Editor’s Note: This article is intended for information purposes only. Because state and municipal laws vary greatly, as do the circumstances of individual cases, readers are advised to contact an attorney for specific legal advice. © Scott C. Tips 2018

The famous novelist George Orwell once observed that “the further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” Very unfortunately, we in the Western world are caught up in just that drift and hate, especially when it comes to nutrition and healing. It takes no keen observer these days to see it all around us.

We see this with the constant attacks on natural health and nutritional prevention and healing. On health-food stores. On dietary supplement companies. And most certainly on natural healers. All of whom threaten the dominant healthcare paradigm that has been carefully and artfully constructed, law by law and regulation by regulation, over the better course of a century so as to exclude any possibility of real competition. Incomplete, their work continues.

Dirty Tricks Still, people can be tough and resilient fighters, even desperate ones, to save themselves or the lives of those they love, when orthodox medicine and standard diets fail them. But as J.B. Handley pointed out in his excellent, new book How To End the Autism Epidemic, some drug companies are not above using dirty tricks to eliminate the competition. As Handley reports, after Merck’s pain reliever Vioxx had caused 500,000 heart attacks; and while Merck was fending off a class-action lawsuit in Australia, many of Merck’s internal documents surfaced during discovery, including a “doctor hit list” that had been compiled of those doctors who “spoke poorly of Vioxx to their patients.” Alarmingly, Handley goes on to state, one Merck email suggested that “we may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,” while another stated that Merck would interfere with academic appointments and funding for any institutions producing research challenging Vioxx’s safety. These are not nice people.

At the April 2018 Codex meeting in Chicago, after the National Health Federation (NHF) played a key role in stopping a Codex standard for the dangerous vet drug Zilpaterol from advancing towards adoption, an outraged Merck-sponsored player there overtly attacked NHF’s reputation and subtly warned the Codex Secretariat not to be seen with me, later bragging about it to my face. Thugs in fancy suits.

Influence Peddling and Conflicts Galore Leaving nothing to chance, large pharmaceutical companies are not shy about spreading around largesse wherever it will buy influence and good press. You can see this influence in any print publication where drug ads proliferate, and on television with the multitude of drug ads aired there. As they say, money talks; and at $200 billion a year in sales, the drug companies have plenty of it. 2

But the drug industry’s influence over media content is more pervasive than simply that of a key advertiser’s. We also know that the drug industry ghostwrites many of the scientific articles and studies that it relies upon to get its drugs approved. 2 Some estimates say that up to one-half of all published articles are actually ghostwritten by industry, with the scientists or researchers only “lending” their names and reputations to the articles. 3 A very recent study conducted by Danish researchers revealed a deeper level of ethical corruption and conflict of interest, when it stated, “Industry employees and academic authors are involved in the design, conduct, and reporting of most industry funded trials in high impact journals” and “data analysis is often conducted without academic involvement. Academics view the collaboration as beneficial, but some report loss of academic freedom.” 4 Alarmingly, when the researchers examined the resulting publications, they found that in about half of the 80 trials reviewed, the industry researchers (or their contract research organizations) were the ones who had analyzed the trial data and without the academics’ input. 5

Dr. José Baselga would certainly know. The chief medical officer and a top cancer doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he has reportedly failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and healthcare companies and then allegedly hidden those financial ties from public disclosure in such top-drawer publications as The New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet when they published dozens of his research articles. 6

Baselga, however, is not alone in this regard. While most medical-journal guidelines ask their authors to disclose any recent financial relationships that could pose a conflict, another study revealed that one-third of the authors in articles reporting on cancer trials did not report all of their payments from the studies’ sponsors. 7 When asked about such lapses in disclosures, one editor of JAMA Internal Medicine remarked, “We rely upon trust and integrity.” 8 Clearly, though, trust and integrity is one quality lacking in modern-day science.

Perhaps this is also due to the drug industry’s hold on medical education. 9 Drug companies flood medical schools with multi-million-dollar endowments and push their message among academia. 10 So, it is no surprise that our doctors are being influenced from early in their medical school years.

This has all resulted in an increasing crisis of faith in science. Respected medical editor Dr. Marcia Angell stated it plainly when she said, “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” 11

And Dr. Richard Horton, the Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, seconded Dr. Angell’s conclusions when he said that “[t]he case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness….” 12

Even scientific institutions are neck-deep in conflicts of interest and ethical failings. The drug industry, for example, has bought and paid for the Academy of Pediatrics with millions of dollars for conferences, grants, medical conferences, and even its nice, modern headquarters. So, of course, the Academy endorses “safe” vaccines for millions of babies and hundreds of millions of dollars for the vaccine industry.

Front Groups Then there are the heavily funded vaccine-industry front groups. Every Child By Two is an organization that promotes early immunization of children; it admits that it takes money from vaccine makers. The Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) is another front group that lists among its funders such vaccine and pharmaceutical companies as AstraZeneca, Merck, Novartis Vaccines, Pfizer Inc., and Sanofi Pasteur, who also heavily populate its advisory board along with Dr. Paul Offit (the vaccine-industry apologist who has made millions from vaccines). IAC, in turn, along with the CDC, National Immunization Program and Department of Health and Human Services, “partners” with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) to push strict and mandatory vaccine schedules. Yes, we have all of the best “public spirited” interest groups and institutions that money can buy. And the influence peddling is not just for vaccines either, it’s for almost all drugs. At Codex, for example, we have the so-called “Health for Animals” INGO that is really nothing more than a Merck et al. front group to help vet drug companies sell more drugs. CURES was another front group created by the drug industry to oppose legislation to allow importation of cheaper Canadian prescription drugs, 13 while 80-90% of patient-advocacy groups have been infiltrated and taken over by drug-company money. 14

In its turn, the psych-drug industry also heavily funds its own groups, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Anxiety Disorders Association of America, Attention Deficit Disorder Association, Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health, Children and Adults with ADD, Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, DBSA Advisory Board, and others. We could spend all day naming the front groups that are just public masks for the drug industry.

Lobbyists and Revolvers But, unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there either. To make matters worse, the drug industry is behind one of the biggest, if not the biggest, lobbying efforts in governments worldwide. From 1998 to 2007, pharmaceutical and health-industry product lobbying rose from $67.5 million to $189.1 million (see chart). Currently, pharmaceutical industry annual spending on lobbyists is approximately $216 million, which is on track to match the $279 million the industry spent on lobbying in 2017. 15 In fact, the total for the twenty-year period from 1998-2018 exceeds $4 billion. 16 PhRMa, or the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, is its powerful lobbying group and is not shy about making its weight felt.

And do we even dare get started mentioning the revolving door between the pharmaceutical industry and government regulatory agencies that has seen numerous bureaucrats become freshly minted drug-industry executives or highly paid consultants when they leave their government jobs? The “revolving door” between the drug industry and the FDA was even formalized in 2001, with the creation of the Food and Drug Administration Alumni Association (FDAAA). This is “a non-profit, non-lobbying organization dedicated to serving those who have supported the consumer protection mission of the U.S. FDA.” 17 But, oddly enough, drug-industry lobbyists and PR people are very well represented on its Board of Directors.

If you did not already have the idea that influence peddling and conflicts of interest are pervasive and deep-rooted in this industry, then perhaps that idea is now taking root. Indeed, it would take books and not just an article to even begin to reveal the extent of the corruption. There is, however, an even seamier side to this tale, if that were possible.

Internet Trolls and Shills Any one of us who has engaged in social-media postings and exchanges has at one time or another experienced the drug-industry trolls and shills who will pepper your posts with harassing questions and contrary “facts.” Their favorite technique is to ask one question that took them seconds to pose that will require a significant investment of your time to respond to; and then when you don’t, they will claim victory in a “gotcha” moment.

Wikipedia, the self-styled online encyclopedia, is a particularly dangerous example of drug-industry influence. 18 While so-called “neutral” Wikipedia attacks natural health, alternative doctors, and health-freedom organizations across the board, even dietary supplements are not safe from its ire. Wikipedia’s entry on vitamin supplements (redirected to “Multivitamins”) discourages consumers from taking supplements with account after account of studies that found no benefits to health from taking supplements.

So, the drug industry infiltrates and compromises medical research and science as well as the publications and other media that report on that scientific research, creates and maintains front groups to agitate for drug-industry goals, floods the halls of Congress and the FDA with expensive lobbyists, donates heavily to political campaigns, provides cushy jobs for government regulators after their retirements, and places trolls and shills on major internet sites, blogs, and social-media platforms to stifle news about real cures and to attack the competition. A normal person would understandably think that these manipulations would be more than enough to maintain a monopoly. That normal person would be wrong.

Wait, There’s More! After having successfully taken over the American Medical Association (AMA) as well as medicine in general, the pharmaceutical industry has now found itself, many years later, confronted with an alarming (to them) increase in the rise of alternative and complementary practitioners. 19 Decades ago the National Health Federation successfully extricated chiropractors from the death grip of the AMA and State Medical Boards that were throttling chiropractic practice, but the weapon of violating “standard of care” or “practicing medicine without a license” is still often wielded by the State Medical Boards and government prosecutors against those who deviate from the drug-happy medical Gulag that we find ourselves in.

Instances of these persecutions abound, and I have even represented a doctor or two in these kind of cases myself. My friend and colleague Rick Jaffee has defended even more, but it doesn’t take an attorney to recognize the heavy hand of the drug industry in the many alternative-doctor prosecutions that take place every year across the United States. Dr. Bob Sears, for instance, is a Capistrano Beach, California pediatrician and longtime critic of mandatory vaccinations who has been placed on a lengthy probation by the Medical Board of California for exempting a toddler from immunizations. 20 And he is not even anti-vaccine; he just has the crazy notion that patients should have the right to consent to treatments before they are given.

Gordon Piland III is a medical doctor who was initially arrested for giving cannabis-infused goat milk to his autistic son, but then authorities found a small bag of poppy seeds and charged him with trafficking heroin. 21 At 70 years of age, Piland has been sentenced to prison for a term that is essentially a life sentence. Had he just been pushing the vaccines that probably caused his son’s autism in the first place, he would have been given dollar bonuses by the vaccine makers rather than a prison term by their thug enforcers. That’s how it is in the World today. He deserves to be free, but he is not.

Or maybe it is even worse? In June 2015, Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet was found dead, floating in a North Carolina river with a bullet hole in his chest. His death has been ruled a suicide by authorities, but by now many know that it was clear-cut murder. He had been successfully curing autistic children of their condition using GcMAF, a natural protein found in healthy humans, and Vitamin D3. Similarly, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee and Harvard-trained epidemiologist Timothy Cunningham was also found dead in a river earlier in 2018. He had been missing for 50 days after he had claimed that a “catastrophic” flu shot was the cause of this year’s deadly flu epidemic that had killed thousands. 22

Some adamantly claim that the drug industry took these and many others out. Others just as adamantly make the case that in a huge population such as ours, mortality statistics alone would account for these deaths, even if they were random murders. No one has produced a smoking gun to date, so who is to really say? It just looks suspicious.

The Medical System Cannot Endure So, while the World pretends that it strives to operate on an “evidence based” or “science based” model, in reality we have nothing more than a corrupt, conflict-riddled system that is based upon bribes and lies and is responsible for the deaths of many millions. Such systems as these are unsustainable and historically they have all ultimately collapsed.

The self-appointed medical and drug elites have had things their own way for far too long, primarily because nobody noticed. The mainstream media was tightly controlled, and still is by basically six corporations. Now, however, through the internet and greater connectivity and the still-independent press such as this magazine, an increasing number of people are learning about the dangers of mainstream medicine and drugs and are choosing their own, independent way. Many of them are also determined to stop the mainstream slaughter and mayhem. The slaughter and mayhem are growing too obvious and costly, and there are a lot of angry people out there.

Buckminster Fuller once wisely said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” We may not yet know exactly what that new model may look like, but we can see it taking shape, with an emphasis upon honest relationships between doctor and patient, true preventative healthcare, and proper nutrition and supplementation while avoiding those toxins, contaminants, and EMFs that destroy our health.

Suggested immediate solutions: 1. Cut the ties between the pharmaceutical industry and medical schools and research institutions; 2. Ban television and print media advertising of pharmaceutical drugs; 3. End or drastically restrict exclusive marketing and other monopoly rights granted by government to industry for their drugs; 4. Ban any and all revolving-door employment between industry and government agencies; 5. Repeal all medical licensing laws and State medical boards, and turn to certification and qualification instead by competing institutions, which lets the patient decide from whom to seek counsel; 6. Check out your existing doctor and see if he or she has been compromised with drug-industry money by visiting www.OpenPaymentsData.CMS.gov. This site has a record of almost $6.5 billion in such payments to doctors since 2013. WFEndnotes:

[1] Marcia Angell, M.D., The Truth About the Drug Companies, Random House, 2005, at p. 3. These are American sales figures. Worldwide, the figure doubles.

2 Elise Langdon-Neuner, “Medical Ghostwriting,” Mens Sana Monogr, 2008 Jan-Dec; 6(1): 257–273; doi:10.4103/0973-1229.33006; PMCID: PMC3190555; PMID: 22013363.

3 Ibid.; see also Antony Barnett, “Revealed: how drug firms ‘hoodwink’ medical journals,” The Guardian, 7 Dec 2003, at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/dec/07/health.businessofresearch.

4 Catherine Offord, “Industry Partners Extensively Involved in Trials They Fund,” The Scientist, October 5, 2018, at https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/industry-partners-extensively-involved-in-trials-they-fund-64906. See also Rasmussen K, Bero L, Redberg R, Gøtzsche PC, Lundh A, “Collaboration between academics and industry in clinical trials: cross sectional study of publications and survey of lead academic authors,” British Medical Journal, 2018;363:k3654, at https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k3654; Nicole Lou, “Industry Involvement in Clinical Trials Huge, Often Downplayed,” MedPage Today, Oct 3, 2018, at https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/clinicaltrials/75481?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2018-10-04&eun=g1179973d0r&pos=11111111111111&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%202018-10-04&utm_term=Daily%20Headlines%20-%20Active%20User%20-%20180%20days.

5 Ibid.

6 Charles Ornstein & Katie Thomas, “Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals,” ProPublica/New York Times, Sept 8, 2018, at https://www.propublica.org/article/doctor-jose-baselga-cancer-researcher-corporate-financial-ties?utm_source=pardot%26utm_medium=email%26utm_campaign=majorinvestigations.

7 Wayant C, Turner E, Meyer C, et al., “Financial Conflicts of Interest Among Oncologist Authors of Reports of Clinical Drug Trials,” JAMA Oncol., 2018;4(10):1426-1428. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2018.3738, at https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/article-abstract/2698041.

8 Supra, Ornstein & Thomas.

9 Wendy Glauser, “Pharma influence widespread at medical schools: study,” CMAJ, Sept. 17, 2013 185 (13) 1121-1122; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.109-4563, at http://www.cmaj.ca/content/185/13/1121.

10 Jeffrey Kluger, “Is Drug-Company Money Tainting Medical Education?” Time, March 6, 2009, at http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1883449,00.html.

[1]1 Dr. Marcia Angell, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption,” NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/01/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/.

[1]2 Dr. Richard Horton (editor-in-chief of The Lancet), “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?” The Lancet, 11 April 2015, Vol 385, No. 9976, p. 1380, at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1/fulltext. A special thanks to Jon Rappoport at https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/shocking-victory-for-proponents-of-alternative-medicine/.

[1]3 Consumer Alert, “New Pharmaceutical Industry Front Group Formed to Oppose Prescription Drug Reimportation,” Consumer Watchdog, 2004, at https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/consumer-alert-new-pharmaceutical-industry-front-group-formed-oppose-prescription-drug-r.

[1]4 Katie Thomas, “More Than 80 Percent of Patient Groups Accept Drug Industry Funds, Study Shows,” New York Times, March 1, 2017, at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/health/patient-groups-drug-industry-money.html.

[1]5 “Summary for Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industry Profile for Lobbying, 2018,” Center for Responsive Politics, at https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=H04&year=a, last accessed at October 31, 2018. Even subtracting out the included $70,000 in lobbying conducted by the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists leaves the year-to-date figure at above $216 million.

[1]6 Ibid.

[1]7 See FDAAA’s website at http://www.fdaaa.org/about.php, last accessed October 31, 2018.

[1]8 Scott Tips, “Wikipedia as Manufactured Consent,” Whole Foods Magazine, July 17, 2015, at https://wholefoodsmagazine.com/columns/legal-tips/wikipedia-manufactured-consent/.

[1]9 See, e.g., Canizares M, Hogg-Johnson S, Gignac MAM, et al., “Changes in the use practitioner-based complementary and alternative medicine over time in Canada: Cohort and period effects,” PLoS One, 2017; 12(5): e0177307, at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5426710/.

20 Staff writer, “OC Pediatrician Gets Probation For Opposing Mandatory Vaccinations,” CBS News, June 29, 2018, at https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/06/29/oc-pediatrician-probation-opposing-mandatory-vaccinations/.

21 Matt Agorist, “Doctor Sentenced to Die in Prison for Healing People with Weed as Child Predator Congressman Let Out Early,” The Free Thought Project, Oct. 17, 2018, at https://thefreethoughtproject.com/doctor-sentenced-die-prison-plant/?fbclid=IwAR3flE-jpeAVpHhaFN4rYZhfbcvwOgXxKhK1dlY0gi-oLpzw0pnptLsW_0o.

22 Bill Sardi, “Killing the Messenger,” Health Freedom News, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 14-17 (Spring 2018).