TORONTO CANCER HOSPITAL EMPLOYS CONVICTED THIEF TO BATTLE HOLISTIC MEDICINE by Matthew D.M. Lee On September 21, 1989, The Princess Margaret Hospital Department of Nutrition sponsored a free public lecture by Victor Herbert entitled "Nutrition, Cancer & Health Fraud." In the words of the printed flyer announcing the lecture, the purpose of this event was to alert the public that "The snake-oil salesmen from the turn of the century have not disappeared; they have simply modernized their approach. Health fraud has always been with us because its supporters offer an irresistible product; hope for an easy, fast and painless cure to whatever ails us. This forum will focus specifically on health fraud in relation to cancer and nutrition." Those audience members that went with tape recorders were told by Mr. Herbert to shut them off unless they wanted to be escorted from the building by the police. This is understandable given Herbert's past history and criminal record. According to a letter written to Princess Margaret Hospital by the Consumer Health Organization of Canada, "This organization is profoundly disturbed that your hospital is sponsoring what amounts to a one-man show by one of the most closed-minded so-called 'experts' in 'anti-quackery' in the United States, Victor Herbert. Mr. Herbert, who uses his MD and legal degrees as a screen for his pontifications on 'health fraud' as a notorious spokesman for the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) has for a decade or more been deriding nutritional, metabolic, holistic and various alternative medical approaches to cancer and the rapidly rising spiral of degenerative diseases as 'quackery'. He has labeled proponents and practitioners of these and other forms of health care delivery as everything from con men to murderers. The major spokesmen in the U.S.A. who blast away at 'alternatives' are usually members of, or allied with, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), an allegedly independent body whose major donors are the food-processor/drug/chemical combines. It should be no surprise that the international pharmaceutical cartel essentially controls American medicine and that Canada slavishly follows the lead of this cartel and its handmaiden, the American Medical Association -- much to its detriment. Herbert speaks for their point of view, and that point of view only. For the past decade, this pompous and arrogant federal employee (VA hospital) and very public foe of alternative health care has also warned broadcasters and journalists of their alleged 'legal responsibilities' if they even allow spokesmen for alternative (that is, non-drug establishment-accepted) therapies and devices to be 'covered' by radio, TV and the media. He is at all times loath to have his points of view challenged, does not tolerate opposition and has an extremely suspicious fear of being tape-recorded, for reasons perhaps only he can understand." In August, 1987, Mr. Herbert was convicted of assault and theft in an Iowa City court. During a seminar in Iowa, Herbert leaped over a row of chairs and grabbed a tape recorder away from an audience member who earlier had disagreed with him. He took the cassette tape from the audience member claiming his intellectual property had been stolen during his speech. The judge did not agree with Mr. Herbert and convicted him of assault and theft of private property. Victor Herbert is no stranger to legal battles with the alternative health care community. In February, 1988, he launched a massive lawsuit in the U.S. against the National Health Federation (NHF), Health Freedom News, Kurt Donsbach, Maureen Kennedy Salaman, Kirkpatrick Dilling, Clinton Miller and 21 other co-defendants. The civil defamation, libel, slander and conspiracy suit filed against the most vocal and popular leaders of the alternative health movement in the U.S.A. asked for an unspecified amount in damages and compensation. Herbert seeks injunctions against 6 publications, 8 associations, and 12 individuals that he claims have conspired to defame him. The suit primarily demands that the defendants stop selling, talking or writing about the book, THE GREAT MEDICAL MONOPOLY WARS by Peter Joseph Lisa (by the way, this book is available from Consumer Health Organization of Canada; phone : 416-222-6517). Herbert alleges the book libels him and is being given away free of charge as an incentive for people to join the NHF. Victor Herbert is a longtime critic of the alternative health care field. Over the past two decades he has written and lectured extensively against practitioners and associations he perceives as nothing more than the "quackery mafia". He is a staunch defender of the sugar industry. It has long been his stated goal to criminally prosecute, fine and imprison NHF officers, members and allies. In May, 1984, during the Quackery Hearings before the Select Committee on Aging of the House of Representatives, Herbert said, "The U.S. Attorney General arguably should invoke the federal racketeering conspiracy law which has been used to break Mafia conspiracies to go after the quackery mafia conspirators." According to Consumer Health Organization of Canada, " No 'public forum' could be said to be even-handed or fair if Herbert is allowed to spout off without challenge. And no public forum could be said to be 'public' if he exclusively is allowed either to pitch funds for his lawsuit or for his books." In the early 1980's, when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to issue regulations forcing vitamin and other natural food supplements to be handled in the same way as prescription drugs, Herbert was an "expert witness" for the FDA. Had he been successful, vitamin, mineral, enzyme and amino acid supplements would have only been available on prescription from a medical doctor. These products would have been taken off the shelves of health food stores and pharmacies. The NHF, however, conducted a successful lobby for freedom of choice in this area and the Congress amended the FDA proposal. A similar movement by government authorities in Canada has proved impotent so far with the exception of amino acid supplements, most of which are unavailable even by prescription (the one exception is L-tryptophan). The newly proposed Health Disciplines Act in Ontario which is set to deregulate the profession of Naturopathy also reclassifies natural supplements as "drugs". This has both angered and alarmed many practitioners in the natural health care movement. The National Health Federation is America's largest "freedom of choice" consumer health organization. It has been in existence since 1954, holds regular conventions that attract thousands of people world-wide, and has many hundreds of thousands of members. The Canadian chapter of NHF is the Consumer Health Organization of Canada located in Willowdale. The major stated purpose of NHF is to expose and oppose the existing medical monopoly and support freedom of choice in health care. In his book, P.J. Lisa documents just how medicine in the U.S.A. is nothing more than a monopoly that seeks to destroy its perceived competition. The lawsuit recently won by the chiropractic profession against the AMA is an excellent illustration of this and supports some of the claims made in the Lisa book. After 11 years of intense legal battles with the AMA (American Medical Association), five chiropractors in the U.S.A. were vindicated in court. On August 27, 1987, a U.S. District Court in Chicago found the AMA guilty of having conspired to destroy the profession of chiropractic in the U.S.A. In the 101-page opinion rendered by Judge Susan Getzendanner, it was ruled that the AMA and its co-conspirators had violated the Sherman Antitrust laws of the U.S. They had done this by organizing a national boycott of chiropractors using an ethics ban on medical doctors who consulted with or referred patients to chiropractors. Trial evidence showed that the AMA took active steps to undermine chiropractic educational institutions, conceal evidence of the usefulness of chiropractic care, undercut insurance programs for patients of chiropractic, subvert government inquiries into the efficacy of chiropractic, engage in a massive misinformation campaign to discredit and destabilize the chiropractic profession and engaged in many other activities to maintain the medical monopoly over health care in the U.S.A. The judge ruled that the actions of the AMA and its co-conspirators over the last 25 years had resulted in serious damage to the competitive process in health care, the profession of chiropractic as a whole, as well as to individual chiropractors and their patients. This legal decision dealt a heavy blow to the credibility of the AMA which represents the economic interests of about 250,000 American medical doctors. In the coming years the NHF expects that the Herbert lawsuit will reveal much more about the medical empire. According to NHF attorney Dilling, the defendants will also attempt to discover "who pays his [ Herbert's ] bills". The November 8, 1988 edition of the MEDICAL POST reported on the progress Herbert had been making in his legal challenge. In this article, Herbert's legal counsel, Michael K. Botts, stated that the suit may also help expose the relationships between purveyors of phony diplomas, phony clinics and phony cures. "It's the same people who own everything," said Botts. One of the defendants named by Herbert's suit is, believe it or not, the American Quack Association (AQA). Herbert has called the founder of the AQA, Dr. Roy Kupsinel the "chief quackerator" and has been quoted as saying, "The majority of these people are pathologic liars." Observers of this battle between Herbert and the alternative health care movement have noted that this name-calling is only the beginning. Victor Herbert also made an appearance in Toronto in the spring of 1989 to attack holistic medicine at a medical conference. The event was reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and rebutted (July 7, 1989) by the then President of the Canadian Holistic Medical Association (CHMA), Dr. Zoltan Rona. Here is what Rona had to say, "The articles "American crusader brings message about health care fraud to Canada" and "Quackery in Canada" (CMAJ, VOL. 140, MAY 15, 1989) deserve some strong comment. I do not dispute most of the points made by Herbert in the articles concerning mail order nutrition consultant diplomas and the need to dispense unbiased information to the public on nutritional therapies. Unfortunately, in his "debunking" of various treatments, most of Herbert's statements are either questionable, misleading or false. For example, his contention that "Of course our food is safe" flies in the face of hundreds, if not thousands of studies that point out the dangers of chemicals in our everyday diet. The article presents absolutely no evidence to support the accuracy of Herbert's views. Has Herbert never heard of the association between asthma and sulfites? Of MSG and Chinese Restaurant Syndrome? Of Nitrates and bowel cancer? Of aluminum and lead contamination and neurological disorders? And what of the Centre for Disease Control's report last year that 38% of all chickens sold in the U.S. are contaminated with Salmonella? The Canadian Cancer Society amongst many other preventive-minded groups recommends that we avoid foods containing chemical additives. Why would they recommend this if our food supply is so safe? Herbert's attacks on fiber are also unbalanced. He gives the reader all the negatives but where are his comments on things such as the proven benefit of oat bran in lowering cholesterol? If fiber is so bad, why is Metamucil so effective in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome and why is practically every senior citizen in nursing homes taking Metamucil? Does Herbert dare to suggest that this is quackery? And what of his unsubstantiated attacks on the benefit of ASA? Wrong again, Victor. I know of very few cardiologists or vascular surgeons that do not recommend ASA for the majority of their angina or MI patients. Are all these specialists quacks too? Perhaps Herbert is right when he says "the college is much too conservative in disciplining people who do this sort of thing." I could go on about Herbert's many double standard dogmas, but by far the most inaccurate statement he made was that the term "holistic medicine" was confiscated by practitioners of "questionable schemes." He doesn't even define holistic medicine properly and then goes on to state that holistic medicine is taught in medical school. How can a journal as prestigious as the CMAJ print such false information? For the benefit of the majority of your readers who, after reading statements attributed to Victor Herbert, do not know the correct definition of holistic medicine, allow me to quote a few lines from the Canadian Holistic Medical Association's informational brochure: " Holistic medicine is a system of health care which fosters a cooperative relationship among all those involved leading toward optimal attunement of the physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of health. Holistic medicine emphasizes the necessity of looking at the whole person including analysis of physical, nutritional, environmental, emotional, social, spiritual and lifestyle values. Holistic medicine encompasses all safe modalities of diagnosis and treatment including drugs and surgery (if no safe and effective alternative exists). Holistic medicine focuses on education and responsibility for personal efforts to achieve balance and well-being." Recently (April 8th), the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies held a one-day symposium on holistic medicine. Their definition of holistic medicine expands on ours by stating that: "Furthermore, the physical, mechanistic treatment perspective is extended to encourage a more humanistic interaction between therapist and patient, and to promote the use of mental and spiritual modalities of treatment." Clearly, these definitions are a far cry from what Herbert purports holistic medicine to represent. It is unfortunate that your otherwise very scientific journal prints articles on misleading and grossly inaccurate statements made by a man who hasn't done his homework properly. The sponsors of Herbert's Canadian visit (Ontario Allergy Society, Ontario Medical Association and the American Academy of Allergy) also owe Canadian holistic physicians an apology for Herbert's appearance in Toronto. Let's hope that your journal dispenses with the Herbert dogmas in future issues and provides more balanced coverage of "scientific" conferences." It is clear that the story of the battle between Victor Herbert and the proponents of holistic medicine is far from over. Stay tuned for updates as they happen. Matthew D.M. Lee is the pen name of a freelance writer who has written extensively for publications such as "Hologram", the newsletter of the Canadian Holistic Medical Association. He can be reached in writing through the publisher of Common Ground.