Quackbusters trick Federal Trade Commission
7 July 2003 - In the US, reports Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen, the "quackbusters" of the National Council for Health Fraud are busy attacking natural alternatives to pharmaceutical medicines. Bolen contends that Stephen Barrett, and Robert Baratz are not alone and that their funding is likely to come from the deep coffers of pharmaceutical companies.
The strategies employed by the unlikely duo include tricking the Federal Trade Commission and their "Operation Cure-All" into taking action based on complaints generated almost entirely by the quackbusters themselves.
With various legal actions challenging these quackbusters already underway and a RICO (racketeering) complaint in the wings, this promises to become an interesting fight. Who is going to win, pharmaceutical interests or freedom of choice?
The Quackbuster's Newest Scam - "Operation Cure-All"...
Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim BolenJuly 7th, 2003
I need to make something clear. DO NOT, for a minute, think that the quackpot soldiers you see, like Stephen Barrett, and Robert Baratz, are running the whole quackbuster operation. They are not bright enough. They are the ones the quackbuster paymasters want us all to see. They're the front men. They've got their function, but it's only part of the game.
I think the whole "Quackbuster" conspiracy, and I have documents that back up my thinking, is being run out of a conference room at a pharmaceutical advertising agency in New York City. It's there that all the decisions, and plans are made, about where to focus the campaign, who to attack, and what cards to play in each attack. It's there that the checks are written.
Want some proof? It's coming. I'm working with P. J. (Joe) Lisa to re-publish his 1995 book "Assault on Medical Freedom." The new book will have, some changes, and four new chapters, bringing the conspiracy up to date. The information Joe, I, and some others are gathering, although for the book, will be also for delivery to Attorney General John Ashcroft and some others. Joe Lisa has thousands of pages of documents. We think there's enough for a Justice Department RICO (racketeering) complaint.
The quackbuster operation in North America is simply a scam devised around the time the American Medical Association lost a Federal Court Case to the Chiropractors in 1987. It's function is to eliminate, suppress, or hamper with, anything that competes with the sale of drugs and surgery. It's here to make sure that "treatment," rather than "prevention," or "a cure," stays the "standard of care" in North American Health Care.
The quackbusters have shifted focus. Today, I'm going to tell you what the new focus is, how it's being organized and run, and who has, and is going to be attacked, and why. In another newsletter I'm going to tell you how we, in the North American Health Freedom Movement are going to crush it.
For them, it's all about pharmaceuticals controlling the North American Health market. For us, it's about getting real health care, right now.
For years, quackbusting centered around the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) operation. State Medical Board Members, Prosecutors, Investigators, Management, etc., were propagandized to believe that anything new in health care that wasn't drugs, or surgery, oriented, was health fraud. Their assignment, should they choose to take it (and not many of them did), was to terrorize MDs who embraced new things, and to attack non-MDs with "practicing medicine without a license."
But the North American Health Freedom Movement woke up one morning and decided to kick the crap out of them. Health Freedom Bills, defenses of practitioners, exposes, you-name-it tactics, all began to work. EVERYTHING we did worked very well. We're winning everywhere.
The focus has been shifted since the quackbuster paymasters discovered that (1) Barrett, and company, just can't deliver the goods, anymore. And (2) Robert Baratz, the current President of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), who was brought up from the minor leagues with high hopes, is turning out to be an amusing (for us) embarrassment (for them).
Now, the quackbusters are using the FTC/FDA "Operation Cure-All" as their platform. Herein, I'll detail how I think they're doing it. In another newsletter I'll tell you how simple it will be to thwart them - one more time.
What's this "Operation Cure-All" thing?
Upper management at the FTC and the FDA think they put this plan together to stop internet health fraud. I'm sure they had the best of intentions. But don't be fooled, it's a quackbuster operation. Not one run by the stooges, like Barrett, or Baratz, or Sampson, this is an exercise of the REAL quackbusters - those funding the whole anti-health care, preserve the drug/surgery status quo, operation. The whole plan was, no doubt, written in the back room of a pharmaceutical advertising agency, for a fee that would stagger the imagination. It reeks of big Pharma thinking. Barrett, et al, are Keystone Kops in this venue.
Timothy Muris, at the FTC, and Mark McClellan, at FDA, are the targets of a drug company funded scam to use their agencies to kill off upstart competitors of the drug industry. So far, they're unaware of this - so let's fix that.
The majority of employees of the FTC, FDA and Operation Cure-All apparently don't know, either, they are being USED to attack the very upstart competition the drug companies fear the most - supplements (that keep people healthy - so they don't need drug "treatment"), electro-medicine (that replaces drugs, without side effects), chelation (detoxification eliminates need for drugs), natural antibiotics (Like Colloidal Silver, Frankincense, Oregano Oil), and scientists and authors (like Hulda Regehr Clark PhD, Naturopath) who advocate a change in the way America delivers health care.
What we'll probably have to do is to get a RICO/Civil rights, and Conspiracy to Violate Civil Rights, action, going against those controlling and manipulating it, and those FTC, FDA, and Operation Cure-All employees involved in the scam. We'll need to get Attorney General John Ashcroft involved in this, as well as FDA Internal Affairs, and the Inspector General at the FTC.
So, what's "Operation Cure-All" up to? You can go to the self-promoting website "www.ftc.gov/opa/2001/06/cureall.htm" and read the sanctimonious words:
"Operation Cure-All" Wages New Battle in Ongoing War Against Internet Health Fraud
FTC, FDA and other law enforcement agencies move to stop Internet scams for supplements and other products that purport to cure cancer, HIV/AIDS and countless other life-threatening diseases. FTC also warns of risks associated with some supplements, including drug interactions."
Sounds good, but the worm in the apple is that the definition of "health fraud" is the one written in a conference room of a pharmaceutical advertising agency. They might as well have come out openly, and said "if it competes with big Pharma, it's health fraud, and we're against it."
The other REALLY bad thing about the FTC and the FDA is the huge amount of INTERNAL influence big pharma has on FTC and FDA thinking. When Dwight Eisenhower left the Presidency, one of the last things he did was to stop the revolving door between the Defense Department and Defense contractors. That has to happen with the FTC/FDA and big pharma - right now. Before America dies of a drug overdose.
Here's how the scam works...
Fact #1: The FTC/FDA system requires that claims about products must be based on "scientific proof." In translation, that means that every claim, or suggested claim, must be double-blind studied in 30 to 50 cities (usually on the inner city poor), and the "studies" will cost somewhere between 200 to 400 million dollars each. Since herbals, and natural supplements, can't be patented, the FTC/FDA system has effectively given big Pharma a monopoly on approvals - since only big Pharma can afford the testing procedure.
Gee, I wonder how that happened? Sarcasm intended.
Fact #2: The FTC won't allow "testimonials." To them, someone saying "I, and 300 of my friends did this thing, and all of us were cured of cancer, and here's our medical records to prove it," is inadequate information. The reality of a "cure" is not in their vocabulary. It's still "unproven," and, according to them, you can't tell anyone about it. Saving lives, by passing around information, is to them, a criminal act.
The FTC/FDA' Operation Cure-All, doesn't want anything to do with reality. It gets in the way.
So, when big Pharma sees that somebody is cutting a little too deep into, or just threatening the future of, their drug market, checks are written, and a meeting takes place in New York City. There a plan (a standard format plan) is made. And the execution begins on Monday.
Here's how they do it.
The quackbusters decide who they're going to hit. The advertising agency (which controls major drug advertising placement) writes up the stories that are going to be distributed to their "letter writing brigade." The letter writers, following the guidelines, then write to the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All, to set a basis for the complaint. Then the ad agency writes stories, getting quotes from the likes of Barrett, Baratz, etc., on the victim. The stories are sent out to the media in which the advertising agency's drug clients advertise. The stories are printed in the media as though they were true.
Once the stories hit the press, a second wave of letters goes out to the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All, to put pressure on upper management to act. Then more media is generated, this time with quotes from the quackbuster insider FTC employees to make it sound official that the FTC is interested. Once this happens, letters and phone calls go out from supposedly "irate consumers (quackbusters)," once again to the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All upper management, demanding to know why they aren't doing something.
Then, letters and phone calls go out from supposedly "irate consumers (quackbusters)" to certain members of Congress demanding to know why the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All, aren't doing something.
Within days, upper management of the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All, are deluged with questions from more media, and Congress. They see the issue as important, and act against the victim - even if there is little or no evidence.
After this, some poor bastard is fighting for his life, while the plotters pop open a case of $1,000 a bottle champagne, congratulating themselves for another hit against their competitor.... And, more checks are written.
This is, I believe, how the attack was organized against the Rife equipment manufacturers, Bob Barefoot Coral Calcium, SeaSilver, the Colloidal Silver proponents, etc... I have good reason to believe that EVERY ONE of the Operation Cure-All targets, right from the beginning, was arranged this way.
For a sample of how it's done, click here for the petition, and here for the signers where the quackpots were attempting to stop the whole science of Homeopathy. They failed...
So, why this new assault? Because the quackbusters are, basically, floundering. The old plan wasn't working.
Why are the quackbusters floundering?
The quackbuster operation in North America is floundering for a number of reasons.
The number (1) reason is that the quackbusters underestimated the intelligence of the North American health consumer. Those consumers don't trust conventional medicine, anymore. Americans can sense when they are being lied to.
(2) Americans have discovered "health," and they've worked out for themselves that "health" and "medicine" aren't the same thing.
(3) Americans have worked out that that expensive "health plan" is a big waste of money - because all it pays for is "medicine." It doesn't pay for "health care." Insurance companies, and the US Government have caught on - and are adding new billing codes (ABC Codes) to deal with reality and demand. The American consumer, right now, is buying "health" out of their discretionary income - and the total amount of that is more than half of the total US health dollar.
(4) The North American Health Freedom Movement is kicking the crap out of the quackbusters whenever, and wherever, they meet on a battlefield.
(5) The whole idea of restricting American's health care offering to drugs and surgery is un-American. Even conventional MDs are getting fed up with the idea that "nothing new should be used in medicine unless it's been approved by a failed MD working out of his basement in Pennsylvania."
(6) The people of New York State are waking up to the fact that right there, in their midst, is a cesspool of quackbuster activity. Not only New York City, but Buffalo. Plans are being made. Targets are being selected.
(7) In the end, GOOD always triumphs over EVIL.
We, in the North American Health Freedom Movement, need to destroy the quackbuster operation. For, Americans are suffering and dying. Nobody is going to fix this problem but us. We are the ones who understand what's happening. We also know what to do, and how to do it. So, let's do it.
Stay tuned...
Tim Bolen - Consumer Advocate
See also related:The Role of the FDA
The Claim There is "No Scientific Evidence" for Alternative Treatments...
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Tuesday July 8 2003
updated on Tuesday December 11 2007URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/07/08/quackbusters_trick_federal_trade_commission.htm
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