173 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 78 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
Exclusive to OpEd News:
OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 1/3/21

The Suppression of Alternative Medicine is Killing Us

By       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   9 comments

Cindy Perlin
Follow Me on Twitter     Message Cindy Perlin
Become a Fan

Mainstream medicine has long colluded with the mainstream media and government to deprive us of life-saving information and it has never been more prevalent and dangerous than during this coronavirus pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved in the last year if this were not the case. Not to mention the social and economic disruption and hardship. Greed is the reason.

Do you find this hard to believe? In 2017, global expenditures for healthcare exceeded $7.8 trillion, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). There are people in this world who are willing to kill people in a robbery for a few dollars. It does not take a wild stretch of the imagination to conceive that, for a big piece of this multi-trillion-dollar pie, many people will do almost anything, especially if they never have to come face-to-face with their victims.

The war against natural, holistic medicine in the U.S. began before the birth of our nation and continues today with the suppression of critical information that would allow us to stay safe from COVID-19. It started with the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The women who were tried and executed were herbalists who were accused of practicing "the Devil's magic".

Fast forward to the 1800s. Homeopathy, developed in 1827 in Germany, is based on extreme dilutions of natural substances that trigger the body's healing response. Homeopathy was becoming wildly popular because it worked and because it was so much gentler than common treatments of the time, which included bloodletting, chloroform and mercury. Homeopathy proved much more effective than conventional treatment during the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1849. By the end of the 19th century there were 44 homeopathic medical schools and more than 100 homeopath-supervised hospitals in the U.S. In the deadly flu epidemic of 1918, 25-50 million people died, while deaths of people treated with homeopathy were rare.

Homeopaths created the first medical association in the U.S. in 1844. When the American Medical Association (AMA) was created three years later, one of its first actions was to ban homeopaths from becoming members and expelling any members who dared to even consult with a homeopath. In 1910, the Flexner Report, commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation and supported by the Rockefeller family, resulted in standardizing the practice of medicine in a way that virtually eliminated homeopathic medicine. All the homeopathic hospitals and medical schools were forced to close. Perhaps many deaths from the pandemic of 1918 might have been prevented if homeopathy had not already been discredited.

If the AMA and government regulators had their way, chiropractic treatment might have met the same fate as homeopathy. The chiropractic profession was founded in the United States in 1895. During the first half of the twentieth century, with the active encouragement of the AMA, many chiropractors were prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license and many went to jail. The AMA founded the Committee on Quackery in 1963. The committee had the avowed goal of creating a health-care monopoly that would eliminate the chiropractic profession. Because chiropractic made little use of technology and no use of drugs, the profession had no strong financial allies. Meanwhile, the AMA had access to the deep pockets of the pharmaceutical industry to further its goals. AMA members faced expulsion from the association not only for referring to chiropractors but even for belonging to the same country club or church or synagogue--association was that strictly prohibited. As a result, chiropractors faced discrimination in not only their professional life but also their personal life.

In 1976, five chiropractors sued the AMA for libel. The suit also included as codefendants the American Hospital Association, the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Physicians and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals. Eleven years later, a federal appellate court judge ruled that the AMA had engaged in a "lengthy, systematic, successful, and unlawful boycott" designed to restrict cooperation between MDs and chiropractors to eliminate the chiropractic profession as a competitor in the US health-care system. In recent years, continued misinformation campaigns and insurance-coverage restrictions (including fees that have not increased in four decades, visit limitations and unreasonable paperwork demands) continue to undermine the practice of chiropractic.

Another area where mainstream medicine has undermined alternative medicine is in cancer treatment. Expenditures on cancer treatment exceed $200 billion annually in the U.S. alone and suppression of alternative medicine for cancer has been fierce. Despite the claims that we are winning the war on cancer, over 600,000 Americans are expected to die of cancer in the U.S. in 2020 alone. Cancer patients are as fearful of the treatments, euphemistically referred to as "slash, poison and burn", as they are of the disease itself.

A well-known Park Avenue physician, Max Gerson, developed a diet in the 1950s that was curing patients of cancer. He was ostracized, lost his hospital privileges, and fell very ill from being poisoned with arsenic just as he was completing a manuscript on 50 of his successful cases. He recovered, but his manuscript was stolen during his illness. He was able to rewrite and publish it.

Also, in the mid-1900s, Harry Hoxsey promoted an herbal cure for cancer that was discovered by his grandfather. He was having great success, with thousands of patients claiming he cured them. He hired doctors and nurses and opened clinics in seventeen states, but was arrested over 100 times for practicing medicine without a license. His treatment was banned in the United States in 1960. One of his nurses fled and opened a Hoxsey clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1963. Hoxsey himself became an alcoholic and died from the disease as a result of all the stress.

In the 1970s, laetrile, also known as vitamin B17, found in highest amounts in wild apricot seeds, was found to be effective in many studies for cancer treatment. The medical establishment went to great lengths to discredit it, funding studies designed to fail and lying about the results of other studies. Proponents were jailed, some were shot at or went missing, books about it were seized, and a law was passed making it a felony to treat cancer with nutrition in California.

In 1994, the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act (DSHEA) made it a crime for a producer or seller to make health claims for a food or dietary supplement, even if the claims are true, unless the substance has gone through the FDA drug-approval process. This process costs, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is beyond the means of most nonpharmaceutical companies as their natural products cannot be patented. The FDA has shut down companies, seized products and pursued criminal charges even in cases of minor violations of this law. Purveyors of natural products live in terror of the FDA as a result. Yet, many of these products have very significant health benefits and can alleviate disease.

These are just a few examples of the historic war against alternative medicine. Though I have focused on the United States, this effort is worldwide.

Fast forward to today when we are facing a global pandemic, the worst in over 100 years, that has already killed over 340,000 in the United States and over 1.7 million globally. Infections are accelerating, there is no sure cure, and vaccinations, although they are starting to be distributed, are still in the experimental stage.

Though COVID-19 is a new virus, one thing has been very obvious from the beginning--people with healthy immune systems do not get sick when exposed to the virus or have very mild illnesses, while those with weaker immune systems get very sick and many die. What has been very striking, from an alternative-medicine point of view, is the complete silence of mainstream medicine and government health agencies (CDC, FDA) about known ways to boost the immune system.

Well-established ways to boost the immune system include optimizing nutrition, including with diet and supplements, mild to moderate exercise, increasing sleep, reducing stress with meditation and other relaxation techniques, and herbal treatments.

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Rate It | View Ratings

Cindy Perlin Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter Page       Linked In Page       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Cindy Perlin is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, nationally certified biofeedback practitioner and the author of The Truth About Chronic Pain Treatments: The Best and Worst Strategies for Becoming Pain Free. She is the founder and CEO of the (more...)
 

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Follow Me on Twitter     Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

The Truth About Chronic Pain Treatments

Shocking US Preventive Services Task Force Position on Vitamin D

The Suppression of Alternative Medicine is Killing Us

What a Trump Presidency Will Mean for Health Care

Despite Opioid Disaster, Feds Continue to Ignore Alternative Pain Treatments

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend