The Unholy Business of Health Care - Don't mention the cherries

The Health Wyze Report
The credible source for alternative medicine and health information.

By: Sarah C. Corriher
Date:

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Could it be that the most respected of industries is actually the most corrupt of all? Decades ago, the medical establishment went to war to silence a purported quackery of holistic medicine and chiropractors. The purported perversion of medicine which the establishment fought so viciously to quell was the contention that vitamin C is beneficial. It has become a conveniently forgotten history, but more importantly, a rewritten history. The new history is that the allopathic establishment discovered the benefits of vitamin C, and it totally never tried to destroy alternative researchers who were reporting its benefits. It is still spoken of as little as possible.

While some practising doctors may be honourable people who seek to help others, their schools, organizations, and governmental agencies are all controlled by pharmaceutical companies which have less noble intentions. It is best for them if diseases are treated, but never cured. The trend is unmistakable. How many decades has it been since any honest effort was made at developing a cure for any disease? Was it polio? How long ago was that?

Alternative medicine continues to eliminate supposedly incurable illnesses on a regular basis. Where would the extremely influential pharmaceutical industry be if their biggest profit illness, namely cancer, were curable quickly, cheaply, and easily? They would use their influence in government and with media corporations to make certain that alternative medicine was either discredited, or simply given no mention.

It is exactly what has happened. In the United States, nothing can be cited or advertised as being medically useful by any company that is lacking official approval. This is regardless of how safe, effective, or natural its products may be. In practice, this approval may only be obtained from the pharmaceutical cartel that the Food and Drug Administration closely partners with. Since safe, effective, and natural cures cannot be patented by these groups for their maximum capitalization, the natural and significantly cheaper remedies are never given approval. Without approval, cures can neither be marketed nor labelled for what they really do. Producers may be imprisoned for making "unapproved medical claims" if they honestly describe what they sell, and it has happened plenty of times. It is how Big Medicine has traditionally destroyed competing alternatives, but the Internet is beginning to change the rules.

Silence The Cherry Growers! Send U.S. Marshals!

In 2005, certain cherry farmers boasted of cherry's health benefits on their websites, and this required the swift intervention of the Food and Drug Administration. The uninitiated farmers were not aware of the great threat that nutrition is to the lucrative disease management industry, until 29 of them received threatening letters from the F.D.A. Their unforgivable offense was posting the results of scientific studies to the Internet that concerned how cherries naturally eliminate many types of inflammation better and faster than all known drugs, with the possible exception of certain potent steroid compounds. It was found that cherry concentrate in supplement form is more effective in neutralizing arthritis pain than the most expensive medications, with absolutely no risks or side effects. A month's supply of such pain-relieving cherry supplements costs about $12.00, which is a discomforting fact for a U.S. arthritis industry that makes over 11 billion dollars per year in maintaining patients' risky drug addictions. An uninsured patient must pay between $1,000 and $3,000 per month for these drugs, without counting the doctor fees. The cherry farmers had to be silenced. The farmers were told that if they continued citing the scientific findings, then the F.D.A. would reclassify cherries as an unapproved drug, and ban their sale in the United States. The F.D.A. actually stated that the use of cherries has never been proven "safe and effective". What follows is a copy of the F.D.A. threat letter.

Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service Food and Drug Administration Central Region 212 3rd Ave S. Minneapolis, MN 55401 Telephone: (612) 758-7114 FAX: (612) 334-4142 October 17, 2005 WARNING LETTER VIA CERTIFIED MAIL, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED Jim Seaquist, President Seaquist Orchards 11482 Hwy 42 PO Box 204 Sister Bay, WI 54234 Ref. No. MIN0604 Dear Mr. Seaquist: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed the labeling of your cherry products on your website at www.seaquistorchards.com. This review shows serious violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) in the labeling of these products. You can find the Act and implementing regulations through links on FDA's Internet home page at www.fda.gov. Under the Act, articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease in man are drugs [Section 201(g)(1)(B) of the Act 21 United States Code (21 USC 321(g)(1)(B)]. The labeling for your cherry containing products bears the following claims: "[N.W.] recently stopped taking drugs for arthritis pain not long after he began eating 50 tart cherries a day. It was very dramatic. Within two days the pain was gone." "[T]here are beneficial compounds in Montmorency tart cherries that help relieve the pan [sic] of arthritis and gout. [M]any consumers are discovering that tart cherry juice and other cherry products can stave off pain." This list of claims is not intended to be all-inclusive, but represents the types of claims found in your product labeling. These claims cause your products to be drugs, as defined in Section 201(g)(1)(B) of the Act [21 USC 321(g)(1)(B)]. Because these products are not generally recognized as safe and effective when used as labeled, they are also new drugs as defined in Section 201(p) of the Act [21 USC 321(p)]. Under Section 505 of the Act (21 USC 355), a new drug may not be legally marketed in the United States without an approved New Drug Application (NDA). FDA approves a new drug on the basis of scientific data submitted by a drug sponsor to demonstrate that the drug is safe and effective. The above violations are not meant to be an all-inclusive list of deficiencies in your products and their labeling. It is your responsibility to ensure that products marketed by your firm comply with the Act and its implementing regulations. Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in enforcement action without further notice. Enforcement action may include seizure of violative products, injunction against the manufacturers and distributors of violative products, and criminal sanctions against persons responsible for causing violations of the Act. Please advise this office in writing, within 15 working days of receipt of this letter, of the specific steps you have taken or will be taking to correct these violations, including the steps taken to assure that similar violations do not recur. Your reply should be directed to Compliance Officer Tyra S. Wisecup at the address in the letterhead. Ms. Wisecup may be reached at (612) 758-7114. Sincerely, W. Charles Becoat District Director

The Crime: Telling The Truth
The cherry farmers had been informing people via the Internet that multiple studies had proven that cherries work better than pharmaceuticals for certain conditions, and in particular, arthritis pain. Publicly speaking about this threat to the F.D.A.'s pharmaceutical empire was their only crime, as admitted by the F.D.A. in its own paper trail. The letter contended that, "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease in man are drugs". Thus, the F.D.A will reclassify any threat to the industry as a "drug" to give itself authority to ban or regulate it -- even cherries. Cherry farmers were banned from telling us that their product could save us from them.

It is noteworthy that the F.D.A. promised that without the farmer's "compliance" it would begin enforcement action without further notice, and without any judicial oversight. Make no mistake about what was meant by "enforcement", for their history makes it painfully clear. They would have convened upon those farms in the middle of the night with a small army of U.S. Marshals in full S.W.A.T. gear, and they would have held those farmers' families at gunpoint as their cherry crops were stolen or destroyed. The agents would have referred to this as confiscating drug paraphernalia (cherries), for the cherries having been an unapproved drug. The farmers knew the real threat was that they would be financially wiped-out, and it was a very legitimate concern.

As journalists, we can report that concentrated cherry supplements do actually work better than the most expensive medicines for arthritis pain. The F.D.A. was willing to shut down the entire U.S. cherry industry to keep the public ignorant and dependent on bankrupting drugs.