Quack quotes
[back] quackery

"A man is eminent as long as he is orthodox. When he begins to think for himself he becomes a crank."---Dr Hadwen 1925

"The War Against Quackery is a carefully orchestrated, heavily endowed campaign sponsored by extremists holding positions of power in the orthodox hierarchy.....The mutimillion-dollar campaign against quackery was never meant to root out incompetent doctors; it was, and is, designed specifically to destroy alternative medicine...The millions were raised and spent because orthodox medicine sees alternative, drugless medicine as a real threat to its economic power.  And right they are...the majority of the drug houses will not survive."--Dr Atkins, M.D. (The Healing of Cancer by Barry Lynes).

The modern health fraud philosophy is extensive and complex, but not really a philosophy, more a series of post hoc defensive arguments for orthodox medicine. At the heart of these assumptions is a simple equation: anything which challenges the monopoly hold of the chemical companies on food production and pharmaceuticals, the professional status of doctors, or the ruling paradigms of industrial technology should be attacked.   Much is made by activists of the fact that the health-fraud philosophy is based upon science. In fact health-fraud arguments are rarely objective, let alone scientific. Quite the opposite, they are usually highly personalised and apparently given weight by un­supported assertions.   The Campaign Against Health Fraud by Martin Walker MA

Constantly trying to correct others’ opinions (arrogant pseudo-sceptic/debunker) ---Psychopathy personality traits

Vitamin producers must be the only groups within the capitalist economy, (apart from criminals such as drug dealers) constantly criticised for making profits. When it comes to vitamins and 'health foods',  journalists and health fraud campaigners radically change their ideological position, suddenly finding the profit motive morally reprehensible. Drug company profits are never alluded to. The Campaign Against Health Fraud by Martin Walker MA

"It is estimated that if people had a choice, lack of demand would shrink Doctors and Drugs to less than 10% of its current size, with the remainder almost entirely related to trauma medicine. That would be a $900,000,000,000.00 (nine hundred BILLION dollar) loss to them. They are not going to take this loss without a good fight."---Dr Richard Shulze, N.D.

"The similarities between the Barrett group (Quackwatch), the Jarvis group (National Council Against Health Fraud), and the AMA's anti-competitive campaign are many. In one of the newspaper articles on the Southern California Council Against Health Fraud in the Los Angeles Times, Jarvis quoted as attacking vitamins, raw milk, and laetrile. Each of these was a target of the AMA's campaign from the past." The Assault On Medical Freedom - by P. Joseph Lisa c 1994

A glimpse into his character can be gained through his habitual use of words to mean their exact opposite. For example, in an article entitled "Poison Mongers," Dr. Barrett refers to people who are trying to stop the addition of fluoride, a poison, to the water supply as poison-mongers. Now a monger is one who sells something, e.g. a fishmonger is a person who sells fish. Therefore, it is quite evident that a poison-monger is a person who sells poison. Thus, one opposed to having fluoride added to the water supply is exactly the opposite of a poison-monger. The word usage of Dr. Barrett is comparable to the process called "Newspeak" described in George Orwell's 1984, where what is true becomes false and what is false becomes true. Who is Stephen Barrett? by Dr. John Yiamouyiannis

Government Thought-Control of Scientists and Professionals:  This is a two-pronged, "divide-and-conquer" strategy carried out through two teams of covert propaganda agents, which I call the "Pseudo-Skeptics" and the "Pseudo-Paranormalists". The Pseudo-Skeptics pose as members and leaders of the intelligentsia, while the Pseudo-Paranormalists pose as members and leaders of the public's grass-roots "alternative" community. The message of the Pseudo-Skeptics also coincides with the government's "official, public" position on science, while the message of the Pseudo-Paranormalists is intended to represent irrationality, mixed with things like the worst kind of religious superstition and paranoia—to make the government's position seem more rational by comparison—and things the government wishes to discourage though ridicule heaped upon them by the Dupe-Intelligentsia (unwitting or useful educated idiots)
.......What we are presented with as "skeptical opinion", in those magazines on the book stands—such as The Skeptic, The Skeptical Inquirer, or Skeptical Opinion—is more like covert government propaganda than anything remotely resembling true skepticism in the historical tradition, when it comes to the socalled "forbidden topic" of UFOs.
.......What the government's reign of thought-terror has done, is reduce the ranks of true skeptics to a small few, who have little or nothing to do with groups or their magazines. I can be confident that these magazines will not respond directly to my accusations, in obedience to a covert policy to never mention or cite anyone who is not a part of the "official" two-pronged thought-control loop. This avoidance is another badge of their conscious fraud.  [pdf] Occult Science Dictatorship: The Official State Science Religion and How to Get Excommunicated by William Lyne

CSICOP, is the original skeptic organisation, from which all other skeptic groups have flowed over the last thirty years. It was founded originally as a Marxist /atheist organisation that poured its academic energy into disputing everything spiritual, religious and other-worldy. For much of its early years, while the CIA searched for psychic weaponry, CSICOP was on hand to publicly dispute the possibility of such Psycho-technology, ensuring that if it was viable it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. However, in the eighties with the cold war coming to an end and the CIA turning its interests to the protection of corporate rather than cold war America, CSICOP became more and more involved in the defence of pharmaceutical company competitiveness.
    The British branch of CSICOP also played a part in setting up the Campaign Against Health Fraud, which later became HealthWatch. The ‘only Professor of alternative medicine in Britain’ (very sic) Edzard Ernst, is a CSICOP fellow traveller and spoke deridingly of all forms of CAM at their 11th International Conference in London. [Jan 2008] Shaking Hands With Monsanto and Big Pharma: The Guardian and Observer’s ongoing war against alternative medicine. A review of Suckers by Rose Shapiro By Martin J Walker

The American Council Against Health Fraud (CAHF), was also a major progenitor of the British Campaign Against Health Fraud, now HealthWatch. Stephen Barrett was a founder member of the organisation. CAHF has had to restructure itself over the years, after facing a number of legal actions against its most prominent members. James Randi was forced into separating and so not attracting financial odium to the group when he was sued by Uri Geller.
    The American CAHF laid down the initial blue print for a number of organisations that followed, this being a very loose knit organisation whose members independently campaigned and took legal action against those with whom they appeared to disagree. At the same time groups also wrote position papers on everything from Homoeopathy to Cancer therapy, deriding all forms of non-orthodox therapies while tacitly, although not openly supporting pharmaceutical medicine and all corporate products that might have been accused of damaging the environment and environmental health. [Jan 2008] Shaking Hands With Monsanto and Big Pharma: The Guardian and Observer’s ongoing war against alternative medicine. A review of Suckers by Rose Shapiro By Martin J Walker

Americans have known, or suspected, for some time, that there has been an organized assault by a group, against companies, and practitioners, offering alternatives to the drugs/surgery paradigm. That group calls itself the "quackbusters," and they are a scam. I'm about to tell you WHY that assault was formally assembled, HOW THE SCAM works, and WHO the players are, and WHAT they're up to right now.  In my next newsletter I'll tell you WHY, right now, Wisconsin is the important battleground.----Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen http://www.quackpotwatch.org/WisconsinWar/who_are_these_so.htm

"If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it.  I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him."  (Mark Twain)

What's Eating Stephen Barrett? by Burton Goldberg
In the paradox of "quackbusting," the quackbusters say they're protecting public health, but in fact, they're abandoning the public to their own suffering to protect the financial interests of conventional medicine, which has no interest in or ability to produce benefits for these conditions.

"The medical monopoly or medical trust, euphemistically called the American Medical Association, is not merely the meanest monopoly ever organized, but the most arrogant, dangerous and despotic organisation which ever managed a free people in this or any other age. Any and all methods of healing the sick by means of safe, simple and natural remedies are sure to be assailed and denounced by the arrogant leaders of the AMA doctors' trust as fakes, frauds and humbugs."---J.W Hodge, M.D

Natural medications that actually cured disease would have to be suppressed. The more effective they were, the more they would need to be suppressed and their proponents jailed as quacks. After all, it wouldn't do to have some cheap, effective, natural medication cure disease in a capital-intensive monopoly market specifically designed to treat symptoms without curing disease. Our Deadly Diabetes Deception by Thomas Smith

"They decide who they're going to hit. The advertising agency writes up the stories that are going to be distributed to their "letter writing brigade," the "testifying whores." The letter writers, following the guidelines, then write to the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All, to set a basis for the complaint. Then the ad agency writes stories, getting quotes from the likes of Barrett, Baratz, etc., on the victim. The stories are sent out to the media in which the advertising agency's drug clients advertise. The stories are printed in the media as though they were true. Once the stories hit the press, a second wave of letters goes out to the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All, to put pressure on upper management to act. Then more media is generated, this time with quotes from the quackbuster insider FTC employees to make it sound official that the FTC is interested. Once this happens, letters and phone calls go out from supposedly "irate consumers (quackbusters)," once again to the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All upper management, demanding to know why they aren't doing something.
    Then, letters and phone calls go out from supposedly "irate consumers (quackbusters)" to certain members of Congress demanding to know why the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All, aren't doing something.
    Within days, upper management of the FTC, the FDA, and Operation Cure-All, are deluged with questions from more media, and Congress. They see the issue as important, and act against the victim - even if their is little or no evidence..." Big Pharma Tactics on Electro Med etc.

"The funniest thing aspect of his article was that it totally escaped his mind that most of the snake-oil cures he talked about were promoted by the "doctors" of the era. ... If he sat down and looked through old issues of the Lancet, he would find a doctor advocating injections of sugar to cure tuberculosis, and another advocating a vaccine made from daffodil juice to cure asthma. He certainly never read a quite famous book written years ago, called "Cured to Death" which would have been funny if it hadn’t been so calamitous. ... If they did some decent investigative journalism they would discover that the medical profession has had the quackery monopoly since the "Hypocritical" oath was used to swear by. Nothing changes, either with mainstream medicine, or the media."------Hilary Butler

"Modern Medicine would rather you die using its remedies than live by using what physicians call "quackery".--Dr Robert Mendelsohn, M.D.

The original "quacks" were dentists who advocated the use of mercury amalgam, and most dentists are still advocating its use today. Quack is short for "quacksalber," the old German word for mercury.

Nowadays the word "quack" is applied to the competition of allopathy and the drug medical establishment.  "Quack" is the allopathic codeword for competition.

"Anyone who tries to hang the label "quack" without personal investigation to the point of proof beyond reasonable doubt must be regarded as a scoundrel until proven otherwise."--Dr Richards & Frank Hourigan.

Quotes by Quackbusters
[Sums him up!] "In organized quackery, the scum rises to the top,....the freedom of choice they're shouting for is a code word for freedom to deceive......I submit to you that they're psychopaths born with a brain defect that makes them pathological liars." ---Dr. Victor Herbert (from Vegetarian Times, August, 1991, p.88)

Government Thought-Control of Scientists and Professionals:  ....The Pseudo-Skeptics pose as members and leaders of the intelligentsia.......The message of the Pseudo-Skeptics also coincides with the government's "official, public" position on science.............What we are presented with as "skeptical opinion", in those magazines on the book stands—such as The Skeptic, The Skeptical Inquirer, or Skeptical Opinion—is more like covert government propaganda than anything remotely resembling true skepticism in the historical tradition..........What the government's reign of thought-terror has done, is reduce the ranks of true skeptics to a small few, who have little or nothing to do with groups or their magazines.