he returns in 1499 with trade specimens, including valuable spices.
1511	Portuguese traders capture Malacca, in today’s Malaysia, establishing themselves in the spice trade.
1517	Martin Luther publishes his Ninety-Five Theses, which leads to the Protestant Reformation.
1518	First New World smallpox epidemic begins, wiping out most of the surviving Taino on Española, who were already only about 1% of their 1492 population.
1520	Smallpox epidemic that began on Española in 1518 comes across with the Cuban governor’s army, probably killing several million people in Mesoamerica.
1525	European epidemic sweeps through Incan Empire, kills emperor and ignites civil war.
1535	Native American medicine man cures Jacques Cartier’s crew of scurvy on Saint Lawrence River with evergreen foliage and tree bark tea, which was high in vitamin C.
1537	Ambroise Paré accidentally ends the practice of pouring boiling oil on battlefield wounds and initiates more gentle treatment.
1543	Nicolas Copernicus’ posthumously published work theorizes that the earth orbits the sun, re-establishing what Pythagoras thought 2000 years earlier. Considered the first work of the scientific revolution. Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica is considered the first work of modern scientific medicine. It challenges a thousand years of dogma based on Galen’s work. The Catholic Church increases its efforts to ban books.	Taino population on Española: 200
1553	Michael Servetus publishes an accurate description of pulmonary circulation. Escapes Spanish Inquisition to only be burned at the stake in Calvin’s Geneva for his heresies.
1559	Catholic Church publishes its index of banned books. Index survives until the 1960s. Tristán de Luna expedition goes where de Soto’s went, hoping to find rich lands to plunder as de Soto did, and finds the region depopulated from aftermath of de Soto expedition.
c. 1570	Hiawatha and Deganawidah form the Great Law of Peace and the Iroquois Confederation, which influences the creation of the U.S. Constitution.
1585	Walter Raleigh establishes the ill-fated Roanoke colony, to try growing tobacco for export.
1593	South Pacific islanders cure Richard Hawkins’ crew of scurvy with citrus fruit.
1599	Bubonic plague visits Spain, carrying off 10% of its population. Spain ends the 16^th century probably worse off than it began it.	Native population of the Americas: 8 million
1600	Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for his heresies, notably for stating that the earth orbits the sun.
1604	King James I publishes A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco, and tours England to warn of its dangers.
1610	Galileo Galilee publishes his discovery of Jupiter’s moons, using the newly invented telescope.
1614	Squanto is captured by John Smith’s men.
1618	Thirty Years’ War, Europe’s last great religious war, begins.
1619	Squanto returns as interpreter with English, and discovers that his entire tribe had been wiped out by European disease. The Puritans would settle on that tribe’s land.
1620	Puritans land at Plymouth, and Squanto teaches them how to survive in the New World. Squanto dies in 1622 of disease.
1628	William Harvey publishes his research on function of human heart.
1638	Three million pounds of tobacco per year are exported from present-day Virginia, reaching 17 million in 1672. Caribbean sugar growing becomes a business on Barbados, the great period of New World sugar growing begins.
1650	By this time, the Dutch have taken the Asian spice trade from the Portuguese.
1668	Antoni van Leeuwenhoek invents the microscope.
1682	Frenchman La Salle explores Mississippi river, finds it deserted, depopulated by disease left by de Soto’s expedition.
1687	Isaac Newton’s Principia is published.
1750	The Enlightenment begins in France at about this time.
1754	James Lind’s experiments aboard HMS Salisbury prove that citrus fruit cures scurvy.
1763	Lord Jeffrey Amherst suggests deliberately introducing smallpox amongst the Native Americans who resisted the English invasion. The subsequent epidemic kills more than 100,000 natives.
1769	James Cook visits New Zealand and claims it in the name of Great Britain. The Maoris had eliminated about a third of New Zealand’s forests by that time, and large animals, such as the Moa, were about extinct. In the first century after the European invasion, more than 75% of the Maori population dies off. Similar population collapse accompanies the Europeans wherever they appear in the South pacific. James Watt patents the modern steam engine.
1770	British exploitation of Bengal leads to a great famine that killed one-third of Bengal’s peasantry. Famines always greatly increased wherever Europe had colonial dominance.
1776	American Revolution begins. Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations.
1778	James Cook “discovers” the Hawaiian Islands. His crew’s venereal disease rapidly spreads through the islands, quickly depopulating Hawaii. The Hawaiian population possibly approaches one million inhabitants. Within 100 years, fewer than 50,000 Hawaiians were alive.
1881	William Halsted begins his surgical career in the United States.
1786	Because of the American Revolution, England can no longer ship its criminals to North American penal colonies. Australia is picked as the next English penal colony. The population of the aborigines in southeastern region of Australia (site of the penal colony) declines by about 95% in 60 years.
1788	Britain claims Tasmania, and the 5000 aboriginal inhabitants are rendered extinct in only 40 years.
1789	French Revolution begins.
1793	Benjamin Rush begins era of “heroic” medicine in U.S. during yellow-fever epidemic.
1794	Antoine Laurent Lavoisier is beheaded in France. His work with oxygen, combustion and respiration founds modern chemistry.
1795	260 years after Jacques Cartier’s crew is cured of scurvy, and more than one million preventable deaths later, the British navy begins issuing citrus juice to its sailors.
1796	Samuel Hahnemann first uses the term homeopathy to describe a new system of medicine that he was developing. Edward Jenner performs first smallpox inoculation.
1825	Homeopathy comes to the United States.	Humanity passes 1 billion
1835	Charles Cagniard-Latour works with yeast, and theorizes that it is alive. Theodor Schwann, the father of histology, confirms Cagniard-Latour’s work at about the same time and takes it further.
1839	Three million Americans use Samuel Thomson’s brand of medicine.
1844	American Institute of Homeopathy founded. Anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide first used by American dentist Horace Wells.
1845	American Medical Association (AMA) founded. Irish potato famine begins.
1847	Ignaz Semmelweis invents Western medicine’s first sterile practices, used in maternity wards.
1848	Louis Pasteur discovers molecular chirality, beginning his career. Revolution sweeps Europe. Marx presents his Communist Manifesto.
1854	Antoine Béchamp begins his Beacon Experiments. German parasitologists have documented parasitic pleomorphic life cycles, ending the spontaneous-generation controversy regarding parasites.
1858	Rudolf Virchow publishes his Cellular Pathology.
1859	First American oil well drilled. Charles Darwin publishes his Origin of the Species.
1861	American Civil War begins. Calomel is the standard medicine for the troops. Antiseptic surgery is not yet invented. Pasteur tried taking credit for discovery of Béchamp. Semmelweis publishes his great work on sanitary practices.
1863	John Rockefeller enters the oil industry and concentrates on taking over oil refining.
1864	Pasteur publicly takes credit for overturning spontaneous-generation theory. The germ theory of disease follows from his work. The AMA steps up its anti-abortion campaign.
1866	Béchamp calls the sub-cellular life forms that he discovered microzyma.
1870	Joseph Lister produces his first report of the success of sterile surgical procedures.
1876	El Niño-caused drought that lasts three years, combined with European export crop imperialism, devastates India, China and Brazil, causing as many as 30 million deaths from starvation and disease. William W. Keen begins using Joseph Lister’s sterile surgical procedures at the St. Mary’s Hospital in Philadelphia.
1878	Yellow-fever epidemic begins in New Orleans. People treated with homeopathy have less than half the death rate of the general population. Congress is impressed. One million American families use homeopathy.
1880	Homeopathy movement splits in United States, leading to its demise. John Rockefeller’s empire controls 95% of U.S. oil refining.
1881	William Halsted begins his surgical career in the United States.
1884	New York Cancer Hospital opens. Later named Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the world’s most influential cancer research organization.
1887	John Rockefeller begins rebuilding a Baptist seminary into the University of Chicago.
1896	Emil Grubbé invents X-Ray treatment of cancer.
1899	George Simmons hired by the AMA. He soon takes it over.	1.6 billion
1910	Flexner Report is issued, and directs Carnegie and Rockefeller “philanthropic” funding of medical schools.
1913	Ludlow Massacre committed by Rockefeller strikebreakers. Rockefeller founds American Cancer Society predecessor organization. Morris Fishbein is recruited to the AMA by Simmons.
1914	Pasteur Institute confirms bacterial pleomorphism.
1924	Divorce scandal forces Simmons to step down at AMA. Fishbein takes over. He tries to buy out Hoxsey’s cancer treatment and begins persecuting Dinshah Ghadiali.
1927	John Rockefeller begins funding the Memorial Hospital, later named Sloan-Kettering. Rockefeller’s Empire enters into its first cartel agreement with I.G. Farben.
1929	American Tobacco Company begins campaign to addict American women to tobacco. Wall Street collapses later that year.
1930		2.0 billion
1931	The findings of Royal Rife’s microscopes begin generating great scientific interest, and Thomas Rivers of the Rockefeller Institute tries discouraging it. Three independent studies conclude that the fluorine ion is responsible for tooth mottling.
1935	Under Fishbein’s guidance, Phillip Morris launches an ad campaign for its cigarettes, making a health claim to do so, quickly becoming the biggest U.S. cigarette seller. JAMA’s pages are filled with cigarette ads for a generation.
1939	After hearing of miraculous success with Rife’s treatment, Fishbein tries buying into Rife’s company. When that fails, the AMA wages lawsuit, destroying Rife’s company. Nazi Germany is in midst of anti-smoking campaign led by Hitler, as well as beginning World War II.
1942	The FDA has Dr. William Koch thrown into jail.
1946	Dr. Max Gerson presents recovered cancer patients using his treatment to a U.S. Senate committee.
1947	Oscar Ewing, ALCOA’s lead counsel and the world’s largest fluoride polluter, heads government effort to fluoridate America’s water supplies.
1949	In the wake of Harry Hoxsey’s victory in court, Morris Fishbein is dumped from the AMA, ending his 25-year reign. Fishbein goes to work for cigarette-maker Lorillard.
1950	Right after Fishbein’s fall, JAMA publishes its first report on the link between smoking and cancer. ALCOA is selling its sodium fluoride refining waste to municipal water districts in the most profitable hazardous waste disposal program in history.
1952	With Fishbein’s well-paid help, Lorillard begins an ad blitz promoting its asbestos cigarette filter, using research that Fishbein helped design.
1953	Fitzgerald Report finds that organized medicine wiped out a dozen alternative cancer treatments, including Krebiozen and Hoxsey’s treatment.
1954	JAMA finally discontinues running cigarette ads, because the drug advertisers complained.
1957	Wilhelm Reich dies in a U.S. federal penitentiary. His work was burned, in U.S. and Nazi Germany.
1960	John Crane thrown into prison for pursuing Rife’s work.	3.0 billion
1964	American Surgeon General releases report that makes smoking hazard clear. The AMA and tobacco companies produce their own “research” that attempts to counter the Surgeon General’s report. Gaston Naessens is run out of France.
1977	Sloan-Kettering rejects laetrile as a cancer treatment, although its famous chemotherapy researcher Kanematsu Sugiura found positive results. It fires Ralph Moss for making that contradiction public.
1983	Dr. Ernst Krebs, the discoverer of laetrile, goes to jail.
1984		5.0 billion
1989	Gaston Naessens is put on trial.
1991	Jimmy Keller is kidnapped by U.S. Justice Department from Mexico.
1996	Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski is put on trial.
1998	Charles Pixley is released from prison. His crime was trying to make 714X a legal import. Jimmy Keller is put back into prison.
1999		6.0 billion
2001	714X treatment making news in the U.S. Keller gets outs of prison again, has stroke.

Thomas Kuhn coined the modern definition of the word “paradigm” in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962. A paradigm, according to Kuhn, is a conceptual model that explains a set of scientific observations, creating a framework to fit the observations. Paradigms are structures that scientists use to order information, and are similar to what we call “worldviews.” Kuhn described how paradigms changed. Scientists perform “normal science,” staying within their paradigm as they perform experiments. When observations occur that fail to fit into their paradigm, those stray observations are often discarded as experimental error, or the prevailing paradigm is patched up to account for them. When the prevailing paradigm becomes increasingly unable to explain the strange observations piling up, eventually somebody would see that those stray observations pointed to a different paradigm. Kuhn presented several instances of that happening, and the most famous was the paradigm shift that Einstein ushered in.

The oddity of the Michelson-Morley experiment’s results - that the speed of light was independent of the speed of the light’s source - was a classic instance of an anomalous result while pursuing normal science. Physicists wrestled with the meaning of the Michelson-Morley experiment for a generation. Then a young clerk in the Swiss patent office proposed a theory that accounted for the experimental results, although Einstein said he was only indirectly aware of them. He proposed his relativity theory, and the Newtonian paradigm was subsequently overturned by the Einsteinian paradigm, and 20^th century physics was born. Einstein challenged Newton’s assumptions of absolute time and absolute space, instead seeing them as relative. Previous assumptions were challenged and replaced, which overturned the paradigm.

Einstein realized that his theories would fall by the wayside one day, stating that every theory is eventually killed by a fact. Einstein also realized the limitations of scientific theories. He wrote that a theory “determines what we can observe.”[1] A paradigm can illuminate, but it can also blind. The trick is keeping one’s eyes and mind open, and not become captive to one’s point of view. In science, unfortunately, scientists are rarely able to see beyond the paradigm they were inculcated with. Max Planck best put it when he wrote,

“a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”[2]

It is no accident that the greatest theoretical breakthroughs in scientific history were usually made by men less than thirty years of age, such as Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, Maxwell and Bohr. They saw the old paradigms with fresh eyes, and proposed new ones. Even Einstein could become dogmatic, as late in his life, as he “reproached” Heisenberg, saying that he surely could not believe that “God plays at dice.”[3]

Kuhn argued that scientists adopt new paradigms not because the new one is more accurate, but because it becomes something they believe in. Kuhn’s observations helped ignite raging controversies about science, truth and reality. Those debates will not end anytime soon. Today, a materialistic paradigm rules the scientific establishment. Everything is seen as a mechanism. There is no role for consciousness to play.

Ironically, the very men whose shoulders modern physics rides on – Einstein, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Bohr, and others - did not subscribe to the scientific establishment’s materialism. They were all, to one degree or another, mystics.[4] That has not stopped the various “skeptical” societies from mounting holy wars against anything not conforming to scientific materialism. There are striking similarities between the views of the scientific fundamentalists and the religious fundamentalists, as their worldviews have little to do with the visions of their prophets, and can be inversions of it. The members of skeptical societies often operate from a faith, a faith known today as scientism, which is the worship of science, believing its methods to be the only valid path to knowledge. Einstein wrote that “cosmic religious feeling” motivated the greatest religious and scientific heretics of history.[5]

Today, paradigms are being challenged across the entire spectrum of human thought. Mark Woodhouse’s Paradigm Wars is a formidable introduction and review of the current state of paradigm challenge and defense. Woodhouse discussed paradigm challenges in the areas of: environment, education, society, patriarchy, economics, religion, personal identity, science, and extraterrestrials.[6] The paradigms often center around dualities, such as patriarchy/matriarchy, but there is also seen a third way that attempts to integrate the polarities, such as Riane Eisler’s conception of gylany, which posits a harmonious co-existence of male and female principles.[7] Dualities being examined these days include: male/female, fear/love, destroy/create, objectivity/subjectivity, control/freedom, victim/creator, competition/cooperation and materialism/spiritualism.

One trap can be falling into the either/or false dichotomy regarding the dualities. One can be for neither patriarchy nor matriarchy, but gylany, which honors both genders. During the Cold War, Americans were fed the false dichotomy of choosing capitalism or communism, and falsely calling capitalism the “free” system, and communism the one that imprisons people. When the United States overthrew the elected Marxist government of Chile (and many others like it), the false dichotomy the United States purveyed of free/unfree about capitalism/communism was laid bare. Any attempt by the colonized peoples to shed Western domination was rubber-stamped “communism,” thus demonized, then subjected to military and covert attack by the United States, with millions of people dying in the colonized world. Some dichotomies appear to have little middle ground, such as love/fear. Various paradigms have become entrenched, with great economic, political and sociological consequences attending the adherence to paradigms, or challenging them. Each of the prevailing ideologies, whether it is capitalism, nationalism, materialism or consumerism, has its foot soldiers, defending the paradigm that puts food on their table.

In medicine, there is a broad picture to see, which has numerous facets, some of which will be presented in this essay.

As Riane Eisler and others have made clear, two powers have been worshipped throughout human history: the power to make life, and the power to take it. Their correspondence to female and male principles is obvious. There is substantial evidence of goddess-based religions in the past, and evidence that the male, sky-god Judeo-Christian religions are ideological successors to a time when male-based religion wiped out female-based religion.[8] Although feminists write about that issue at length, so did Joseph Campbell, the United States’ greatest mythologist.[9] Campbell wrote that ancient mythology in west Asia (today’s Middle East, Fertile Crescent region, etc.) evolved from female-dominated creation myths to male-dominated creation myths. It reflected the power struggles of the day, when herd-tending warrior societies, with their violent, male, sky-god deities invaded and conquered the agricultural societies with their feminine, earth-based, life-giving deities. The mythology eventually reflected who was in charge.

A prominent instance of the male-based corruption of feminine mythology was the evolution of the snake in symbology. Snakes were associated with women, healing and the regeneration of life (related to how snakes shed their skin) in ancient times. The Adam and Eve story in the book of Genesis turned feminine mythology upside down. Instead of being the source of life, Eve and the serpent were relegated to inferior, even malevolent, roles as they ruined the paradise deal that the Jewish god dictated to humankind.[10] Even though such refashioning of ancient myths to favor men persists to this day, the feminine symbolism persists in less obvious ways. Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine. His staff was entwined with a serpent, and the serpent-entwined caduceus is the symbol of today’s American Medical Association (AMA). Among Asclepius’ offspring were Hygeia and Panacea, the goddesses of health and healing. The word hygiene derives from the same word that Hygeia does. Hygeia represented the principles of prevention, sanitation, nutrition and healthy living. Hygeia represented the gentle principles of feminine-oriented medicine. They have largely been denigrated or ignored by male-dominated medicine for thousands of years, coming back into vogue only recently. They are largely minimized in medical circles even today, as there is no money in preventing disease. The current paradigm provides funding for treating diseases, not for preventing them. “Cure” can be sold by the pound, while prevention is only needed by the ounce, as Ben Franklin observed.

Below are some images related to the evolution of the serpent in Western mythology and iconography.

The West has engaged in a war against women for thousands of years; women are history’s most consistently oppressed group. The power to give life is a decidedly feminine undertaking, but in the war against women, men have dominated and have exalted the power to take life as the ultimate power, hence our wars against each other, mother earth, our bodies, etc. Healing the human body is the province of the feminine principle, but men have taken it over. In a might-makes-right world, the mightiest rule.

Historically, women have dispensed most health care, but it was usually done for family members, and those women were not financially compensated. Even when saint-like figures such as Florence Nightingale brought women into the modern healing profession, along with the principle of sanitation, they initially had to work for free, and had to be completely subservient to the male doctors. In the standard, male-written histories of medicine, women are so scarce that they stand out as remarkable when mentioned.[11] There are debates about how many women died in the witch hunts (likely several tens of thousands, at least – and about 75% of all witch executions); how many were healers and midwives is also a source of debate, but what is not debatable is that when the Catholic Church’s ideological dominance eventually gave way to the rise of Western science, the baton passed from one male-dominated establishment to another. When science rose in the West, generally considered to have begun with Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, women were conspicuously absent. That was partly due to women often being forbidden formal education. Western religion and science were united in their misogyny. The conquest-of-nature attitude that still dominates Western thinking also reflected the denigration of all things feminine.

The witch-hunting centuries nearly wiped out herbal medicine in Western Europe, even though Paracelsus, the great Renaissance medical iconoclast, claimed that the best medicines he had seen came from women healers.[12] Medicine evolved from the gentle medicine of women healers to the leeches, purgatives, bleedings, mercury and other barbarities of male-based medicine. Even men of the day knew that women's medicine worked vastly better than the male-based tortures that masqueraded as medicine, but that did not stop the burning of "witches" and other suppressions of women healers. The archbishop of Saint Andrews summoned a woman healer to cure him, which she did. He then had her burned to death for practicing "witchcraft" on him, partly to prevent having to pay her bill.[13]

Feminine medicine operates from the principle that prevention is best, that well treated bodies take care of themselves, being their own best medicine. When the body needs healing, feminine medicine is gentle. Remedies such as herbs and nutrition coax the body back to health.

Masculine medicine sees the body as a soldier on a battlefield. Not gentle, masculine medicine does not see the body as able to care for itself. As in cowboy movies, it is always riding to the rescue. It is the body versus the hostile world, or even against itself. The body becomes a battlefield, needing the intervention of medical violence.[14] It is life-taking, instead of life-giving. It uses antibiotics to kill off "invading" microorganisms. It violates the body with knives. It uses powerful drugs that violently manipulate the body's chemistry. It does not give the body what it needs to heal itself. It does not trust the body's wisdom, certain that it is clever and powerful enough to manipulate the body into health. It operates from the victim principle.

In the case of cancer and vascular disease, masculine medicine sees the body itself as the enemy. With cancer, parts of the body "turn traitor" and the goal of masculine medicine is annihilation. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation all operate under the paradigm of attacking the body, asserting that it is discerning enough to kill the "bad guys" while sparing the "good guys."

The issue of masculine versus feminine medicine is a conflict between paradigms. That mentality can be seen throughout Western Medicine, from childbirth interventions (and even before, as with amniocentesis) until a patient's deathbed.

The masculine medical paradigm has waged war specifically against women's bodies. Women used to give birth in a squatting position, which is by far the most effective method. Louis XIV changed the practice from women squatting to them lying on their backs. It was done so he could have a good look at one of his mistresses giving birth. The birthing stools of the day did not afford him a clear and salacious view, and he had the practice changed so he could peek from behind a curtain at the festivities. Giving birth on one's back is much harder on the mother than letting gravity help. Fortunately, that practice is waning somewhat. It has taken "medicine" three centuries to begin undoing the damage of a perverse king.

Changing the childbirth position is the least of it. Male, Western doctors devised fiendish methods of "treating" women's problems. Clitoridectomy was used in the nineteenth century, prescribed for maladies such as hysteria. The Greek word hysterikós meant womb, and is the root of the word hysteria, a decidedly misogynistic word. If a woman was insufficiently obedient to her husband, a diagnosis of hysteria could be obtained, and a clitoridectomy was performed. In the 1870s, a London doctor specialized in performing clitoridectomies without obtaining informed consent from his patients, which got him kicked out of the business, not for performing the operation, but for doing them without consent, and also because he was a self-promoter. He simply moved to the lax regulatory atmosphere of the United States and continued practicing his treatments. Suspicion of the vile behavior of masturbation was grounds for the operation. If a woman was too orgasmic during sexual intercourse, the operation was also the recommended "cure."[15] Part of that practice's justification was contraception, as the day’s theory stated that if a woman did not attain orgasm, she could not conceive. Male Western doctors have never advocated castration or penisectomies for "curing" male maladies.

In the 20^th century, lobotomy was one method of "curing" many maladies, prominently used on women. Hysterectomy and mastectomy have been very "popular" over the past century, invented and performed almost exclusively by male doctors. They operate from the principle of “when in doubt, cut it out.” From foot binding in China, to Suttee in India, to hunting witches in Europe, to clitoridectomy in Africa, to the "enlightened" practices of modern medicine, the record is long and grim.[16]

In America, Caesarean section "childbirth" is performed in about a quarter of all births. In Europe, where they did not wipe out all the midwives, the rate is half of America's, and in Japan, the rate is only 7%. In profit-making hospitals, the rate in America is more than a third, and some doctors warn that it will go over 50% in the current legal climate, where the "when in doubt, cut it out" philosophy guides hospital doctors. It already is 50% in some hospitals, if the woman is white with medical insurance. As America’s Caesarian rate has gone up, its infant mortality ranking among the world’s nations has correspondingly dropped. The Caesarian rate in the United States is more than three times Japan’s, and its infant mortality rate is nearly twice as high, and is higher than that of any nation in Western Europe.

When a Kansas insurance company began paying doctors the same amount for delivering a child, whether the birth was Caesarean or not, Caesarean sections declined by over half within one year. In a hospital in Pithiviers, France, supervised for many years by an enlightened male obstetrician, where they do not induce labor or unduly interfere, the Caesarian rate is less than 7%, substantially less than nearly any Western hospital. At a home birth community in Tennessee known as The Farm, the Caesarean rate was less than 2%. The stress on the infant and mother is enormously higher with Caesarean birth, as well as "complications" that risk their lives. Even with “normal” births, the episiotomy rate in U.S. hospitals approaches 100%, where it is about 6% in Scandinavian hospitals.[17] Episiotomy is a painful and dangerous practice that causes severe complications with mothers, but in the rush to cut, the practice is standard in American hospitals. Midwifed births have a far lower infant mortality rate than doctor-supervised hospital births. Women report far more satisfaction with the childbirth process if they can deliver it outside of a hospital environment, particularly in America, where women are often seen as little more than packages to be opened to remove the prize. A mother's complication rate is many times higher with Caesarian section births than vaginal delivery, and their death rate much higher.[18]

There have been some victories in the area of childbirth. After the medical profession nearly rendered them extinct, midwives have staged a comeback in America. In Washington State in the year 2000, House Bill 2031 was passed, and my medical insurance company was forced to provide coverage for midwifed births.

Western medicine is a money machine. America spends more than one trillion dollars a year ($1.3 trillion in 2001) on health care. A tiny fraction is spent on prevention, and the prevention is worse than the disease in many instances, and even causes disease.[19] Instead, nearly all the money goes to dramatic interventions, dominated by drugs and surgery. Dr. Julian Whitaker once challenged his readers to try naming a common mainstream medical treatment in America that was not a drug or surgical procedure. Whitaker bet that they could not.[20] The entire Western medical paradigm may be built on a shaky foundation.

During my father’s career, he gradually gained weight. He was an exceptional athlete in his youth, but by age 34 the American diet combined with his desk job took its toll. He went from about 155 muscular pounds in his youth to more than two hundred. He also drank heavily. Early in 1970, he began having kidney problems, quit drinking cold turkey, and has not had a drop since. He quit smoking around 1960 the same way.

In June of 1970, although he had stopped drinking, he weighed about 200 pounds, had high blood pressure and incipient angina. He was developing arthritis. His father had similar problems, and soon had a string of heart attacks that forced him into retirement. The naval base where my father worked was a high-stress environment, and the coronary care unit in nearby Oxnard was filled with professionals from the base. My father was obviously heading for a heart attack, and he wanted to prevent it.

My father was suffering from arteriosclerosis. Arteriosclerosis, like atherosclerosis, is a disease of the blood vessels. Those and related diseases kill one million Americans annually today. What happens is that the blood becomes “polluted” with matter that helps form deposits on the blood vessel walls. A deposit breaks off from the wall, or the turbulence created by the rough cell walls allows a blood clot to form, which eventually lodges in a blood vessel supplying the heart, brain or other vital organ, which often kills the person. The process of arterial clogging and hardening begins very early with Americans. Recent research has found that the process can even begin in the womb. In 1970, Western medicine considered hardening of the arteries to be a normal aging process. The blood pressure tables of the day had the ideal blood pressure steadily increasing as one got older. When I told that to an uncle recently, he said, “Yes, the formula we were taught was 80 plus your age.” I was able to look that advice up in The Book of Health, published in 1973.[21]

Since arteriosclerosis was considered a normal part of the aging process, my father was told that the hardening and clogging of his arteries was normal, and that the only hope of avoiding a future heart attack was taking some pills. That was the best that “medicine” could do. Essentially, my father was given his death sentence, to be executed at some future date, perhaps before long. In those days, medical doctors in America were a short step below God in the hierarchy of existence, yet my father sought a second opinion, and not from another physician.

He obtained a booklet titled Stale Food vs. Fresh Food: The Cause and Cure of Arteriosclerosis. It was the result of research by American biologists from Arkansas. It presented the theory that arteriosclerosis was a disease of civilization, particularly the consumption of “civilized” food. Wild animals and “primitive” humankind had virtually no hardening of the arteries. Only modern man “preserves” his food. The booklet stated that the process of “preserving” food robbed it of its nutritional value. More than that, the process of “preserving” food created the substances responsible for hardening the arteries.

According to Stale Food vs. Fresh Food, dead food, particularly flour products, caused hardening of the arteries, and live food was its cure. The vast majority of Americans are so addicted to processed food that they cannot imagine changing their diets. I have seen only a few people significantly change their diets, even when their eating habits were killing them and they knew it. I have never seen an adult change his/her diet when their spouse and/or family did not support it. People are creatures of habit, and the eating habit is perhaps the most ingrained one we have, but my father was trying to save his life. When he stopped smoking and drinking, and when he decided to eat live food, he just did it. Nobody else in the family smoked or drank, but we ate like the average American family. In California, there was more fresh produce available than in other states, so we already ate more fresh food than most Americans, but our family diet was not otherwise remarkable.

At that time, my breakfast consisted of a huge bowl of Cornflakes, drowned in sugar. My culinary specialty was making inch-thick peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, eaten with a soft drink. Twelve-year-old boys can eat like there is no tomorrow. I was the average American kid, diet-wise. One memorable day in June 1970, as I sat at the kitchen counter, eating my bowl of Cornflakes, my mother walked into the kitchen and said, “Do you know those Cornflakes are bad for you?”

My father embraced Stale Food vs. Fresh Food’s findings and was determined to try it, and decided the family would follow suit. I read Stale Food vs. Fresh Food and was impressed. The booklet laid out its thesis and research clearly. It presented numerous case histories of health miracles attending the change of diet from processed food to live food. Old people suddenly began acting and looking twenty years younger when put onto live-food diets.

The booklet had photos of cadavers' arteries sliced open and laid flat. The photos were of arteries at various ages, from age three to seventy, of average Americans. At age three, the plaque could be seen beginning to finely coat the artery wall. By age twenty, the process had begun in earnest. As the person aged, the artery became distorted, no longer running straight. The artery walls got thicker and thicker with the deposits, and instead of running straight they began looking serpentine, like question marks. By age seventy, the artery was almost unrecognizable. They were some of the most obscene pictures I have ever seen, and those were average American arteries.

My entire family changed eating habits, and I was a willing participant. It was not a complete change to live food with no looking back, but it was radical. We ate junk food from time to time, and I know firsthand how hard it is to swim against the current of society in something as fundamental as eating. My father was trying to save his life, however, and followed it to the letter. It worked. Results were seen almost immediately, and in two years my father’s health made a complete turnaround. He lost forty pounds. The angina and arthritis disappeared. His blood pressure went from abnormally high to “abnormally” low. It was not really abnormally low, but according to the inflated blood pressure tables of the day, where arteriosclerosis was considered normal, it was. He turned himself into a superman. He later said it was the healthiest he had ever felt. He spread the news of his cure to all who would listen. He began preaching the virtues of live food to relatives, friends and coworkers.

That was 1970, and it was radical talk to state that your diet could make you well. To a degree, it still is. The mainstream medical doctrine of the day stated that hardening of the arteries was irreversible. That belief is still entrenched today, even though they now admit that when they said that hardening of the arteries was a normal aging process, they did not know what they were talking about. The issue of irreversibility is a medical dogma even today. I just reviewed my Mayo Clinic Family Health 1996 Edition CD ROM, and regarding vascular disease and diet there was virtually no mention, and no mention at all of diet as a way of treating it. The Mayo Clinic’s advice was solely devoted to drugs and surgical procedures.

To date, I know of nobody who radically changed their diet to live food and did not benefit immensely from it. The problem is that very few people do it. Hardening of the arteries is indeed reversible. Modern medical doctrine aside, Dr. Dean Ornish has had success in reversing heart disease with his health regimen, which is mainly about eating a live food diet.[22]

My father convinced some of his coworkers to try out a live food diet, and one man lost more than fifty pounds while eating more than ever, and reversed his health problems. A few coworkers and his immediate family were about the only people that my father ever persuaded to change their diets. The most common reaction was to call it all “crazy.” The term “health nut” came into use around that time. That my father was living proof that it worked made no difference to people addicted to processed food. They looked to the pronouncements of the medical establishment for guidance, and there was nearly complete silence on the issue of diet. I talked to people about it, and was amazed at the hostile reactions I received. At age 12 I learned that few want to hear that their addictions are harmful, and it was no different with processed food.

I learned to be cautious about voicing unpopular opinions. I only give health advice to those around me when it appears it will be received, which is rarely. I have watched numerous people die at the hands of Western medicine over the years, and it has not been easy to watch. American physicians receive almost zero nutritional training, and what little they do receive is often propaganda from the food processing industry. Consequently, they cannot have an informed opinion on the issue.

When I was 17, my father brought home Paul Bragg’s The Miracle of Fasting, which was his magnum opus. Today, evidence points to Bragg lying about his age and other things. I present the evidence in this essay, with the background at this footnote.[23] With the fraudulent misrepresentations aside, Jack LaLanne was one of Bragg’s pupils (he was the classic 98-pound weakling when he met Bragg as a teenager), and Jack is still going strong in his 90s. Bragg promoted other health ideas such as regular fasting, which has been part of my health regimen for more than thirty years. His charlatanry aside, Bragg’s advice is about all I have ever needed, and I doubt that anybody will come along and improve on it much. The ways of health are quite simple: eat live food, exercise, fast, drink pure water, have pure thoughts, get out in nature. That is about all anybody needs to know. It is the essence of Hygeia’s role in medicine. There is nothing of significance to add, except perhaps realizing that humans are poorly designed to eat animal flesh. I have been a vegetarian for many years, with no ill effects and many positive ones.

The medical paradigm regarding the biggest killer in America is obviously false. Prevention is the only answer worth talking about, and what prevents heart disease also cures it.

The same kind of gangsterism that we encountered in the energy industry is possibly worse in medicine. In 1990, I obtained a book titled Medical Dark Ages, by Ralph Hovnanian.[24] The book chronicled the studies that have been performed with alternative cancer treatments, and their success rates. They nearly all had higher batting averages than surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. They are, nearly without exception, harmless. They are nearly all vastly cheaper than mainstream methods, and they are all illegal in the United States. In many states, doctors have gone to prison for prescribing them to their patients. Medical Dark Ages listed the results of hundreds of studies that covered dozens of treatments. I had already been obtaining other material about alternative cancer treatments, but Medical Dark Ages was my wake-up call.

For all the information involving alternative cancer treatments, what bowled me over in Medical Dark Ages were the more than 100 pages of quotations. I would read the quotes for an hour or so and get a kind of intellectual vertigo, overwhelmed by the quotes. With Ralph's enthusiastic permission, I reproduce many of them on this web site, organized slightly more than Ralph has. Ralph spent years collecting a vast array of quotes from various sources about the medical industry, the cancer industry in particular. Before I deal with the cancer industry, here is a quote that lays out another aspect of the medical establishment. Here it is.

"Although I found that the booklet (Stale Food vs. Fresh Food) contained some helpful suggestions and its author, Mr. Robert Ford, is a knowledgeable and sincere person (i.e. no intent to defraud), I found the representations in the Respondent's booklet to be unproven and contrary to the weight of informed medical and scientific opinion. As indicated by Dr.___, (the only U.S. Post Office medical witness) a danger of this publication is that it will deceive people who have arterio-sclerotic problems into believing that they can cure these problems by diet alone instead of seeking medical (AMA) help. Because the ads and this booklet contain materially false representations, they violate the provisions of 39 US Code Section 3005. Therefore...a mail stop order...should be issued..." - E.S. Bernstein, Administrative Law Judge, (1982).

That booklet saved my father's life. The mail stop order made it illegal to send it through the U.S. mail system, effectively banning it in America. In effect, it was similar to the Nazi/Catholic book burnings. Using the U.S. Post office is an effective tactic to wipe out alternative health practitioners. It is only one weapon in the medical establishment’s arsenal, but it is an effective one. Here is a link to a full account of the banning of Stale Food vs. Fresh Food.