" Fake clinical studies, fake journal reports, and Dr. Oz . . .
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more surreal . . . "
Last month (Apr., 2017), I received an email
from
GreenMedInfo, highlighting an article by
Jefferey Jaxen, entitled, "
Retractions and Errors Driving Loss of Faith in the Peer Review Process." The lead-off
sets the tone:
"Establishment medical professionals are quick to hold up peer-reviewed studies
as the gold standard, argument-ending proof in an attempt to shut down valid discussions around
'alternative' health and healing. Major medical and science journals have long-been considered
the sacred cows from which information gets disseminated down through the roots of mainstream
medicine with unquestioning adherence mirroring religious dogma. What if this peer-reviewed research
was flawed? What if major medical journals acted as gatekeepers long-crafting a health paradigm
that favored only limited and dangerous pharmaceutical interventions?" [emphasis added]
The article then goes on to discuss the recent retraction of
107 research papers by
Tumor Biology, which released a statement that read:
"The current retractions are not a new case of integrity breach but are the result of a deeper manual
investigation which became necessary after our previous retractions from Tumor Biology in 2016. The extent
of the current retractions was not obvious from the earlier investigations in 2015. We are retracting
these published papers because the peer review process required for publication in our journals had been
deliberately compromised by fabricated peer reviewer reports."
None of this is news to established, practicing naturopaths, who have
to battle disinformation every day of their career. I, myself, began an
Ashwin article in June, 2015 with quotes from Marcia Angel, M.D.,
former Editor-in-Chief of
The New England Journal of Medicine and Richard Horton, M.D.,
former Editor-in-Chief of
Lancet, who both have decried the increasingly bullshitty character
of the peer-review process and the unreliability of most published clinical studies, in general.
(Moreover, both of them figure prominently in the GreenMedInfo article cited above.)
Going farther back, I've written a series of articles about the untruthful, dishonest character of
"official information." I've written about the
unjustified war
against herbal products (April, 2015); the
disinfo campaign
against escharotics (Sept., 2014); orthodoxy's campaign against reputable alternative companies
and their websites
using WOT (Aug., 2012); convention's art of disinformation
using
mediated experience (Oct., 2009); and
the deliberate lies that spew forth from that beacon of official medical lies that's known as
Quackwatch ("Confronting
the MIC's Unending Cavalcade of Pathological Lies") (Apr., 2009),
etc., etc., etc. And none of this addresses the unending lies that the FDA's minions of darkness
used in connection with their attacks on me since 2003 -- (see
Chapter 3 of Meditopia.)
Do the lies that emanate from anything that's remotely connected
with conventional medicine ever end?
Apparently not.
Earlier this month -- on May 10, 2017 -- the Dr. Oz Show
aired a segment on "Black Salve," based on a private interview I gave to Dr. Oz himself on
April 17. I have to hand it to Dr. Oz's staff: they did an incredible job in the editing room of
twisting everything I said and crafting a hit piece on my person, that anyone who didn't know me or
my work would be quite convinced that I deserved a place among the world's most notorious criminals
that put me somewhere between Osama bin Laden, Al Capone, and Jack the Ripper.
Even worse, Dr. Oz made so many provably false statements
about Black Salve, that I had to respond with
a
lengthy, comprehensive rebuttal of my own.
The interesting thing about Harry Frankfurt's work --
whose quote I use to begin this Ashwin article -- is that he has found the extreme lack of
truthfulness so prominent in our culture that it has lead to him to produce a
Unified Theory of Bullshit.
Prominent within Frankfurt's theory is the idea that the "value" of spoken communication is its
ability to persuade, with no mind as to whether or not its truthful.
"The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what they
say is true or false, but rather only cares whether or not their listener is persuaded."
With that standard in mind, it has become all too obvious that the Medical Industrial Complex
has filled its ranks with wall-to-wall bullshitters.
On inconsequential matters, it's easy to ignore this feature
of our culture. But when the
Theory of Bullshit is applied to organized medicine, it leads to
disastrous decisions by ordinary people on matters that, all too often, turn out to be a matter
of life and death.
And all of this returns us to our reason for being at
Alpha Omega Labs: supplying raw, verifiable information that consumers can use to make their own
health care decisions -- void of the tendency of those in the orthodox medical community to tell
anyone who will listen to them, whatever they want -- no matter how provably false it is --
as long as it makes more money for the Medical Industrial Complex.
More than ever, it's important for consumers to think for
themselves, knowing that those in authority do not live to provide the public
with what's in their best interest. Never before has it been more important to think independently
and do one's own research.
