Sunday 23 January 2011

MURDER BY INJECTION: CHAPTER 2: QUACKS ON QUACKERY


By Eustace Mullins

Quack ~ an ignorant pretender to medical or surgical skill.
Quackery ~ charlatanry. 1783, Crabbe, Village 1, "A potent quack,
long versed in human ills, who first insults the victim
whom he kills." ~ Oxford English Dictionary

The first significant figure in American medicine, according to
Geoffrey Marks, was the theologian Cotton Mather (1663-1728).
The son of Increase Mather, the President of Harvard University,
Cotton Mather wrote many theological works, but also wrote a full
length medical work, "The Angel of Bethesda" on which he wrote
from 1720 to 1724. His medical letters drew heavily on local Indian
lore; he also pondered the mental factor in illness, noting that "A
cheerful Heart does Good like a Medicine, but a broken Spirit dries
the Bones."

Mather seems to have been the first and last theologian to be
interested in the practice of American medicine. The next figure of
importance in American medicine was a Dr. Nathan Smith Davis
(1817-1904). After apprenticing under Dr. Daniel Clark in upstate
New York, Davis moved to New York in 1847. As early as 1845, he
had demanded that the Medical Society of the State of New York
correct the more flagrant abuses in medical education, insisting that
the four months of instruction then in vogue be increased to a period
of six months. On May 11, 1846, he convened a group of physicians
in New York to form the nucleus of the American Medical
Association. The organization took on formal status the following
year in Philadelphia, on May 5, 1847, the official date the American
Medical Association came into being. The hundred delegates to the
New York meeting had swelled to over two hundred and fifty at
Philadelphia. They soon formed state organizations in a number of
states. Smith later moved to Chicago, where he joined the faculty of
Rush Medical School. In 1883, when the AMA founded its Journal,
he became the first editor, serving until 1889.

Despite the good intentions of its founder, Dr. Davis, the AMA
remained moribund for some fifty years. In 1899, the organization
took a giant step forward, with the arrival of one Dr. George H.
Simmons from Nebraska. Simmons, who throughout his life was
known, perhaps derisively, as "Doc," is now remembered as the preeminent
American quack. Born in Moreton, England, Simmons
immigrated to the United States in 1870. Settling in the Midwest, he
began his career as a journalist. It is interesting that the two other
dominant figures in twentieth century American medicine, Dr.
Morris Fishbein and Albert Lasker, also began their careers as
journalists; Fishbein remained a journalist all his life. Simmons
became the editor of the Nebraska Farmer in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Several years later, he decided to improve his finances by launching
on a career of unparalleled medical quackery. Interestingly enough,
the AMA in 1868 had formally defined quackery as "the sale or
administration of drugs or treatments that are not approved by
legally constituted medical authorities." Simmons ignored this
requirement. No one has ever been able to determine that he had
studied anywhere to qualify for a medical degree. Nevertheless, he
began to advertise that he was a "licentiate of the Rotunda Hospital
of Dublin," referring, presumably, to Dublin, Ireland. In fact, Dublin
Hospital had never issued any licenses, nor was it authorized to do
so.

No one ever bothered to raise the question as to why Simmons,
who had supposedly arrived in the United States as a duly licensed
physician, chose instead to practice journalism for some years. He
also advertised that he had spent "a year and a half in the largest
hospitals in London," although he refrained from making any claims
as to what capacity whether as a patient, an orderly or other
functionary. Years later, he obtained a diploma by mail from one of
the nation's flourishing diploma mills, Rush Medical College in
Chicago, while maintaining a full time medical practice in Lincoln.

There is no record that he ever set foot on the campus of Rush
Medical College prior to obtaining this degree. His protege, Morris
Fishbein, also attended Rush Medical College. There was some
question as to whether Fishbein ever actually graduated; years later,
in his time of influence, he became a "professor" there, specializing
in teaching the public relations aspects of medicine.

In their definitive work, "The Story of Medicine in America,"
an exhaustive and detailed compilation, the authors, Geoffrey Marks
and William K. Beatty, make no mention of either Simmons or
Fishbein, seemingly a glaring omission, as they are the two most
notorious practitioners in our medical history. Apparently realizing
that these two men were the two most famous quacks in medical
history, the authors prudently decided to ignore them.

In Who's Who Simmons notes that he practiced medicine in
Lincoln from 1884 to 1899. He lists his degree as L. M. Dublin
1884. This raises further questions. Simmons had immigrated to the
United States in 1870; he remained continuously in Lincoln from
1870 to 1899, when he went to Chicago. For some reason, he
forbore the listing of the mail order diploma from Rush Medical
College in his Who's Who listing in the 1936 edition; he had listed it
in the 1922 edition as receiving it in 1892. Here again, no one later
raised the question of his educational record, which showed that he
only began his medical education in Dublin after he had come to the
United States.

"Doc" Simmons' advertisements in Lincoln employed a standard phraseology
of the time, "A limited number of lady patients can be accommodated at
my residence.'' This was a coded notification that he was engaged in
the practice of abortion. He also operated a beauty and massage
parlor on the premises, as part of a "Lincoln Institute" of which he
was apparently the only official. His advertisements also identified
him as a "homeopathic physician," although he would soon embark
on a career with the AMA to destroy the profession of homeopathy
in the United States. His advertisements announced that he "treats
all medical and surgical diseases of women."

QUACK ADVERTISEMENT OF THE ORGANIZER AND BOSS OF THE
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION IN FORMAT USED BY
ABORTIONISTS

The lines, "A limited number of lady patients can be accommodated at my
residence," was the form regularly used by abortionists in their advertising in 
those days. The London and Vienna hospital experienced the Irish license is 
fictitious. This advertisement appeared at a later date than that
Lincoln Institute, but years before "Doc" Simmons had obtained
his diploma mill degree.

Having learned about the American Medical Association,
Simmons, always in search of more status, formed a Nebraska
chapter, the Nebraska Medical Association. His talents as an
organizer came to the attention of the Chicago headquarters, and he
was summoned to take over the editorship of the Journal of the
AMA. Thus "Doc" Simmons came to the AMA, not as a physician,
but as a journalist. He found that the AMA was drifting along, with
no one capable of implementing a national policy. The situation was
made to order for a man of his capacities and drive. He soon named
himself as secretary and general manager of the American Medical
Association, launching the organization on its dictatorial and 
self-aggrandizing policies which it has maintained to the present day.

All moneys accruing to the AMA passed through Simmons' hands, and
he personally supervised every detail of the operations. He soon
found an able and willing lieutenant in a man who had formerly
served as a Secretary of the Kentucky State Board of Health. He
seems to have been a man after Simmons' own heart, for he had
been arrested after examiners found a shortage of some $62,000 in
his accounts. As a member in good standing of the state
bureaucracy, he managed to obtain an official pardon from the
Governor of Kentucky, with the gentle admonition that it might be
best for him to settle elsewhere. Chicago was only a short train ride
away, where he found that Simmons was overwhelmed by his
credentials. This gentleman, Dr. E. E. Hyde, died in 1912 from
leukemia. This proved to be a fortuitous circumstance for another
journalist waiting in the wings, Dr. Morris Fishbein. Fishbein had
apparently completed his studies at Rush Medical College, but he
had not yet been awarded his diploma. In any case, he did not want
to become a doctor. He had desultorily served as an intern at Durand
Hospital for a few months, but he was unwilling to comply with the
then regulations requiring a two year internship in an accredited
hospital.

He was seriously considering a career as a circus acrobat,
and had been working part time as an extra in an opera company. He
had also learned of a possible opening at the AMA, and had been
doing some part time writing there during Dr. Hyde's terminal
illness. Simmons had also found Fishbein to be a man after his own
heart. When Dr. Hyde died. Simmons at once offered the youth a
very handsome starting salary of $100 a month, a high figure for
1913. Fishbein found a home at the AMA; he did not leave until
1949, when he was literally kicked out.

With the advent of Fishbein, the American Medical Association
was now firmly in the hands of the nation's two most aggressive
quacks, Simmons, who had practiced medicine for years,
unembarrassed by the fact that he had no medical degree which
would hold up under the light of day, and Morris Fishbein, who
admitted under oath in 1938 that he had never practiced medicine a
day in his life. Because "Doc'' Simmons, as he was genially known,
had never shown any motivation in his career except greed, he soon
realized that the enormous power of which the AMA was capable
had in effect launched him into a gold mine. He was not slow to
request certain considerations in return for the favor or the goodwill
of the AMA. First and foremost was its "Seal of Approval" for new
products.

Since the AMA early on had virtually no laboratory,
testing equipment or research staff, the Seal of Approval was
obtained by "green research," that is, the laborious determination of
how much the supplicant could afford to pay, and how much it
might be worth to him. At first, some pharmaceutical manufacturers
resented this arrangement, and refused to pay. The leader of this
opposition was one Dr. Wallace C. Abbott, who had founded Abbott
Laboratories in 1900. Simmons met him head on by refusing to
approve a single product of Abbott Laboratories, no matter how
many were submitted. This standoff continued for some time, until
one morning, "Doc" Simmons was visibly shaken to see Dr. Abbott
towering over him in his office.

"Well, sir," he stammered, "and just what can I do for you?"

"I just came down to hear from you personally" Dr. Abbott
replied, "why not one of my products has ever been approved by the
AMA."

"That's not really my department, sir," "Doc" Simmons replied,
"I'll be glad to check with our research department and find out what
the problem is."

"Is there any way I could speed up your inquiry?" asked Dr.
Abbott.

Simmons was overjoyed. At last the stubborn chemist was
beginning to see things his way. "I'll be glad to do whatever I can,"
he said.

"There is something you can do," said Dr. Abbott, "if you
would be so good as to look over these documents, it might help you
to make up your mind."

He spread a number of papers out on "Doc" Simmons' desk.
Simmons immediately realized that he was looking at a complete
record of his career, carefully garnered by private detectives who
had been hired by Dr. Abbott. There were the full details of the so-called
"diplomas'; records of sex charges brought against Simmons
by former patients in Lincoln, and other titillating items, such as
charges of medical negligence resulting in the deaths of patients. He
knew that he was trapped.

"All right," said Simmons, "just what is it you want?"

"All I want is to have the AMA grant approval of my products,"
said Dr. Abbott. "Do you think that is possible, now?"

"You've got it," said Simmons. From that day, the products
from Abbott's firm, which was still called Abbott Biologicals at that
time, were rushed through the AMA process and marked
"Approved." Dr. Abbott never paid one cent for this special
treatment.

Through the years, various versions of the Abbott-Simmons
conflict were repeated. A whitewashed version appears in Tom
Mahoney's "Merchants of Life," which claims that Simmons
objected to Dr. Abbott's "commercialization" of the medical
profession, and wished to teach him a lesson. The Council on
Pharmacy and Chemistry not only refused to approve any of
Abbott's drugs, but also turned down his requests to advertise in the
journal of the American Medical Association, and later refused to
print his letters of protest. Simmons then launched personal attacks
on Dr. Abbott in the Journal in the issues of December 1907 and
March 1908. Simmons' pious claim that he did not wish to see Dr.
Abbott commercializing the medical profession rings hollow;
Abbott was manufacturing pharmaceutical products for sale. The
rub was that he refused to pay the usual shakedown to Simmons.
After the imbroglio was settled, S. DeWitt Clough, Abbott's
advertising manager, became a bridge playing crony of Morris
Fishbein.

A spirited critic of the AMA during its Simmons-Fishbein
period, Dr. Emanuel Josephson of New York, wrote, "The methods
which Simmons and his crew used in their battle for a monopoly of
medical publications and of advertisements to the profession were
often crude and illegitimate . . . The AMA has openly threatened
firms that advertise in media other than their own journals with
withdrawal of 'acceptance' of their products." Dr. Josephson
described Simmons' practices as "conspiracy in restraint of trade,
and extortion." He further charged, again correctly, that "almost
every branch of the Federal Government active in the field of
medicine was completely dominated by the Association."

This was borne out by the present writer, who cites many instances later
of government agencies actively implementing the most horrendous
cases of racketeering by the Drug Trust. So exhaustive were the
controls set in place by Simmons that the President of the AMA, Dr.
Nathan B. van Etten, later filed a sworn affidavit in the New York
District Court that he, as President of the American Medical
Association, had no authority to accept any moneys or enter into any
contracts. All such deals were the province of the Chicago
headquarters staff. It was later noted that AMA "focuses on
protecting physicians' incomes against government intrusion in the
practice of medicine." This was a case of having their cake and
eating it too. While steadfastly opposing any government
supervision of the Medical Monopoly, the monopolists frequently
forced various government agencies to act against anyone who
posed a threat to their monopoly, having them arrested, prosecuted,
and sent to prison.

"Doc" Simmons' lucrative dominance of the American Medical
Association led him into numerous sidelines. In 1921, he established
the Institute of Medicine in Chicago. This apparently was nothing
more than a holding company for his bribes. He had also been
enjoying the perquisites of the American success story, a buxom
mistress installed in a luxurious Gold Coast apartment. Scoundrel
that he was, Simmons was not content to flaunt this liason to his
wife; he also became increasingly cruel in his determination to get
rid of her. He then embarked on a classic ploy, the physician
attempting to dispose of an unwanted wife by plying her with
narcotics, trying to convince her that she is going insane, and
hopefully, driving her to suicide. After some months of this
treatment, his wife fought back by filing suit against him.

A highly publicized trial in 1924 ended in his wife's testimony that
he had given her heavy doses of narcotics, prescribed on the strength of
his "medical experience," and then began proceedings to have her
declared insane. This was not such an unusual procedure during that
period; it had happened to literally hundreds of wives. However, his
wife proved to be tougher than most victims. She testified in court
that he had tried to have her framed on a charge of insanity. This
trial inspired more than a dozen subsequent books, plays, and
movies based on the story of a physician who tries to drive his wife
insane through a campaign of ministration of drugs and
psychological terrorism. The most famous was "Gaslight," in which
Charles Boyer played the role of "Doc" Simmons to perfection, the
luckless wife being played by Ingrid Bergman.

The trial brought Simmons a torrent of unpleasant publicity,
and forced his retirement as head of the AMA. However, he retained
the title of "general editor emeritus," absenting himself in 1924 until
his death in 1937. Morris Fishbein, still operating under his lucky
star, was now moved into total dominance of the AMA. Between the
two of them, they controlled the AMA for more than a half century,
perfecting their techniques for using this organization to raise
money, exercise political clout, and maintain dominance over
physicians, hospitals, drug companies and concerned government
agencies. Simmons moved to Hollywood, Florida, where he lived
until 1937. His New York Times obituary was headlined "Noted for
War on Quacks.'' His longtime critic, Dr. Emanuel Josephson, noted
that this was an odd memorial for a man who had long been known
as "the Prince of Quacks."

Morris Fishbein also inherited Simmons' able assistant at the
AMA, Dr. Olin West (1874-1952). West had been state director in
Tennessee for the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission from 1910 to
1918. Thus he had the requisite credentials as a representative of the
Rockefeller connection at the AMA headquarters. Dr. Josephson
later termed Fishbein "the Hitler of the medical profession" and
West as "his Goering." Fishbein remained aware of the AMA's
ability to "use" government employees for AMA purposes. Of the
first fifteen members of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry,
three had been members of the federal government.

With the disappearance of Simmons, Fishbein now had a free
hand. From that day on, he made sure that when anyone mentioned
the AMA, they also paid tribute to Morris Fishbein. He used his
position there to launch a host of private enterprises, including book
publishing, lecturing, and writing feature newspaper columns. On a
very modest salary of $24,000 a year from the AMA, Fishbein
became the Playboy of the Western World. His children were
supervised by a French governess, while he commuted weekly to
New York to be seen at the Stork Club and to attend first nights at
the theatre. Fees, kickbacks, awards and other moneys poured into
his coffers in a veritable flood. During his twenty-five years of
power at the AMA, he never lost an opportunity to advertise and
enrich himself. Despite the fact that he had never practiced medicine
a day in his life, he persuaded King Features Syndicate to sign him
on as daily columnist writing a "medical" commentary which
appeared in over two hundred newspapers. A full page ad appeared
in Editor and Publisher to celebrate his new venture on March 23,
1940, stating "An authority of medicine, Dr. Fishbein's name is
synonymous with the 'sterling' stamp on a piece of silver." Whether
this was an oblique reference to Judas is not clear.

Fishbein garnered additional income by having himself named
medical adviser to Look Magazine, the second largest publication in
the United States. In 1935, he had ventured into what was probably
his greatest financial coup, the annual publication of a massive
volume, "the Modern Home Medical Adviser.'' The book was
written for him by doctors on consignment, but he wrote the lurid
advertising copy, "Endorsed by doctors everywhere. The Wealthiest
Millionaire Could Not Buy Better Health Guidance." Obviously, no
doctor anywhere dared to criticize the book.

Fishbein's steadily aggrandizing powers at the AMA were
veiled by the fact that he never had any title there except "editor."
He maintained absolute control over all the publications of the
AMA, and thus gained his total power over the organization. No one
who disagreed with him had any opportunity to voice any
discontent. He also maintained absolute control over the selection of
the personnel of the various committees of the AMA, so that no one
was ever in a position to attack him. The Committee on Food and
the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry were his particular
preserves, because of the great power they had over manufacturers
and advertisers. The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry had been
set up in 1905, at the same time that the Food and Drug Act had
been passed by congress; the two groups always worked together
very closely. As advertising revenues increased each year, Fishbein
steadfastly denied that any profits were being made by the AMA.
He was quoted in Review of Reviews, 1926, "Far from being the
'corporation not for profit' which the statutes list it, the American
Medical Association has been exceedingly profitable to the public,
both in dollars and in lives." Thus Fishbein adeptly turned aside
growing criticism of the income of the AMA by his claim that it was
profitable to the public at large.

Under Fishbein's editorship, the AMA health magazine,
Hygiea, carried the banner headline, "PURE FOODS, HONESTLY
ADVERTISED." "The Seal of Acceptance of the Committee on
Foods of the AMA is your best guarantee that the claims of quality
for any product are correct and that the advertising for it is truthful.
Look for this Seal on every food that you buy. White Star Tuna and
Chicken of the Sea brand Tuna have this acceptance." At the very
time that Fishbein was running these advertisements, the Food and
Drug Administration was repeatedly seizing shipments of these very
brands of tuna, condemning them because "they consisted in whole
or in part of decomposed animal substance." So much for the Seal of
Acceptance.

The AMA Committee on Foods always verged on the brink of
exposure or serious damage suits, because it had virtually no testing
apparatus. The June 24, 1931 issue of Business Week raised serious
questions about these operations, particularly the power of the AMA
to censor manufacturers' ad copy. Business Week asked "whether a
national body of professional men conducted presumably on the
highest ethical plane, is not continually exceeding the natural
boundaries of its actions when it attempts to assume police and
regulatory powers over the nation's largest industry." The editors of
Business Week were well aware that the staff at AMA did little
testing and were not qualified to render judgments on the
"acceptance" of products. The magazine story may have been
intended as a quiet warning to the AMA to cease and desist its
activities in this field. They reckoned without Fishbein's chutzpah.

The AMA Committee on Foods, under Fishbein's guidance,
continued its operations for another decade. In 1939, Fishbein
awarded the Seal of Acceptance to some 2,706 individual products,
which were produced by some 1,653 companies. Its chief rival in
this field, the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, had also come
under increasing fire for its aggressive tactics in seeking more
customers for its Seal. In May 1941, the Federal Trade Commission
issued "cease and desist" orders against the Good Housekeeping
Seal; Fishbein saw the handwriting on the wall, and shortly
afterwards, he discontinued the AMA Seal of Acceptance awards
for general purpose foods.

The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry was quite another
matter. This was the key to the big money. A drug company could
make one hundred million dollars on a new product, if it were to be
released under the proper auspices; the most vital, of course, was the
AMA Seal of Acceptance. The opportunities for large scale bribery,
conspiracy and corruption were too prevalent to be ignored. One
physician who was very conscious of this was Dr. Emanuel
Josephson of New York. Heir to a large fortune, Dr. Josephson
resided in a multi-million dollar townhouse in the city's most
expensive area, just around the corner from Nelson Rockefeller on
the fashionable Upper East Side. Josephson was unable to conceal
his contempt for Fishbein and his money-grubbing activities.

On January 2, 1932, he officially resigned from the AMA's New York
City Medical Society; the AMA chose to ignore his letter of
resignation until 1938, when Fishbein released a letter claiming that
the AMA "had severed connections with him." In 1939, Dr.
Josephson submitted the important record of his ground breaking
research to Science Magazine, "Vitamin E Therapy of Myasthenia
Gravis," which they refused to print. Dr. Josephson later pointed out
that the AMA had deliberately concealed the benefits of Vitamin E
therapy for more than twenty-five years. This was only one instance
of hundreds in which the AMA withheld life-saving information
from the public. The benefits of Vitamin E therapy are now
generally recognized by the medical profession.

The AMA technique for controlling all new products was
revealed by a United Press dispatch January 20, 1940, that the AMA
had a well-defined newspaper policy "never to call anything a cure,
or in fact give publicity to any remedy of any description, without a
thorough investigation." The organization usually recommended
that any report of a remedy should be referred to the New York
branch of the AMA for investigation. As Dr. Josephson testified, he
had tried for years to get the New York chapter of the AMA to
investigate his findings, but they always refused.

The AMA Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry had effectively
solidified its control by amending the official AMA Code of Ethics
to prohibit individual physicians from giving any testimonials in
favor of any drug; this amendment protected the valuable monopoly
of AMA headquarters in Chicago. A distinguished scientist and
teacher, Dr. Frank G. Lydston, published a booklet, "Why the AMA
is Going Backward," in which he stated, "The achievement of what
the oligarchy of the AMA has boasted most vociferously has been
its belated war on proprietaries, quack medical manufacturers and
unproved products. When I recall the nauseous array of proprietary
fakes on the advertisements on which the oligarchy built its
financial prosperity, its 'holier than thou' pose is sickening. It was
fitting to its psychic constitution that after the AMA has for years
done its level best to promulgate the interests, and to fatten upon,
fake manufacturers and professional poisoners of the innocent, it
should bite the hand that fed it. Despotic powers such as the
oligarchy wields over the food and drug manufacturers is dangerous,
and human nature being what it is, that power might be expected to
sooner or later to be abused."

Dr. Josephson also observed that "The history of the AMA's
Seal of Acceptance is replete with betrayals of professional and
public trust. Drug products of the highest value have been rejected
or their acceptance unwarrantedly delayed. Worthless, dangerous or
deadly food and drugs have been hastily accepted."

On April 20, 1936, Time magazine reported that the American
Medical Association was then worth $3,800,000, of which two
million was in government bonds, one million in cash, with an
$800,000 headquarters building in Chicago. Time also mentioned
another little known aspect of the AMA medical monopoly, "Shoes
designed to correct foot trouble must be approved by AMA before a
conscientious physician may prescribe them.'' Just how the AMA
had set up this shoe monopoly was not clear.

On July 7, 1961, Time reported that the AMA Journal now had
a circulation of 180,000, with income of 16 million dollars a year,
"the bulk from ads in its publications mainly by drug and appliance
makers." The AMA Constitution states that it was organized "to
promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public
health." Yet the history of the AMA was replete with events which
contradicted this goal. Literary Digest reported on June 11, 1927,
the AMA had adopted a resolution that alcohol had no scientific
place in medicine. In all fairness, it should be reported that the 1917
resolution had probably been passed at the behest of the Rockefeller
interests, which, for their own hidden purposes, were strongly
supporting passage of prohibition at that time.

On February 9, 1977, the Federal Trade Commission issued an
order against the AMA because it had barred certain drug
advertisements. Throughout the 25-year reign of Morris Fishbein at
the AMA, the organization repeatedly made bewildering about face
recommendations on certain products, the reason for such reversals
being known only by Fishbein himself. The situation also offered
impressive profits to be made by investing in the stock of a certain
drug firm just before it received the coveted AMA Seal of
Acceptance for a new product. After such an announcement, it was
not unusual for the stock of the drug firm to double in price. Only
Dr. Fishbein knew when such an approval would be released.

One of the more reprehensible decisions made by Dr. Fishbein
during his long reign at the AMA was his move to hush up a
dangerous outbreak of amoebic dysentery in Chicago at the height
of the World's Fair observance in 1933. Although the cause of the
outbreak was traced to faulty plumbing at the Congress Hotel,
Fishbein met with a group of Chicago business leaders and pledged
the cooperation of the AMA in holding back any warnings until the
Fair had ended its season. Hundreds of unsuspecting tourists who
visited the World's Fair returned to their home towns infected with
the terrible illness, which often lingers for years, and is very difficult
to treat or to cure.

The list of dangerous drugs approved by Fishbein during his
tenure as public spokesman for the AMA is lengthy and terrifying.
Fishbein hastened to approve the notorious diet drug, dinetrophenol,
despite laboratory records that it was dangerous to health. Another
drug, tryparsamide, manufactured by Merck under license from the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, was a dangerous
arsenical drug. Used to counter the effects of syphilis, it was
abandoned by its discoverer, Paul Ehrlich, when he found that it
caused blindness by atrophying the optic nerve. Ehrlich's warnings
did not prevent the AMA, Merck or the Rockefeller Institute from
continuing to distribute this drug.

In the issue of June 21, 1937, Morris Fishbein had a cover
portrait on Time magazine. It was an unusually unflattering
photograph, in which Fishbein looked as though he needed a doctor.
Time had published a story earlier that year that Fishbein was
suffering from Bell's Palsy. The right side of his face hung slack,
and he was obviously in very poor condition.

One of Fishbein's most dangerous errors was his approval of
sulfathiazole in 1941. On January 25, 1941, Fishbein announced that
Winthrop Drug Company's sulfathiazole "has been accepted by the
Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry for inclusion in its official
volume of new and non-official remedies." Winthrop was a
subsidiary of the international drug cartel, I. G. Farben.
Sulfathiazole was also approved by Dr. J. J. Durrett, the FDA
official in charge of new drugs. Durrett was a Rockefeller-approved
appointee to this vital position. By December 1940, 400,000 tablets
had been sold, which contained as much as 5 grains each of
Luminal. The safe dosage was 1 grain of Luminal. Many persons
who took the Winthrop dosage never woke up.

In 1937, the AMA approved an extremely poisonous
preparation of sulfanilamide in a solution of diethylene glucol; this
mixture caused a number of fatalities. It caused white blood cell
loss, even though it was advertised that it would "help" heart
disease. Long after Fishbein's departure, the AMA continued to
endorse potentially dangerous products. The Winter issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association featured
advertisements for Suprol in 200 mg capsules (suprofen), an
analgesic which had been approved by the FDA in December of
1985. It was produced by McNeil, a subsidiary of Johnson and
Johnson. By February 13, 1986, the firm had received the first
reports of acute kidney damage, yet on December 2nd the FDA
Arthritis Advisory Board recommended that Suprol remain on sale
as an "alternative analgesic." It had already been banned in
Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Great Britain; McNeil
suspended its production here on May 15.

One of the more reprehensible episodes in Fishbein's long
career was his denial of the Seal of Acceptance of the AMA to
sulfanilamide, although it had been saving lives in Europe for
several years. Because its producers had failed to negotiate a
satisfactory deal with Fishbein, numerous persons in the United
States continued to die of septicemia, or blood poisoning. The dam
finally broke when a member of the Roosevelt family, in dire need
of immediate treatment with sulfanilimide, had his physician obtain
a special supply. Shortly thereafter the AMA Council was forced to
"accept" it. In 1935 and 1936, the Council accepted and advertised
in the Journal a heart stimulant, Digitol, at the very time that
government agencies were seizing and condemning interstate
shipments of this drug as a substance dangerous to life. Another
product, Ergot Aseptic, was accepted by the Council, and
advertisements for this product prominently featured in the Journal,
at the same time that government agencies were seizing and
condemning its shipments because of adulterants and misbranding.

Under the leadership of the nation's two most notorious quacks,
Simmons and Fishbein, a gigantic nationwide drug operation was
perfected which today poses a serious threat to the health of every
American citizen. The fixed prices of these drugs has been a
contributing factor to the meteoric rise in the cost of health care. In
1976, the national bill was 95 billion dollars, which was 8.4% of the
Gross National Product, a figure which had risen from 4.5% in
1962. From 1955-1975, the price index rose 74%, while the cost of
medical care rose 300%. Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn, an independent
health practitioner, estimates that 30% of X-rays taken in the United
States, some 300 million a year, are ordered when there is no valid
medical need.

A federal expert reports that if we would reduce the
unnecessary X-rays by one/third, we could save the lives of one
thousand cancer patients each year. Yet the responsible
organization, the American Cancer Society, has consistently ignored
this problem. The genetic effect of X-rays on the population in a
single year has been predicted to cause as many as thirty thousand
deaths per year in future years. In 1976, doctors wrote one billion
doses for sleeping pills, some twenty-seven million prescriptions
which resulted in twenty-five thousand trips to emergency rooms for
adverse drug reactions, and some fifteen hundred emergency room
deaths from tranquilizers. Ninety per cent of these victims are
women. By 1978, five billion tranquilizer pills were being
prescribed; the most notorious of these, Valium, produces five
hundred million dollars per year income for Hoffman LaRoche Co.;
it is the epitome of the mythical "soma" described by Aldous
Huxley in his "Brave New World," "the perfect drug, narcotic,
pleasantly hallucinant."

An English study showed that aspirin caused fetal defects,
deaths, birth defects, and bleeding in newborn babies. Recently, a
nationwide campaign was launched proclaiming that new studies
"showed" that an aspirin a day would prevent heart attack in men.
An appended afterthought suggested that it might be wise to check
with a personal physician before embarking on this regimen, but
how many thousands of men will at once begin to take a daily
aspirin, hoping to postpone a dreaded heart attack, and unaware that
they may be suffering from another result of the ingestion of aspirin,
internal bleeding? It is this property of thinning the blood which
caused it to be recommended as a preventive for heart attack.
Aspirin is also of doubtful value when taken to reduce fever; by
reducing fever in some instances, notably during the onset of
pneumonia, it disguises the symptoms of pneumonia so that the
physician is unable to make this diagnosis. It usually takes twenty
minutes to dissolve in the stomach, and then only if it is taken with a
full glass, eight ounces, of water. Few people know that if aspirin is
taken with orange juice, its efficacy is greatly diminished, because it
may not dissolve.

In September of 1980, the Food and Drug Administration
announced that it would remove from the market more than three
thousand drugs whose effectiveness had not been proven. During
the previous year, Americans had spent more than one billion
dollars on these same "unproven" drugs, many of which had been
"accepted'' by the AMA. In 1962, Congress had passed amendments
to the Food and Drug Act which implemented drug effectiveness
requirements by 1964. The drug manufacturers resisted all attempts
to force them to comply with these amendments, forcing the FDA to
remove them from the market some sixteen years later. The average
life of an effective drug is about fifteen years; this meant that the
delaying tactics of the drug manufacturers had allowed them to milk
these unproven drugs for their entire effective market life!

We now come to the most amazing record of criminal
syndicalism in our history. After Congress had passed stringent
requirements in 1962 to force the drug manufacturers to prove that
their drugs were effective (a requirement which in many cases was
impossible to observe, since they were worthless), the drug
manufacturers were advised by their cohorts in the AMA and the
advertising industry that it would be wise to start a brushfire, a
diversionary tactic which would draw attention from the fact that
they had failed to comply with the new Congressional requirements.

This diversionary tactic was to be called "the War Against
Quackery." A few months after the new regulations went into effect,
the AMA Board of Trustees met to create a new committee, the
Committee on Quackery, which was formally incorporated on
November 2, 1963. It was originally intended to destroy the entire
profession of chiropractic in the United States, the nation's second
largest health care group. It soon branched out in search of further
victims, as the "Coordinating Conference on Health Information."
This subsidiary was the brainchild of a New York letterhead outfit
called the Pharmaceutical Advertising Council, which in turn was
merely a space on the desk of the President of Grey Medical
Advertising Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the prestigious
Grey Advertising Company in New York.

Although it was ostensibly merely an advisory group, the
Coordinating Conference on Health Information soon launched an
all-out war on independent health practitioners all over the United
States. Its victims were usually selected by the nonprofit AMA,
aided by the charitable foundations, the American Cancer Society
and the Arthritis Foundation, both of which had been smarting under
accusations that they were killing patients while independent health
advisors were saving them. The criminal syndicalists were able to
enlist the full police powers of the federal government, through
contacts in the Federal Trade Commission, the Post Office
Department, the Food and Drug Administration, and the United
States Public Health Service. These federal agents were solicited by
the charitable foundations to initiate police actions against hundreds
of unsuspecting health practitioners throughout the United States.

It was one of the most massive, well planned and ruthless operations
in which the federal agents ever engaged. In many cases, .people
were arrested for selling or sometimes giving away booklets which
advised such innocuous health practices as taking vitamins! These
distributors now found themselves under restraining orders from the
Post Office, the Department of Justice, and the Food and Drug
Administration. Others, who were distributing various salves,
nostrums and other preparations, most of them based on herbal
formulae, received heavy fines and prison sentences.

In every case, all of the stocks of these practitioners, many of whom
 were elderly and impoverished, were seized and destroyed as "dangerous
substances." It was never alleged that a single person had ever been
injured, much less killed, by any of these preparations. At the same
time, the drug manufacturers were continuing to sell drugs which
produced extensive side effects such as kidney damage, liver
damage and death. Not one of them was ever enjoined from
distributing these products on the terms used against the
independent health practitioners. In most cases, when these
dangerous drugs were banned in the United States, the
manufacturers shipped them overseas to countries in Latin America
and Asia, where they continue to be sold to this day. The stock of
Syntex Corporation rose from a few dollars to a high of $400 a share
when it started dumping steroids in foreign markets.

Many of the attacks were focused against the distributors of an
anti-cancer preparation called laetrile, a fruit product. Extremely
sensitive to any rival of their very profitable chemotherapy drugs,
the cancer profiteers ordered the federal agents to carry out terror
raids against their competitors. Often striking at night, in groups of
heavily armed SWAT teams, the federal agents broke down doors to
capture elderly women and their stocks of herbal teas. Many of
these housewives and retired persons carried small amounts of
vitamins and health preparations which they furnished to neighbors
or friends at cost. They had no funds to fight the massed agencies of
the federal government, who themselves were merely patsies for the
Drug Trust. In many cases, the victims lost their homes, their life
savings and all other attachable assets, because they had posed a
threat to the Medical Monopoly. It was the most blatant use of the
police powers by the Big Rich to protect their profitable enterprises.
To this day, most of these victims have no idea that they were
knocked off by the Rockefeller Monopoly.

Sidney W. Bishop, deputy postmaster general, boasted at the
Second National Congress on Medical Quackery in 1963, "I am
particularly proud of the excellent arrangements existing between
the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission
and the Post Office department to maintain coordination in the
exchange of information leading to the establishment of criminal
prosecution," a laudatory reference to the success of the "war
against quackery." It was later revealed that the Coordinating
Conference on Health Information had been entirely financed by the
leading drug companies of the Medical Monopoly, Lederle,
Hoffman LaRoche and others. From 1964 to 1974, their search and
destroy campaign was carried on as a total war by federal agents
against anyone who had ever offered any type of health food or
health advice. The goal of course, was the elimination of all
competition to the major drug companies.

In 1967, the AMA received 43% of its total income, $13.6
million, from its drug advertisements. It then issued a letter of
agreement jointly with the Food and Drug Administration
publicizing a campaign to "enhance public awareness of health
fraud devices and products by identifying them as ineffective and
potential health hazards." These were the same persons who had
been unable to persuade the drug companies to comply with federal
requirements that they prove the effectiveness of their drug
products! The hazards, as we have stated, lay more with the Drug
Trust than from the elderly ladies in California who were advising
people to eat more garlic and lettuce if they wished to stay healthy.
The death tolls were from "approved" drugs, not from the
preparations distributed by the holistic health advocates.

The AMA then sponsored a National Health Fraud Conference,
whose principle spokesman was Congressman Claude Pepper. This
was an ironic turn of events, because a few years earlier, the then
Senator Claude Pepper, one of the most powerful political figures in
Washington, had aroused the ire of the AMA because he planned to
support socialized medicine in the United States. A longtime
spokesman for leftwing interests, who was known as "Red" Pepper
because of his political sympathies, Pepper had found himself
attacked by the big guns and money of the AMA. They found a
candidate to oppose him in Nixon's friend, George Smathers, and
Pepper was defeated in Florida. Coming back as a Congressman,
Pepper now licked the boots of those who had ousted him. He
endorsed their police state methods against anyone who dared to
challenge the power of the Medical Monopoly.

Having proved his loyalty to the Rockefeller power, Pepper
was allowed to stage another health conference in 1984. It was
denounced by informed observers as a typical "Moscow show trial.''
The new Pepper sideshow was called the Congressional Hearings on
Quackery. Pepper claimed that "health fraud" was a ten billion
dollar a year scandal, an impressive figure for what was essentially a
small cottage industry. He summoned a longtime apologist for the
Medical Monopoly, Dr. Victor Herbert, a physician at the Bronx
Veterans Administration Hospital. Herbert demanded that the
Justice Department use the RICO (Racketeer Inspired Criminal
Organization) strike force against "medical charlatans" and "health
frauds" by using the same techniques which had been employed
against organized crime. RICO allows the government to confiscate
all assets of those who are convicted "as a result of a proved
conspiracy." In December of 1987, this same Dr. Victor Herbert
surfaced again, filing a 70 page complaint in the U.S. District Court
in Iowa. He charged that the officials of the National Health
Federation, a rival to the AMA, and other alternative health care
practitioners had libeled him. Kirkpatrick Dilling, the attorney for
the defendants, termed the suit a flagrant attempt to destroy freedom
of choice in health care in the United States. Dilling pointed out that
Herbert was backed by a shadow group called the American Council
for Science and Health, a front for major food manufacturing
companies.

Dr. Herbert was joined at the Pepper Hearings by a longtime
agent of the Medical Monopoly, Mrs. Anna Rosenberg. She voiced
her outrage that there should still be any competition in the United
States for the Drug Trust. A longtime vassal of the Rockefeller
family, she had served as director of the American Cancer Society
during its valiant struggle to restrict all treatment to the orthodox
and highly profitable "cut, slash and burn" techniques, which,
unfortunately for the patients, usually proved to be fatal. Anna
Rosenberg had been married to Julius Rosenberg. She earned five
thousand dollars a week as "labor relations specialist'' to keep
unions out of Rockefeller Center and to keep its underpaid minions
on the job.

The Coordinating Conference on Health Information ran amuck
for some ten years, sending hundreds of victims to prison on what
were in most instances flimsy or trumped up charges. The desired
effect, to terrorize everyone who had become active in the
alternative health care field, was achieved. Most health practitioners
went underground, or closed up their businesses; others left the
country. An inevitable reaction against these terrorists operations set
in; by 1974, there were public demands for a Congressional
investigation of the SWAT tactics used by the Post Office and the
U.S. Public Health Service against elderly housewives. Such an
investigation would inevitably have revealed that these
conscientious and dedicated public servants were actually faceless
tools of the sinister behind the scenes figures who manipulated the
government of the United States for their own power and profit.

Needless to say, no such Congressional investigation was ever held.
Instead, the CCHI suddenly went underground. They were immune
from countersuits by their victims, because all actions had been
taken against the victims by federal agents. They were not immune,
according to the statutes, but the chances of recovering against them
in any federal court was remote. (The present writer has on
numerous occasions sought redress against federal agents in federal
courts, only to have a polite federal judge rule against him in every
instance.)

After the Coordinating Conference on Health Information went
underground, health practitioners in the State of California suddenly
found themselves under more concerted attack than ever before. The
activist now was the California State Board of Health. It was then
found that the stealthy minions of CCHI, still doing the work of the
Medical Monopoly, had merely abandoned their national operations
for fear of exposure, but had now nested in the California State
Board of Health like a group of diseased rats hiding from inevitable
retribution. The CCHI has remained imbedded in the California
State Board of Health ever since, carrying on a steady warfare
against health practitioners in that state. The drug cartel continued to
operate unmolested.

This war against American citizens fulfills every requirement
for prosecution under the statutes forbidding criminal syndicalism in
the United States. It is a classic case of a supposedly nonprofit
organization, the American Medical Association, conspiring with
certain charitable foundations, notably the American Cancer Society
and the Arthritis Foundation, to enlist public agencies to start a war
to benefit the national Drug Trust, while denying American citizens
the benefits of reasonably priced and effective health care. Not only
were there repeated violations of the constitutional rights of citizens
who were active in the health care movement, often from a sense of
public service rather than from a desire for profit, while the
evidence of an active conspiracy (RICO) to subvert official
government agencies for the profit of private multinational drug
firms is too abundant to ignore. Those who have been victimized by
the CCHI conspiracy can also bring actions against Lederle,
Hoffman laRoche and the other drug firms who hired these people
to do their dirty work. The trail of liability is plain; it will be simple
to establish it in court.

Meanwhile, the effect of the CCHI depredations has been
devastating. Millions of Americans, particularly the elderly and the
poor, have been forcibly deprived of reasonably priced health care
because of this conspiracy. These victims have been forced to do
without their modestly priced health advisors, and thrown onto the
care of the high-priced physicians from the AMA, who place them
on expensive drugs produced by the Rockefeller drug monopoly.
The fact that many of these drugs are overpriced, ineffective, and
potentially dangerous has been routinely covered up by the federal
agencies responsible for protecting the public, particularly the Food
and Drug Administration. It is notable that the drug cartels have
never been investigated by any government agency under the
pertinent provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, because these
cartels are the property of the international financial monopolists.
This proves what many observers have charged for years, that the
government regulations purportedly enacted by Congress to protect
the public have, in reality, served only to protect the monopolists.
By 1986, this Medical Monopoly had reached a yearly take of
$355.4 billion a year, eleven per cent of the Gross National Product
of the United States. The Medical Monopoly has long had its critics
among conscientious members of the medical profession. In
December 1922, the Illinois Medical Journal featured an article
which declared that "The American Medical Association has
become an autocracy." This was during the heyday of Dr. Simmons'
rule in Chicago. The article denounced the dictatorial assumption of
power over the entire medical profession. Although it had first
organized in 1847, the AMA had not formally incorporated until
1897, when it paid a three dollar fee to the Secretary of the State of
Illinois. Within two years after its incorporation, "Doc" Simmons
had arrived on the scene to begin his twenty-five year power grab.
He soon realized that the medical schools control the hospitals; the
medical examination boards control the medical schools, and so he
expanded the power of the AMA until he had total control over the
medical examination boards.

The records show that coincidentally with the growing power
of the AMA, there came a corresponding decline in the quality of
medical care and the personal responsibility of the physicians to
their patients. The AMA enacted a stern Code of Ethics, which serve
to form a phalanx of protection for any physician who faced
criticism for his errors, such errors, in many cases, resulted in the
crippling or deaths of his patients. This same ' 'code" usually
prevents any physician, nurse or other hospital employee from
testifying in court about the errors committed by a physician.
One noted physician, Dr. Norman Barnesby, who had long
been a prominent member of the U.S. Army Medical Staff and the
U.S. Public Health Service, said, "Chaos and crime is inevitable so
long as doctors abide by the AMA's code of ethics, the code of
silence. (This is akin to the notorious Omerta, the code of silence of
the Mafia, which invokes the death penalty to any member who
reveals the secrets of the Cosa Nostra. The Medical Gnostics, the
AMA, has set up its own Cosa Nostra, which passes a sentence of
professional death against any physician who reveals any medical
omissions or crimes, the result being ostracism from the profession,
denial of hospital privileges, and other drastic forms of punishment.

The ethics to which doctors subscribe smells to high
heavens. It is a disgrace to any vaunting civilization. 'A peculiar
reserve must be maintained by physicians toward the public in
regard to professional questions and as there exist many points in
medical ethics and etiquette through which the feelings of
physicians may be painfully assaulted in their intercourse, and
which cannot be understood or appreciated by general society,
neither the subject matter of their differences nor the adjudication of
their arbitration should be made public."

The last part of this paragraph is Dr. Barnesby's direct quote
from the AMA Code of Ethics. Note the arrogance of the AMA in
claiming that "medical ethics and etiquette" cannot be understood by
general society. Dr. Barnesby continues, "I am convinced that the
remedy lies in a full abolition of all codes and practices inimical to
society, and a complete reorganization of the system on the lines of
legal supervision or other responsible control." Dr. Barnesby's
recommendations were ignored by the Medical Monopoly.

An AP dispatch of February 11, 1988 noted that "5% of
Doctors Lie About Credentials" a headline of facts discovered by a
large health care corporation, Humana, Inc., found that 39 of 727
doctors who applied to work in their clinics during a six-month
period, that is 5%, presented false credentials. Even worse, many
doctors, convicted of drug or sex charges in one state, simply move
to another state and set up practice, protected by the Medical
Monopoly. There have been horrendous stories in recent years about
habitual sex offenders, convicted in one state, who go to another
state and through their professional practice, began their career of
violating children once more.

A gifted physician, Dr. Ernest Codman, of a distinguished New
England family, addressed the annual AMA convention on March 2,
1924 as follows:
"I have notes on four hundred registered cases of
supposed bone sarcoma. All of these four hundred
registered cases, with few exceptions, are records of error
and failure; I have many of the foremost surgeons and
pathologists in the country convicted in their own
handwriting of gross errors in these cases. Legs have been
amputated when they should not have been, and left on
when they should have been amputated."

Dr. Codman's speech left his audience dumbfounded. None of
them challenged his statements, but his speech was deliberately
hushed up by AMA officials. He wryly records that never again
during his distinguished professional career was he asked to address
any AMA meeting.

From time to time, other dissidents have appeared at AMA
meetings, to engage in a brief skirmish as they voiced their
objections, and then disappear, forgotten in the all consuming war to
maintain the Medical Monopoly. Time magazine gave a brief
summary of one such episode on June 6, 1970, with the headline,
"Schizophrenic AMA." The story noted that some thirty to forty
dissidents, young idealistic doctors, had rushed the podium and
taken over the AMA annual meeting for a few anxious moments.
Their leader denounced the AMA from the lectern in vigorous
terms, "The A.M.A. does not stand for the American Medical
Association—it stands for the American Murder Association!"
Armed guards turned back members of other groups which sought
to voice their dissatisfaction. The young intern vacated the platform,
and presumably is chief of surgery at some hospital today, having
learned that you can't fight the system.

Another dissident, Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn, noted that in
1975, 787,000 women had hysterectomies, and that 1,700 of them
died as a result of this surgery. He believes that half of these women
could have been saved, as their surgery was needless. The
Washington Post noted on January 21, 1988 that "Most heart
pacemakers may be unneeded; more than half are not clearly
beneficial." The story noted that one American in 500 now has a
pacemaker. This business is only twenty years old, but there are now
120,000 implants each year, a business taking in one and a half
billion dollars a year. Greenspan complained that "many internists
are ordering them without consulting a heart specialist."
Dr. Mendelsohn has also complained that terramycin was an
ineffective antibiotic, its major result being that it left children with
yellow-greenish teeth and tetracyclin deposits in their bones. He
quotes the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program, which
found that the risk of being killed by drug therapy in an American
hospital was one in a thousand, and that 30,000 Americans died
each year from adverse reactions to drugs prescribed for them by
their doctors. Mendelsohn minces no words in his opinion of
modern medicine. He calls it the Church of Death, whose Four Holy
Waters are 1) immunizations; 2) fluoridated water; 3) intravenous
fluids; and 4) silver nitrate. Mendelsohn dismisses all four as being
"of questionable safety."

By the early 1940s, ranking members of the AMA had come to
the conclusion that much of their problems with their membership
lay with the abrasive Morris Fishbein. Most doctors were
ultraconservative in their thinking, and they found Fishbein's antics
repulsive. Nevertheless, he had spun his web at the AMA so fine
that it involved everyone in the headquarters. His power was built
on censorship, intimidation, and exercise of his powers to the limit.
It took his rivals almost a decade to get rid of him.

Their opportunity came when Fishbein's able lieutenant, Dr. Olin West,
 became ill, and was no longer able to maintain iron control of the AMA
headquarters for the Fishbein regime. Apparently ignorant of the
cabal against him, Fishbein continued his merry life of travel and
recreation, continuing to garner many awards and prizes for his
medical public relations work. He had been named an Officer of the
Cross in the exclusive order of Orange-Nassau, a very secretive
organization which commemorated the invasion and takeover of
England by William of Orange, and the subsequent establishment of
the Bank of England. Fishbein made frequent trips to England,
where he was wined and dined by prominent members of the
Establishment; they must have believed he could be of use to them.

However, none of these honors proved to be of avail when the
man who was described by Newsweek as "the man with one hundred
enemies" (surely the understatement of the year), was thrown out
even more unceremoniously than his predecessor, the unsavory
quack, "Doc" Simmons. Despite repeated public criticisms of his
junkets and abuse of his expense accounts, Fishbein confidently
announced at a luncheon on June 4, 1949 that he would be around
for at least five more years. He counted heavily on the traditional
schism between two groups at the AMA, the liberals and the
conservatives, whom Fishbein declared would never be able to
agree on anything. He was wrong, because they did agree that he
should be kicked out. United by their common hatred of Morris
Fishbein, they formed their conspiracy to assassinate their Caesar. In
describing this episode, Martin Mayer notes that since 1944, a
sizeable faction at the AMA had been resolved to get Fishbein out at
any cost.

He had been exposed on a national radio program, Town Meeting of
the Air, in early 1949, as a habitual liar. He claimed that
he had been touring England, visiting the offices of general
practitioners every day. The radio program revealed that he had
actually been attending the Olympics, that he had dined with several
members of the British aristocracy and attended a number of plays
in London, and then had travelled to Paris for a round of the night
clubs, all in the name of promoting medicine. The program, aired on
February 22, 1949 by Nelson Cruikshank, demolished Fishbein's
reputation, noting that Fishbein had not gone near any doctor's
office in England during his stay. As for Fishbein's report about his
trip, Cruikshank branded it a lie, calling it "a libel on a profession
which is proud of its tradition of service to its patients. Fishbein's
life was described as "a constant round of visits to New York plays,
the Stork Club, and night clubs in London and Paris."

As a result of this publicity, the AMA at its 1949 convention
passed a unanimous resolution that Dr. Morris Fishbein be removed
from all posts in which he did any writing and speaking. This
resolution provided that it be implemented "as soon as possible,"
which turned out to be that very afternoon. By evening, Fishbein
was gone from AMA headquarters, never to return. One of the
literary losses of Fishbein's departure was his column, which he had
fancifully termed "Dr. Pepys Diary." It was described by one critic
as "a running or logorrhic account of Morris Fishbein's private life.

Each Christmas, the Diary was enshrined between boards and
distributed as the Fishbein Christmas Card to nearly everyone who
had a permanent mailing address." Like all of Fishbein's
extravagances, the expense of this largesse was entirely borne by the
dues-paying members of the AMA.

For years, Fishbein had used the awesome power of the AMA
Seal of Acceptance to force drug companies to accede to his wishes.
Harper's Magazine noted (Nov. 1949) that "The Seal is probably the
biggest single 'puller' of advertising ever concocted. The Journal is
far and away the most profitable publication in the world. Fishbein's
absolute power—he often talked as if he carried the seal in his
pocket—was also the source of other men's power."

After Fishbein's forced departure, AMA officials moved to
dilute the center of power at the Chicago Headquarters. The Council
on Pharmacy and Chemistry changed its name to the Council on
Drugs in 1956; the Seal of Acceptance was dropped entirely. Ben
Gaffin and Associates had reported to the AMA, "The advertisers, in
general, feel that the AMA, especially through the Councils,
distrusts them and views them as potential crooks who would
become actively unethical if not constantly watched." This had been
Fishbein's paranoid approach, but his attitude had been based on the
need to maintain control and to force "contributions" from the
ethical drug manufacturers." As soon as the Seal of Acceptance was
dropped, AMA's revenues from advertisers doubled in five years; in
ten years, it had tripled, from $4 million a year to over $12 million.

In retrospect, Fishbein's arrogance and his shortsighted policies had
been costing the AMA millions of dollars a year in lost revenues.
Dr. Ernest Howard of the AMA offered gratuitous reasons for
dropping the Seal, saying "it was too arbitrary, and too much
authority was vested in one body . . . there were also certain legal
problems."

Despite the fact that Fishbein had gone, some aspects of his
malign influence lingered at the AMA headquarters for years;
costing the organization many million of dollars and a great deal of
unfavorable publicity. Especially virulent was Fishbein's burning
determination to destroy any possibility of "socialized medicine'' in
the United States.

 It was paradoxical that the AMA leadership under Fishbein's
dominance should be so vehemently against "government
intervention" in the medical field, when they had used government
agencies for years for their own purposes, particularly the Food and
Drug Administration, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the
National Cancer Institute. One authority, James G. Burrow, traces
the AMA's stance towards compulsory health insurance, which
changed from exploratory interest to violent hostility between 1917
and 1920. This stance was justified as "anti-Communism," it being
well known that Socialized Medicine had long been a primary goal
of the Communist Party. A select group of prominent American
leftists had been summoned to Moscow for special indoctrination in
this goal. They attended a summer course at Moscow University on
"the organization of medicine as a state function."

The group included such stalwart liberals as George S. Counts and
John Dewey. On their return, they began a campaign of public agitation
for national health care. Their first convert was a "liberal
Republican," Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. In fact, he represented
the New England group of bankers who were allied with
Rockefeller in maintaining the Medical Monopoly. On March 1,
1940, Senator Lodge introduced a bill for health insurance, which
provided forty dollars a year for health care. The bill was quickly
shelved, but the gauntlet had been thrown down. Fishbein had no
intention of turning his fiefdom over to any government department.
Over the next several decades, the AMA spent many millions of
dollars fighting "socialized medicine," all of it raised by special
levies on American doctors. It also became enmeshed in several
expensive antitrust cases as a result of its activities.

As early as 1938, the AMA had been indicted by the
Department of Justice in the Group Health Association case. In
1937, a group of government employees had borrowed $40 from
Home Owners Loan Company to start a group hospital. The plan
offered group medical care for $26 a year for an individual, or $39 a
year for a family. This association, which took the name Group
Health Association, hired nine physicians. The District of Columbia
Medical Society then refused these physicians permission to use the
hospitals or to consult specialists. On April 4, 1941, a jury found the
AMA and the District Medical Society guilty of anti-trust law
violations. The two organizations and eleven physicians had been
indicted for restraint of trade. Those convicted included Dr. Morris
Fishbein. Two and a half years later, the Supreme Court upheld their
conviction in 1943. A fine of $2,500 was levied, and the AMA was
ordered to cease and desist in its interference with the Group Health
Association.

The AMA fared little better in its twenty year battle against
Medicare. The preservation of the integrity of the local physician
was a worthwhile goal; however, he was already under the control
of the Rockefeller Medical Monopoly; it is difficult to see how the
establishment of socialized medicine in the United States would
change anything, nor has it. Time noted on December 10, 1948 that
the AMA had assessed each of its members $25 for a campaign to
spend $3½ million on ' 'medical education,'' a campaign to turn
people against socialized medicine. It was the first such assessment
of the AMA in its hundred years of operation. Almost two decades
later, the Saturday Evening Post noted in its issue of January 1,
1966 that the AMA had spent five million dollars in 1964 and 1965
battling the medicare lobby in Washington. It was noted that the
AMA had $23 million income that year from its annual dues of $45
per year, and from the sales of advertisements in AMA publications
to drug companies and medical supply houses.

Time on Dec. 1, 1978 noted that Judge Fred Barnes,
administrative law judge at the Federal Trade Commission, had
ruled that the AMA Code of Ethics illegally restrains competition
among doctors by preventing them from advertising. He further
ruled that AMA ethical guidelines should in the future be approved
by the FTC. The AMA issued an indignant press release opposing
the decision; "There is no legal precedent in the United States for
the federal bureaucracy to write or approve a code of ethics for any
of the learned professions."

The subject of the AMA Code of Ethics had already come up
several times. Science magazine noted on June 21, 1940 on "the
bureau of investigation of frauds and charlatans" that the question
was raised, "Should medical ethics be changed? The principle of
medical ethics as set down at present, can be improved in wording
and arrangement, but it also believes that the present is not the time
to do the rewriting. It seems wise to let the muddied waters settle
before any consideration is given to so fundamental nature of our
organization as our principles of medical ethics.'' Although the
speaker was not identified, this pious pronunciamento could only
have come from Fishbein himself. The speaker goes on to admit,
rather coyly, that "the principle of medical ethics can be improved"
but that ended the matter.

The passage of Medicare, after the AMA had sent so many
millions opposing it, apparently changed nothing. It proved to be an
unexpected windfall for many of the more unscrupulous members of
the medical profession. They had no problem in padding bills for
fees to the tune of millions of dollars per year per practitioner. In
1982, Medicare paid out some $48.3 billion dollars, while Medicaid
paid out $38.2 billion dollars. The more conservative estimates
believe that some 11 billion dollars of these funds were skimmed in
illegal profits. The heirs of Morris Fishbein at the AMA may have
lost the battle to "stop socialized medicine" but they have won the
war.

As we previously noted, the AMA trustees at a meeting on
November 2, 1963, resolved to "eliminate chiropractic" their biggest
rival, through a Committee on Quackery. The secretary of this
committee reported back to the trustees on January 4, 1971 that "its
prime mission, first, the containment of chiropractic, and ultimately,
the elimination of chiropractic." A more blatant admission of
conspiracy can hardly be found in any organization's records. The
Committee's special investigative unit, headed by the general
counsel of the AMA, Robert Throckmorton, involved using
insurance companies, hospitals, state medical licensing boards,
public and private colleges, and lobbyists. Every method of
intimidation and censorship was used. Dr. Philip Weinstein, a
California neurologist, had given many lectures to chiropractic
groups on diagnosing illnesses of the spine; the AMA ordered him
to stop all such appearances. He sent a note of apology after
cancelling a forthcoming lecture, "Please accept our sincerest
apologies for this late cancellation due to circumstances beyond our
control. We were unaware that delivering medical lectures (to your
organization) was prohibited."

Throckmorton also tried to put chiropractic schools out of
business by preventing the government from granting guaranteed
student loans or grants from the government for research at
chiropractic colleges. He prevented them from getting accreditation;
lobbied in every state to prevent the establishment of a government
created accreditation body, and was furious when the HEW Office
of Education, being an agency of educators rather than physicians,
resisted his efforts and in 1974 sanctioned the Council on
Chiropractic Education as a national accreditation body for
chiropractic schools. The AMA brought pressure on C. W. Post
University, a division of Long Island University, to drop a course
designed for pre-chiropractic students in 1972.

In the late 1960s, the AMA Joint Commission on Accreditation
of Hospitals imposed new requirements on hospitals; the AMA
Principles of Medical Ethics barred its members from all forms of
exchange with chiropractors. A JCAH letter August 13, 1973 to a
hospital administrator declared that "Any arrangement you would
make with chiropractors and your hospital would be unacceptable to
the Joint Committee. This would be in violation of the Principles of
Medical Ethics published by the AMA that is also a requirement of
the JCAH."

On January 9, 1973 the JCAH wrote to a hospital in
Silver City, New Mexico, "This is in answer to your letter of
December 18 referring to a bill which may be passed in New
Mexico that hospitals must accept chiropractors as members of the
medical staff. You are absolutely correct—the unfortunate results of
this most ill-advised legislation mean that the Joint Committee could
withdraw and refuse accreditation of the hospital that had
chiropractors on its staff."

The AMA then forced the Veterans Administration to refuse
payments to veterans for chiropractic services. These tactics had
been reported to the AMA as positive results. A confidential
memorandum dated September 21, 1967 by the Committee on
Quackery boasted to the trustees that "Basically the committee's
short range objectives for containing the cult of chiropractic, and
any additional recognition it might achieve, revolves around four
points:
1) Doing everything within our power to see that
chiropractic coverage under Title # 18 of the Medicare law is NOT
obtained.
2) Doing everything within our power to see that
registration, or a listing with the U.S. Office of
Education, or the establishment of a Chiropractic Accrediting
Agency, is NOT achieved.
3) To encourage continued separation of
the two National Chiropractic Associations.
4) Encourage state medical societies to take the initiative in
their state legislature with regard to legislation
that might effect the practice of chiropractic."

Because of the flagrant activities of the AMA, several
chiropractors finally sued, charging conspiracy. The case dragged
on for years, and on August 27, 1987, after eleven years of
continuous litigation, Federal Judge Susan Getzendammer of the
U.S. District Court found the AMA, the American College of
Surgeons, and the American College of Radiologists, guilty of
conspiring to destroy the profession of chiropractic. During the
proceedings, the AMA freely acknowledged that they never had, nor
have, any knowledge of the content or quality of the courses taught
in chiropractic college. Judge Getzendammer wrote a 101-page
opinion, and issued an Order of Permanent Injunction requiring the
AMA to cease and desist from "restricting, regulating or impeding
or aiding and abetting others from restricting, regulating and
impeding the freedom of any AMA member or any institution or
hospital to make an individual decision as to whether or not the
AMA member, institution or hospital shall professionally associate
with chiropractors, chiropractic students or chiropractic
institutions."

Thus ended the legacy of malice and obstructionism which
Morris Fishbein had left to the AMA. Although he had been
formally relieved of all duties at the 98th meeting of the AMA on
June 20, 1949, the AMA had been bedeviled by his obsessions for
four more decades. Another of his obsessions was his refusal to
admit any black physicians as members of the AMA. He was often
heard to refer contemptuously to "der schwartzers," a Yiddish term
of contempt for blacks, whenever the subject of admitting blacks
came up, as it did repeatedly during his regime. His policy
continued at the AMA for two more decades, until 1968, when the
AMA was forced to admit blacks. Previously, the blacks had
maintained their own organization, the National Medical
Association. In hailing the decision, Time referred patronizingly to
"the moss-backed AMA."

The fact that Simmons and Fishbein were able to impose their
petty concerns on this national organization for half of a century
reflects little credit on its members. One of the most telling
comments was made by T. Swann Hardy in the Forum, June 1929.
In an article with the title "How Scientific Are Our Doctors?,"
Hardy wrote, "Medicine, as a profession, is not distinguished for the
mentality of its members. The average intelligence is lower than in
perhaps any other profession. Organized medicine in America is
unalterably opposed to any standard of reorganization which would
1) make the medical monopoly thoroughly scientific; 2) make such
therapy generally available to all who need it; 3) menace the
incomes of incompetent practitioners."

It is noteworthy that the insignia of the medical profession is
two snakes entwined on a staff. However, the University of
Rochester, deciding that this was excessive, recently reduced the
two snakes to one. The caduceus is the mythological symbol of the
Roman god Mercury. He was the patron of messengers, but he also
had a somewhat unsavory reputation as the associate of outlaws,
merchants and thieves. In the ancient world, merchants were
synonymous with the other two categories.

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