What follows are two reviews written on P.J. Lisa's Assault on Medical Freedom.  One written by the author and one written by a long time associate of the author.  Since each of them deal with different aspects of this substantial work, they are not redundant.  furthermore, what is stated is these two reviews stands alone as valuable information for anyone to have.  To the extent that there is some overlap, we apologize.  Assault on Medical Freedom turns a spotlight on very nefarious dealings of professionals, organizations and agencies in whom we have been taught to trust and hold in high regard.  That trust has been insidiously violated by a small cabal.  As a consumer, it is justifiable to be irate while reading this book as the racket is exposed.  One can only wonder what well meaning members of the AMA and sincere public servants from FDA and other implicated agencies feel when this situation comes to light for them.  Something between revulsion and disgust - akin to finding out that one is married to Jack the Ripper - no doubt.  Good.  Perhaps they'll seize the moment and oust the rats that have defiled and encumbered health care in this country.  America has a good sense of humor when it comes to rackets, but not at the expense of thousands of lives.

The Author's Summary:

"Current antitrust laws are no obstacle to the joint collection, analysis, and distribution of information needed for the purpose of containing health care costs.  Sharing information is lawful, unless it reduces competition."

The former Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition, Timothy J. Muris, made the above statement in 1984, to the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. Senate.  His statement is still applicable to the current state of affairs in wholistic medicine.

For over eleven years, an investigation has been looking into, and uncovering treatments, products, services, practitioners, and manufacturers from the health-care playing field.  Part of what has been exposed is a massive computer tracking system that has named and identified practitioners, their treatments, products, as well as the names of their patients.  The information contained in these computer databases has been supplied to government agencies, the insurance industry and medical boards by sources connected to the drug industry.

Practitioners using Electronic Acupuncture machines (EAVs) vitamins/herbs, chelation therapy, and other forms of alternative approaches to various diseases have come under fire by their medical boards in almost every state.  Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agents have raided, in some cases with guns drawn, local health food stores, doctors' offices, clinics, and manufacturing plants.

Alternative practitioners have had their insurance claims denied for payment or reimbursement.  Patients have been denied access to products and treatments.  The insurance companies have been turning names of "questionable" practitioners over to medical boards, who in turn have moved against the licenses of these healers.

"Consumer-oriented" organizations have also been involved in tracking these practitioners, turning names over to federal and state prosecutors and insurance companies, as well as to medical boards for action.

How could all of this be happening in America?  Who is behind this?  Is this by design?  Most importantly, can we do something about it?

After spending the better part of thirteen years investigating the opposition to alternative medicine, I can say the following with certainty.  There is a plan to destroy the alternative health-care system.  This is based on hard documentation uncovered from inside the media, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries, as well as from within the structure of the federal and state agencies involved in this massive anti-competitive campaign.

Having knowledge of what is going on is good to have.  However, unless something is done with this knowledge, then it is all wasted.

For years advocates of the alternatives have known that the medical establishment conspired to destroy and eliminate the entire profession of chiropractic.  Did you also know that even after the famous Wilk v AMA case was won, that the medical establishment continued to work to eliminate chiropractic from the health-care system?  Did you know that members of the AMA, even while the Wilk case was still in federal court, devised a plan to form a chiropractic "front group" to advance a campaign by the medical establishment against chiropractic?  The following statement is taken from this plan:  "Since chiropractors are here to stay, an adjunctive alternative, revolutionary in concept is to establish a membership category within the structure of (the AMA) for those chiropractors who are ethical......

"Thus, any campaign against chiropractic by the medical profession could not be interpreted as an effort to corner the market in health-care delivery as often has been the case in chiropractic strategy."

Who these people are, who in the anti-chiropractic campaign they are connected and associated with, what their agenda is and how they are carrying out this anti-competitive activity is important to know.  Internal documents, gathered over many years from within a complex web of organizations illustrate how these groups have been working together since as early as 1983 to destroy and eliminate all forms of alternatives from the health-care system.

No one is immune to the effects of this chilling, and most likely, illegal activity.  Acupuncturists, chiropractors, chelation therapists, homeopaths, naturopaths, vitamins, herbs, and supplement manufacturers have all been targeted.  Plans outlining this massive campaign have now been exposed.  How the vested interests planned on adversely influencing the government, the insurance industry, the media and others is described in their own words, taken from previously secret plans.

Some of the many solutions included: practitioners and patients fighting insurance denials for payment and reimbursement, using the small claims court system against the insurance companies in court for as little as $20.00, and using case histories to challenge "Independent Insurance Consultants" who deny various alternative treatments, modalities, and products in claims.  Use the Federal Trade Commission, the State Insurance Commissioners and other agencies to help fight the battle.  Patients and consumers can fight back.  There are many who have fought back and won.  This includes practitioners, patients, consumers, and manufacturers.  There are many avenues that can and have been pursued to a victory.

There are dedicated groups already doing something positive to help.  Case after case of successful legal and media victories are accumulating on a daily basis.  There is hope.

One encouraging example of how a small handful of patients can change the system happened in the Mid-west.  A large insurance company deleted 350 chiropractors from the "provider" list, falsely labeling these practitioners as being guilty of "over-utilizations".  This is a term used loosely to describe a physician who submits bills for more visits than what is arbitrarily termed "average use".  A patient recovering from a car accident, or a work-related injury might justifiably require more visits.

A small band of about 30 patients picketed the state headquarters of the insurance company protesting the decision to suspend 350 chiropractors.  Having alerted radio television and newspapers to the picket, the demonstrators were met at the designated site by local media.  By exposing that the insurance company was involved in a campaign against chiropractors the patients were successful in getting all of the 350 chiropractors reinstated within 72 hours of this event.

All of this and more can be used in finding individual solutions to the problem.  I invite you to do so.  "Knowledge is the light at the end of mystery's tunnel."  Using it is up to you.

.Stephan Cooter's View

Acting as an undercover agent, author P.J. Lisa gained access to the secret files of the AMA's Chicago Department of investigation under the guise of collecting information to expose "mental health quackery."

The first three days gave Lisa access to hundreds of photocopies of memos, minutes, and other documents that launched a 10-year search for answers that proved little about the existence of quackery in alternative medicine, but much about an organized propaganda machine that intended to discredit and destroy all alternatives to drugless medicine and all foreign drugs.  Lisa found fresh, hard documentation to prove that a "totalitarian medical-pharmaceutical police state" had been organized since 1847, the birth of the AMA, and a conspiracy slowly developed, funded by the pharmaceutical industry and the AMA, to ust the insurance industry, the US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the IRS, the US Postal Service, and  and many other state and federal agencies as pawns in the game of establishing a single medical monopoly.

The AMA was pictured as a greed-motivated trade union from its very beginning that had ethical conduct and quality of medical education as its official purpose, but in reality was more interested in systematically eliminating all competitors to is monetary and political interests.

Funded by the Carnegie Foundation, Abraham Flexner was ostensibly empowered to investigate the quality of medical education in all 161 medical schools that existed in 1910.  In reality, Flexner knew in advance what he would find.  He used consistency with "modern scientific medicine" as a tool to glorify AMA  drug-oriented medical schools at the same time discrediting all alternative colleges of medicine that didn't use Rockefeller's brand of science and Rockefeller's industries.  In league with the Rockefeller billions, Flexner helped destroy the credibility and funding sources for nearly all schools that used drugless-medicine.  161 medical schools became 81 by 1919; medical graduates declined from 5,747
 to 2,658.   "Overcrowding" of a profession had been the public AMA theme song decrying the threat to "opportunities of those already in the profession to acquire a livelihood."

Alternative medicine and even Sears  catalogue of home remedies were seen as competitors to be wiped out.

Although MD-oriented trauma care is acknowledged to be the best in the world, allopathic MD-oriented drug medicine was reported by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to he only 15 - 20% effective as a medical approach. Despite this, the AMA's board of directors stated mission was to publish articles that attacked effective alternative treatment as "quackery".

This propaganda machine slowly expanded over the years.  By 1964, the AMA's Committee on Quackery extended its membership to become the Coordinating Conference on Health information.   CCHI membership included AMA officers, The American Cancer  Society,  The  American Pharmaceutical  Association, The
Arthritis Foundation, The Council of Better Business Bureaus, The National Health Council, which invited the FDA, The Federal Trade Commission, US Postal Service, The Office of Consumer Affairs, US and State Attorney Generals' Offices, and the IRS to attend national meetings. CCHI officials allegedly asked the FDA to prosecute drugless "quackery" targets that had regional or national notoriety beginning to intrude on market share of the legal drug lords and the doctors prescribing drugs.  The Federal Trade Commission was asked to get injunctions against competitive advertisements, the US Postal Service to put  mail  watches  on  clinics, manufacturers, and individual doctors who used alternative therapies in order to discredit and destroy competition from  chiropractic,  acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, vitamin therapy, Japanese cancer vaccines, alternative books on cancer treatments, all alternative cancer treatments and all alternative drugless arthritic treatments.

Lisa's book, like Breggin's Toxic Psychiatry, Beasley's Betrayal of Health, Mendelsohn's Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Carter's Racketeering in Medicine, and a growing number of other similar books, is unique in the detail of its hard documentation from minutes of CCHI's meetings and evidence which shows federal agencies complying with CCHI's targets and goals.  Court injunctions have been
successfully levied against everything from books to importing acupuncture needles as a result.

Lisa's evidence suggested that by 1984, this medical conspiracy had targeted vitamins, minerals, enzymes, raw milk, and laetrile, as well as a plan to exclude chiropractic and other alternative health care from insurance coverage.

Any product,  store,  doctor,  or manufacturer of any competitor to drug health care was the subject of media discrediting,  licensing   board harassment, seizure or raid.  The FDA and  Pharmaceutical  Advertising Council had entered into an agreement to form a joint anti-quackery campaign.  Key congressional leaders were invited to meetings and asked to join in the effort.  Initially, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Medicare, Aetna, the Health Association of America were fed a black list of doctors and treatments that were "questionable" and asked to exclude them from coverage.  By 1986-88, a computer data base created by this conspiracy helped to deny insurance claims by hundreds of insurers.  One myth we have all heard was created by this kind of unholy alliance: "vitamins only produce expensive urine." At the same time officials of the FDA cooperated by attacking food supplements that were proving to be competitors to drug treatment.  Merck, Sharpe, Dohme, Roche, Lederle, and Burroughs-Wellcome diversified into giant producers of vitamins with massive TV campaigns to promote their sales.  These companies were never raided by FDA inspectors; only the drugless manufactures were.  Vitamin E alone has now become a $338 million a year market.

Few of the FDA raid-seizure operations were ever motivated by interests protecting the safety of the consumer.  Instead, the FDA's own health Fraud Consumer Report of 1988 targeted cancer, arthritis, and other food supplement treatments that were known to be "very effective to somewhat effective."  Lisa's point: safety or effectiveness was not the real issue - identification of serious competition to drugs was the issue.

The middle third of the book is devoted to case histories of companies, professions such as chiropractic, chelation  therapy,  naturopathy, acupuncture, wholisitic dentistry, and homeopathy that had been targeted for harassment, delicensing, or discrediting.

The last third of Lisa's book deals with useful advice for both doctors and consumers for fighting back to retain or regain their health freedom.  Sections include how to challenge insurance companies that deny claims, legal remedies from small claims courts to Insurance Company State Regulatory Commissions, and private suits.

One fascinating avenue mentioned is filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission which is partly empowered to investigate and enforce anti-trust violations.    Enough information is given in Assault Against Medical Freedom to be useful for individuals and groups to right wrongs brought against them by a conspiracy that still threatens to take away our medical freedoms, despite the passage of Senate Bill 784.  It's a book entirely worth reading and a book worth acting on before it is too late.  "In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a Communist....Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not protest because I was a Protestant....Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up."

 Clinton's Health Reform as presently written levies penalties against individuals choosing to take advantage of alternative medicine; $50,000 for each offense to the patient, another $50,000 for each doctor.  Should the Health Reform Bills ever pass in their present state, everyone may be covered, but all alternative medicine will be outlawed.  (Townsend letter for Doctors, Nov. 1994).   When the federal government becomes a health monopoly, the Sherman anti-trust laws no longer apply.   Anti-monopoly laws apply only to private industries.