A decade's-long dispute between a highly respected physician/scientist and the State of California ended with the elderly doctor, Bruce Halstead, on criminal probation and stripped of his license to practice medicine.
In light of this and other recent actions taken by state governmental authorities in cooperation with such U. S. institutions as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), the government appears to be engaged in a concerted war against a domain of the healing arts known as alternative medicine. This war, ostensibly for the protection of American citizens from unscrupulous "quacks," has apparently moved into a new phase. The FDA's pursuit of medical "public enemies" is no longer restricted primarily to non-MD practitioners not trained at established medical schools--those the general public largely considers the unorthodox fringe of the medical world. These federal agencies are now engaging the force of the government's legal machinery in the prosecution of physicians practicing "conventional medicine"--those who have dared to recognize and even incorporate into their practices the efficacy of holistic natural remedies.
Dr. Halstead is a graduate of Loma Linda University, a medical school which, to those in the field of the human physiological sciences, ranks as one of the more prestigious schools of medicine and scientific research in the world.
The 77-year-old physician is currently on probation under the State of California, Los Angeles County, for his activities involving the prescribing of alternative medication, specifically for his cancer patients. Dr. Halstead has been suspended from any form of medical practice. "In fact," he told The WINDS, "I can't even talk to a patient about nutrition."
When his home and clinic in San Bernardino County were raided by the Los Angeles District Attorney, "I challenged their legal jurisdiction," Halstead informed The WINDS, "since I had never lived or worked in Los Angeles County, but that did not matter. I was a legal novice and had not yet learned that jurisdiction and venue were merely legal fantasies which have no meaning in actual fact for the alternative health physician." (Nor, apparently, does the constitutional doctrine of habeas corpus).
Dr. Halstead was charged with twenty-eight counts of conspiracy, grand theft and violations of the Health and Safety Code, along with twenty felony and misdemeanor counts.
"The prosecutor wanted me to go to prison for eight years," he told The WINDS, "but the court ultimately reduced the sentence to 32 months. I was offered, on at least ten different occasions, the 'opportunity' of plea bargaining for a crime which I did not commit," Halstead explained. "My reply was 'not until hell freezes over.'"
The assault upon alternative medicine "is not just against me," he said. "They're after everybody and everything" connected with the field.
Dr. Halstead, acclaimed as a genius even among his peers, has authored hundreds of books and research publications. Among them are benchmark works such as Poisonous and Venomous Marine Animals of the World which the U.S. Navy considers of such importance as to fund a project to put the entire three-volume tome on CD-ROM.
The WINDS obtained a copy of Dr. Halstead's Curriculum Vitae, the academician's equivalent of a resume´. The following qualifications belong to a man whom the government deems dangerous to his patients, incompetent to practice medicine and academically inadequate to determine what is harmful or beneficial to human physiology:
Additionally, Dr. Halstead has been deeply involved in the study of the use of oriental herbal therapy on immune deficiency disorders.
If the foregoing portrayal of a physician/scientist depicts a man who is unqualified to recommend treatment to his patients, to whom would the government have its citizens resort?--to those whose abysmal record of success appears to condemn far more patients to death than life. With the aforementioned credentials ascribed to him, one could ask how any law enforcement agency, tasked with the medical oversight and welfare of its citizens, could be so zealous as to prosecute one such as Dr. Halstead and class him with the "snake oil" peddlers they sometimes encounter.
In 1959 Dr. Halstead founded the World Life Research Institute in Grand Terrace, California. It was his work with this organization that, years later, ran him afoul of the Food and Drug Administration when he attempted to incorporate his massive knowledge and experience into the treatment of cancer.
Perhaps something else Dr. Halstead revealed to The WINDS has played a part in the FDA's zeal to relegate him to the medical "scrap heap". "We have been monitoring the illicit regulatory activities of the FDA and the cancer establishment, " Halstead claims, "and are in constant contact with a network of organizations and attorneys dealing with their illegal health activities in this country which are steadily driving up our national health costs."
Is it not interesting how money keeps introducing itself into the mix? Halstead concurs making the ominous assertion that, "Cancer is the sacred cow of the medical industry. More people make money by treating cancer than there are victims dying from the disease."
After a 25-year effort into medical/biological research, "I was shocked," Dr. Halstead exclaimed, "to find upon my Rip Van Winkle return to clinical medicine that dangerous toxic drugs, all FDA approved, had proliferated to a frightening extent--over 1.54 billion prescriptions written in the U.S. per year.
"I found," Halstead continues, "that many of these drugs destroy your immune system and are carcinogenic. New and awesome medical technologies were also being spawned, mind-blowing in both their diagnostic capability and staggering costs to the consumer.
"However, in evaluating this new drug and health technology, I did not find a commensurate improvement in either morbidity or mortality statistics in chronic degenerative afflictions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. Costs had increased, but not the overall health index. We had dropped to about 23[rd] position among the nations of the world in health care."
This data, presented by an eminent physician/scientist, raises the logical question as to whether this may be a reasonable explanation as to why the strike by New York doctors several years ago resulted in a decline in the city's overall death rate. "At this point in time," Halstead concludes, "I have the profound conviction that America is on a disaster course in health care both economically and therapeutically....A dangerous therapeutic mind set exists in this country that it is better to die in an orthodox fashion than to survive in an unorthodox manner."
In reference to his implication that the government would rather allow an individual to die than to condone the application of "unorthodox" treatment, Dr. Halstead relates the following event he presented in his court trial:
"During my final oral argument I recounted the incident when defendant Alfred Dix and his wife had their home raided by the Los Angeles District Attorney. Mr. Dix had been using and selling the herbal drink." [The doctor is here speaking of a specific compound of Japanese herbs (ADS) from which a tea is made that many clinical trials, according to Halstead, have proven very effective in the treatment of cancer].
"Mrs. Dix had been diagnosed as having terminal abdominal cancer. She had had surgery, nine different types of chemotherapy, and over ninety different treatments of radiation, all of which had failed. Her doctors told her that she had only 30 to 45 days to live. She was bedridden, had given up hope, and was preparing to die. She and her husband had even contacted a mortician to make funeral arrangements.
"Mr. Dix then came in contact with ADS [the herbal compound]. After taking ADS for about ten days, Mrs. Dix began to feel better, started doing housework, shopping, traveling, and started entertaining again. I met Mr. and Mrs. Dix one day in the lobby of a hotel in Pasadena. She was walking, mentally alert, happy and laughing, and stated emphatically that she was feeling great. No aches or pains - thanks to ADS.
"At the time of the raid at the Dix home, the D.A. confiscated all of her ADS. Her husband begged and tearfully pleaded with the D.A. to release enough of the ADS for his wife's use. The D.A. refused to release any of the tea to her.
"The next time I saw Mrs. Dix was in the courtroom. She looked pale, in a weakened condition, unable to walk, crestfallen and anguished. A few days later she died - a broken woman, a victim of the land of the free and the home of the brave.
"What has happened to our national ideal of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Why has the prosecution denied Mrs. Dix the right to retain a cup of harmless adaptogenic tea which she purchased for her own cancerous condition? What has happened to her civil liberties?
"I could not think of a single tyrannical country in which this scenario could have taken place."
Perhaps, one might reason, Dr. Bruce Halstead's case and claims are somewhat of an isolated example of government intervention into the medical lives of Americans.
Case-in-point #2: Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD., who, in 1970, fled the repressive Communist regime of his native Poland and came to the "land of the free and the home of the brave" where he soon became a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
"During the next several years," as reported by radio commentator and columnist Paul Weyrich, "he authored and co-authored sixteen papers, mostly on cancer research. He became a member in good standing of both the AMA and the American Association for Cancer Research. It was during this period that he developed a non-toxic, experimental therapy which resulted in a synthetically-produced protein sequence which reprogrammed and reverted the activity of cancer cells.
"Over the past eighteen years," Weyrich continued in his commentary entitled, "Time to Review the FDA", "2500 people have been treated by Dr. Burzynski. Not a single one of them became ill from the treatment. But more importantly, every single patient showed anti-tumor activity and most of these patients are in a state of complete remission. That should be enough to earn Dr. Burzynski a place alongside such famous medical pioneers as Jonas Salk. But, unfortunately for Dr. Burzynski, for the second time in his life, he has encountered the oppressive hand of the all-powerful state. Thinking that he had come to America to escape the repressions of communism, the good doctor has been, for the past twelve years, fighting the Food and Drug Administration."
Dr. Burzynski has been another of those scientists to have touched the medical "sacred cow" of cancer research and been unfortunate enough, it seems, to have discovered an effective treatment for the disease.
Another logical question arises from the confusingly inconsistent application of "human rights" by this nation's government. The WINDS has been discussing the fate of two highly respected physician/scientists, well established in not only the medical community but in the halls of scientific research. Their "crimes" were sharing with fellow human beings--those who happened to also be patients, suffering with maladies that are, for the most part, still a mystery to conventional medical science-- remedies for which there have been ample empirical and reproducible scientific evidence of effectiveness. Why were these men's actions deemed criminal by federal authorities? According to standard "government think", it is largely because the medical community does not, or will not, recognize the validity of most natural remedies. They are not sufficiently profit-intensive thereby, robbing the large, multi-national pharmaceutical companies of immense profits. Many very effective medications can be found growing as "weeds" in the forest, urban fields or even in one's own back yard where there is no law (yet) against harvesting and using them.
A support organization established in Burzynski's name has erected a web site, the contents of which appears to be a carefully recorded chronology of events describing the interaction between Dr. Burzynski and the Food and Drug Administration. That chronology includes quoted statements by FDA officials that render a chilling perspective on that powerful organization's support of large industrial pharmaceutical companies and the federal government's attitude of consigning the individual to relative insignificance.
Former FDA Bureau of Drugs Director, Richard Crout, is quoted as stating that any organization, other than large research establishments who desire the Administration's approval to conduct clinical trials, should be subject to "harsh regulations....Sometimes we say it is proper to hinder research."
For those who question that power and money are the controlling influences in the drug industry, Dr. Crout is also quoted as saying, "I never have and never will approve a drug to an individual, but only to a large pharmaceutical firm with unlimited resources."
Occasionally, there appears a light within the federal juggernaut emanating from one that seems to understand this nation's tenth amendment to the constitution. One such light resides in a statement from FDA official, William Nychis who is quoted by Burzynski as informing Herbert Koch, MD, of the Harris County Medical Society that, "a physician who manufactures and uses a drug within his own practice of medicine...is not subject to [FDA regulations] since the practice of medicine is properly regulated by state or local authorities."
Apparently the FDA was not enlightened by Nychis' statement. In a response to a U.S. District Court Judge's tacit approval of Dr. Burzynski's use of his anti-cancer drug within Texas state boundaries, the FDA allegedly issued the statement that if the federal judge does not comply with its demands, the "...government would then be obliged to pursue other less efficient remedies, such as actions for seizure and condemnation of the drugs or criminal prosecution of individuals...."
This they did when Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD, was subjected to four Grand Jury investigations in which one U.S. Assistant Attorney was disciplined for prosecutorial misconduct and "FDA Commissioner David Kessler face[d] harsh questioning by Congressman Joe Barton's Investigations Subcommittee about FDA's abuse of Grand Juries, and about how he can justify four Grand Juries with no indictment."
A fifth Grand Jury attempt by the government to indict Burzynski, however, was successful on the grounds that he "released his out-of-state patients to return home with a supply of antineoplastons [the drug at issue]. The charges are based upon 'interstate commerce of a new drug.'"
In an article published in Reason Magazine, former FDA Chief Counsel, Peter Barton Hutt, makes a startling claim: "If you beat the FDA in court," Hutt asserts, "you have an angry FDA that is willing to slit your throat. When the FDA loses a case, it has a mind like an elephant. It's just something you've got to understand about the FDA. Once the agency makes a collective decision, trying to make it let go is almost impossible. These are FDA crusades -- in a real sense they are vendettas."
On May 27, as reported by the Houston Chronicle, Dr. Burzynski "who once faced 75 federal charges stemming from the interstate shipment of his experimental cancer treatment drug was acquitted...of the lone remaining count. "The verdict ended, without a single conviction, a 14-year effort by federal authorities to make a criminal case against the Polish-born physician."
The Chronicle went on to report that,
"Patients and their families who packed the courtroom in a show of support wept and shouted when the verdict was read after about three hours of jury deliberation.
"Burzynski, too, was elated.
"It's the end of 14 years of war. It's the beginning of the end of the war on cancer," he said.
"He predicted that the verdict would put his class of experimental drugs, known as antineoplastons, on the fast track for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"Burzynski now treats about 300 patients from all over the country, most of whom have brain cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma under an FDA program for investigational new drugs."
"I found the government's behavior offensive," one of the jurors, a Houston attorney, is quoted as saying. "A lot of people felt it was. This was a Big Brother issue." (ibid.)
Among the growing list of those who are finding the "government's behavior offensive are a few examples related to The WINDS by the publisher of The Echo, a Washington State-based watchdog publication that keeps track of such abuses.
Why this growing intervention from federal authorities in instances where the public's safety and well-being are clearly not an issue; instances where conventional medicine has demonstrated an impotence in dealing with the maladies being addressed? A series of rhetorical questions could be posed whose answers would seem ridiculously obvious.
Does money have anything to do with the government's handling of the aforementioned instances? Does the fact that an inordinate number of FDA officials, according to congressional inquiries, accept executive positions with large pharmaceutical companies upon retirement play any role in creating an atmosphere where such super-lucrative business ventures, as cancer research, will be endlessly perpetuated? Recall Dr. Bruce Halstead's statement, "Cancer is the sacred cow of the medical industry. More people make money by treating cancer than there are victims dying from the disease."
If, as national death statistics indicate, 500,000 people per year die of the disease, the "cancer economy" of this nation is staggering in both the number of individuals employed and the quantity of capital outlay for research and pharmaceuticals. Could there be another even more insidious agenda behind this obstruction by the government of potentially massive lifesaving research?
According to the document that is the expression of the spirit guiding the New World Order since its inception, the answer is clear, "The upper class, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy and strong. We are interested in just the opposite--in the diminishment, the killing out of the nations. Our power is in the chronic...physical and mental weakness of the worker. What that results in is his being made the slave of our will, and he will not find in the authorities of his own society either the strength or energy to oppose us... for an excited patient [one that is under stress] loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion,"-- even the suggestion, it would seem, to die rather than reject the fallacious authority of those invoking his servitude to mindless administrative regulations.
If one were to describe, without including the details of the situation, the forgoing scenario of a government refusing to allow a person control over their own body, the narrative would most likely be mistaken for an anti-abortion or "pro-life" argument. The concept of "pro-choice" is, after all, a term applicable only when it applies to the destruction of children while still residing in their mother's body. The idea that the abstraction might apply to one attempting to save his or her own life or that of a loved one, is anathema to the collective consciousness of "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
Written 9/15/97