What am I ranting about? A letter to the editor in todays Adirondack Daily Enterprise. Rather than link to it, let me post the entire letter (actually I will link also in case you think I made this up).
Recently, Ms. Marcia Van Horn of Beltsville, Md., commenting on “Taking your medicine at the point of a gun,” quite properly notes that it is somewhat inflammatory. On the other hand, her statement that “we have not wasted billions of dollars on cancer research with little to show for it” cannot go unchallenged. The fact is that 30 years of expensive cancer research has resulted in very little change in cancer death rates.
There is plenty of evidence that successful cancer treatments have been suppressed. Daniel Haley’s book, “Politics in Healing,” financed by a former member of Congress frustrated in his attempts to promote alternative medicine in the National Institutes of Health, contains information about multiple suppressions. My book, “Suppressed Science,” provides the results of my independent research on this subject.
Haley devotes 35 pages to the Hoxey cancer treatment which Cherrix went to Mexico to obtain. He notes that in 1957, the Hoxey Clinic in Dallas, Texas was forced to close after 20 years of offering treatments for cancer, found effective by two juries, because the Texas Legislature had been induced to pass a law stating that no doctor could work for a non-doctor. Previously, in 1954, a committee of 10 independent physicians from nine states made an intensive two-day study of the clinic, its patient records and its techniques and concluded that his treatment was “superior to such conventional methods of treatment as X-ray, radium and surgery.” His standard fee for lifetime treatment in the 1950s was said to be $400 with no charge for the poor, about 25 percent of his patients.
It is a fact that many people are not adequately informed about alternative medical treatments. Daniel Haley and I have been independently trying to replace misinformation with the facts regarding some of them. He has suggested that people will need to get “pitchfork mad” in order to affect change.
People not only need to know the facts about effective alternative medical treatments, but they also need access to them and the right to utilize them if desired.
George Washington’s surgeon general wanted freedom of choice in medical care enshrined in our Constitution. We should at least have it enacted into law.
Jack Phillips
Saranac Lake
First of all, who is Jack Phillips. He is the author of a book called "Suppressed Science" published by the American Free Press. Mr. Phillips, a rocket scientist (no really!) evidently believes that the US government and the NIH are in cahoots in hiding cancer cures among other cool scientific discoveries such as dowsing.
Mr. Phillips is evidently a fan of the Hoxey (sic) cancer treatment. John Hoxsey was an Illinois coal miner in the 1920's before he promoted himself as a healer. Hoxsey admitedly had some success in treating surface cancers with what we now call an escharotic agent. He basically dissolved them away using red paste containing antimony sulfide, bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) and zinc chloride; sometimes by a yellow powder containing arsenic and antimony sulfides, various plant substances, talc, and what Hoxsey called yellow precipitate. You can go here to find out more about escharotic agents and why they are not used today.
In any case, despite what Mr. Phillips claims, there is a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health where you can apply for grant funds to do research on alternative medicine, including (unfortunately) faith healing. It's highly unlikely anyone is hiding anything and if you can't get your work published, there is probably a reason for it.
