[Lecture without pictures--for printing]
Pictures from book: Rockefeller Medicine Men Medicine and Capitalism in America by E. Richard Brown
LECTURE
BY MR. G. EDWARD GRIFFIN
Author of "World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B–17"
The subject which brings us together this evening ladies and gentlemen, is a uniquely sobering one. Any factor which could cause so much as one lingering, painful, premature death should be a sobering factor and one against which we would mount every resource at our command. Cancer is not going to cause just one premature death. It is going to account for one out of every four of us here this evening, and indeed, everyone in these United States, unless scientific research discovers a means to a control, which can produce a world without cancer.
Most of you are aware of this; there is probably no one in this audience or on this (planet) whose life has not been deeply touched by the loss of a loved one to cancer, and some may be here solely in the hope that a means may be revealed to them here tonight by which a friend or a relative now suffering perhaps might be saved.
The Committee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy believes that a material which has been widely tested shows great promise as a major weapon against cancer. Indeed, that it shows great promises as being the sought after cancer control agent. I am speaking, of course, of Laetrile, also known as Amygdalin or Vitamin B–17. But this Committee was formed because, as the title suggests, we are being denied freedom of choice in testing and developing the full potential of laetrile which experience suggests, is there to be developed, and we are being denied the right to use laetrile right now to that degree of life saving benefit already known to definitely exist.
Our speaker tonight is Mr. G. Edward Griffin, who was one of the founders of the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy. This will hardly come as a surprise to many of you who have come to expect to find Ed Griffin in the forefront of any special battle involving the preservation of individual freedoms. Mr. Griffin has become well known because of his unique talent for researching obscure and difficult topics and then presenting them in clear, concise terms that all can understand. But, perhaps, you are not aware of how young he was when he first displayed his talent for work in serious matters affecting the country.
Ed was just 15 when he delivered a speech on Patrick Henry at the annual national oratorical contest sponsored by the Hearst newspapers, and won first prize. During his senior year in high school, he was master of ceremonies of his own CBS radio network program, "Make Way For Youth". Then he was awarded a "Regions Alumni Scholarship" to the University of Michigan, where he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree.
In addition to two years in the Army, Mr. Griffin served as a radio announcer news commentator, assistant TV director and insurance man before commencing his career as an author, narrator and producer of documentary films and books, which has established his national reputation. Among these, many familiar to most of you, are the "OSHA Controversy", "The Capitalist Conspiracy More Deadly Than War", "The Grand Design", "The Great Prison Break", "The Fearful Master" and most recently, "A World Without Cancer". He is now the President of "American Media", a publishing and film production company in Southern California, where he lives with his wife and four children.
Tonight, he will speak to us on the politics of cancer therapy. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor and privilege to present Mr. Ed Griffin.
The first time I was introduced to the subject of Laetrile or vitamin therapy in the control of cancer, was when I was on a short fishing trip with Dr. John Richardson, a physician in San Francisco, who as you probably know, is in the forefront of the legal battle to establish the physician's right to use laetrile or vitamin therapy or anything he wishes to use, in the treatment of his patients. Because he was using laetrile last year he was arrested by the FDA, and he is taking this case to the courts. I think he stands an excellent chance of winning but, of course, that remains yet to be seen. The whole purpose, the initial trigger behind the formation of the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy was to rally nationwide support behind not only Dr. Richardson but other physicians who hopefully would have the courage to join with him and challenge the establishment, if you will, the bureaucracy, in the right for a physician to have freedom of choice in this regard.
At Any rate, I have known John for quite a while, and we were on this fishing trip up in Oregon. If you ever have the chance to meet this man you will recognize immediately that he is a very intense person. I was trying to enjoy the babbling stream, the fresh air, the green trees, the blue sky and he brought his brief case with him. I can assure you that his brief case was not loaded with fishing gear. He brought papers and manuscripts, books and charts and statistics, and he kept talking to me about a control for cancer that he had discovered and he was using it on his patients and low and behold he was saving lives of men and women who previously he would have had to tell that they were terminal and there was nothing more he could do.
He kept telling me about this and I had really no particular interest in it. I was glad to hear it but I had about as much interest in learning the technical medical details as you or I might have in listening to an engineer talking about internal stresses in girder bridges. You know, these are things of great fascination to the engineer or the physician, but to the layperson it was not too interesting.
Finally he began to tell me about the fact that “they” were suppressing this. “They” wouldn't let him use it, “they” were harassing him. I thought all of a sudden, good grief, John. Why he is becoming paranoid and I turned to him, and I remember very distinctly, I said, "Wait a minute, who are “they” John? Do you mean to tell me that there are people in the medical profession or in government or anywhere in the world who are so low and so crass, so mean, as to deliberately withhold a control for cancer?" And I didn't realize it at the time, but with the asking of that question my curiosity was already aroused and I was launched even then on an investigative research project that was to take me two or two and a half years, and it led me to the discovery of one of the most amazing stories of the twentieth century.
This is a story in which the science of cancer therapy is not nearly as complicated as the politics of cancer therapy. This evening I am forced, because of the limitation of time, to assume that you are familiar with the science of Vitamin B–17 or laetrile. Now I realize that this may not be a safe assumption for many of you because I'm sure not all of you have see our film "World Without Cancer". If you have not seen the film, or if you are not familiar with the scientific question, all I can do is to tell you to do so as soon as possible.
But just so we start off on a common footing let me give you in a sentence or two a summary description of what the science of cancer therapy involves. Our research has led us to the realization that cancer is simply a deficiency disease, like scurvy, pellagra and pernicious anemia. It is caused by the lack of an essential food compound in modern man's diet. It is not caused by a virus or some mysterious toxin. It is caused by the lack of something. And the ultimate solution for the control of cancer, therefore, simply is to restore this essential food element to our daily intake. Now that, in a nutshell, is what this science is all about.
[ This lack of proper nutrients, which are responsible for maintaining our natural immune system, or other sources of stress, activates a "Pleomorphic" virus that has been proven conclusively to bring about most cancerous conditions — Tommy Cichanowski ]
This substance is known by several names as you already have been told in the introductory remarks this evening. It is known as Amygdalin when it is found in nature. As such, under the name of Amygdalin, it has been listed in the Standard Pharmathera for over a hundred years. It is identified and known for all this time, listed as a non-toxic. It has been used experimentally on a wide variety of ailments in every country of the world. It is particularly well known in Asia, but also definitely known in the United States and Europe. When it is described by nutritionists, it usually is referred to as nitrolosides. In its purified and concentrated form used specifically for cancer therapy, the form developed by Dr. Ernest T. Crebb, Jr., it is known as Laetrile.
I think the best way to describe this substance is simply to call it what it really is. It is a vitamin and it is vitamin B–17. That is how it will be known in the future — Vitamin B–17, because it is found in that grouping of vitamins known as the B–complex, of which there are some twenty-four fractions. It is found in that grouping of vitamins when it is found in natural foods. And since it was the seventh one to be isolated and identified, it is properly known as Vitamin B–17, and one last thing, just to give you a little more information about it, it is found in over 1,2000 edible plants around the world, most of which you wouldn't dream of eating: grasses, Johnson grass, Tunis grass, arrow grass, and things like that.
It is also found in the foods of primitive man, primitive cultures which even today are noted for their lack of cancer. There are many cultures in the world including the Akkadians(?) on the Black Sea, the Hunzakut of Northwest Pakistan, the Hopi and Navaho Native Americans, the traditional Eskimo, and groups like this in Africa, Latin America and all around the world which traditionally are cancer free, or relatively cancer free. And in every case, ladies and gentlemen, when you examine the natural diets of these cancer free populations you always find that the degree to which they are free of cancer is the same degree to which their foods are rich in vitamin B–17. There are no exceptions to that statement.
Now the science of cancer therapy, as I have mentioned, is an open and shut case. We could, in the film "World Without Cancer" and in other studies, go into the laboratories and experiments that have been conducted. We could explain the theory behind it, we could analyze the case histories of men and women who have been literally brought back from the edge of the grave, almost hopeless cases and all of that. That is an open and shut case. There is really no longer, or should no longer be any controversy about it. The controversy now centers around the politics and it is to that subject that I would like to address he remainder of my remarks this evening. So to repeat, the purpose of this presentation is not to discuss the science of cancer therapy, but to review at least the highlights of the politics of cancer therapy, and to answer to the best of my ability that very interesting question, "Who are “they” John?"
Now the politics of cancer therapy can be understood only in light of two grim and shocking realities and here they are. These are the two blocks into which my remarks will be divided: One, the scientific basis for the opposition against laetrile or B–17 has been blatantly dishonest — and we'll prove that. And the second reality is that the hidden source of this scientific corruption is a financial political interlock that constitutes the largest and most powerful cartel the world has ever known.
Let's begin then with reality number one. The scientific basis for the opposition against laetrile or vitamin B–17 has been blatantly dishonest. Not one physician out of a thousand has ever had a chance to use laetrile or vitamin B–17 himself. And yet, most physicians, if you ask them if laetrile works, they will say no, it does not. It's a fraud; it's quackery. And if you ask them how they know that, they say well, it has been analyzed by reputable sources and that is the verdict of official scientific investigation. And you say “Well, who says so?” Well, they don't rightly remember. Most of them think they have read about it in the American Medical Association Journal or a publication put out by the American Cancer Society or a statement made by the FDA officials or something like that. So you go to these prestigious organizations and you ask them where they got their information and again you find that the people involved in the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association and the FDA have not tested laetrile themselves. They are, almost all of them, referring to an original research project that was conducted in the State of California in 1953. It is known as the California Report and it was published by the Cancer Advisory Commission of the California Medical Association.
So, now let's take a look at the California Report since this is the mainspring of 99% of the scientific and legal opposition to laetrile today. It is a very interesting experience to take a look at that California Report. It was written by two men, Dr. E. M. McDonald the Committee Chairman, and Dr. Henry Garland, the Committee Secretary. The Cancer Committee consisted of seven other prominent physicians but they had no part of the writing of that report. It was written only by McDonald and Garland. None of these men, ladies and gentlemen, including McDonald and Garland has ever used laetrile. All they had done was to summarize and interpret the written records of medical people who had done various phases, different kinds of experimentation of laetrile. They read these reports submitted to them, and then summarized them and issued their own report, which was to tell us what they found.
Now let's just stop for a second and ask ourselves, what kind of people were these individuals? What about their scientific judgments? Are they men whom you can trust? Well, you may not remember them by name, but McDonald and Garland were the two physicians who at that time were making headlines all across the country by claiming publicly and vociferously that there was absolutely no connection between cigarette smoking in particular and lung cancer. Now, for instance, Dr. Garland gave a speech in 1964 entitled "Smoking and Health". This was delivered before the Commonwealth Club in California in San Francisco on July 9, 1964, and here is what he said in part: "A current widely held hypothesis is that cigarette smoking is related to cancer. The hypothesis is not proven. Cigarettes are regarded by many as one of the better tranquilizers. It is likely that obesity is a greater hazard to American health than cigarettes," so says Dr. Garland. And then, Dr. McDonald was even more specific; here is a photocopy of an article, a feature article taken from "U.S. News and World Report" dated August 3, 1957, entitled "Here's Another View, Tobacco May Be Harmless".
And in this article here is a picture of Dr. McDonald sitting there very happy with a cigarette in his hand, smoke coming up, and underneath the caption, they quote Dr McDonald as saying, "The total evidence fails to establish a cause and effect relationship between smoking and cancer." And then in the article itself, he describes smoking as a harmless past time up to 24 cigarettes per day and then he says: "One could modify an old slogan, a pack a day keeps lung cancer away." Now, these are the two guys who wrote the California Report. It is interesting that if people had generally followed the medical advice of these two men there would have been additional millions of deaths from lung cancer in the United States today.
Now, as an interesting sidelight to all of this, Dr. McDonald died a few years later. He was incinerated in a fire started by his cigarette while he was asleep. Dr. Garland who had boasted that he was living proof that smoking was safe because he had been a chain smoker ever since he was a boy, he said, "Here I am, perfectly healthy, that's proof that you don't have to worry about smoking.” He, of course died of lung cancer.
Now, but more important than this, ladies and gentlemen, is that McDonald and Garland, more important than their scientific ineptitude, is that they falsified their summary of the laetrile experiments and I mean exactly that when I use the word falsified, there is no other explanation for it. The reason I can say that is because ten years later, almost by a fluke, the original documents that McDonald and Garland used to analyze and upon which they based their summary were published and made part of the public record.
Ten years later, and for the first time, we were able to go to the original references and see what these experiments really did say. We didn't have to rely any longer on just the word of McDonald and Garland as to what they said. In 1963, the State of California Department of Public Health revised its original California Report, updated it, added a few more things to it and reprinted the whole thing, including those original studies in this book entitled, "Report by Cancer Advisory Council on Treatment of Cancer with Beta-cyanogenic Glucosides" or laetrile, and low and behold, when you go to the appendix and look at those old ten year old reports you find that McDonald and Garland had lied. For instance, in the original California Report of 1953, McDonald and Garland conspicuously quoted excerpts from one physician who said that he was unable to obtain cyanide from the laetrile. Now for those of you who are not familiar with the chemistry involved here you should know that at this point, at least, that cyanide is an essential part of the anti-cancer action of laetrile or vitamin B–17. Now don't let that scare you because I know we have a cultural antipathy towards cyanide in any form because somehow or another we know that they kill people with cyanide in the gas chamber and it is poisonous. Indeed, when taken in the gaseous form and when taken to excessive quantities, but cyanide in trace amounts as you will see, when you get into the scientific question in trace amounts, is not only safe but very essential for health.
In fact, many doctors have not thought about the fact that cyanocobaltin [ vitamin B–12 ] has a cyanide radical in the molecule. Also, the fact that cyanide is in the vitamin B–17 is about the same as saying well golly, we dare not eat any table salt because table salt is sodium chloride and you all know that chlorine gas is deadly. All right vitamin B–17 is hydrocyanic acid. It does contain a cyanide radical. And the fact that McDonald and Garland had said that they couldn't get any cyanide out of it when they tried to chemically break it down was used as powerful evidence indicating that the entire theory behind vitamin B–17 was a fraud.
Okay, we now go to Appendix IV, where we find a curious document labeled as the AMA lab Report No. 72W13371. It is dated January 14, 1953. And in this report it says, "After refluxing for three hours, the odor of hydrogen cyanide could be detected." Then it says, "the hydrogen cyanide was distilled into sodium hydroxide and determined by the Prussian Blue technique." They had obtained cyanide from it. So that was what you might call an unfair statement to indicate that they had not succeeded in doing so.
Now, the other misleading factor about this report is that McDonald and Garland had said in their original report that the biopsies of the cancer tissue taken from the cancer patients who had been treated with vitamin B–17 showed absolutely no trace whatsoever of positive chemical action on those tumors. That the men who did the examinations had examined them carefully and were absolutely unable to find any trace of beneficial affect. That was not true.
I refer you now to Appendix III. Here is a laboratory report entitled, "Autopsy-Findings in Patients Treated by Laetrile". It is dated September 10, 1952. First one comes from a Dr. J. L. Zandell, M. D., and here is what he says, now remember this is what was submitted to McDonald and Garland, he said: "Following are the impressions gained from reviewing the slides on autopsy cases, Serial No. M–1 to M–6. These slides were reviewed with the idea of detecting possible hystologic changes which might be interpreted as due to chemotheraputic agents or laetrile," and then he describes them, “Case M–1,” he says, after describing what he observed under the microscope in very technical terms, “this might represent a chemical affect” and then for Case M–3, he describes changes and then he concludes, "I would consider this as a possible result of chemical affect."
He then summarizes, "Two cases showed moderate changes which might be considered as chemotheraputic toxic cellular changes.” Then in the same appendix, there is the report of John W. Budd, M.D., dated December 15, 1952, he describes Case M–11, he says: "Spontaneous changes could produce all the evidence of degeneration seen here but an interpretation of chemotheraputic affect might be entertained". And, then Case M–6, he says, "The marked desmoplastic reaction is probably induced in part by therapy, I would suspect irradiation". Now forgetting what he suspects caused it, he did observe chemotheraputic changes.
See, these guys were so programmed against vitamin B–17, that what they were really saying is that, "Oh, I don't believe that laetrile can work to that any beneficial effect that we see has to be caused by radiation or prior treatment with drugs or spontaneous remission or something else." But the fact is plain that they did report four separate cases of positive action against the cancer cell.
And so when you go back to the original California Report which I have here as it was published in "California Medicine" which is the monthly publication of the California Medical Association, and you read this, McDonald and Garland had said the unanimous opinion of these consultants was that in no instance could any recognizable affect of the chemotheraputic agent be observed in the histology of these various neoplasms, no evidence of the cyanotoxic changes was observed by any of the consultants.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a lie and this is the document, the California Report, which is the bedrock of the entire scientific and legal case against laetrile. Well, it's really worse than that. It is worse than just those outright lies in the report. For one thing, the doses in these experiments were much too small. Today it is common to use as much as two or three grams of Vitamin B–17 in a single injection and generally it takes somewhere between 30 and 40 grams total over the course of a week to ten days before the average cancer patient is able to report tangible signs of progress. Thirty to forty grams total.
In the California Medical Association experiments, the maximum dose was two grams. That was the total dosage. Two grams divided over twelve injections with a maximum single injection of less than 1/10th of that used today. Five patients received only two injections and five received only one so it was not at all surprising that they were not able to get significant results from Vitamin B–17. What is surprising is that the examination of those tumors showed any beneficial affect at all. That is really surprising considering the extremely low dosages they used in that experiment.
Well, since the California Report there have been other less publicized studies. There was one at Stanford University, one at the National Cancer Institute, one at the University of California at Berkeley, one at Diablo Laboratories at Berkeley and one at McGill University for the Canadian Medical Association.
Now I've read all of these. It takes a certain amount of tenacity to get through all of the gobbledygook in these things, but here is what you'd find. Some of these studies admitted openly that there was anticancer activity but they've all attributed it to other causes. They said well, since the theory is wrong with laetrile, we know that it can't be the laetrile doing these things, so it must have been a spontaneous remission or the delayed benefits radiation or something like that. Most of these patients had already had other treatments before they started on laetrile so they explained them away with other causes. Some of these studies were toxicity studies only, which means that they were just checking to see just how much of the material they could give the poor little rats before they got sick or died. They weren't checking for anti-cancer affect at all but just toxicity levels.
All of those studies involved transplanted tumors rather than spontaneous tumors, and they were transplanted on mice rather than humans and some of them involved tumors in laboratory dishes that could be incubated that were weren't even attached to living creatures at all. You don't have to be a scientist to realize that transplanted tumors are different than spontaneous ones. Mice are different than human beings and certainly tumors in a dish react differently than tumors on a living creature.
Now in almost all of these cases, ladies and gentlemen, the criterion used for whether or not the laetrile was effective was the question of how much the tumor was reduced in size. The tumor reduction was the criterion. Now that may sound very plausible at first. We tend to think of cancer as being a tumor, and if we cure cancer we would like to see that tumor disappeared, but the fact of the matter is that most tumors are a mixture of benign and malignant tissues and some tumors have very little real cancer in them, mostly benign tissues, the attempt of body apparently, to seal off the malignant tissues.
Now, I'm sure you've all known of cases where the person has gone in for surgery and had a rather large tumor removed and then they were told by their physician they were very fortunate because that tumor was benign and had no cancer tissue in it at all or very little, or they weren't able to find any at all. There probably was some in there but it was so small they couldn't find it. Now it's obvious that tumors that are made up of non-cancerous tissues, are not going to shrink when you kill all the cancer cells and this is especially true with transplanted tumors. The only ones that will work in a transplant, as you know the body has rejection mechanisms, the only ones they can generally get to stick, you might say, or to stay, or survive, are those which generally have two or three percent cancer tissue in them. So in these cases, what I'm saying is that even if the Vitamin B–17 were 100% effective the reduction of tumor size would be only two or three percent at the most. So naturally, that criterion did not produce positive results and in some cases in these experiments, the materials used may not have even been laetrile in the beginning.
Now that is a tremendous handicap, ladies and gentlemen, against a laboratory experiment or a pseudo scientific experiment. Now I say that not lightly, when I say that laetrile may not even have been used. For instance, this is an article that I found in the "Bio-Medical News" of July 1971, entitled "Laetrile's Value as Cancer Cure Still Unsubstantiated". In the article here is what it says: "Dr. Dean Burke, Head of the National Cancer Institute's Chemistry Laboratory of Bio-Chemistry, and highly respected by his colleagues as a biochemist, alleges that the animals were treated at inadequate concentrations with a drug of questionable origin and chemical authenticity."
Dr. Bayard Morrison, assistant to Dr. Carl G. Baker, Director of NCI, who considers laetrile worthless, and while unconvinced the drug has value, nevertheless, agrees with Dr. Burke that “inadequate concentrations of the drug were used.” Dr. Morrison told Bio-Chemical News: "We cannot say that laetrile is no good without further proof." Well, at least there is one scientist, although he is biased against vitamin B–17 — he has never worked with it himself — naturally, he would have no reason to think that it would work, but at least he had the honesty to admit that so-called evidence against B–17 so far was totally inadequate, and it was impossible to say that it does not work without further testing.
Well, the latest test of these long series, then I'll wind this part up, was conducted at Sloan-Kettering. Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, as you know, is very well known around the country for its cancer work. At last it looked as though the establishment was going to get in on laetrile and everybody was very excited over the fact that they were finally doing some tests. Of course, those of us who had been watching what had happened in the past were not as enthused as some of my more naive compatriots, but anyway, we watched with great interest and we received, I won't say smuggled out of Sloan-Kettering, but through unofficial channels we got a copy of their report.
This is a Sloan-Kettering Report dated June 13, 1973. The experiments were conducted by Dr. Hiyamitsu Sugura. He lists all of his laboratory experiments on mice and so forth and here's what he says in part: "The results clearly show that amygdalin significantly inhibits the appearance of lung metastasis in mice bearing spontaneous mammary tumors." Now that is significant. Let me just stop. These were spontaneous mammary tumors. They weren't transplants. These were the hard ones to get and so he said that they significantly inhibited the appearance of lung metastasis or spreading of cancer in mice bearing spontaneous mammary tumors and increases significantly the inhibition of the growth of the primary tumors. Laetrile also seemed to prevent slightly the appearance of new tumors and then he said the improvement of health and appearance of the treated animals in comparison to those in the controlled group is always a common observation.
Now that was the internal report of Dr. Sugiura at Sloan-Kettering and this was given to us in about September of 1973. We were told that in November, Sloan-Kettering was going to send a representative to an international cancer convention or conference in Baden-Baden, Germany, and make public what they had found and were referring to in this report. They did so. On November 1973 a Sloan-Kettering representative stood up in Baden-Baden and before the whole world, before cancer experts from many of the nations of the world, and described the results of this test and, of course, many pro-laetrile people were ecstatic with joy. At last, they said, a breakthrough had come.
I was less than ecstatic. I am paranoid if you remember, and I wasn't ready to say that the battle was over. There is nothing worse or less humble than a person quoting himself, but I am going to do that now. I wrote an article for "The Committee For Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy" that was sent out in October 1973, and this was before the Sloan-Kettering announcement if you remember. So we wrote this article for "The Committee for Freedom of Choice", and bear in mind, one month before the public announcement at Baden-Baden. I'm going to read to you just a part of it. “Sloan-Kettering is, of course, the epitome of the orthodox medical establishment. With untold millions of dollars channeled through its facilities in the war on cancer it would be embarrassing to say the least, merely to end up serving the function of confirming what a handful of independent researchers without a penny of tax money to support them, have been saying for over twenty years. A triumph by free enterprise of such magnitude simply must not be acknowledged by the establishment, which is so deeply committed to government subsidies, government programs, and government controls.”
Then, I had a lot of other unkind things to say about Sloan-Kettering. I conclude it by saying this, "We can look forward to the prospects of B–17 mass produced either under the name of amygdalin or in conjunction with some man-made compound under an entirely different name, and then distributed through existing channels of prescription drugs. There will be little or no price competition in such distribution and although the actual price will not seem unreasonable considering the benefits derived there will be an overly ample profit margin for the manufacturers. Above all, however, it will not be regarded as a nutritional factor or as a vitamin and thus the general prestige and sales market for drugs will not be endangered. The present drive of establishment medicine against vitamins consequently can continue without hindrance. All of this is part of the anticipated scenario, which begins with the tests of Sloan-Kettering.” Will it turn out this way? Of course, only time will tell.
Perhaps even this prediction, if read by enough people, could set into motion a series of events that could cause it not to come to pass. As a matter of fact, that is the very prediction that is being made. It is axiomatic that deception cannot be successful if the person to be deceived is warned in advance by making it clear before hand what is expected. It is this author's hope either to thwart the deceivers altogether or at least to force them to seek an alternative course which either will be less harmful or more obvious.
Well, I honestly believe that we might have done some good in forcing them into an alternate course, one which was certainly more obvious. I was approached by a person who had an inside track into Sloan-Kettering, very close to the top people there. He told me that Sloan-Kettering was very upset by the harsh tones, by this kind of talk about conspiracies, and drug profits and people deliberately holding back controls, and so forth. He said to me, the people at Sloan-Kettering are receiving pressure from above to get out of this entire laetrile thing entirely, that they were told to forget it, drop it, and he said they're good men. They want to help you, they want to be on your side but you are just making it hard for them by calling Sloan-Kettering the establishment and so forth. Tone it down so they can come closer to your position without losing face!
What an incredible statement that was. Because you realize that these are men who are charged with the very serious responsibility of finding a control or cure for cancer as soon as possible. Millions of people are suffering and dying from this disease and they are worried about saving face and doing it so that it is politically expedient. They are worried about who criticizes whom and what terms they use. They are worried about their jobs. They are worried about pressure from above instead of calling a spade a spade and saying, "look this stuff works." Well, we didn't tone it down because I didn't think they would have the guts to go through with it. I didn't think, I was hoping I was wrong, but I didn't think that they would be able to stand up to this pressure from above that we will be discussing later on, and they didn't.
This is the January 10, 1974 copy of the Los Angeles Times. There was an article there heading "A Controversial Drug", and in it said Dr. Robert A. Goode, President and Director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute of Cancer Research, "at this moment there is no evidence that laetrile has any affect on cancer." That's two months after their report at Baden-Baden, Germany. Two months after they announced to the world, to all the experts in the world that laetrile was effective. Now two months later, they reversed their position and said, "At this moment there is no evidence that laetrile has any affect on cancer." And with regard to that report of Dr. Sugura, he said, "A premature leak last fall, of test information from the laboratory, had given thousands of cancer victims false hope that laetrile might work." Premature leak meaning their own public announcement at an international forum. These, of course, are lies. Lies spoken by highly respected scientists who are leaders in the fight against cancer. And it is certainly no exaggeration to say that the so-called scientific basis for the opposition against vitamin B–17 has been blatantly dishonest. Which is our reality number one. Why, why did these men lie? Why have the scientific facts been distorted? Why are they maneuvering to cover their tracks? That leads to reality number two.
Reality number two is a financial political interlock that constitutes the largest, most powerful cartel this world has ever known. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be new to many of you, I believe. It certainly was new to me. Two years ago, I used to think I was pretty hot stuff. I knew a lot about conspiracies and world politics. I had spent a lot of my time reading about these subjects.
I didn't know anything about what I am going to tell you. I hadn't even the slightest inkling of it. The information that follows is taken primarily from government hearings that transpired between 1928 and 1946. All there. Some of those hearings are dusty and yellowed but they are there. These are hearings that were conducted into such topics as Nazi propaganda, munitions industry, cartels, national defense, patents, lobbies, banking and currency, the court records of the Nuremberg Trials, and are loaded with information in dozens of standard reference volumes in any library. In other words, what I am saying is that while the information I am going to give you now is not widely known, it is not secret either. It is simply a matter of public record for anyone who wants to take the trouble to dig it out. Now here is that story.
There came into being after World War I, a cartel centered in Germany, but it existed all over the world. It was known as I. G. Farben. I. G. stands for Interessen Gemeinschaft, which is German for "Community of Interests" or a cartel, if you want to say cartel. [or Interessengemeinschaft — "Association of Common Interests"]
Farben is the German word for dyes. Now that's a deceptively innocently sounding word because it conceals the whole field of chemistry including all industrial and commercial chemicals, but including especially munitions and drugs. Historically, when Farben started into the chemistry industry, it was primarily with dyestuffs and so the word Farben was sort of a historical carryover of its origins. But the word Farben today is used to define or cover the entire field of chemistry especially munitions and drugs. This cartel is known as I. G. Farben today. For those of you who travel in Europe you can see the I. G. Farben all over.
Now to define a cartel. There is sometimes a fuzzy understanding of what that word means. A cartel comes into existence when two or more companies or group of companies cross national lines, sign a contractual agreement to reduce competition between them. Let's imagine that I own a giant corporation in America, and you owned one in Europe and we come together and say look, why should we cut each other's throats over prices on our products. I'll specialize in automobiles, you specialize in tractors. Let's agree not to compete. You don't produce automobiles, and I won't produce tractors and we'll get along fine. That's an agreement we seek, and if we both sign it, we both agree to it, we now become a cartel.
Cartels are formed with large companies agreeing not to compete on price, not to compete on products divided up world markets by saying you can have Latin America, I take North America. They really do these things by cartel agreements. And the end result then, is not a single company, a still separate company, but as they add more and more agreements not to compete in this field or that field, finally they begin to act more as a single company, and they provide a unified front to the consumer. The consumer has fewer and fewer choices. You may have noticed for instance, that while your local gas stations may compete price wise with gas wars as they used to back in the good old days, the gasoline companies themselves do not. There is no competition between Shell, Texaco and Standard Oil.
This is also true in the entire chemical field. Not only petroleum, but all of chemistry. Dupont does not compete with any of the other chemical companies. Baer Aspirin does not compete with the others and so forth. They may compete with advertising and say well, look my aspirin is better quality then the other guy's aspirin, but that is the extent of the competition. So the point is that cartels simply are contractual agreements to reduce or eliminate competition. The end result of this is higher prices to the consumer, and less product selection.
It is important to keep this in mind because most people think that cartels are monopolies. This is what I was taught in school. That monopolies are the product of free enterprise capitalistic system. Competition brought about monopolies and of course, just the opposite is true. Monopolies are not the result of competition but the escape from competition. Old John D. Rockefeller was quoted many, many times in all of his biographies as saying, "Competition is a sin." Rockefeller built his entire empire on that concept. Competition was a sin. Free enterprise was a sin. Why compete? Why cut each other's throat? He took the strongest of his competitors and brought them with him. He made them partners in his ventures. The weaker competitors he brought in as stockholders. The ones who wouldn't cooperate he crushed. That's the building of monopoly, not competition.
It is important to know also before moving on to the other aspects of I. G. Farben, that this was the controlling, creating force behind Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Regime. This is a thoroughly documented fact that is again not widely known, but is certainly no secret. Hitler was simply one of many political figures in pre-Nazi Germany and it was the policy of Farben to finance all parties, have liaisons with all political parties. The same operation was conducted there that often is used in local politics in this country where contractors will contribute large sums to all parties for city council. All of them get the same amount of money, so regardless of who wins, they've got a friend on the city council. I. G. Farben was doing this in National Politics in Germany. But, at the crucial time in German history there was a decision made in the highest levels in Farben to throw the entire weight of this gigantic enterprise behind Hitler. They withdrew their support of the other candidates. They donated millions upon millions of Deutsche Marks to Hitler. He became a figure overnight. All of the newspapers in Germany which were owned by Farben or heavily beholden to Farben because of advertising or investments, all of a sudden, all of them turned their editorial policies over to Hitler and created the image of a great popular candidate and Hitler was made by I. G. Farben. This all came out of the records of the Nuremberg Trials and no other place.
It was brought out, for instance not at the Nuremberg Trials, but at a Senate Hearing, that a man by the name of I. V. Lee, who was well known in the United States at that time a public relations expert, was hired by old John D. Rockefeller to improve his public image. I. V. Lee was the man who told Rockefeller to start giving away a little bit of his money in conspicuous ways so as to begin to look like a philanthropist. Lee told him to give away money, especially for public buildings where his name could be in the cement outside in the front, like a hospital or library, so that thousands of people passing by everyday would see the Rockefeller library, the Rockefeller hospitals, etc. Just pennies to Rockefeller by comparison, but look at the good public relations it would be. I. V. Lee is the guy who told Rockefeller to carry shiny dimes with him, rolls of shiny dimes whenever he made public appearances and when the newsmen were there, he was to throw these shiny dimes out into the audience and the children would scamper around to get the dimes and, of course this would be different news so the photographers would take pictures, and they did, and it worked beautifully. The newspapers all across the country were always showing pictures of Rockefeller throwing out the shiny dimes. And through this kind of technique the image of Rockefeller gradually was changed from a miserly, old, mean man to a philanthropist who loved children. This was I. V. Lee's brainstorm.
I. V. Lee testified that he was hired by I. G. Farben to go to Germany and interview Adolf Hitler, Goehring and the rest of the Nazi regime to analyze their potential for public relations and to make suggestions on how they could put a favorable public image before the German and American people. I. V. Lee was hired by I. G. Farben to do this. There is no question when you get into the records that the Nazi regime was created by Farben. Now this again is a little bit different then is in the history books.
We are told that, in Nazi Germany, the big industrialists made a big mistake by cooperating with Hitler and they wound up being controlled by Hitler. That's what you read. The truth of the matter is that Hitler was always a puppet of the big industrialists. He was put forth as a façade, an excuse for controlling the economy. The economy of Germany was rigidly controlled and the people were told that it was controlled by the Fascist government, when in reality it was the cartel that was making the decisions and was using the government as a tool for enforcing on the economy all the regulations and controls which it, the cartel, had decided it wanted. These controls did several things. They eliminated all the competition against the cartel. They squeezed out the little guy. They squeezed out the small businessman. They destroyed him completely, and secondly, they regimented the entire German population. These were decisions made by the cartel. Okay, back to the cartel itself.
It was operative in 93 countries, in all of the continents of the world and, ladies and gentlemen, if you were to look at the list of corporations that it had interlocking agreements or cartel agreements with, it would take you all day just to read the list. There were in fact, over 2,000 companies in the world with interlocking agreements with I. G. Farben. Farben owned or controlled outright all of the heavy industry of Germany. You think immediately of the Krupp Steel Works. E. G. Krupp was one of the Board members of I. G. Farben. This is how it worked, it was all part of one big happy family. Through all of Germany, most of Europe, and much in the United States.
I would like to read to you now just a few companies, which were clearly in the orbit of ownership or control sphere, which were good old American companies. The Baer Company, by the way, Professor Baer was one of the founders of I. G. Farben. Baer Company, American I. G. Chemical Corporation, Agfa Ansco Corporation, Sterling Drugs, Winthrop Chemical, Metts Labs, J. T. Baker Chemicals, Hoffman-LaRoche, Jensen Salisbury Labs, Taylor Chemicals, Oxilite Chemical, Alba Pharmaceutical, Bristol Meyers Drug Inc., Vegets Inc., Sentower Co., Groselle Chemical, General Dye Stuff, American Magnesium, Life Savers Corp, Vicks Chemical, United Drugs, Cooke labs, Rexall-Liggett Drug Stores, General Analine and Film Corp, GAF, Ethical Drugs, and many, many more. It would take too long to read the complete list. Some of these you recognize that GAF are in themselves giant holding companies, which control as many as a hundred other large companies underneath them. These were all (part of) I. G. Farben.
Now Germany discovered, at the end of World War I, when it lost, that never again would it find itself in a position of fighting a war without petroleum gasoline. The leaders of Germany felt that one of the reasons they lost the war was because they didn't have an internal supply of gasoline. And so, after the war, they put their top chemists in I. G. Farben to work to find a way of producing gasoline out of the soil of Germany, and they came up with what is known as the hydrogenation process. You might keep this in mind when sitting in a gas line. They discovered a way of making high-grade gasoline out of low-grade coal. They called it the hydrogenation process, and they sent a communiqué to Standard Oil of New Jersey and invited them to send a representative to their Baldish plant to see what they had invented.
Up until this time, I. G. Farben was dealing primarily in the field of chemicals, drugs and munitions. It had not gotten into the area of petroleum. Standard Oil of New Jersey pretty well had that field locked up and so here was a chance they saw of merging these two giant cartels into a super giant cartel, but they had to have something to barter with.
So Standard Oil of New Jersey sent a representative, Frank Howard, a Vice President, to the Baldish plant in Germany. And what Mr. Howard saw there made the eyes bulge right out of his head. He sent a letter back to the President of Standard Oil who was at that time, Mr. Walter Tegal, and here in part is what he said in that letter: "Based upon my observations and discussions today, I think that this matter is the most important which has ever faced our company. The Baldish can make high-grade motor oil fuel from lignite and other low quality coal in amounts up to half the weight of the coal. This means the absolute independence of Europe on the matter of gasoline supplies. Straight price competition is all that is left." You could almost see the tears going down his cheek, “my word; we are going to have to compete on price. Straight price competition is all that is left. I shall not attempt to cover any details. I think this will be evident of my state of mind." It was turmoil right? That was March 1926. You know that Germany fought all of World War II on gasoline that was produced from coal. It was very feasible technology even today. They haven't forgotten.
Now, as a result of this, I. G. Farben and Standard Oil did get together on this. They decided they did not want to compete on price so the inevitable happened. After three year's negotiations, the two cartels were married, a phrase or term, which they themselves used. They married on November 9, 1929, the cartels formed a super cartel and the agreement they signed contained three primary provisions. They are:
They said that anytime I. G. Farben wanted to go into a field relating to petroleum they would do so jointly with Standard Oil and anytime that Standard Oil wanted to go into the field of chemicals or drugs or anything like that it would do so jointly with I. G. Farben. But above all, they must never compete and so they were married and out of that came literally, the largest and most powerful cartel the world has ever known, even though most people have never heard about it.
Now, as the Nazis prepared for war, it became obvious that a certain group of their cartel members would be on one side and another group would be on the other side. Now they had no particular loyalties to Germany or to the United States or to England or to any of the other countries that would be involved in the war. Their primary loyalty was to the cartel. That was their mother, their father, their protector and that was their life.
So they began to make arrangements to conceal their interconnect ownership in these various countries so that when the war came the countries involved wouldn't confiscate their properties. So what they did was to create a maze of ownership through Swiss Banks. It was called the Stuttgart circle and it was a brilliant maze. It took years to unravel it. Each company was bought out by another company and the Board of Directors were members of another company and you had to be a Houdini Magician to figure out what led to where. For example, all of the American holdings of I. G. Farben were eventually brought together in the General Analine and Film Corporation. Prior to that it had been under the general heading of American I. G. Well, that "I. G." that didn't sound good, that stood for Interessen Gemeinschaft, so they had to get rid of that. They changed the name from American I. G. to General Analine and Film Corporation. You "Sweet Adeline".
That's how it was known on the stock market. And then they got rid of all the German names on the Board of Directors like Schmidt, and replaced them with names like Tegal, good old American names, and then General Analine and Film was sold to a Swiss company, I. G. Chemy.
I. G. Chemy was owned by Swiss people, all Swiss ownership, mostly members of certain banks in Switzerland, and then you dig into that, oh, these are the banks which were set up by I. G. Farben, and you finally get back to it that all this was camouflaged merely to conceal the fact that nothing had changed at all except names and trails. It was still all owned by I. G. Farben.
At the end of World War II, when occupation forces moved into Frankfurt Germany, Frankfurt was leveled from a series of heavy bombing raids, but miraculously in the center of this rubble there was a tall building left standing with nary a scratch. That was the international headquarters of I. G. Farben. Somehow or another, the bombardiers had been instructed to miss that building and they did and we were told, at the time; well, we would need an office building for our occupational headquarters when they moved into Frankfurt and they selected that building. Of course, the truth of the matter is, that the Secretary of War at that time was a Rockefeller financial agent who had helped finance the building of that building in Frankfurt. That's the fact of the matter. The Rockefeller interests in the United States at that time dominated the Federal Government. They had surrounded President Roosevelt and Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and all of the top policy decision levels who were held by people who were within the Rockefeller or Standard Oil sphere of influence which was exactly the American arm of this cartel, and they were protecting their own interests over there.
As an aside, Ford Motor Company had plants in Germany and in Nazi occupied France, which were producing for the Nazis all during the war. IT & T had a large share of ownership in the Fasoldt Plant in Germany, which was producing fighter planes in Nazi Germany. So you see, these people weren't Americans, or Germans, they were cartelists. They were prepared to make profits from both sides of the war. They were willing to bomb factories and buildings but they wanted to preserve their share. The same reason, for instance, that the Standard Oil refineries and oil tanks were never bombed in North Vietnam while other things were. Those little paddle wheels took a terrific beating in the rice paddies but not the Standard Oil refineries for some reason. But anyway, getting back to the main track here.
When we moved in and took over the Frankfurt headquarters of I. G. Farben, we inherited all these documents in the filing cabinets. They had destroyed many of them but, of course, many of them remained. Some of these wound up being read into the Congressional hearings, to which I have referred to earlier. One of those captured documents read as follows: "After the first war we came more and more to camouflage our foreign companies in such a way that the participation of I. G. in these firms was not shown. In the course of time the system became more and more perfect for a variety of reasons. It is of the utmost importance that the officials heading the agent firms, which are particularly well qualified to serve as cloaks, should be citizens of the country where they reside.”
So, who owns these companies? The Securities and Exchange Commission began investigations of I. G. Farben in 1938 and they spun their wheels quite a bit, but one of the interesting things that came out of these hearings was the testimony of Walter Tegal who was, if you recall, the President of Standard Oil. Walter Tegal was also on the Board of American I. G., naturally so was Edsel Ford but that is beside the point.
Walter Tegal, a member of the Board of Directors of American I. G., President of Standard Oil, was called to the witness stand. He was asked if he knew who owned American I. G., the major stockholder of American I. G., the company on which he served as Board Member and he said, “I don't know.” He didn't know who owned it! He didn't know how many shares of American I. G. were owned by I. G. Chemy or the Swiss firm. He didn't know who owned I. G. Chemy. In fact, it was pointed out to him that over 500 shares of American I. G. were issued in his name, in Walter Tegal's name. Who owned those shares? He said, "I don't know." He didn't know anything. Or, so he said.
The facts came out later, of course, that he was lying. He was acting as the confidential agent of the I. G. Rockefeller cartel, which is why he was President of Standard Oil. You don't think people like that get to be president of these multi-national companies because they are able to be super executives because of deals like this. Not that they are sloppy executives, because they are good executives, but the primary quality for being the head of these super national organizations is being on the inside and be willing and able to transact confidential deals like this.
The cartel prospered through, and by World War II and with the sale of General Analine and Film in 1962 — I should explain something about that — in spite of all the camouflage it was generally accepted that still, General Analine and Film was indeed owned by nationals of Germany, which was at that time a foreign power and an enemy power. General Analine, and Film was put in receivership operated by the alien property custodians. In other words, it was put in receivership by the Federal Government. At the end of the war it became a problem of what to do with General Analine and Film. It was the resolve of Congress not to give it back to German nationals.
So after many years of haggling, it was decided to sell it at public auction under the direction of Attorney General, Robert Kennedy. It was put on the block in 1962 and was sold to the highest bidder, and the whole thing smelled to high heavens. The highest bidder constituted a consortium of investment firms on Wall Street, all of which were within the Rockefeller sphere of influence. They were all Rockefeller Wall Street firms. They dominated the entire transaction and so what happened is that Rockefeller merely recovered what was his all along and nothing had changed. Except, the American people were told that General Analine and Film had been put up for sale and was no longer within the sphere of the cartel. But it remained where it had always been.
Now let's get back to the main topic of this presentation. The mechanism for the link up between the I. G. Rockefeller cartel and the politics of cancer therapy was the tax-exempt foundation. I won't go into too much of this because there are so many side subjects here we can't afford the time for them all, but the tax-exempt foundation was pioneered by Rockefeller and Carnegie. These two men were (very) close friends. They worked jointly like this through all of their ventures, even their philanthropic ventures using the same old policy of let's not compete. They always worked together with their philanthropic contributions so as not to overlap or compete that way. They got double value from their money. The tax-exempt foundations were pioneered to accomplish three things for these men:
Now, one such profitable commercial venture, which they can research through philanthropy is drug research. I want to stress to you that Rockefeller's group is the primary American focal point of the drug industry today, even though I cannot prove it because of the ways in which they have camouflaged and concealed their ownership. The only way I can make that statement is by giving you the long history which I had to ask you to sit through, because without that background you wouldn't believe that the Rockefellers have anything to do with drugs. If you go down to the companies themselves, La Roche or Winthrop Chemicals and you say, "Who owns these companies?" they won't show you a list of stockholders, but even if they did, you won't find Rockefellers name there.
You'll find dummy corporations. You'll find Swiss banks. You'll find names like the descendants of Walter Tegal, who own it in the name of somebody else, but you will not find the names of Standard Oil or Rockefeller. But the evidence is clear. The tracks are all around. Those are Rockefeller tracks all around the drug industry and they have it.
So, anytime a tax exempt foundation like the Rockefeller Foundation or the
Carnegie Fund starts pumping money to a university, and they insist that that
money be spent on drug research, the light goes on! Drug research, sure!
Because out of that research comes new miracle drugs which they then can
produce at great profit, and it was old John D. Rockefeller's idea that for
every dollar given away in philanthropy you ought to be able to make at least a
hundred back, otherwise don't give it. And this is how it works.
Ferdinand Lemberg, in his monstrous book called "The Rich and The Super Rich" has this to say on the subject. Now Mr. Lemberg and I disagree on almost everything but this one, he hit the nail on the head when he said, "Recipients of the money must be ideologically acceptable to the donors." There is a positive record showing that by these means purely corporate elements are able to influence research and many university policies, particularly in the selection of personnel. The foundations are staunch supporters of the physical sciences, the findings of which had many profit making applications in the corporate sphere, and indeed they do.
Now the mastermind behind this whole method of philanthropy was not really I. V. Lee, whom I mentioned a moment ago, but it was a man by the name of Fred Gates. He called himself the Reverend Fred Gates. He started the ministry but his forte was raising money, and he had done a very interesting service for George Pillsbury of the Pillsbury Flour fame.
Pillsbury had a reputation almost as bad as Rockefeller’s, and Fred Gates went to him one day and said, "Pillsbury, if you give me some of your money, I will spend it in a way that you suddenly will become a great guy in the eyes of a lot of people." And out of that developed what Fred Gates called the Pillsbury Formula .
And it was simply this. He told Mr. Pillsbury, if you are going to build a hospital, don't just give all the money for a hospital, give half of it. "Matching funds." You put up half of it on the condition that the hospital raise the other half from the community, from the business leaders of the community. That way, he said, you still get the credit for it, because your name is still on it. You gave the biggest share but you only give half the money. You get the same value for only half the investment, not only that, you get hundreds, perhaps thousands of people scurrying around raising the other money in terms of $5.00, $10.00, $100 or a thousand dollars and everybody that is involved in the fund raising program now is committed to you. They identify with you psychologically. They are part of your team. And, think of all the good will you'll get that way. That was the Pillsbury Formula.
Old John D. Rockefeller was twisting his mustache as he watched that very carefully. He got hold of Fred Gates, and he brought him in and he picked his brain. Finally he decided to hire him and put him in charge of all the Rockefeller foundation ventures. Rockefeller himself wrote about Gates as follows, he said, "I realized I had met a commercial genius. I persuaded Mr. Gates to become a man of business which he did." One of the first foundations created by Fred Gates for John Rockefeller was called the General Education Forum.
Now the name would lead you to believe that this was concerned with upgrading the level of education. It was not. The purpose was to program the attitudes of people, mold the minds of people, and to change society to conform to the ideological commercial objectives of Gates and Rockefeller. The first publication of the General Education Board was published in 1904 and it was written by Fred Gates and here is what it said:
"In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by traditions, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk!“We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into Philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply.
“The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."
Rev. Fred T. Gates — General Education Board — 1904
Board's Occasional Letter No. 1
That's what the foundations are all about, ladies and gentlemen. Make no mistake about it. The foundation takeover of the "American Medical Schools" followed almost immediately after Gates went to work for Rockefeller. It was fast and it was simple. It took place in three steps.
The first was when Rockefeller and Carnegie together financed the famous Flexner Report of 1910 written by Abraham Flexner, hired by Rockefeller and Carnegie. Flexner traveled all over the country and made a very scholarly analysis of how bad the level of medical education was in America and he was right. He didn't distort it. To my knowledge he didn't distort (any of it). He didn't have to. There were diploma mills. There were a few good schools. But, there were a lot of mediocre schools and there were a lot of bad schools. And people could get a medical degree just by paying enough money and so Flexner brought all of this together in the Flexner Report. It was published by the foundation as a public service and everybody was very much concerned. Something had to be done. You see now, the problem was crystallized with foundation money.
The next step was to solve the problems. Rockefeller and Carnegie then provided the money to solve the problem. They offered tax-free grants. Tremendous infusions of millions and millions of dollars to those selected medical schools that were cooperative and that were willing to go along with the recommendations made by Rockefeller and Carnegie. The ones who weren't willing to submit themselves to the influence of the money didn't get any, and they fell by the wayside. The ones who did go along got this money and were able to build big buildings to attract qualified teachers. They were able to get the necessary equipment, and they became the large medical schools in America today, through Rockefeller and Carnegie money.
Now, there is an old saying that "he who pays the piper calls the tune." And that is exactly what happened. Gates and Flexner, and those whom they appointed, became Board members and consultants for all of these schools. And you can be sure, ladies and gentlemen, that if you are on the Board of Trustees of the school and you are struggling for money and somebody comes to you and says here is 10 million dollars and then they say, however, or by the way, we would suggest that the next time you look for a president we suggest that you look at Mr. Smith, he's a fine, reputable man. You will listen very carefully when they make that suggestion and Mr. Smith becomes the next president.
Mr. Smith listens very carefully when Mr. Gates, Mr. Rockefeller, or Mr. Carnegie say, "now, Mr. Smith, you need people on your teaching staff with these qualifications, and we suggest that you look at Dr. Jones, Dr. Radcliff” and so forth. They all listen. Money has a distinct sound. It is the ruffling of thousand dollar bills. Now there is no corruption there. It is not necessary to set down and say we are going to control the school. We want you to do what we tell you, it is all just very gentlemanly and done gently. But it's done, nevertheless. And so you can be sure that those schools that were willing to cooperate were the ones who got the money. The record indeed shows that this is true.
Now the result of all this then, the third part, the third step is the result. One of the results is that the technical quality of medical education in America was upgraded tremendously and for that we should be thankful. The second result is that the staffs of these schools and the curricula, all of them, lean heavily towards drugs and drug research today. Because that is where the foundation donors get it all back, one hundred to one.
The average physician today has had no training at all in basic nutrition.
His wife knows more about nutrition than he does, and I don't want to get any
physicians here angry at me, but most doctors will tell you honestly that this
is a fact. They'll spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours working to
learn about drugs, their actions, and everything and they are lucky to have even
a chance to spend one or two hours studying basic nutrition. This I submit is
no accident and so what we find is that the medical student today, without even
suspecting it, and he'd certainly be the last one to admit it, certainly he
doesn't believe it, but without suspecting that he has been carefully programmed
by the educational system to be a drug pusher.
You go to your doctor, and I'm going to get some doctors mad at me for sure, but you go to your doctor, and he'll examine you and if he can cut something out he'll do that, and if he can set a broken bone he'll do that. He'll mend something, but beyond that the only thing he can do is write a prescription. You say, I don't feel well, he says, take this prescription to your drugstore and if that doesn't work come back and see me in two weeks and I'll write you another prescription of different kind, and if that doesn't work we've got a whole list of drugs to prescribe until we find something that works.
That is what has happened, and so the medical profession today has been subverted, I submit, by a force, which they do not even suspect themselves.
Now beyond the medical schools, there is of course, the AMA, the FDA, and Institutions of this kind. It is possible that the cartel has reached into these institutions as well. Consider very briefly now, I am going to start moving very rapidly, consider the AMA. Almost half of its income every year is derived not from membership dues, but from the average doctor who knows nothing about what the AMA is doing and is unable to have any voice in it. Half of the income comes from cartel drug firms, in the form of advertising in the "Journal of the American Medical Association". Ten million dollars a year is funneled into the AMA from drug firms. Plus, ten million dollars of AMA money is invested in stock ownership in these big drug companies. That is what you might call a conflict of interest.
Now, another thing to consider: in 1972, the AMA Council on Drugs completed a study on currently used drugs. It was a long awaited analysis and when it came it hit like a bomb because it didn't say what everyone expected it to say. The committee said that many drugs currently in use at that time were irrational and should be removed from the market. Heresy! That couldn't be permitted. And to make matters worse, the Chairman and the Vice Chairman of the AMA Council on Drugs testified before a Senate sub-committee and said that "the income that the AMA derived from the drug companies has made the AMA a captive arm and beholden to the pharmaceutical industry."
Now, if the first was heresy that was double heresy. Something had to be done and it was. The AMA abolished the committee of the Council on Drugs right then and there. The excuse given was an economy move. Now those were just two little items that may give you a sampling of whether or not the AMA is under undo influence of the drug industry. As far as the FDA is concerned, that's a gigantic story.
It is well known for instance, that the drug industry constitutes one of the most largest and powerful lobbies in Washington and they can get legislation through lobbying activities. There is also a great deal of evidence of outright corruption. For instance, in 1940, Mr. Theodore Klump, who was the head of the FDA, did not prosecute Winthrop Chemical after 17 deaths occurred following the use of sulphur thyazoid. Now normally if this would have been death from Vitamin B–17, you can imagine what would have happened. The whole armory of the Federal Government would have been moved against it, but nothing was done against Winthrop Chemical when there were 17 deaths. In fact, there was an attempt to hush up the whole thing.
Well you know, accidents do happen and Winthrop Chemicals is a fine company, etc. The only thing that was done is that there was a three-month ban put on the sale of that drug. This was a three-month ban after the drug had already been oversold, overstocked in all the drug stores in the nation so there wasn't even an interruption in sales. The next year, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Theodore Klump became president of Winthrop Chemicals. That was the payoff.
A few years later Dr. Joseph Sadusk, who was the Director of FDA Bureau of Medicine, defended Park Davis after several deaths occurred using Chloramphenicol. There was no recall of the drug. No label warnings were even required and it wasn't long after that, that Dr. Saduak became Vice President of Park Davis.
In 1960, there was a Congressional inquiry that revealed that Dr. Henry Welch, who was the director of the FDA Department of Antibiotics, that he had been paid over a quarter of a million dollars in honorariums, from advertisements for drugs in medical magazines and on, and on, and on. The same inquiry revealed that over 10 per cent of the high officials in the FDA get some kind of a reward from the drug industry, usually a nice retirement job with a fat pay check where they don't have to do very much.
To break the cartel's hold, all we have to really do is to break its grip over the government, reduce the size of government, so it no longer has the power to regiment the economy. Then we have in one felled swoop, without destroying the cartel per se, we have done almost as good as destroying the cartel. We have taken from them the lever of power that they need. Without big, powerful, centralized governments the cartels would be reduced to the level of competition, straight price competitions between them, eventually they would. It might not happen right away but eventually it would happen, because if it didn't happen, I just know a lot of people would get together who would pool their resources and form another big corporation and go in where the super profits are. When there are super profits (to be made) that's where the investors and speculators always go if they are allowed to go by the government, so all we have to do is get the government out of this field.
Now to bring this about it means a great deal of education obviously. As I mentioned a moment ago, all of this was news to me two years ago, I presume it is news to a lot of you here this evening and I can assure you it is brand new news to most people out on the street. We've got to take this news to the American people. We've got to explain to them about cartels. We've got to explain to them about corruption in science and government. We have a job on our hands. To do this more effectively, we should join with others. We can't do so well ourselves although we can do certain things by ourselves. We multiply our effectiveness when we join with others, in groups that have good positive leadership.
I recommend for this specific task being discussed here this evening, I cannot recommend an organization more highly to you than the one which is sponsoring this meeting, the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy. One good thing about this organization, its leadership knows what it is all about. There are a lot of organizations in this cancer fight that can see only a part of the picture, just going around trying to generate support for slogans like "FDA, Please Test Laetrile." Why, that's like asking the wolf to check out the lunch in Little Red Ridinghood's basket. We don't want the FDA to test laetrile, if they do, they'll miss-test it. They'll lie about it, like they always have. We don't ask the FDA to test or give us approval. We say to the FDA, get out of the field. Make way for free enterprise. Make way for honest people to get into the field of medical research, and we need politicians to take a stand behind the slogan of the Committee which is "Get the Government off the back of private research and out of the field of medical practice!"
And so ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion, I would like to say that the ultimate solution to both the science and politics of cancer will be found only when the political powers of this cartel are broken permitting a return to freedom of choice. So I urge you to join the "Committee For Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy". Become active in its work. Carry this message to your friends. Help to build up a grass roots army of public opinion. An army, that is so powerful that the politicians and bureaucrats can no longer ignore it. You may save some lives, but just as important, the freedom you will save will be your own.
Thank you very much.