The Quackbusters
Vitality May 2002By Helke Ferrie
“The great mass of people will more easily
fall victim to a big lie than a small one.”
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925
My first encounter with Quackbusters was on November 10,1998, when a public debate was sponsored by the American College of Toxicology in Orlando, Florida. The speakers on one side were Albert Donnay and Grace Ziem, both with Johns Hopkins medical school and experts on multiple chemical sensitivity. The Quackbuster representatives were its founder Stephen Barrett and Ronald Gots, the founder of the Quackbuster branch, Environmental Sensitivities Research Institute. Both men are also directors of the American Council on Science and Health, another branch of Quackbusters. Their presentations were later published in the prestigious International Journal of Toxicology (vol. 18, no.6, 1999). The debate focused on whether chemical sensitivity is a psychological or a biological condition. In front of an audience of several hundred people, and aware that the entire debate was being video- and audio-taped, Gots stated that prestigious university-affiliated authors of a (named) main-stream peer-reviewed journal had recently provided incontrovertible proof, on the basis of rigorous scientific study and experiment, that chemical sensitivity was a psychological condition.
Gots was followed by Johns Hopkins’ speaker Albert Donnay who informed the audience that this prestigious study was fictitious. The authors were fictitious, too. Even the journal was fiction. A gasp went through the audience. Amazingly, Gots made no attempt to answer. Even more astounding was the body language of both Gots and Barrett. While the audience was audibly shocked and murmurs were going through the crowd, those two Quackbusters leaned back in their chairs, fiddled with their pens in the bored and relaxed manner of total self-assurance awaiting the next item on the agenda.How is this possible? I asked myself. If this had happened to a university professor, his tenure would be in jeopardy and his chances of ever getting published again in a peer-reviewed journal would be zero. Sure, some university professor lie and cheat and fudge the data, and occasionally huge government investigations into science fraud are launched, such as recently in Germany - but never does this happen so outrageously, brazenly in full public view. If cooking the data to support a favorite theory is like the skilled production of counterfeit money in a secret basement operation, Gots’ performance was like a bank robbery in full daylight.
A bona fide researcher, even if he is a crook, must at least appear to be honest. But if your work is supported by an infinite money source, nothing much matters. Gots’ and Barrett’s job seems to be to keep lies circulating so doubt remains strong and fuel is given to the self-defensive all-too-human tendency to dismiss unpleasant information as scare-mongering. Such propaganda provides a highly effective break for change and saves billions of dollars for those whose products and practices would otherwise be compelled to change radically. So, who funds Quackbusters?Birds of a FeatherThe main Quackbusters are Ronald Gots, Victor Herbert and Stephen Barret, retired physicians all who appear in countless public venues, many high profile, to air their views on how untold millions are being poisoned by vitamin C, why we should fight for the right to have fluoride in our water, avoid unhealthy organic foods because they lack those protective pesticides we urgently need, and trust in the absolute safety of mercury amalgam fillings. Global warming is a silly scare perpetrated by individuals in need of psychiatric help, and vaccines cannot possibly cause health problems. On Barrett’s web site one finds in-depth article on everything he believes is fraud (amounting to roughly one fifth of the US gross national product). The most personal and viscous attacks are reserved for the likes of Linus Pauling and many leading lights in current medical research.[/b]
For Barrett and friends nobody -absolutely anybody - has any authority. The alternative crowd is for them as bad as, the (alas!) progressively more and more deluded mainstream such as the World Health Organization, the NIH, the FDA, the White House task force on complementary medicine, Harvard and Johns Hopkins medical schools, and any other serious person or institution trying to make sense of the world’s ills. As for good old-fashioned research, the only democratic tool humanity has got by which to establish what is real and what works - that’s only permitted in Barrett’s world as long as the results fit his opinion. In the world of Gots and Barrett there are no surprises. They are trapped in a black-and-white movie from the early 1950’s and they want us all to be trapped in it too. In a detailed analysis of why doctors turn to complementary medicine, Barrett diagnoses them as suffering from paranoid mental states, fascination with the paranormal, profit and prophet motives, psychopathic tendencies, and boredom.
That last item is closer to the truth than even Barrett could stand: I have had literally hundreds of doctors tell me at international conferences on environmental and complementary medicine that they were bored to tears with prescribing drugs and have their patients return for more and more drugs, getting sicker and sicker. Then they switched to real medicine (the kind inspired by Hippocrates who 2,500 years ago taught about clean air, water and wholesome food) and being a doctor became exiting at last. “Life began when I stopped seeing drug reps,” one said, and another sighed happily, “I haven’t used my prescription pad in years. I am not sure where it is.”
Barrett tells us that “Neither Quackwatch nor I have any financial ties to any commercial or industrial organization” and “Quackwatch has no salaried employees” and is funded by personal donations and profits from publications. “If its income falls below what is needed … the rest comes out of my pocket.” His and Gots’ pockets are interesting, to say the least. The funding sources of their organizations were readily available on the Internet until recently; in the early ‘90’s he stopped disclosing such information. The last annual report to list donors was published 1991 where we find all our toxic friends: Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland (both of genetic engineering fame), the Nutrasweet Company (neurotoxic aspartame etc.), Union Carbide (as in Bopal disaster), the producers of pesticides, fertilizers, and fluoride Dow Chemical, Dupont, Cargill etc., the biochemical warfare and pharmaceutical producers Eli Lilly, the Uniroyal Chemical Company, all the big petroleum and pharmaceutical companies, and various refined sugar producers and refined food producing giants. Two thirds of the world’s economy is controlled by this list of North American Big Business. With friends like that, who needs to worry about telling the most fantastical lies in public?
To test Quackwatch’s insistence that it is based on public support, I applied to become a member in 1999. First I was told that the annual membership fee was US $25,000. I said, “That’s fine, send me the membership application form.” Was I calling on behalf of a corporation? No, I informed the person, who then said, “We prefer corporate members.
Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist, has written 49 books debunking what he identifies as health fraud. He also enjoys debunking UFO’s and experiences of the paranormal. He operates six Web sites. In his CV he claims that he did peer reviewing for some of the top medical journals (e.g. New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association). Since the peer review system is secret, there is no way of verifying this claim.Of course, mainstream medicine has as much trouble discriminating between what’s sound and what’s dubious in medicine as the rest of us. So, it came as no surprise that in 1999 Quackwatch was able to convince the New England Journal of Medicine to co-host a conference on a critical appraisal of alternative medicine. The journal's justly famous then editor, Marcia Angell was the keynote speaker, but rubbing shoulders with Quackwatchers did not impair her find mind and sound judgement. All the hype and tongue clicking notwithstanding, the conference produced lots of sound stuff. Angell’s editorial integrity is now the stuff of legend, as she sounded the wake-up call for medical publication rules and standards of ethics with her June 22, 2000, editorial. She identified the rot by asking to whom the pharmaceutical industry is accountable and argued that it is time medical research does some serious soul searching. As of September 2002 the rules governing conflicts of interest in medical publication have been re-written worldwide. Barrett’s friends are having a hard time, at last - as is his entire organization, because the law suits against Quackwatch are increasing in number and seriousness. Check out
jurimed@yahoo.com for the details.
By Their Works Ye Shall Know ThemSo observed Jesus 2000 years ago with astute psychological insight – fortunately, that cuts both ways. Serious long-term irritation can produce magnificent pearls. Quackwatch’s Dr. Victor Herbert specializes in vitriolic smear campaigns. Linus Pauling describes his many irritating meetings with Herbert in Linus Pauling in His Own Words (1995): “Here is this …. Victor Herbert, who to this day keeps writing papers and giving speeches saying that no one benefits from taking extra vitamins, and he won’t even look at the evidence…. I finally became sufficiently irritated by this fellow that I decided I ought to do something about it. So I sat down one summer … and in two months wrote the book Vitamin C and the Common Cold." [1971]
Quackwatch’s negative influence is formidable. The formula of their attacks on health freedom is fairly simple and easy to detect and its success depends on persistent repetition. The Quackwatch formula simply requires citing scientific literature that is outdated, irrelevant or non-existent. Only the specialist or nitpicking investigative journalist will ferret out the truth. In attacking the White House Commission on Complementary Medicine (annual budget of US $ 50 million at the National Institutes of Health) initiated by President Clinton in March 2000, Barrett devotes enormous amounts of cyberspace to its condemnation. Triumphantly he informs the browser that even members of that task force have broken away in disgust and made their dissent known publicly. What really happened can be found in the rather reliable March 28, 2002, issue of the world’s premier science journal Nature. Two members of that task force stated that more money should be allocated towards research into complementary medicine, and that the task force’s final report would have been better if it had cited even more research to support its suggested program of action.
Quackwatch also delights in using the medial regulatory systems to go after doctors who have strayed from the One True Barrett Path. The State of New York is currently holding hearings (the equivalent of a public inquiry) into the inappropriate way in which the disciplinary process has been used, with Quackwatch “expert” witnesses, to stop doctors from using complementary medicine. The popular radio show “The Touch of Health” was relentlessly attacked with viscous and insulting e-mails by Ontario Quackwatch member Dr. Polevoy until the show was closed down. One of the worst examples of Quackwatch’s power comes from Nova Scotia. In the early 1990’s the faulty air filtration system at Halifax’s Camphill Hospital caused 900 people to become seriously chemically injured and today more than 300 remain permanently disabled. When these cases began to come before Workers’s Compensation tribunal in the late 1990’s, it was Ronald Gots who appeared as the “expert”. The expert opinion reports, accepted by the tribunal, weren’t even signed by doctors and Gots explained that the secretaries could be trusted to know the physicians’ intentions. Gots’ expertise caused all claims to be denied and the claimants were encouraged to seek the help of a psychiatrist. Enter Johns Hopkins researcher Albert Donnay who provided the whole truth and nothing but the truth, scientific and legal, to the appeals board. Since then case after case has been won on appeal.
Some time ago, when I was scheduled to speak at the Health Expo, a friend found me on the Canadian Quackwatch site described as a doctor’s wife who promotes quackery in public lectures. I am flattered. The information I provide must be dangerously accurate.
