I took down the Quackbusters article last week as Dr. Barrett contacted me and requested I investigate the issue more carefully. In the interest of fairness I have published his response. Please be very clear that I am in NO way shape or form endorsing what Steven Barrett says, merely providing a forum where he can openly debate.
Tim's original article has been widely distributed over the Internet and you can review it by going to the Natural Product's Industry web site.
I spoke with Tim for quite some time this past week and he shared information which leads me to believe that his original article is accurate. It does in fact appear that the days of Steven Barrett's Quack Busters are numbered, and that number is not very large.
You will definitely want to tune in next week when I post Tim Bolen's response to Steven Barrett's reply.
If you are a health care practitioner you will want to send this and the future articles in this series to a colleague.
You can do that by holding the CTRL button down and pressing "a" this will block the article. While still holding the CTRL button down press "c" as this will put the article onto your clipboard. Then you can go to your e-mail and make sure the HTML is enabled (Internet Explorer that is Format on the title bar and click Rich Format). Then put your cursor in the message box and while holding CTRL press "v" as this will transfer the content to the window. Alliteratively you could just do the same sequence for the URL or address of this article and send that.
Just Who is Steven Barrett Anyway?
If you have been in alternative medicine for some time you will know who Steven Barrett is and no further information is required. If you are new to this field, what better way to get up to speed than to go to the chief of AlternativeMedicine.com, Burton Goldburg, and read his review of Steven Barrett.
Steven Barrett's Response:
When false ideas are attacked, their promoters often spread lies about the critic. That's happened to me in response to information I have posted about Hulda Clark, a naturopath who claims she can cure cancer, AIDS, and many other serious diseases, sometimes within a few hours.
During the past year, a man calling himself Tim Bolen -- and representing himself as her "publicist" -- has been distributing false and defamatory messages about me through the Internet. His latest diatribe -- posted in mid-September 2000 -- is titled "The Last Days of the Quackbusters." Because it has achieved wider circulation than most of his other previous messages, I have decided to respond to it.
Bolen's uses the "Quackbuster" to describe people he thinks are "persecuting" Clark and other "alternative" practitioners.
Bolen claims to be conducting an investigation and periodically reports that he has assembled lots of useful information.
However, he seems to have very little understanding of my activities; and some of his messages falsely accuse me of participating in activities that I know nothing about. Here are several passages from "The Last Days of the Quackbusters" that show why Bolen should not be regarded as trustworthy.
Please NOTE, this is Steven Barrett's response only, Tim will get his chance next week. Stay tuned, this will be interesting.
The "Quackbuster" operation is a conspiracy. It is a propaganda enterprise, one part crackpot, two parts evil. It has declared war on reality.
The conspirators are acting in the interests of, and are being paid, directly and indirectly, by the "conventional" medical-industrial complex.
The "Quackbuster Conspiracy" was started shortly after the American Medical Association (AMA) lost the court battle to the Chiropractors in Federal court in 1976.
The Federal judge ordered the AMA's covert operation shut down - and leave the Chiropractors alone. Barrett, and his minions, had the common sense to stay away from criticizing Chiropractors until (I believe) the Federal Judge died.
Federal judges have a way of enforcing their decisions using shackles, Federal Marshals, the federal prison facilities, asset seizure, etc...
Even Barrett, in all his incredible arrogance, isn't dumb enough to match wills with a Federal Judge.
In 1976, various chiropractors began a series of civil suits against the AMA, other professional organizations, and several individual critics, charging that they had conspired to destroy chiropractic and to illegally deprive chiropractors of access to laboratory, x-ray, and hospital facilities.
Most of the defendant groups agreed in out-of-court settlements that their physician members were free to decide for themselves how to deal with chiropractors. In 1987 -- not 1976 as stated by Bolen -- federal court judge
Susan Getzendanner concluded that during the 1960s "there was a lot of material available to the AMA Committee on Quackery that supported its belief that all chiropractic was unscientific and deleterious." The judge also noted that chiropractors still took too many x-rays. However, she ruled that the AMA had engaged in an illegal boycott.
She concluded that the dominant reason for the AMA's antichiropractic campaign was the belief that chiropractic was not in the best interest of patients. But she ruled that this did not justify attempting to contain and eliminate an entire licensed profession without first demonstrating that a less restrictive campaign could not succeed in protecting the public.
The case was decided on narrow legal grounds (restraint of trade) and was not an evaluation of chiropractic methods. The judge enjoined the AMA from doing certain things that it had stopped doing several years previously. The AMA was not enjoined from issuing justifiable criticisms.
The full text of the decision is posted on the Chirobase Web site. I was not a party to the suit but, even if I had been, the judge's order would not apply to anything that I do. Bolen's notion that the judge died many years ago shows how carelessly he "investigates." It took me less than a minute with a search engine to find information about her current activities
The AMA files, library, etc., ended up in Stephen Barrett's 1,800 square foot basement in Allentown, PA.
In that early, educational case for me in California, Stephen Barrett and two slime-ball investigators from the California Medical Board, had convinced members of the Laguna Beach Police Department that a nutritionist using ozone therapy was "a sex criminal preying on women."
Flak-jacketed thugs screwed a gun into Salvatore D'Onofrio's ear, forced him to lie on the ground, and thus began a brutal, anything goes, persecution.
If you peruse Stephen Barrett's (don't call him doctor, he's not licensed) website, you get the impression that "allopaths" are to be classified somewhere next to archangels - and "alternatives" are snake-oil salesmen, akin to the devil's minions
Since I graduated from an accredited medical school I am entitled to be called "doctor." I have been licensed in four states and practiced psychiatry for 35 years before retiring in December 1993. When I retired, I had my license placed on "inactive" status.
Since I retired in good standing, I can reactivate it simply by paying the licensing fee and obtaining insurance as required by state law. Bolen would like people to believe that I misrepresent my credentials, but I don't.
Examination of Barrett's operation proves that the "Quackbusters" are a paper tiger. . . . Their membership is small, they have an even smaller core group, the industry is turning its back on their extremism, and their leadership "public presence" is laughable.
Their support network could best be described as "pea-brained." Their "annual meeting" for the conspiracy was held in a Super 8 motel in Missouri - 25 stalwarts attended from, at least, six different plotter groups. Not very impressive.
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