P. Joseph Lisa

"One of the most effective and well researched books which came out in the early 1990s was written by researcher and activist P. J. Lisa and called Are You a Target for Elimination?  Like myself, Lisa had joined up with a group which had come under attack - in his case a company which produced herbs. His first book began to describe the attacks which were taking place out of public view. In Are you a Target, Lisa focused on the continuing attempts by quackbusters to destroy chiropractors. This book was followed up in 1988 with a more complete analysis in The Great Medical Monopoly Wars. Both these books by Lisa and his more recent ones, bear all the hallmarks of good investigative writing and critical scholarship in this difficult area.  In them he begins to define the Health Fraud movement in America, to give body to its motivation and to root out and to expose its funding.  It is principally due to Lisa that we are able to say that pharmaceutical companies bankrolled the health fraud movement in America."---- A Bibliographic History of the Health Freedom Movement by Martin J Walker

Books:
[c.1994] The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa
[1986] The Great Medical Monopoly Wars by P.J. LISA,
[1984] Are You a Target for Elimination - An Inside Look at the AMA Conspiracy Against Chiropractic and the Wholistic Healing Arts by LISA, P.J.

Quotes
Exactly what is health "quackery"? Apparently it's simply anything that the medical and pharmaceutical industry cannot control. Interestingly, it is also the economic competition to drugs and medical treatment. The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa c 1994

For some years prior to the 1975 dissolution of his Department, Taylor worked to get groups outside the AMA to take an active role in their campaign against "quackery." One of Taylor's tactics had been to get other groups to take a stand against quackery, to develop position papers on quackery, and to parallel what the AMA was doing in this area. Quite often these groups would simply duplicate the AMA's position on the issue. The AMA would help that group develop their statements, and then the AMA would tout the group's position as being independent of the AMA's. In this fashion the AMA used the other group's statements to strengthen its own campaign. In the seedy world of intelligence this is known as "multiple reports." One creates outlets from outside one's immediate area, and then points to these reports as evidence that there is a "national movement" or "public opinion" against one's target in a campaign. The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa c 1994

Another way of doing this is to create either a front group or a cover organization to carry on one's campaign. In the case of a front group, one simply helps to start up a group which parallels one's own organization. One then can feed that group money or information or both.   The front group usually has a different name, but its function is the same. It is always run by someone who knows what the group is all about. This leader is usually in direct communication with the group that helped set it up, so as to continue to receive support from the originating organization. An example of such an operation would be the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) setting up a front group such as Radio Free Moscow to transmit propaganda into the USSR. Radio Free Moscow would receive funding covertly, and the people who would run the operation would also be CIA operatives or employees. The role and mission would be known to all who work there. The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa c 1994

However, the function and mission of a cover organization or group would be totally different. Upon cursory inspection it would appear to be just what it was held up to be. The employees of a cover group would not necessarily know what the group was really all about. The person heading the organization would know, but the link between this person and the organization he or she was truly working for would be totally hidden. Usually the group would be a self-supporting entity and no money trail would ever be found going back to the original group that set it all up. The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa c 1994

Several of the professional societies endorsed our group and donated money to help the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Health Fraud, Inc. The medical society allowed us to use its office equipment until we obtained our own. ....By working "undercover" using assumed names and box numbers, we've gotten all sorts of information and publications other groups, like the medical societies, haven't been able to lay their hands on. ....Really, we're a bunch of guerrillas - we're not a large group, there are about 40 members, but we're the only such group in the country. ---Barrett (Ref: The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa c 1994)
 

"The similarities between the Barrett group (Quackwatch), the Jarvis group (National Council Against Health Fraud), and the AMA's anti-competitive campaign are many. In one of the newspaper articles on the Southern California Council Against Health Fraud in the Los Angeles Times, Jarvis quoted as attacking vitamins, raw milk, and laetrile. Each of these was a target of the AMA's campaign from the past." The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa c 1994

The current campaign has several elements in it that were not seen as frequently in the old AMA campaign. These include such illegal acts as breaking and entry, unauthorized phone taps, the theft of files from practitioners offices, intimidation and harassment of patients, violations of search-and-seizure statutes, physical violence and threats of violence, and break-ins into attorneys' offices involving the theft of case records.  In most cases, the perpetrators of these illegal acts have not yet been identified or prosecuted. However, these crimes are being committed against alternative practitioners, manufacturers, and distributors. The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa c 1994