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Eclub digest version, 24th October 2005
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Up Close and Personal
EU 'Cherry Picking' from Rules the Voters Rejected
A few days later, voters in the Netherlands dismissed it even more decisively, with 62 per cent saying No to the controversial treaty. After these results from two of the EU's founder members, the constitution - which set out a blueprint for the future of the union and contained a weighty Charter of Fundamental Rights - was said by virtually all sides to be dead in the water, despite the fact that it had been endorsed by all EU heads of government. Tony Blair breathed a sigh of relief because the French and the Dutch rejections meant that there was no point in going ahead with his plan to stage a referendum on the constitution in Britain next spring - a vote which looked impossible for him to win and which was seen by some as a possible finishing post for his time in Downing Street. However, Brussels documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph are compelling proof of the desire of the European Commission to breathe new life into the corpse of the constitution - and in particular the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Document COM (2005) 172 effectively insists that the provisions of the charter must be enshrined in all new EU legislation. It baldly states: "This document sets out a methodology for ensuring that the charter is properly implemented in commission proposals." New laws proposed by Brussels will be subject to "systematic and rigorous monitoring" to ensure that they comply with the charter, the document reveals. Eurosceptics have also seized on a footnote to page two of the eight-page document, which establishes the primacy of case law handed down by the European Court of Justice over existing laws in member states. The footnote accepts that the charter is not legally binding, but adds: "It contains the fundamental principles which have been held to be binding in case law as general principles of community law." Last night, Chris Heaton-Harris, the Conservative Euro MP, said: "This shows that the commission has no intention of taking any notice of the voters in France and the Netherlands, who decisively rejected their blueprint for a federal super state." Brussels bureaucrats were simply "cherry picking" the bits of the constitution they wanted to see implemented and forcing them through by the back door, he added. The Charter of Fundamental Rights faced heavy criticism when it was drawn up because, for example, it could give the Army and the police in Britain the right to strike for the first time. The right to education could allow Brussels to say how British schools are run. The charter also creates new rights to social security, housing assistance, health care and environmental protection - all with potentially serious consequences for the Government and British businesses. The charter also permits a right to asylum, potentially handing full control of the UK's asylum system to the European courts. Last night Liam Fox, the shadow foreign secretary, demanded an urgent explanation from Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, about the document, as Britain currently holds the European Union's rolling six-month presidency. "I have repeatedly made clear my fear that the EU is determined to ignore the results of the two referenda and instead press ahead with the implementation of many elements of the Constitutional Treaty," he said. "This document confirms that those fears have been fully justified. It is simply not acceptable for EU governments and the commission to behave as though the Constitutional Treaty had come into force." A Foreign Office spokesman said last night: "The
constitution has not come into force. We are still in the position we
were in before. It is right for the commission to ensure that anything
it does not cut across the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The charter
remains the most recent political declaration by the governments of EU
member countries about the rights of their citizens." PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: Who isn't surprised about this classic and quite tragic example of the 'democracy' of the EU, which pays lip service to its people while doing what it wants to anyway. I will continue to say it until I am blue in the face, this wretched Union is one of the most dangerous political developments in the world today, run by incompetent Communists who have lulled the populations to sleep with promises of peace and security, and yet, drip by drip, have removed the final stages of personal representation and accountability. Do not be fooled for an instant with all the talk of 'human rights' and charters purporting to 'protect' the people, precisely the same honey Marx and Lenin used to beguile millions with tragic results. Further Resources Ten
Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day Click
here to purchase or review any of the above.
Dr Reid Stays Strangely Silent Last week demonstrated how absurdly easy it has become for John Reid, our Secretary of State for Defence, to conceal what is now his department's central policy: the stealthy integration of Britain's defences with those of the EU, wasting billions of pounds. On Thursday, following warnings from two of Britain's best-known former military commanders that this policy of integration is potentially disastrous, Dr Reid put out a silly statement denying that he had any such policy - on the very day he was hosting a meeting of 25 EU defence ministers to agree another major step towards integration. Yet this was almost wholly missed by the media, whose attention was otherwise focussed on a report by MPs which appeared to direct devastating criticism at the waste and inefficiency of the Ministry of Defence's procurement policy, while avoiding any mention of the main reason for this - namely the MoD's switch from US and British to EU-made equipment, at far greater cost. The meeting of EU defence ministers chaired by Dr Reid
at RAF Lyneham on Thursday yet again confirmed what this column has been
reporting for months: that British defence is in the middle of a historic
and potentially catastrophic realignment, away from our "special
relationship" with the US and towards the integration of our
Armed Forces' equipment and command structures with those of our EU "partners".
As was revealed after the meeting by Javier Solana, the EU's foreign and
security policy chief (although not by Dr Reid), the ministers agreed
in effect to suspend Article 296 of the EU Treaty, which allows members
to protect their own arms industries by not allowing other countries to
bid for their defence contracts. For some time now Britain has been leading the way
in this respect, by awarding a succession of major arms contracts to other
EU countries, as is analysed in detail in a new Centre for Policy Studies
paper by Dr Richard North. Trenchantly endorsing all it says, the foreword
to Dr North's paper, "The Wrong Side of the Hill: the secret realignment
of UK defence policy", is by Major-General Julian Thompson, commander
of British Land Forces in the Falklands. Following its publication, and a similar warning from
Colonel Tim Collins, hero of the advance on Basra, Dr Reid put out a strangely
thin and disingenuous statement, calling Dr North's paper "deeply
misleading and potentially very damaging". There was no policy
of integration with the EU, he claimed. The "special relationship"
is alive and well. By way of proof, he cited seven major projects. Four
are based on long-standing arrangements with the US, and soon to end.
The other three are EU projects which, along with many others, exemplify
the very policy that Dr Reid denies. What made this even odder was a report the same day
by the Commons Public Accounts Committee which excoriated several MoD
procurement projects, but omitted the main reason why they have gone so
wrong. The MPs were highly critical, for instance, of the £5 billion
contract to build six Type-45 destroyers. But they failed to notice that
the MoD could have saved £2.4 billion by basing their ships on a
proven US design, with better missiles. The MoD only wasted this vast
sum through its determination to arm the ships with French missiles. The failure of both MPs and media to see the scale
of what is afoot - and our Government's duplicity in trying to hide it
- has become a national scandal. Now the facts are available, in Dr North's
paper, it is time more people followed the lead given by two of our most
respected military men and woke up to what is going on. Further Resources The Real
Face of the European Union by Phillip Day, video documentary
(PAL format only) Click
here to purchase or review any of the above. Let There be Very Costly Light As the hapless Catholic parishioners of Beccles, Suffolk, have discovered, there is a new twist to the old joke about changing light bulbs. Until recently, when the flock of St Benet's needed to replace a bulb in their lofty late-Victorian priory church, it was just a matter of someone shinning up a ladder. Now they have been advised that, thanks to regulations implementing the EU's "working at height" directive, 2001/45, their roof is so high that this is no longer permissible. The job can only be done by putting up scaffolding. When a bulb recently needed changing, I am told by
Father Anthony Sutch, the parish priest (formerly a lively headmaster
of Downside school), "it cost us £1,300". To renew
all the bulbs, "which formerly would have taken a couple of hours,
will now take three days". How many EU Commissioners would it
take to change a light bulb? Don't even ask. Further Resources The Real
Face of the European Union by Phillip Day, video documentary
(PAL format only) Click
here to
purchase or review any of the above. ADHD Advice Secretly Paid for by Drugs Companies
The groups give out advice on stimulant drugs and other controversial medical treatments for young children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Their internet sites provide extensive details of medications that doctors can prescribe. But at the same time they are also being secretly financed by the pharmaceutical companies which make the controversial "chemical cosh" drugs. Last night one of the groups, a government-funded charity, admitted receiving five-figure sums from the drug giants and one of the companies involved conceded that a desire to sell more of its product was one of its motives for providing the finance. The revelation comes amid increasing concern over the huge increase in children being fed powerful drugs in order to control overly exuberant behaviour. Prescriptions of methylphenidate [Ritalin], a stimulant sold under several brand names, have increased 180-fold in the past 14 years. Nicknamed "the chemical cosh" for its ability to slow down children, methyl-phenidate is predominantly prescribed to under-16s and its side-effects include insomnia, unresponsiveness and loss of appetite. Critics claim that its use is unnecessary in many instances, as the children are exhibiting natural traits for their age which can be alleviated with dietary measures. The National Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service (ADDISS) is a Department of Health-funded charity set up to "provide people-friendly information and resources about ADHD" and its website provides a factsheet giving details of the drugs that can be supplied to children. It has received funding from three of the major pharmaceutical companies that make methylphenidate and other ADHD medications, which have been accused of sparking suicidal behaviour and liver problems in children. However, the drug firms' financing is not acknowledged on the site and nor do their names show up on the accounts lodged with the Charity Commission. Andrea Bilbow, the founder and chief executive of ADDISS, admitted that her group had solicited and received total funding of around £20,000 from Janssen-Cilag, which makes Concerta, a form of methylphenidate, UCB Pharma, which also produces another branded form of the drug, and Eli Lilly, which makes a form of atomoxetine, another ADHD drug which is linked to an increased suicide risk in children. She said: "From time to time we do go to the pharmaceutical companies to ask for money, but we are not getting massive amounts. We don't sell our soul to the devil but we can't survive without them." Ms Bilbow said that she did not identify the companies which have funded her charity on its internet site because to do so would be giving them "something in return". "If we put the names on the site that would be promoting the companies and I've told them I won't do that," she said. "That would be advertising and I'm not getting enough money from them for that." Another website, Adders.org, run by the Thanet ADDers non-profit support group, also gives detailed instructions on which drugs are available. Thanet ADDers has received money from at least one drug company. A spokesman for Eli Lilly confirmed that it had provided support in the form of a "small grant". Caroline Hensby, who runs the website, did not respond to calls. The Eli Lilly spokesman said that the company wanted to help educate people about ADHD, but she conceded that there was a degree of self-interest in it doing so. A spokesman for Janssen-Cilag confirmed that financial support had been given to ADDISS for a "specific meeting" organised by the charity. A spokesman for UCB Pharma said: "Whilst we have good working relationships with ADDIS and ADDers, we have not provided any significant funding or sponsorship." Not all ADHD help groups take money from the pharmaceutical companies. Glenn Slater, who has a child with ADHD and runs the website ADDvice.co.uk, which does not receive such funding, said: "Pharmaceutical companies giving money is not a good idea as people on the outside might get the wrong idea about the sites' motives." Jim Mackie, former chairman of the Overload Network,
which provides support for families affected by ADHD, said: "If
they [the charities] are being funded by drug companies who are interested
in promoting their products then that should be made clear on the websites." Further Resources Know a family combating the problem of 'ADD/ADHD'? Discover the global con of 'mental illness', the real causes of aberrant behaviour, and what you can do about it. The Mind
Game by Phillip Day Click
here to purchase or review any of the above. Report on the Escalating International
In 1990, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) asked American Psychiatrist and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to issue warnings about the latest psychiatric drug causing violence and suicide: the antidepressant Prozac. CCHR filed complaints and provided evidence. In response, on September 20, 1991, the FDA ordered an advisory committee to hold a hearing to investigate the safety and effectiveness of antidepressant drugs. A panel of nine psychiatrists, many with financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, heard chilling testimony from medical experts as well as the victims of these drugs - and did nothing. It was not until 13 years later, on 15th October 2004, that the FDA finally ordered pharmaceutical companies to add a "black box" warning to antidepressants, saying the drugs could cause suicidal thoughts and actions in children and teenagers. It took nine months for the FDA to issue another advisory, warning doctors to watch for suicidal behavior in adults taking antidepressants. The FDA advisories vindicated CCHR's allegations and patient and family testimony in 1991. However millions of men, women and children were needlessly subjected to dangerous drugs for more than a decade. Now, with controversy growing over the previously undisclosed dangers of psychiatric drugs, international warnings are being issued at escalating rates, citing side-effects of drug dependence, addiction, mania, hostility, aggression, psychosis, suicide and violence. Sixteen such warnings were issued in the last year alone. Following is a brief summary. September 20, 1991: The FDA ordered an Advisory committee to hold a hearing to investigate the safety and effectiveness of antidepressant drugs. The panel's chairman, Dr Daniel Casey, stated: "I do not find from the evidence today, that there is credible evidence to support a conclusion that antidepressant drugs cause the emergence and /or the intensification of suicidality and/or other violent behaviors." 13 Years Later: October 15, 2004: The FDA ordered pharmaceutical companies to add a "black box" warning to antidepressants, saying the drugs could cause suicidal thoughts and actions in children and teenagers. The agency also directed the manufacturers to print and distribute medication guides with every antidepressant prescription and to inform patients of the risks. December 17, 2004: The FDA required that a new warning be added to the packaging of the "ADHD" stimulant, Strattera, showing that the drug should be discontinued in patients who develop jaundice or liver damage. The FDA noted, "The labelling warns that severe liver damage mat progress to liver failure resulting in death or the need for a liver transplant in a small percentage of patients." April 11, 2005: The FDA asked manufacturers of the atypical (new) antipsychotic drugs to add a warning to their labelling that the drugs could increase the risk of death in elderly patients suffering dementia. April 25, 2005: The European Medicines Agency scientific committee issued a statement concluding that suicide-related behavior and hostility were more frequently observed in clinical trials among children and adolescents treated with antidepressants compared to those treated with placebos. June 28, 2005: A document on the FDA website announced the identification of possible safety concerns with Methylphenidate drug products. Specifically noted were psychiatric adverse events linked to Concerta, Ritalin and other drugs used to treat children diagnosed ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) such as visual hallucinations, suicidal ideation, psychotic behavior, as well as aggression or violent behavior. The FDA announced its intention to make labelling changes and examine other stimulant drug products approved for treatment of ADHD. June 30, 2005: The FDA issued a Public Health Advisory entitled "Suicidality in Adults being treated with Antidepressant Medications." The advisory states that several recent scientific publications suggest the possibility of increased risk of suicidal behavior in adults taking antidepressants and while a review of all available data is being undertaken by the FDA, it is recommended that physicians should monitor adults who take antidepressants for suicidal tendencies. July 7, 2005: The National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse issued a report that 15 million Americans were getting high on prescription drugs, painkillers and psychiatric drugs such as Xanax, Ritalin and Adderall, abusing these drugs more than cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines combined. Some 2.3 million teens were abusing the drugs per the report. Further, the study found that the teen who abuse controlled prescription drugs were 12 times likelier to use heroin, 14 times likelier to use ecstacy and 21 times likelier to use cocaine, compared to teens who do not abuse prescription drugs. July 16, 2005: The British Medical Journal published a study by Joanna Moncrieff, senior lecturer in psychiatry at University College London, who found that antidepressants are no more effective than a placebo and do not reduce depression. The study found that trials of antidepressants with negative results are less likely to be published than those with positive results and that within published trials, negative outcomes may not be presented. Moncrieff found "no good evidence that these drugs work." August 2005: Columbia University came out with a study on the abuse of prescription drugs by teens; titled "National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse X: Teens and Parents," which found that the number of Americans who abuse controlled prescription drugs has nearly doubled between 1992 and 2003, with the number of 12-17 year olds having jumped 212%. Further, the study shows that the percentage of teens who have known someone who has abused prescription drugs jumped 86% from 2004 to 2005. August 19, 2005: The Commission of the European Communities, representing 25 countries, issued its decision to endorse and issue the strongest warning yet against child antidepressant use as recommended by Europe's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP). This followed a review of clinical trials that showed he drugs cause suicidal behaviour, including suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, aggression, hostility and/or related behaviour. August 22, 2005: A study by Norwegian researchers disclosed that Paxil (known in Norway as Paroxetine) increases suicide risks in adults. The study of more that 1,500 patients found that 7 patients taking Paxil attempted suicide compared to one suicide attempt by those on placebo. The study also says that the recommendation to not prescribe Paxil to children and adolescents should be extended to include usage by adults. September 13, 2005: The Drug Effectiveness Review Project of Oregon State University published a major study questioning the effectiveness of ADHD drugs. The researchers reviewed 2287 studies, virtually every study ever done on ADHD, and released a 731 page report which found that there is little evidence that the drugs used to treat ADHD actually work or are safe in the long term or that they help school performance. September 22, 2005: Dr Jeffrey Lieberman of Columbia University released a federally funded study in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that 74% of the patients in the study discontinued antipsychotic medication before the end of their treatment due to inefficacy, intolerable side effects or other reasons. September 23, 2005: Lester Crawford resigned as the Commissioner of the FDA. Amongst many speculations of the reason for this resignation, The New York Times reported " Critics, including many in Congress, said the agency had tried to stifle one of its own scientists who had evidence that the use of antidepressants could cause children and teenagers to become more suicidal." September 28, 2005: The British National Health Service Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence released a study that details the best practice advice on the care of children and young people with depression and gives Clinical Guidelines on "Depression in Children and Young People." The Guideline specifies regular exercise, sleep and a balanced diet as the first levels of therapy and further states that antidepressants should not be used for the initial treatment of children and young people with mild depression. September 29, 2005: The FDA ordered that "black box" warnings be based on a commonly prescribed ADHD drug, after clinical trials linked the drug to suicidal thoughts and behavior. The FDA indicated that the new warning stems from an ongoing review of all ADHD drugs and their possible association with suicide. September 30, 2005: In a landmark report, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the world's premier children's rights body, issued a strong warning against falsely labeling youth with the psychiatric diagnosis of "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)" and administering powerful ADHD drugs. In its Concluding Observations on reports by Australia, Finland and Denmark regarding their compliance to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Committee expressed concern that "[ADHD] and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) are being misdiagnosed and therefore psycho-stimulant drugs are being over-prescribed, despite growing evidence of the harmful effects of these drugs." In Summary In just twelve months, more than 16 warnings have been issued on the previously undisclosed dangers of psychiatric drugs. This comes on the heels of public awareness campaigns by watchdog organizations, independent medical doctors, patients and their families repeatedly requesting independent evaluations of clinical drug trials and accountability for the harm and loss of lives. While drug regulatory agencies such as the FDA may be accountable for failing to act sooner, it should be noted that psychiatrists have been their advisors, and have a vested interest in maintaining a multi-billion dollar psychiatric drug industry. Psychiatric drug sales have soared in recent years based solely on psychiatry's criteria for a myriad of "mental disorders," which are simply a checklist of behaviors, emotions and attitudes. Promoting these disorders as medical conditions requiring drug treatment is misleading to the public, governments and patients. There are no blood tests, X-rays, brain scans or any scientific/medical means by which psychiatry's diagnoses can be verified. Subsequently millions of men, women and children have been wrongly diagnosed as being mentally ill, and prescribed dangerous and potentially lethal psychiatric drugs. Medical personnel and insurance companies should be evaluating other approaches to treating patients using standard medical diagnostic procedures which can accurately detect and assess unwanted physical conditions which can result in mental stress, problems and other emotional issues. Recommendations 1) All treatment options should include checking for
underlying medical conditions that could cause a patient's mental or emotional
duress. Further Resources Know a family combating the problem of 'ADD/ADHD' and other psychiatric problems? Discover the global con of 'mental illness', the real causes of aberrant behaviour, and what you can do about it. The Mind
Game by Phillip Day Click
here to purchase or review any of the above. References Transcript
of Proceedings, FDA Psychopharmacology Drugs Advisory Committee, 20 Sept.
91, p. 290. Children Being Made Deaf by Cancer Treatment
While treating the cancer remains the priority, the damage to hearing, which affects adults as well, has only recently been understood. Now the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) is appealing to pharmaceutical companies to develop less toxic versions of drugs or others that protect the hearing without diminishing the effect of the chemotherapy. The drugs that cause the damage are the platinum- based chemotherapy treatments, usually cisplatin, an effective cancer drug developed in the 1970s. The RNID says that more than 500 children are treated every year in Britain with cisplatin or similar drugs. They say that at least a quarter of children sustain "easily observable" hearing loss and or tinnitus or balance problems. Some research suggests that all treated children will develop profound hearing problems over time. Cisplatin is used in a third of childhood cancers and substantially adds to the burden of hearing loss in children in this country, the RNID said. Each year, about 800 children will be born with profound deafness. For adults, the picture is less clear, mostly because "before and after" research on hearing loss has not been conducted. Every year, 68,000 people are treated with cisplatin but hearing loss is not routinely monitored. Even so the risk to adults is put at between 11 and 91 per cent. Scientists know that cisplatin damages or destroys the sensitive hair cells in the inner ear that relay information to the auditory nerve. They have also discovered that the damage accumulates with each dose given. Dr Penelope Brock, a child cancer specialist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and a world expert on hearing damage problems, said: "The cure rate for childhood cancer has improved considerably over past decades and now exceeds 70 per cent. Cisplatin will continue to be a major contributor. However, this cure is not without cost to the child. Permanent side-effects are the most damaging and hearing loss is one which affects everyday life and development. Children who survive cancer are determined to make the most of the life they have been given but struggle to compete in an increasingly competitive world. Preventing hearing loss would transform their lives and futures." Munna Vio, the RNID commercial research manager, said thousands of cancer survivors were left with unnecessary hearing damage. "RNID research indicates that if a suitable
drug was approved that effectively protected against hearing loss but
did not interfere with chemotherapy, cancer specialists would use it across
the board for all cancers treated with cisplatin. The pharmaceutical industry
should seize this opportunity to deliver vital drugs." Further Resources Know a loved one who is suffering from cancer? Check out the great resources below: Cancer:
Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth by Phillip Day Click
here to purchase or review any of the above. Court Victory is a First for Cell Phone Programmers
"When I got home, the phone was ringing. It was the doctor's office, and they told me, 'Brace yourself. Honey, you have a brain tumor.' I was standing by the refrigerator, and I just collapsed, saying, 'no, no, no, it can't be a brain tumor'," she recalled. After her diagnosis in 1999 and surgery to remove most of the tumor, Price started looking for answers. She became convinced that exposure to radio-frequency radiation on the job, where she programmed cell phones for new customers, had caused the tumor. In May, an administrative law judge who handles worker's
compensation claims awarded her $30,000 to pay her medical bills and other
expenses. Price may be the first person to convince a judge that her illness
was caused by radio-frequency radiation. The decision is unlikely to have
widespread repercussions for the cell phone industry, however, because
the settlement was small. Price said when she filed a workers comp claim, her boss fired her, eliminating her health insurance. Then she lost the case. The Native American single mother of two daughters was devastated. She turned to Tribal Health, a government health agency for Native Americans, to get anti-seizure medication. "If I hadn't been Indian, I would have died," she said. Her former boss, Dave Bohlen, said that he did not fire Price, that she quit, based on her doctor's advice that she not return to work there. Bohlen said he dropped the insurance because she was no longer an employee. He called her worker's comp case "frivolous" and said there was no proof her tumor was caused by working in his small shop. "There's nothing harmful going on here," he said. After Price recovered from brain surgery, she went to the Internet and found researchers studying the biological effects of radio-frequency radiation, and got to know them. "I would call them up and say, 'You are absolutely dead on. If a rat could talk, this is what it would say. I'm the human rat.'" Price couldn't find an attorney to take her case until she contacted Carl Hilliard, a semi-retired lawyer and president of the Wireless Consumers Alliance, a California-based consumer-advocacy group. Hilliard volunteered to represent her pro bono and re-filed her workers comp case. Hilliard said his group has represented cell phone users in issues involving poor service, billing problems and misrepresentations by cell phone service providers. "We're the ones who filed a case saying federal law does not pre-empt state law [on consumer issues] and won that case four years ago," Hilliard said. Hilliard brought in Dr. Nachman Brautbar, an occupational toxicologist and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, to review Price's medical records. Brautbar has been an expert witness in a number of
high-profile cases, including the chromium poisonings from polluted drinking
water portrayed in the movie Erin Brockovich. "It's not a money issue, suing the company,
it's a health and safety issue," said Price, who speaks to school
assemblies and classes about the need to use a headset when talking on
a cell phone. "We need to explain to people that just like putting
on condoms, you have to take this precautionary measure to make the product
be as safe as it can be." DR GRAHAME BLACKWELL'S COMMENT: Note that we have here a legal precedent of non-ionising (radio frequency) radiation being ruled to have caused a tumour - something official sources say is not possible. For more information, see www.starweave.com Downs is Dangerous Listeners to the BBC's You and Yours on Thursday might have been surprised to hear an interview with Georgina Downs, a pesticides campaigner, from the venue where the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution had just launched its report on the dangers to health of toxic chemicals sprayed on fields. Twice, after noises off, Miss Downs was forced to stop, with strangled cries that the Royal Commission was demanding that she get off the telephone. That this report appeared at all was a tribute to the pressure Miss Downs, a 32-year-old former singer, has brought on ministers, for four years, on behalf of all those who, like herself and her family, have suffered severe health problems after exposure to spraying of nearby farmland. So forcefully did she pursue her campaign, as frequently reported in this column, that last summer Alun Michael, the minister for rural affairs, agreed to ask the commission to investigate. Although its report does make nominal concessions to her case - as in admitting it is "not implausible" that there might be a connection between ill-health and exposure to toxic chemicals - the fact is that Miss Downs has run into that familiar brick wall which successive governments have built round pesticides, ever since ministers learned in 1992 that the health of thousands of farmers had been ruined by the use of organo-phosphorus sheep dips. The trouble is that, since all pesticides are licensed by the Government itself as safe to use, the Government cannot afford to admit that it is responsible for a massive public health disaster. The licensing agencies, such as the Pesticides Safety Directorate, are happy to emphasise how dangerous these products are to those who use them, insisting on every kind of safety precaution. But when something goes wrong, as with all those hapless victims represented by Miss Downs, officialdom moves into implacable denial mode. To admit otherwise would make it liable for the fact that its regime has failed. The most vital thing of all, as borne out yet again by the Royal Commission report, is to ensure that no serious study is ever made of the connection between pesticide exposure and damage to health. Report after report can thus come out dismissing all evidence of damage as "anecdotal", while making sure that no one is ever allowed to put it to proper scientific test. For what she has achieved with her campaign, Miss Downs
is a heroine of our time. But like other campaigners before her, such
as the redoubtable Countess of Mar, she has run into one of the most ruthless
conspiracies of silence in modern government. Fluoride Failings
If the Government were really concerned about children's tooth decay, it would ensure that there are enough NHS dentists. Teeth need adequate calcium and vitamin D, which also benefits general health. These measures are much better than adding the toxic fluoride chemical to water supplies. Medication should be prescribed individually according
to need, not given to whole communities, with no control over dosage received.
This goes against all medical ethics. Meating the Main Problem
"For about the past twenty-five years, researchers in human nutrition have pointed to the unrefined plant dietary as a more ideal food than animal products. They have designated the Western world's high-fat animal product, fibre-poor, refined diet as the chief cause of so-called "Western diseases", e.g. coronary heart disease, diabetes, obesity, gallstones, appendicitis, diverticulitis of the bowel, hiatus hernia, hemorrhoids, osteoporosis, kidney disorders, varicose veins, cancer, and accelerated sexual development in children. Some of today's most prevalent and devastating diseases in the United States have now been credited to excessive consumption of meat and animal products (milk, cheese, eggs) and insufficient ingestion of plant foods." The first thing to note are the words 'excessive consumption'. Humans, as Harvey Diamond explains, are not natural carnivores: "A carnivore's teeth are long sharp and pointed - all of them! We have molars for crushing and grinding. A carnivore's jaws move up and down only, for tearing and biting. Ours can move from side to side for grinding. A carnivore's saliva is acid and geared to the digestion of animal protein; it lacks ptyalin, a chemical that digests starches. Our saliva is alkaline and contains ptyalin for the digestion of starch. A carnivore's stomach is a simple, round sack that secretes ten times more hydrochloric acid than that of a non-carnivore. Our stomachs are oblong in shape, complicated in structure, and convoluted with a duodenum. A carnivore's intestines are three times the length of its trunk, designed for rapid expulsion of animal proteins, which quickly rot. Our intestines are twelve times the length of our trunks and designed to keep food in them until all nutrients are extracted. The liver of a carnivore is capable of eliminating ten to fifteen times more uric acid than the liver of a non-carnivore. Our livers have the capacity to eliminate only a small amount of uric acid. Uric acid is an extremely dangerous toxic substance that can wreak havoc in your body. All meat consumption releases large quantities of uric acid into the system. Unlike most carnivores and omnivores, humans do not have the enzyme uricase to break down uric acid. A carnivore does not sweat through the skin and has no pores. We do sweat through the skin and have pores. A carnivore's urine is acid. Ours is alkaline. A carnivore's tongue is rough, ours is smooth. Our hands are perfectly designed for plucking fruit from a tree, not for tearing the guts out of the carcass of a dead animal as are a carnivore's claws." If the above doesn't convince you that humans are not natural carnivores, then trust to instinct. What do you think you are psychologically programmed to eat? Next time you pass over some road kill, screech the car to a halt, leap out with your juices flowing and go back and get stuck into the blood and guts. Tear that rabbit apart and delight and marvel as the blood flows down your throat. Feel the satisfying crunch of its bones and the slippery visceral sensation of its organs in your mouth. Well, why not? You're a meat-eater by instinct, aren't you? Any of your brothers and sisters-in-kin, like a fox or a crow or even a dog, would likely beat you to it. Don't be the runt of the pack! Get your muzzle in there, barge aside the competition, and chow on down. And, while you're about it, leap over the fence when you're done and go and suckle a few of those Jerseys over there in the field to slake that rabid thirst. Don't worry about the cars that have pulled over on the side of the road, their occupants staring at you with ghastly fascination with their jaws on the floor. They're just a jealous bunch of failed meat- and milk-swillers wishing they had come along the road and got tuckered down a minute before you did. The point being made is that, even though they disapprove of your meat-garnering activities in the natural, your critics will be down at Safeways, Asda or Piggly Wiggly's at 4pm later buying up their own supplies of meat and pints of milk. Do you watch wildlife programs because you wish you were out there on the Serengeti, charging down the zebras yourself? Is your toddler crying in the kitchen? Maybe your little one is hungry. Try an experiment and give her a live hamster in one hand and a strawberry in the other. What will this child do by instinct? Eat the hamster alive and then toy with the strawberry? Then imagine walking through a vineyard in summer time. You're hot, you're sweating from the heat that is only now burning off the dew and mist that cloaked the pasture in its morning glory. Above you, glistening in the sun, are bunches of ripe and tasty grapes, still with the dew on their skins. Now what are you instinctively going to do? Meat is well known as 'a source of protein', but what kind of protein? Animal protein! Humans cannot use and create human protein directly from the consumption of animal protein. The human has to break down the animal protein into its constituent amino acids and then reconstruct human protein from these building blocks. Proteins are formed from chains that can range anywhere from 50 to 200,000 amino acid links. These chains have to be deconstructed and recombined into human links, a procedure that is extremely tiring to the human, and also an extremely inefficient form of manufacturing protein. Flesh foods actually have very little going for them, in terms of their positive nutritive value, apart from Vitamins B9 and B12, which are essential for human health. Even if you are eating meat for protein, you aren't, because the meat is almost always cooked, charbroiled, fried, boiled or roasted, which destroys much of its enzyme and amino acid benefit, converting these protein components into an acidic toxic gunk which the body will later have to neutralise and eliminate. Of course, if you were a true meat-eater, you'd be chomping your beef, chicken and duck raw to maximise the protection of the meat's amino acids, in the same way animals instinctively do in the wild. But you don't, do you? Of course, the other deficit in logic centres around the question that is seldom asked: Where do the animals we eat, such as cows, sheep and chicken, get their protein from? From grass, vegetation and cereals! That's right, from the amino acids they derive, not from flesh foods, but from those occurring naturally in the plant kingdom. Carnivores will only attack and eat other carnivores in an emergency. In almost all other cases, true carnivores are happy to go for herbivores, attacking the stomach cavity in their victims first, to slop up the amino acid pool that has collected there, comprised as it is of pre-digested nitrilosidic grass and vegetation. "But I eat my steaks to make me big and strong!" This also is a lie. All your tumultuous steaks are doing is giving you corpse-like breath, an overdose of protein your body has to neutralise and then eliminate, an inside track on bowel cancer and heart disease, and chronic indigestion problems eventually ending in appalling bowel actions. I worked with many bodybuilders when I was living in California, and the ones who were clued up weren't using meat to win their contests. Many of the top 230lb hulks at Gold's Gym, World's Gym and the Marina Athletic Club were mostly fish, fruit and salad boys, consuming a minimum of flesh foods, but ingesting free amino acids. The vegetarian silverback gorilla, as Harvey Diamond points out, has no problems building its proteins. This animal is three times as large as a man, but over thirty times as strong. Have an arm-wrestling match with one of those and I'll guarantee you two things off the bat. One, the gorilla won't have had a T-bone steak all day, and two, it'll rip your arm off at the shoulder. In regard to energy, meat contains almost no carbohydrates. Yet carbs are where your fuel comes from. Meat also contains next to no fibre, is high in saturated fat, and can take days to pass through your gut. And it is here that the downside to flesh-food eating is massive and repellent. Meat, quite literally, rots in the stomach, especially when it is ill-combined with carbohydrates, such as rice, potatoes, chips and pasta. Meat proteins require the stomach to secrete acid to digest them, whereas carbohydrates require an alkali. Put the two together in the form of steak and fries, chicken tagliatelli, or eggs on toast, and the digestive juices cancel one another out. Later, as this gridlock continues to jam up our insides, the rotting and putrefaction commence, resulting in horrible bear's breath, foul gas, rancid body odour, deposits of mucoid plaque along the insides of the colon, a frantic race against time to procure a ready supply of Tums, and ultimately 15 minutes reading the Wall Street Journal on the pan with the veins popping out of your forehead as you pull those ghastly faces at yourself in the mirror in the daunting lead-up to Beethoven's Last Movement. Dr Herbert Shelton wonders at the insanity of modern man's sick predicament: "Why must we accept as normal what we find in a race of sick and weakened human beings? Must we always take it for granted that the present eating practices of civilized men are normal? ...Foul stools, loose stools, impacted stools, pebbly stools, much foul gas, colitis, hemorrhoids, bleeding with stools, the need for toilet paper are swept into the orbit of the normal." Nutritionist Dr Dean Burkitt accuses the West's fibre-deficient, refined diet with too few plant foods, too little fresh water, as well as increased ingestion of animal foods, in accounting for the rash of modern Western diseases, such as coronary heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and liver disease. Burkitt and colleague Alec Walker determined, by studying multiple bowel transit times, that meat-heavy, ill-combined meals were creating an aftermath of appendicitis, constipation, diverticulosis, varicose veins, hemorrhoids and colon cancer (the second leading cancer death). They found that the average time for passage for this putrefying detritus through the human alimentary tract was three to five days, and even as much as two weeks in the elderly. Rural Third World peoples, on the other hand, consuming diets fibre-rich in unrefined plant dietary, such as yams, cassava, cereals, vegetables and fruits, with little animal products, passed easily propelled stools in 24 to 36 hours. William J Mayo, founder of the famous Mayo cancer clinic in the United States, addressed the American College of Surgeons with these words: "Meat-eating has increased 400% in the last 100 years. Cancer of the stomach forms nearly one third of all cancers of the human body. If flesh foods are not fully broken up, decomposition results, and active poisons are thrown into an organ not intended for their reception." Correct food-combining is one of the most important points dealt with in my book, Health Wars, and is covered in the chapter on Natural Hygiene. But it's important to see how all the pieces of the nutrition picture go together. For instance, as we have learned with cancer, according to research , a diet rich in proteins robs our body of its vital supplies of pancreatic enzymes, which are used by the body to terminate healing processes, which can otherwise go on to form tumours if they are not arrested upon completion. These enzymes, such as trypsin and chymotrypsin, are employed during the complicated process the body undergoes as these foreign proteins are broken down into their constituent amino acids and reconstructed as human proteins - a process extremely taxing on the body's resources. We also chomp meat because our society has bought into the fear of dying through lack of protein, most believing that unless we scarf down animal flesh by the rack-load, we are in serious danger of becoming protein-deficient. This myth originated from early trials conducted on rats. Later it would transpire that rats require up to eleven times more protein than humans, as evidenced by the commensurate increase in rat mothers' proteins in milk, as compared with the protein content of human milk. Today, it is recognised that human protein requirements are not nearly as great as formerly assumed (between 20 - 40 g/day). Yet many are ingesting 100 - 200 g/day. It is this excess that is causing all the bother, especially in the realm of causing acidosis in the population that can eventually prove fatal. Nevertheless, the protein-scoffing trend has been hard to extirpate from the minds of the laity, which in turn has led to an overabundance of illnesses and scourges in the protein-gorging West. These diseases, relatively rare in the 1930s, are now found in ever increasing abundance among our present-day, 'well-fed' populations, due to the massive increase protein advertising. Notice that the major food lobbies with limitless ad budgets are all pushing acid-forming foods, such as meat, grains, milk and sugar. But research shows that ancient peoples were also cursed with these diseases that came from heavy protein consumption, ironically a trait of all prosperous societies. In Exodus 15:26 of the Bible, God is addressing the Israelites: "If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians." What were these diseases of the Egyptians? For that answer, we go to Dr Marc Armand Ruffer, a paleopathologist who, along with his associates, has performed over 36,000 autopsies on Egyptian mummified remains of Pharaonic royals. Ruffer's research demonstrates that most of the diseases striking the Egyptian royalty bear an uncanny resemblance to those killing us today: atherosclerosis, various forms of heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, stroke, obesity, tooth decay, arthritis, diverticulosis of the colon, and early sexual development in children. Even back in 1992, heart disease alone was claiming 3,000 Americans a day. Colon and rectal cancers, now the second cause of cancer-death in America, for years have been associated with high-protein, low-fibre diets. Excessive bile acids are required to process proteins in the bowel and bile acids are carcinogenic to humans. The transit time for foods through the alimentary tract is prolonged with low-fibre bowel content, allowing a longer period of time for bile acids to act on bowel mucosa. High pork, beef and chicken consumption correlates closely with the incidence of colon cancer. Interestingly, Americans have two and a half times
the incidence of colon cancer deaths as the Chinese, and yet Chinese-American
women who adopt the high-fat, high-meat dietary habits of the United States
suffer four times the rate of colon cancer as their counterparts in China.
In Chinese-American males, the colorectal cancer rate is seven times that
of their Chinese counterparts. Colon and rectal cancers increase more
than 400% among sedentary people, which also correlates with the increased
incidence of constipation in this group. The simple fact is, if you consume a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and nuts, you couldn't get a protein deficiency if you were hit over the back of the head with one, because your body will have access to all the amino acids required to construct human protein. There are twenty-three amino acids, fifteen of which can be produced by the body. The final eight however have to be procured through our diet, thus they have been labelled the 'essential amino acids'. Meat does not need to enter into the picture, so far as amino acids are concerned. The body makes use of a constant circulating bank of amino acids in the blood and lymph systems, known as the amino acid pool, which the liver and cells use to withdraw whatever material is required. The liver and cells are also capable of storing amino acids, which, in a balanced diet, are available in more than plentiful supply. From this amino acid pool, the body is able to draw and chain aminos into protein blocks for use within the human body. Once we understand how the body trades in amino acids, not proteins, either foreign or domestic, all the claptrap about protein deficiency can be tossed out and a new, healthier and leaner 'you' can break free of all turbulent, misleading myth. In fact, most of the ills of today's Western societies centre around the consumption of too much protein, protein poisoning and diseases arising as a result of the body's resultant acidosis and inability to rid itself of the toxic metabolites created as a result of chronic protein consumption. This links meat and dairy squarely with obesity. The final problems with eating meat are in essence very similar to those with milk. As discussed briefly earlier, meats today can be, and are contaminated with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), pesticides, insecticides, arsenic, antibiotics, hormone accelerators, steroids, ticks, parasites, viruses and pus cells. Feed additives, such as estradiol and DEA, synthetic estrogen mimics, are still added to the food chain. In spite of a clear record of carcinogenicity since its introduction in 1947, DEA, for example, has failed to be curtailed by the Food & Drug Administration, in spite of repeated attempts by researchers to have it scrapped. Meat is rarely unadulterated. Some meat receives chemical and dye treatments to turn it a 'healthy' red and not the usual grey of dead flesh. Some meat is treated with sodium sulphite to decrease the stench of decay. Farmers have been known to feed their cattle cement and concrete dust to increase weight for when their livestock comes up for sale. CONCLUSION This is not to say that a human can't eat some meat and dairy products. A small amount of organic meat is desirable for nutrients such as the B9 & B12 we examined earlier, which are sometimes hard to obtain for vegans, who run the risk of these deficiencies if they are not diligent. In fact, a 5-10% component for organic meat/fish and dairy balanced with the remainder of the diet consisting of properly constituted whole foods (salads, vegetables, nuts, legumes, etc.) seems to be ideal. But we just need to be aware of the problems with heavy meat and dairy consumption and simply side-step them. Further Resources Health Wars by Phillip Day Click
here to purchase or review any of the above. References Nelson,
Ethel R The Eden Diet and Modern Nutritional Research, the Twin Cities
Creation Conference, Northwestern College, 1992
Persecution of Alternative Practitioners Treating Cancer in the UK In
depth conversation with Roy MacKinnon
Around 20 years ago I decided on a career change and I got myself a qualification in counselling but later noticed that sometimes people who were depressed were not getting better as rapidly as I hoped. This caused me to look further at things like allergies, flower essence remedies, etc. to see whether the whole process could be accelerated and I began looking in a rather more detailed way at herbs and supplements to see if they would help people. These had been of interest to me since I was a teenager. When I became ill with ME/CFS, I had found all of this information really quite helpful. I had received Chinese medicine, acupuncture and then shiatsu. In the early 1990s, I went to the Bristol School of Shiatsu and did my 3 years there as a student. Then I practised the shiatsu method that had helped me. It was only after this that I discovered the work of Dr. Hulda Clark* which I then added to the work I was already doing. I believe you used the Hulda Clark methods to help people with cancer? Can you describe her protocol? Basically the approach of Dr. Clark is to understand the individual as somebody who once had a very well functioning immune system but became ill because a build up of pathogens and toxins had been too great for their immune system to handle. It follows therefore that if you remove those pathogens and toxins, you are taking the burden off the back of the immune system and allowing it to recover so the individual can get well again. Yes, exactly. The reason people get ill if they've been previously well, is either that they need to be detoxified - perhaps they've had too many antibiotics, pharmaceutical medicines, they've got parasites or their nutritional intake is lacking or inadequate. I think the important point here is that Dr. Clark encourages individuals to look for the root cause of illness. She's not interested in treating individual symptoms, although symptoms are obviously part of an overall picture. Orthodox medicine treats symptoms so it's not surprising that they don't really have any cures. Our interest is trying to get to the root cause of whatever really triggers and allows subsequent chronic illness to develop. You cannot really sort that out unless you can get to what has caused that malaise. I am not denying that maybe an inherited or psychological factor is involved. There is something that has bothered the immune system to cause it to collapse and if it can be identified and removed, the individual starts to become well again. The other thing of course is diet. If you are not giving the body the right nutrition, it cannot repair itself, it cannot recover and you have to re-educate people regarding their eating habits. The whole thing with the food angle is very, very important - not only food but also water. The bottom line in our society is money not health. As a result people are tempted by what looks and tastes better rather than what does them good. You have all sorts of chemicals and pesticides that facilitate the market driven economy and it's often at the expense of health. What looks best and is cheapest is not going to maintain your health because it can be toxin-laden and sometimes pathogen-laden as well. That applies to water as much as it does to food. The quality of our water is deteriorating almost on a daily basis. Since we all have to drink, it becomes quite central to our health. You can go into a supermarket or health food shop and buy organic food, what you can't do is buy organic water. There can be up to 500 different toxins in drinking water. Did you have success with your methods of healing? Oh yes. This was one of the very helpful factors when the case came to trial. I was able to draw on a number of cases that were very positively helped by using the Hulda Clark toxin/pathogen removal process. There were very happy people whose health had improved who were delighted to come to court to support me. There were a dozen people who wanted to come, some of them coming great distances - from Northern Ireland, Norfolk, Cornwall and the north of England. Some of them had to travel over two days to get to Swansea. What I am really interested to know about is how it all started - when you first encountered the difficulties with the authorities over treating people. The troubles really started when I came to Swansea in 1999. In the last few years since coming, I have been attacked by the BBC no less than 3 times. What happened exactly? What happens is that your work comes to their attention and they try to find a disgruntled patient or somebody like that. It seems they contact or are contacted by this rather sinister organisation, formerly the Campaign Against Health Fraud (CAHF) - now called HealthWatch, which appears to be effectively just a branch of the pharmaceutical multinationals. This is a quackbuster organization and there is another one in the US called QuackWatch. They are out to discredit alternative health practitioners. This is exactly what happened to a friend of mine who was a homeopathic practitioner working in South Africa. They found a disgruntled patient and used her as a means of trying to shut down his clinic. They appear to have their own connections within the media. Exactly what they do I can only surmise but it looks to me as though programme producers or directors are encouraged to try and promote an angle in a particular programme. So was it a programme or just a news item? The programme that ruined my reputation was 'Week In, Week Out', a Welsh programme which features anything that is happening in Wales. A feature about my practice was also shown on a national programme, CrimeSquad. I have had two attacks from BBC Wales and one from BBC nationally. I think CrimeSquad was the first one which could have been seen by 8 or 9 million people. The problem is the reporting of the BBC. There is no objectivity in reporting. The person they are busy investigating is not being investigated at all, because the conclusion has already been arrived at before they ask you any questions whatsoever. It doesn't much matter what sort of answers you give, as they will be edited out. It is the worst form of journalism and the BBC seems to be full of reporters who will stoop that low. To them what they've got to do is produce something which is a bit sensational so they come as judge and jury having found you guilty. They simply want to persecute you in order to produce a programme which they've only got limited time to do. In terms of the end product, it was determined even before they left their office. Did they come and speak to you? Did they interview you? Well firstly they tried to surreptitiously do this under cover. On one occasion they posed as a patient with a friend and one of the reporters had a buttonhole camera. Another had a tape recorder inside her handbag. On another occasion there was a telephone conversation which was simply tape-recorded without me being informed. So there is a lack of honesty, uprightness, forthrightness in this. They tried to sneak information from me which would benefit their programme-making and the truth goes out the window. So you had somebody who posed as a patient who wasn't really a patient? How many times did that happen? Three times. Three times people came to you as patients? Could you sense that they were a bit bogus, that they didn't seem to have anything much wrong with them? On one occasion they came to my house. On the two other occasions it was done by telephone. So do you treat people at your house? Not these days. I stopped after the first occasion when the BBC sent the reporters under disguise and I worked simply by telephone but then they just sit and record your telephone messages. Then of course they can edit them and do whatever they like. I did not get a fair investigation. And how long did that go on for? It all happened within a 2 to 3 week period when they were producing a programme. But typical of paparazzi, they will follow you all over the place in order to try and get an interview. I can remember on one occasion they waited for hours and hours around the corner from my house and then chased me across Swansea. I had to go into a friend's house in order to get away from them. How awful. What gives the BBC the right to be judge and jury, to convict a person without trial? By the very fact that they have put you on a programme called CrimeSquad or Week In, Week Out, they have convicted you, tried you and found you guilty of a crime. And yet not one piece of evidence had been heard on the side of the defendant. And trash your reputation at a stroke. The thing is you cannot actually take them to court unless you have huge amounts of money. Some of my patients are saying 'Why don't you sue the BBC?' But the BBC would take you for every penny all the way to the House of Lords and even then you might not win. People have to be very brave to take on the big boys because their lawyers will use every way to win. But the BBC sets itself up as though it were part of the legal system of this country. The BBC seems to work closely with the government. Like a police state, you are guilty if they decide you are guilty, whether or not evidence is heard on your behalf or not. This is the country we live in. In Europe, it seems you are guilty unless you can prove your innocence. In this country - you are innocent unless you're proven guilty. You are free to do what you want unless there is legislation which stops you. There is a serious lack of investigative journalism nowadays. No objectivity. Really good quality objective journalism ought to be open to whatever is uncovered. This is not the case with these BBC journalists. They have decided what the outcome will be even before they decide to make the programme. How can that purport to be objective? The truth has not been presented at all. Even if it were, it would be edited out. And you say you were on television three times? That's right. They actually inferred on one occasion that they expect most people to crack up after one such event and to stop their line of business as a result of the way in which they treat their victims. They were somewhat surprised that I was still on the go after two of these incidents, let alone three. On the third occasion, what they did was to take their files and present them to the local Trading Standards office. Regardless of how trading standards operate, you have to understand that this was political. When the BBC is making such a request, trading standards have to investigate. So Trading Standards haul you in for an interview. So you had to go? Yes, and it's costing you money because you have to then get hold of a solicitor because you cannot get Legal Aid until you are formally charged. You are hauled in for a really quite dreadful interview. It's almost Gestapo-like. After that they make a formal charge. If you are not well off, you are entitled to Legal Aid, so at least you get legal bills paid but the idea is to ruin you wherever possible. It's not the Trading Standards people who were to blame, it is the BBC, because they were putting pressure on the Trading Standards. The Trading Standards know that if they are not seen to investigate, then obviously the BBC can give that local Trading Standards office a very bad name. But who was behind the BBC investigations - the so called Health Watch, do you think? Yes, it appears so. In my opinion they are backed by the pharmaceutical multinationals. And you were charged with saying you could treat cancer? Cure cancer. Under the 1939 Cancer Act, you are not allowed to advertise that you can cure cancer. They said I was making a claim to cure cancer - something which I could not and would not do. So they said I was making a false claim in terms of the services I was offering the public. Well as I've explained, I don't offer to cure cancer. I offer to use the protocol of Dr. Hulda Clark in order to unburden the immune system of its toxins and pathogens and thereby help the body to recover. I don't go out to say I'm going to cure you of this particular chronic illness, let alone cancer, multiple sclerosis or whatever. But attempts were made to trick me into saying that. Therefore your freedom of speech is denied as well. But nevertheless they charged me with claiming to cure cancer, HIV and MS under the 1968 Trades Descriptions Act. So do you think that they picked on you because there have been attempts to try and close down Dr. Clark's work in Mexico and they found out you were using her methods? I think so and also there aren't too many therapists in this country that will take on chronically sick people as patients and assist them if they wish to pursue the Dr. Clark approach. You can number them on one hand. So therefore by hitting out at me, they are striking a great blow against alternative medicine because very clearly, no pharmaceutical company that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a supposed cancer cure wants the public to get to hear of a natural approach, which would therefore undermine their investment. That of course also includes lost revenue for all the pills for the side effects, etc! That would threaten the profitability of pharmaceutical companies which is required by their shareholders. As I was saying earlier, the bottom line is always money. The problem is that the number of people getting cancer these days is on the increase. Therefore, a practitioner might be quite innocently treating a cancer patient with nutritional supplements for example and then could be unfairly charged with saying they can cure cancer. Absolutely, if the patient has made the therapist aware of the presence of a chronic illness, then there is an obligation on the part of the therapist to describe their therapy as something other than 'curing' the 'chronic illness', even though effectively that might be exactly what the therapist is doing. The therapist has to be very careful how he phrases the aims of his therapy and why. Remember, we no longer live in an enlightened democracy and human rights such as freedom of speech can no longer be taken for granted in countries governed by politicians and governmental bodies strongly influenced by the power of corrupt orthodox medicine. And tell me about the charges in the Court cases and how they proceeded. Well the charges against me were originally four. Two were in connection with cancer, one was in connection with HIV and one was in connection with multiple sclerosis. Three of them were supposedly coming from a telephone call, a telephone message by a BBC reporter posing as a patient. The fourth charge came from somebody who had started using the Clark method and actually I think I spoke to her twice or three times in all. She had some sort of heart problem and decided to discontinue because she was finding the lights of the electronic zapper, which is part of Dr. Clark's approach to clear parasites, was not agreeing with her heart. Whether or not the zapper was the cause of the complaint is another matter. Subsequent to seeing the Week In, Week Out programme when it was televised, she decided that I had to be a charlatan so she wrote in to the BBC and the BBC passed her letter and correspondence on to the local trading standards and they formed a fourth charge around that. But was she the trigger do you think? No, the trigger I think came from a previous patient who had died, who had come to me probably with only a matter of weeks to live and asked me what to do. I told her what Dr. Clark would do. This included dental work and she came to Swansea for this work with a local first class dentist. But her husband was totally against the whole approach and when this poor soul died, he then became very, very bitter and I think it was he who in the first instance triggered the Quackbuster connection that resulted in the BBC creating the Week In, Week Out programme. Yes, this is the trouble. You get certain patients that expect too much. It is especially difficult if they are seriously ill. The reality is that this particular patient I think would have died anyway. She really was suffering very badly from a brain tumour and when she actually approached me, I believed she had only about 8 weeks left to live. Remember, she had already been through the orthodox protocols and they'd given up on her. Yes, she died. The dentist and I - we do what we can for such people who come and ask us for our help but her husband was very bitter. He is obviously understandably grief-stricken but what he did was to display misplaced anger because it wasn't either the dentist or I who had robbed him of his wife. The whole set up from the word go and the poverty of orthodox treatment was what had failed his wife. The dentist and I became the butt of misdirected anger. And that's how these cases are instigated in the first instance. Yes.... And tell me how the court case went exactly because you must have had a reasonably sympathetic judge for the charges to be dropped. I went backwards and forwards to court for two and a half years. I don't know how many times I appeared. About fifteen times. Really?! It starts off in the magistrate's court and if you think you will get a better hearing, you can elect to be tried by jury and that takes it to the Crown Court. But there are all these little bits and bobs where the process of law has to be pursued with an absolutely monotonous routine and your case will come up for mention for something to be done, for it to be committed or other stages in the proceedings to be advanced and so on and so forth. As regards the Prosecuting counsel for the Crown, I've never seen a more dilatory mob in all my life. If ever I had an insight into the legal system, this was it. Everybody else goes out and works for a living. They were lazy, they were slow. We would get a situation where the prosecuting barrister would actually stand before the judge and say, 'Well, no your Honour, I have not done this' or 'No, your Honour, I have not done that'. The Judge would get more and more annoyed and would defer the proceedings for another two weeks in order for the prosecuting barrister to do what was required. But he'd come back the next time and say no, he had not done it again. Oh no! Just dragging it out deliberately do you think? No, I just think laziness. Gosh and they're being paid so much for that. Whenever a solicitor or a barrister goes to court, as far as I'm aware, they get a fee for their appearance. So therefore it's in their interests …. To go as often as possible. So you had to go back so many times? Absolutely, and it was not just to Swansea. I had to go to Carmarthen on a couple of occasions because they have circuit judges and they don't necessarily always convene court in one locality. You can understand too that if you were not on Legal Aid, each time the case had a hearing attached to it, you would be involved in further expenditure. Taking time off and probably a whole day to get there and back. I actually asked my solicitor at the end of the trial that if I had not qualified for Legal Aid, exactly what sort of a total bill would I be facing and he said in the order of £30,000 or something! Now that is absolutely horrendous. But eventually what happened was that the three immediate BBC telephone recorded charges were dropped because the prosecution was so dilatory that they ran out of time. They had been unaware that there was a one year proscription on some of these charges being brought to committal. My solicitor, who was conversant with this, was aware the time limit was coming up. He therefore encouraged the barrister who now represented me, to put it to the circuit judge that these three charges should be dropped and they were. The prosecution then wanted to have the charges reinstated and you have to have a high court judge that operates in a Crown Court to reinstate them. The judge behaved very well. This happened prior to the Christmas recess last year and he went away and mulled it over his Christmas dinner and came back in January saying he felt that my barrister's claim that the charges should remain dropped was absolutely in order and that these charges should not be reinstated. So that left me with just the one charge. Which was what? That was where this lady had been involved who had decided, having seen the BBC programme, Week In, Week Out, that I was a charlatan, that I had presented myself as somebody who purported to operate the Clark system. The way it's recorded in the charge was that it was a falsehood. The actual charge read: "FOR THAT, you Roy Duncan MacKinnon did in the course of trade or business on the 7th. January, 2003 recklessly make a statement as to the provision of a service which was false, namely that you could cure cancer by means of a particular therapy when that was not the case. SUCH THEREFORE, being contrary to Section 24(b) (ii) of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968." What this implies is that only orthodox medicine can be used to 'cure' a chronic illness - according to medical experts who wouldn't recognize parsley if it was put in their soup and yet shout they are experts in alternative medicine which they have never studied. She was a patient - the lady with the heart problem? As I said, probably on two or maybe, three occasions, I had spoken to her on the phone and she was the lady with the heart problem. She did not complain at the time, please note. She registered the complaint with the BBC only after watching the televised programme 'Week In, Week Out'. I doubt if she would have done it had she not seen that totally bigoted programme. So many people believe what they see on TV - that it must be right because it's on television. All I can say to anybody who watches a BBC programme which is reporting a set of circumstances, where a reporter has been given a briefing and there is some sort of commentary - don't take it at face value. They know what they want to report before they start and anything that might be to the contrary of this, can be dropped and edited out. But that was the basis on which this lady had proceeded to make a charge. Something it is unlikely she would have done, had the BBC not made this programme and broadcast it in Wales where she lived. Tell me more about how the final court case went. When I appeared at the trial, the Judge was quite upset because when the Prosecuting Counsel stood up to open the proceedings, he advised the Judge that his three witnesses could not be produced together on that day and he wanted to bring the other two into court on the next two consecutive days. And the Judge didn't want it to be drawn out like that... three days in a row. Well of course - court time costs a lot of money. I had my barrister and my solicitor and his team who managed to get no less than 12 witnesses, all capable of appearing within a 2 day period. They, on the other hand, couldn't get 3 witnesses to appear in a single day. Never mind 2 days, it had to take 3 days. So the Judge immediately said, 'Well we're going to start now. If you've got no witnesses then I'm afraid you're going to have to present no witnesses. And the prosecution case will then rest.' Anyway a recess was called at that point. Remember the jury was not yet sworn in. But in that recess the Prosecuting Barrister then came back and asked for the charge to be amended slightly. Instead of saying 'cure cancer' which was the supposed lie, it was changed 'to treat cancer'. And the Judge would have none of it. He could see that this was just time-wasting on the part of the Prosecuting Barrister. There was then another recess, prior to which the Judge had said: 'You should understand that I cannot see where the complainant has actually levelled a direct charge against Mr. MacKinnon and in view of this, when it gets to half time, you know what the outcome will be'. And he took his glasses off and looked the Prosecuting Barrister in the eye. Well it was perfectly obvious that what he was meaning was that the case would collapse, you see. So this further recess was then granted and when the Prosecuting Barrister then came back in and the Judge entered the Court, the Prosecuting Barrister said that he would not be moving forward with the case and even before he sat down the judge turned to me and said: 'Mr. MacKinnon, you are a free man. I will record a verdict of 'not guilty'. Oh fantastic…! It all happened so quickly in a matter of about 5 seconds. It was quite amazing! So that was at the end of July 2005 I believe? After two years of going back and forth to Court! So now, do you feel that you can carry on with your work? I've lost a very large proportion of my business. I've not been able to advertise - not knowing exactly what I am allowed to advertise. The damage to my health has been quite considerable through the stress of the whole thing and I'm going to have to take some time to get back to where I was. Exactly how best to move forward is very, very difficult in this climate, when this country of ours is rapidly becoming like a totalitarian state. I am busy seeing at the moment if I can find barristers or lawyers who are really prepared to tackle and take on the so called expert witnesses which prosecuting counsels bring in against alternative practitioners. For example, for my case they brought in an oncologist whose statement said: 'Oh yes, I've heard of Dr. Clark. Oh no, it's all rubbish. What? Parasites related to cancer - nonsense. Bacteria related to cancer - nonsense'. Very often such medical expert statements are a tissue of lies but you need to have a barrister who is prepared to tackle this because if you say, 'Well can you provide me with the evidence for this?' they usually can't. I have now got quite a lot of first class evidence and information which shows that parasites, bacteria, viruses and so on are directly related to cancer. The expert witness is assuming and depending on the fact that nobody will actually query his statements. But if you have got somebody that can do precisely that, then you are in a much stronger position. I am very fortunate that I had really good loyal patients to help me but other people may not have that. They may not have been in business long enough. What do they do? What you really need to do is tackle the expert witness and the only way you can do that is by having a specialist barrister. This is part of what I'm busy looking into at the moment. Yes, there must be some but many in the legal system are so keen to make a lot of money. It wouldn't hurt them to do a good deed ever | ||||