Medical Politics Articles
Articles  Medical Politics

[1993 Interview with Dr. Alan Levin.] Modern Medicine and its Military Links

[2010 Jan] Naked Intimidation: The Wakefield Inquisition is Only the Tip of the Autism Censorship Iceberg By Mark F. Blaxill  There are no words to describe the findings of the General Medical Council (GMC). All I can say is that none of us should be surprised. The stakes had escalated far too high for the British medical establishment to countenance any other outcome...... The GMC proceeding is a frightening and thoroughly modern form of tyranny. It makes you shudder to think what Stalin or McCarthy might have accomplished if their public relations had been more skillful and better organized.
    The extremity of the GMC’s verdict--all three men guilty on all counts—lays bare any pretense that the British medical establishment cares one whit about the welfare of its patients. Let’s put in perspective the actions at issue here. No children were harmed and no parent or guardian has complained about the care these three men provided. In fact, the procedures involved were routine, the resulting treatments standard and the careful attention to gastrointestinal illness in autistic children has recently been endorsed by a consensus statement published in the journal Pediatrics (no friend of the autism community). Considered in this light, the GMC hearing process stands exposed for what it is. It was not about medical standards. It was not about evidence. It was not even civilized.  It was, rather, a naked exercise in intimidation, a fateful moment of moral decision in which the medical industrial complex exposed its ruthless, repressive essence. They are a frightening bunch and their conduct here raises issues well beyond autism.

CENSORSHIP. 1947 - EPILEPSY STUDY.  HARRY ANSLINGER’S CONCERN   Today [for all practical purposes] it is against the law to do any medical research on Medical Cannabis in this country.   And has been so probably since the days of Harry Anslinger.   HOW? --- To quote another section of this book (on why Medical Cannabis will never be legalized) : 
. . . The narc's have a very long history of repressing / ignoring the truth. . . . There are numerous other ways the narc's have of assuring that Cannabis NEVER gets FDA approval. HOW? 
You want to do medical research ^[6] on Cannabis, you FIRST have to get a permit from the Drug Police. Of which, they simply don't give out.   In fact, since the passage of the control substances act (1970), all the way up until California passed Prop-215 legalizing Medical Cannabis under their state laws, NONE were issued. According to Chemical Heritage Magazine:
    "Today, American researchers who wish to obtain legal cannabis for scientific study must apply to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which maintains a government-funded, 1.5-acre marijuana farm in Oxford, Mississippi.   Compared with street marijuana, however, the government's plants are low in cannabinoid content, and some researchers have also complained of the institute's slow and seemingly arbitrary decisions.   In 1994 Donald Abrams, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, proposed to study the effects of smoking cannabis on HIV-related weight loss, but his application was rejected by NIDA, even though it had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.   When he then resubmitted his proposal, this time emphasizing the drug's potential negative effects, NIDA not only approved the study but also provided him with nearly a million dollars in funding.   Another researcher, Lyle Craker of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2001 for the right to grow cannabis for research purposes as a way of sidestepping these potency and access issues.   For three years he heard nothing, until a federal court ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration to respond.   They said no, so he sued them. That case is still under way. " 
. . . . . The chill affected researchers as well as clinicians. Medical journals published dozens of studies before the tax act but few after its enactment.   As researcher Lester Grinspoon noted, " virtually no medical investigation of cannabis was conducted for many years " as a string of additional laws, including the 1951 Boggs Act and the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, further deterred research." --- T. Geller - Chemical Heritage Magazine.   Which is a nice way of [saying] -- NO WAY IS IT EVER GOING TO BE RE-LEGALIZED.