The Ashwin
The Ashwin is a webzine for ΑΩ Labs' customers -- June, 2015 Edition
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“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.”
Marcia Angel, M.D.
Longtime Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
Richard Horton, M.D.
Editor-in-Chief, Lancet

When Big Pharma Shills
Rule The Blogosphere

The Case of Bob Higgins, Alternative Practitioner:
What Happens When Those of Us
Who Know Better Don't Speak Up?


Greg Caton -- Meditopia author Life here in the high Andes -- (we live at close to 10,000 feet or 3,000 meters, take your pick) -- is pretty "tranquilo," as they say in Ecuador. There seems to be something in the water, the climate, the culture, or perhaps it's a combination, that resists the kind of contentiousness and never-ending conflict that grip so much of the rest of the world.
There is one notable exception, however: it is the mere mention of anything pertaining to health care that does not sing "hallelujah praises" to the great glory of the pharmaceutical industry. Yes, even in the remote part of the world in which I live, we're not immune to the drumbeat of pharmaceutical industry shills -- most of them on the payroll, some not -- standing guard over the comment sections of web pages where there is the slightest possibility these things can be discussed, fully "locked-and-loaded" and ready to pounce on anyone who commits the ultimate sin in their book: to express an independent line of thought that does not coincide with officially santioned Industrial Medical Complex doctrine and propaganda.
The truth of this hit home quite recently when a local alternative practitioner, Bob Higgins, wrote a series of articles for our local English-speaking online pub, Gringo Tree, expressing his very personal journey in the world of cancer treatment. [Readers can contact Bob at: cuencaholisticguide@gmail.com].
He first published an article, entitled Cancer and Institutionalized Medicine: Who's the Real Enemy? Then he followed this up with Cancer vs. Institutionalized Medicine, whose comment section has to contain some of the most foul flaming I've ever seen in my 20+ years on the internet. And then just a few days ago, Gringo Post Forum, an unrelated local forum, had an entire page of posts in which Higgins was included, even though he had never participated in the discussion. (It concerns an MMS Conference that is taking place in Vilcabamba, about 5 hours south of here. Neither Bob nor I are attending.) Fact is, Bob knew nothing about the MMS conference. Nonetheless, the MMS matter was used as a opportunity by shills to seriously flame Higgins. He was sandbagged for an issue in which he took no part.
Since over 99% of my clients are outside of South America, it might appear that my presentation here is starting to appear provincial. However, I have seen this same treatment of alternative practitioners for years on other blog sites, and yet I have chosen to say nothing. Should I have? Or should I have said something?
After meeting with Bob to discuss what had just happened him, I composed the following response, which has just been sent to the editors of Gringo Tree. It contains compelling arguments that anyone can use against shills for the Medical Industrial Complex.



< --- Prior to posting this response, Bob and I met at the Caton Family Library outside Cuenca. With over 6,000 volumes, the majority of which are devoted to chemistry, physics, health, nutrition, medicine, botany, horticulture, agriculture, and their related disciplines, this library is the largest English-speaking library of its kind anywhere in Ecuador.


ADDRESSING ROBERT HIGGINS' "ALTERNATIVE CANCER" ARTICLES ================================================================
by Greg Caton --- Herbalist

I watched with interest as the responses to Robert Higgins recent articles on alternative cancer therapies poured in and I was somewhat surprised by the level of vitriol by some of our more spirited defenders of the Medical Industrial Complex . . . (Charlie, Victor, Mark Zuckerburglar, William Baker, Kenneth Merena -- some names real, some fake . . . it doesn't matter. You guys know who you are. You are the dominant bacterial organisms who have made the blogosphere your primary intestinal habitat -- if only because ordinary people have more important things to do.)
Since the possibility exists that some misinformed individuals could read this mindless dribble and take it seriously, I thought it might be refreshing to let some of this propagandistic fog clear and deal with established facts. I will also attempt to transcend personal attacks on Bob's character --- cheesy, though predictable, because when the therapies you're defending produce such disastrous therapeutic results, what other fig leaf are you going to reach for besides deflection? Let's bring the focus back to where it belongs.
I'll make this easy with a simple numbering system --- and footnotes for those who want documentary support. I provide hundreds more references in Meditopia.

Medical Guesswork - Business Week, May 29, 2006 ( 1 ) THERE IS NO CONVINCING EVIDENCE ANYWHERE THAT SUPPORTS CONVENTIONAL CANCER THERAPY.
As I detail extensively in Chapter 4 of Meditopia, ( 1 ) there is absolutely no credible evidence, anywhere, in any language, in any country, in any time period, in any of the existing extant literature, on this planet and quite likely any other, that supports the notion that most conventional therapies for serious degenerative disease, but most particularly any conventional cancer therapy, actually work. There is, however, plenty of credible evidence that supports the fact that few things are as effective in KILLING people as conventional cancer treatment. It was not without sound foundation that the late two-time Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Linus Pauling, could say, "Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them." ( 2 ) (Try to keep in mind that when it comes to Nobel Prizes, Linus Pauling, unlike Barack Obama, actually EARNED his.) If you knew what I knew, you would -- as do I -- regard Pauling as being excessively diplomatic when he said this, if not downright obsequious, given his standing in the orthodox scientific community. This only makes it a more astonishing admission.
This is why you have medical renegades who have introduced the revolutionary concept of "evidence-based medicine." And -- believe me -- it is truly revolutionary. Why? Because it defies the conventional medicine position that it is perfectly acceptable to foist incredibly expensive, dangerous medical products, procedures, and modalities upon the public using fake data (as "Isabella" pointed out in her post) all the while pointing a finger at those "outside" the system as quacks and snake oil salesmen and whatever other pejoratives you can construct using the 26 known letters of the English alphabet. As Dr. Barbara Starfield (3) so aptly pointed out, where there is increased expenditure within the modern medical model, there is more death and disease. Ours is the Age of Iatrogenesis : death from doctoring.
Over the years I have constructed several models to assist those who are cerebrally challenged to get their heads around the simple, historical observation that the cancer industry has nothing to do with coming up with a cancer cure and everything to do with suppressing those who do. I have created corollaries of Parkinson's Law (4), put together a short treatise tying together the time-honored principle of planned obsolescence in business administration with the NEED FOR iatrogenesis (5), shot holes the size of beach balls through orthodox media campaigns designed to deceive the public (6), and the first four chapters of Meditopia itself -- a free read at meditopia.org -- stand as an indictment of this incredibly corrupt system, replete in its filth, devoid of any moral or ethical fiber. (7)

The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship: An Examination of Epistemic Autocracy, From the 19th to the 21st Century ( 2 ) THERE IS NOTHING "SCIENTIFIC" ABOUT "MEDICAL SCIENCE" . . . AND THIS IS BECAUSE ORTHODOX SCIENCE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE IMPARTIAL QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE --- BUT RATHER THE QUEST FOR CONSENSUS WITHIN A PRIVILEGED, PROFESSIONAL, AUTHORITATIVE ELITE.
One of the things I do in Chapter 4 of Meditopia is dissect Thomas Kuhn's famous landmark work, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" to show that science is a control system. It isn't about the quest for impartial knowledge.
But apart from that, throughout my entire career, I have seen one ridiculous article of faith that carried all the weight of gravity and feigned sincerity by established medicine after another, obliterated . . . by people who were smarter, more brilliant, more creative, more resourceful, only to see their lives destroyed for attempting to inject a little verifiable truth into what author, Thomas Sheridan, calls our global "psychopathic control grid." (8) I could come up with a hundred examples, but for brevity's sake I'll just take two salient, poignant, and very personal examples.

EXHIBIT A : In 2000 I was exposed to a researcher who claimed that he created a formula to rapidly accelerate the healing of broken bones. Upon investigation, I quickly realized that one of the hidden assumptions of his formula is that the body utilizes silicon to create calcium compounds. (9) This angered me at first, because as anybody who was paying any attention during their high school chemistry classes knows, elemental transmutation is impossible, right? I mean . . . the entire scientific establishment wouldn't lie about something that fundamental, now would they? Subsequent to this, the researcher in question led me to thoroughly examine the work of Professor C.L. Kervran, whose thoughts are summarized in his seminal work, "Biological Transmutations." I was willing to make this effort, because I really wanted to know how this "bone builder" formula worked, and I couldn't come up with an alternative explanation as to why it was so effective to save my life.

Prof. Kervran - 'Biological Transmutations' Just like with the apologists for the Medical Industrial Complex, the simple observable facts of daily life become obscure when you have people in authority telling you what to believe and to trust THEM rather than your own experience.
Like . . . what comes out of a chicken's rear end. Well . . . yes . . . I'm talking about eggs. But did you know that the egg shell is made of calcium carbonate, and that if you deliberately deprive a chicken of calcium its entire life, the eggs it produces will still be covered in shell that is made of calcium carbonate. Where does the calcium come from if the chicken isn't producing it internally from other elements. Kervran provides countless other examples that science cannot and will not explain. Not now. Not ever. Why should they? Science is not about knowledge, and its prominents take delight in suppressing observations that clearly defy their cherished theories.
H3O -- Calcium Sulfate Hydronium Concentrate EXHIBIT B : I make a product called H3O (Calcium Sulfate Hydronium Solution) (10) In October, 2001, I was in Washington D.C., giving a demonstration of this material along with its companion product, HRx. (11) What is the difference? H3O (also the chemical shorthand for hydronium) has a pH of close to 0.0, yet is non-caustic and non-corrosive to animal tissue; while HRx has a pH of close to 14.0 and is similarly non-caustic and non-corrosive to animal tissue. I produced a website devoted to the hundreds of truly scientific tests that we conducted to show the properties of these products. (12)
Okay, so back to this Expo East show. (13) About halfway through my demonstration, I do a live example showing that when H3O and HRx are combined --- that is to say, an extreme acid with an extreme alkaline --- they produce no exothermic reaction and the resulting solution has a pH that is close to 7.0. If you know anything about inorganic chemistry, you know that all the chemistry books will tell you that this isn't possible. Is this registering with you yet, dear reader? I have just done a live demonstration showing that one of the bedrock principles of inorganic chemistry has at least one provable exception.
A professor from Georgetown University approaches me --- business card in hand. I look at it and see that he has a Ph.D. in chemistry.

"How did you do that?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I replied.
"What's the trick? Are the pH strips you're using artificially marked?"
"No," I replied. "There's no trick. I use ColorpHast strips from EM Science, imported from Germany, and we make these solutions here in the States. These products really do have the properties I've indicated."

Suddenly, the man's face grimaced and as he turned to walk away, he muttered, "What a con artist!"

The truth is that this professor was more committed to believing a mythology that was central to his position, authority, standing, and world view than he was in trusting his own eyes. This is what historian Gary North is referring to when he says, "Always beware respectable people . . . because they are beholden to the institutions that are the source of that respectability!" And this is what those in authority count on : that you're dumb enough, gullible enough, foolish enough to believe whatever they come up with --- even when it defies what your own senses tell you. People will believe a medical doctor, who frequently has financial motives that conflict with the interests of the patient, over their own body, which has NO INTEREST apart from that of the patient. A doctor will lie to you. Your own body will not. I learned this from Jerry Mander (14), though a more convincing look at how divorced "modern science" is from reality and how it has been transformed into a twisted religious cult, can be found in Phillip Collins work. (15)

( 3 ) A WORLD WITHOUT CONVENTIONAL CANCER THERAPY --- OR PHARMACEUTICALS DRUGS, FOR THAT MATTER --- PRODUCES NO DEFICIENCIES. WHY?
The Hidden Story of Cancer Everyone knows that the body needs a variety of macronutrients, vitamins, minerals, and enzymes in order to function properly. What happens when your body doesn't get any one of the many nutrients that it NEEDS? It gets diseased, right? Insufficient Vitamin C leads to scurvy; insufficient Vitamin B3 leads to pelagra; insufficient iodine leads to goiter, etc., etc.
IN FACT . . . there is not one thing that the body needs which is essential (that is to say the body cannot manufacture it) whose deficiency will not result in a diseased condition. And why is that? Because the body requires it. It's essential to good health.
My world -- the world of phytopharmacology -- is filled with thousands of various natural chemicals which belong to different classes of organic compounds whose deficiency results in harm to the body. This is because naturopaths, like myself, will only deal in things that the body NEEDS. We're not in the business of creating Frankensteinian molecular structures that can be found nowhere in this entire universe, filing a patent for it claiming ownership, and then attempting to sell the public on the idea that our completely artificial molecule is somehow necessary for a restored, natural function of the body.
If I told you that I have a special kind of mud on my property that if you put it into your gas tank, it will improve your car's performance, would you be dumb enough to believe me? No? Well, anybody who agrees to go in for chemotherapy or radiation therapy buys that logic, so why won't you? After all, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BEING CHEMOTHERAPY OR RADIATION THERAPY DEFICIENT! Such a physical state does not exist.
The word "pharmacology" comes from the ancient Greek root, meaning "poison." (16) This is not an accident. The fathers of modern medicine knew what they were doing, and this is conveyed in the word they chose to describe their art : using materials that are foreign to the body, unnecessary for its optimal function, the absence of which cannot possibly produce a deficiency, all while extolling its vital curative properties. The very etymology of the word provides us with a clue as to what cancer therapy itself is about : poisoning the patient so that further treatment will be required. This fits perfectly with the "problem, reaction, solution" Hegelian model that rests at the very foundation of modern government . . . and make no mistake about it, modern medicine IS a form of governance. (17)

( 4 ) THE MAJORITY OF MEDICAL DOCTORS WHO ADMINISTER CHEMOTHERAPY WOULD NOT UNDERGO IT THEMSELVES.
The figure from a study last year (2014) was 88%. (18) However, I have seen higher. But surveys aside, I can personally attest that Cathryn and I have talked to scores of medical doctors over our 25 years of working together who have told us privately that they would NOT undergo chemotherapy or radiation therapy themselves and the only reason they prescribe these approaches is because they risk losing their licenses if they don't.
How many cancer patients who get sold a bill of goods on the "chemo / radiation good-time choo-choo train" understand that there is a greater than 50% chance (and that's an extremely conservative figure) that the medical doctor who sold them on that therapy would not undergo it themselves because they know it's too danger. That they know it doesn't work. That they know there are better alternatives. That they know that chemotherapy "kills cancer patients faster than no treatment at all." (19)
Probably not many.

( 5 ) ANECDOTAL TRUMPS JAMA ANY DAY.
I get sick and tired of hearing about how something is valid only if has been confirmed by a triple blind study. Do you have any sense of how ridiculous this is? If I'm walking down the street and I see a woman violently raped to the point of hospitalization, do you understand that my testimony is of no value to the police if I applied these people's logic? It is only what I saw or heard, so how COULD my testimony have any valid meaning? Only a qualified controlled study could confirm that this woman was raped and who did it!
As I discuss in Chapter 4 of Meditopia, the first American Medical Pharmacopia consisted almost exclusively of "cures" that were stolen from native American Indians. It was ALL anecdotal. And what does anecdotal mean? It means what you have seen with your own two eyes, without interpretation by anyone in authority. It means knowledge that has not yet received the imprimatur of people in authority who view you as little more than cattle --- something to be milked until you're ready for the clinical cancer slaughterhouse.
In fact, the working knowledge of indigenous people all over the world is based on anecdotal observations. Bob Higgins' naysayers would argue that none of these natural medicines have any value -- after all, they haven't been "triple blind studied" and had their results published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a pharmaceutical company.
I beg to differ . . .
It might be different if these studies were "legit," but the FDA routinely helps Big Pharma pull off studies that are hugely fraudulent (20). To put it bluntly "most medical research is false." (21) And what happens to those who blow this whistle on this kind of fraud? They get punished for being honest. (22)
Is this really the kind of medical system that we should honor, respect, support, and follow?
Strangely . . . the posters who were unjustifiably gunning Robert Higgins' article and his personal character certainly think so.

( 6 ) YOU WOULDN'T TRUST A LOCAL "MAFIA DON" WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE NEEDS. SO WHY WOULD YOU TRUST AN ONCOLOGIST WITHOUT QUESTION?
I remember having a phone conversation in the mid-1990's with Canadian physician, Dr. Guylaine Lanctôt, M.D. She was in the process of releasing her book, "The Medical Mafia." This was an important checkpoint in my ongoing education as to just how criminal the medical establishment is. There is no room in the conventional medical establishment for objectivity. It is a world, like that of George W. Bush, "where you're either with us . . . or you're a terrorist."
James Hill In 2010, in the aftermath of my celebrated kidnapping, while imprisoned in Beaumont, Texas, I spent a good deal of time with James T. Hill, M.D. Here was a physician who, like Guylaine, had come to the conclusion that few of the practices and principles of the Medical Industrial Complex were sound. Unlike most physicians he worked with his patients on improving their diets. He frequently recommended nutraceuticals, medicinal herbs, vitamin and mineral supplements, and he prescribed a fraction of the pharmaceutical drugs that most physicians prescribe. The local licensing board found out and wasn't pleased. In the end, federal charges were brought against Dr. Hill involving a single prescription and he was sentenced to more than ten years.
But imprisoning practitioners using fake charges and fictitious allegations isn't good enough anymore. Those who follow the long list of "unconventional" scientists who have died in recent years of strange, mysterious, unusually violent deaths are now having to add medical practitioners to their lists. (23) I personally know of practitioners myself who are petrified of the wave of murders that is taking place to physicians who don't "toe the party line."

And how is this relevant to the current discussion? . . . Simple :
If you represented a system of health care, especially as it relates to conventional cancer treatment, that had any validity to it, if your therapeutic approaches were better, safer, more effective, and superior to those offered by the naturopathic community, would it really be necessary to falsely imprison contrarians or pay assassins to violently murder those who did not agree with your system?
Now . . . you might say, "But wait . . . My doctor (or my oncologist, or my pharmacist, or my pathologist, or my registered dietitian, etc.) doesn't have anything to do with this!"
They don't have to.
They are the foot soldiers in a system that has other operatives who DO. And just like "The Matrix," as long as they are plugged into this system, this vast abyss of endless corruption -- well-meaning though they might be -- they are participants who profit from it. They belong to a club that rewards adherents for conformity, and swiftly punishes those who express independent thought or give credence to empirical evidence. [Forget "1984." Welcome to the Borg!]
Therefore, you have a right to question their recommendations.
Ask yourself: Is a system that behaves this way a system that you can trust with life-and-death decisions? I believe this is something that deserves serious attention before giving any heed to critics of alternative practitioners like Bob Higgins, who is merely suggesting that there may be a better way.

( 7 ) AND FINALLY . . . IF THESE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES STILL ELUDE YOU . . . I DEVOTE THE BETTER PART OF TWO HOURS ON MY LATEST INTERVIEW EXPLAINING THEM! (24)

Greg Caton --- Herbalist


Footnotes

  1. http://www.meditopia.org/chap4.htm
  2. On the mortality of conventional cancer treatment --- see :
    http://www.naturalnews.com/033847_chemotherapy_cancer_treatments.html
    Dr. Linus Pauling, with reference, is taken from Chapter 1 of Meditopia.
  3. http://www.drug-education.info/documents/iatrogenic.pdf
  4. http://www.altcancer.net/lysis5.htm
  5. http://www.altcancer.net/ashwin/ashw0809.htm
  6. For an example, see : http://www.altcancer.net/ashwin/ashw0914.htm;
    also: http://www.altcancer.net/ashwin/ashw0415.htm
  7. http://www.meditopia.org
  8. "Puzzling People: The Labyrinth of the Psychopath" by Thomas Sheridan, Velluminous Press, 2011.
  9. Out of this experience, we used to carry a product called Bone Builder :
    http://www.altcancer.net/bb.htm
  10. http://www.altcancer.net/h3o.htm. It should be pointed out that the demonstration had to do with chemical properties. No mention was made of medical properties. I was, after all, in Washington, D.C. . . .
  11. http://www.altcancer.net/hydrox.htm
  12. http://www.gregcaton.com/natura/
  13. http://www.expoeast.com/ee15/public/enter.aspx
  14. Mander wrote a book in 1976 called "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television," which deals extensively with the use of television as a programming tool, and how deftly it gets people to do things that are against their own best interest. The title is deceiving, in as much as the book stretches the mind well beyond what you expect of the initial subject to be covered.
  15. "The Ascendency of Scientific Dictatorship: An Examination of Epistemic Autocracy, From the 19th to the 21st Century" by Phillip Darrell Collins & Paul David Collins.
  16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacology
  17. http://www.infowars.com/the-hegelian-dialectic-and-its-use-in-controlling-modern-society/
  18. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2643751/Most-doctors-terminally-ill-AVOID-aggressive-treatments-chemotherapy-despite-recommending-patients.html
  19. http://www.naturalnews.com/048827_chemotherapy_cancer_treatment_patient_survival.html
  20. http://retractionwatch.com/2015/02/09/fda-repeatedly-hidden-evidence-scientific-fraud-says-author-new-study/
  21. http://www.naturalnews.com/039416_medical_research_scientific_fraud_false_data.html
  22. Example : http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/the-vaccine-autism-cover-up-how-one-doctors-career-was-destroyed-for-telling-the-truth/
  23. More recently, the murder of holistic naturopathic doctors within the past couple of weeks has been raised to eight.
  24. In even providing this link, I wish to note that since interviews are "extemporaneous," mistakes are made. Early in this interview, for example, I use the word "months" instead of "years" at one important juncture. A little later on I slip and mention that my wife received her bachelor's and master's from Texas A&M (true), and then a Doctorate in Naturopathy at Clayton "School of Business," when it should have been Clayton College of Natural Health -- an institution that prior to its closing in 2010 was, predictably, under constant attack from conventional medical interests.
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