The Merchants
by Steven Ransom

"If man were to throw his entire medicine cabinet
into the sea, it would be better for man and worse
for the fishes." Oliver Wendell Holmes

In their long, hard battle for proper recognition, genuine natural treatments for serious illnesses have always had to fight on two fronts. Firstly, they have had to do battle with the drug merchants, who use every trick in the book to undermine any genuine treatments not under their own jurisdiction. And they will employ all means possible to disseminate their damaging disinformation on 'the non-conformists and their wares' as far and wide as possible in order to protect their own lucrative market. No department, private or public, is beyond the reach of the merchants' all-consuming influence.

Thriller writer John Le Carré spent many years working in the British Foreign Office and knows the politics of big business very well. His most recent book, The Constant Gardener, focuses on the corrupt nature of the pharmaceutical industry. Interviewed on the subject, Le Carré stated:

"Big Pharma is engaged in the deliberate seduction of the medical profession, country by country, worldwide. It is spending a fortune on influencing, hiring and purchasing academic judgment to a point where, in a few years' time, if Big Pharma continues unchecked on its present, happy path, unbought medical opinion will be hard to find."

The following report, dated February 2002, comes from the Journal of The American Medical Association:

Most Doctors Who Set Guidelines Have Industry Ties: The vast majority of doctors involved in establishing national guidelines on disease treatment have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry that could potentially sway their recommendations and inappropriately influence thousands of other physicians, a new study concludes.

Eighty-seven percent of guideline authors had some type of relationship with drug companies, yet these often were not disclosed, according to survey responses from 100 authors of guidelines published from 1991 to 1999 for common diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma.

More specifically, 38% of respondents said they had served as employees or consultants for pharmaceutical companies and 58% had received financial support for medical research. In addition, 59% had links with drug companies whose medications were considered in the particular guidelines they authored.

Selling sickness
The British Medical Journal recently featured an article entitled "Selling Sickness: the Pharmaceutical Industry and Disease-Mongering". The report, which readers are strongly advised to read for themselves, reveals the calculated manner in which unnecessary fear of disease is instilled into the public mind, in order then to market equally unnecessary drugs and related pharmaceutical services. In the introduction to their study, the BMJ authors state:

"There's a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they're sick. Some forms of medicalising ordinary life may now be better described as disease-mongering: widening the boundaries of treatable illness in order to expand markets for those who sell and deliver treatments. Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers. The social construction of illness is being replaced by the corporate construction of disease....

Although some sponsored professionals or consumers may act independently and all concerned may have honourable motives, in many cases the formula is the same: groups and/or campaigns are orchestrated, funded, and facilitated by corporate interests, often via their public relations and marketing infrastructure. A key strategy of the alliances is to target the news media with stories designed to create fears about the condition or disease and draw attention to the latest treatment. Company-sponsored advisory boards supply the 'independent experts' for these stories, consumer groups provide the 'victims' and public relations companies provide media outlets with the positive spin about the latest 'breakthrough' medications."

Through information taken from leaked documents and other sources, the authors single out GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Roche - all leading pharmaceutical companies - as engaging in this practice to one degree or another. The authors summarise their report as follows:

• "Some forms of 'medicalisation' may now be better described as 'disease-mongering' - extending the boundaries of treatable illness to expand markets for new products.
  
• Alliances of pharmaceutical manufacturers, doctors, and patients groups use the media to frame conditions as being widespread and severe.
  
• Disease-mongering can include turning ordinary ailments into medical problems, seeing mild symptoms as serious, treating personal problems as medical, seeing risks as diseases, and framing prevalence estimates to maximise potential markets.
  
• Corporate funded information about disease should be replaced by independent information."

For those interested in the extent to which this brazen form of 'marketing' has penetrated and 'shaped' our collective understanding of illness and disease, readers are encouraged to obtain a copy of the Credence title, Plague, Pestilence and the Pursuit of Power. In this book, the reader discovers that engendering a heightened fear of minor illnesses and disease is a useful political tool for profit and control and is being used to influence public reaction in a wide variety of ways.

A great number of profitable oncology services are now being offered to a fearful population - a population whose understanding of cancer has been 'shaped' almost entirely by those who sell and deliver treatments. Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century reveals the extent to which establishment medicine has been teaching us what to think about cancer but not how.

Forever 'unproven'
G Edward Griffin is the author of World Without Cancer. On the approval and licensing of non-pharmaceutical cancer treatments, he states:

"Therefore - and mark this well - as long as the present laws remain, the only substances that ever will be 'approved' for cancer therapy will be proprietary. No substance from nature will ever be legally available for cancer or any other disease unless its source can be monopolised or its processing patented. No matter how safe and effective it may be, and no matter how many people are benefited, it will forever be relegated to the category of 'unproven' therapies. As such, freely available cures from nature will always be illegal to prescribe, to promote, and in many cases even to use."

In opposition to the incessant drive by big business to dominate our health choices, Dr Matthias Rath provides another non-populist summary of the primary ethics of the merchant's house:

"Throughout the 20th century, the pharmaceutical industry has been constructed by investors, the goal being to replace effective but non-patentable natural remedies with mostly ineffective but patentable and highly profitable pharmaceutical drugs. The very nature of the pharmaceutical industry is to make money from ongoing diseases. Like other industries, the pharmaceutical industry tries to expand its market - that is, to maintain ongoing diseases and to find new diseases for their drugs. Prevention and cure of diseases damage pharmaceutical business and the eradication of common diseases threatens its very existence.

Therefore the pharmaceutical industry fights the eradication of any disease at all costs. The pharmaceutical industry itself is the main obstacle, why today's most widespread diseases are further expanding, including heart attacks, strokes, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis and many others. Pharmaceutical drugs are not intended to cure diseases. According to health insurers, over 24,000 pharmaceutical drugs are currently marketed and prescribed without any proven therapeutic value. According to medical doctors' associations, the known, dangerous side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs have become the fourth leading cause of death after heart attacks, cancer and strokes.

Millions of people and patients around the world are defrauded twice: A major portion of their income is used to finance the exploding profits of the pharmaceutical industry. In return, they are offered a medicine that does not even cure."

More vested interests
In an eye-opening book entitled Reclaiming our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the Source of True Healing, author John Robbins has collated some interesting statistics:

The Cancer Industry
Percentage of cancer patients whose lives are reliably saved by chemotherapy - 3%

Evidence to show that, for the majority of cancers, chemotherapy exerts a significant positive influence on survival or quality of life - none

Percentage of oncologists who said that if they developed cancer they would not participate in chemotherapy trials due to "the ineffectiveness of chemotherapy and its unacceptable degree of toxicity" - 75%

Percentage of people with cancer in the United States who receive chemotherapy - 75%

Company that accounts for nearly half the chemotherapy sales in the world - Bristol-Meyers Squibb

Chairman of the Board, Bristol-Meyers Squibb - Richard L Gelb

Richard L Gelb's other job - Vice-Chairman, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Director, Bristol-Meyers Squibb - James D Robinson III

James D Robinson III's other job - Chairman of the Board, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Director, Ivax, Inc. Chemotherapeutics - Samuel Broder

Samuel Broder's other job (until 1995) - Executive Director, the National Cancer Institute.

Organised medical crime
Dr Richard Schulze has spent many years speaking out against the pharmaceutical cartels and promoting personal responsibility in healthcare. One of his more famous sayings is "Getting well is easy, it's the getting sick that takes years of constant, dedicated, hard work." When he was 11, his father died in his arms of a massive heart attack. At 14, his mother also died of a heart attack. They were both only 55 years old. At 16 years of age, Richard was diagnosed with a genetic incurable heart deformity.

After curing himself of this so-called incurable disease through changes in his lifestyle (and no surgery), he set out on a mission to help others. Schulze had first-hand experience of being in the clutches of the orthodoxy and determined to set out to do something about alerting the wider world to some of its perils. Dr Schulze now travels the world, delivering his message:

"Over 200 years ago, Ben Rush, who signed the Constitution of the United States, warned that we needed to include a medical freedom clause in the Constitution. He said if we didn't it was likely that one group of doctors would monopolise healthcare by passing legislation to outlaw other types of doctors and systems of medicine.

This is exactly what happened. Over the last 80 years, organised medical groups and pharmaceutical companies, using lawyers, bribes, lobbyists, insurance companies and the strong arm of the Food and Drug Administration, have been very busy. They have corrupted elected officials to pass laws to remove any competition. They have crushed Natural Doctors, Natural Medicine and Self-Care. Their goal is to monopolise healthcare and make us dependent on medical doctors and pharmaceutical drugs. It almost worked!

We have watched them pass more and more laws restricting our rights. They have made many healing herbs, foods and even nutrients illegal. Natural health professionals who flourished a few decades ago are now barred by law to practise, and natural doctors, holistic healers, health food store-owners and even family members of the sick have been arrested and jailed for using natural remedies. If you disagree with your doctor regarding the medical treatment of your children, they can be taken away from you, put in a foster home, and you can be arrested for endangering the health and welfare of your child.

There are many people who are jailed every year, put there for disagreeing with medical doctors and their policies. Organised medical crime has gone so far, they have outlawed words for other health professionals to use, such as 'Diagnose' and 'Cure'. Just by using these words you can be arrested for practising medicine without a license."

It seems that the delivery system of 21st century conventional healthcare is being bought and taught to think of treatment and prevention of disease in pharmaceutical terms only. The current move by the European Parliament to restrict the nutritional supplement market is a case in point. In its sights are over 300 vitamins, minerals, herbs and other nutrients, whose sales they are seeking to streamline and bring under their own jurisdiction. All this under the guise of wanting to protect the public from harm.

The following text is taken from an article exploring the potential ramifications of this move:

"Imagine dropping by your favourite health food store to find it boarded up and out of business. So you go around to your local drug-mart to pick up some vitamin C, but the only dosage on the shelf is ridiculously low. The druggist informs you that 60mg is now the maximum dosage available without a prescription. So if you've been taking a mega-dosage of vitamin C to help fight heart disease or build up your immunity against cancer, you'll have to find a doctor willing to prescribe that dosage - you're no longer free to decide on your own how much of this natural vitamin you want to take.

Sounds like a nightmare? It gets worse.

Imagine that all of this is the result of new legislation imposed by lawmakers with direct ties to pharmaceutical companies - powerful companies that will use the law to create an enormous new source of profits. Now that's a real nightmare. But what makes it truly nightmarish is that, incredibly, it will soon become a reality in the United Kingdom and most of Europe - if the global pharmaceutical industry has its way."

A number of health organisations are currently spearheading the fight against the pharmaceutical industry and various monopolies, as they seek to legislate against our free choice of natural nutrients. If this legislation is passed, it will directly affect YOU in many ways. Positive moves are afoot to thwart their attempts and a website address is included at the end of this book to enable you to find out more about this directive and register your protest quickly and easily.
© Copyright 2003 Steven Ransom
Extracted from Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century

Further Resources

Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century by Steven Ransom
Cancer: Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth by Phillip Day
The ABC's of Disease by Phillip Day
B17 Metabolic Therapy compiled by Phillip Day
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