How To USE This Website...

This is the Bolen Report website.  It is the successor to, and companion to, Quackpot Watch - which still exists.

The articles here, on the Bolen Report, overlap, for continuity, with Quackpot Watch during the period from October 2005 to October 2007.  There are links to other older websites for historical value.

On the Main Page of the Bolen Report there are five columns from left to right.  Starting from the left is the black background "Link" column.  You will find this "link" column on every article page also.  The second, third, and fourth columns are "Feature Article" columns by me, Tim Bolen.  The farthest right column is for Guest Articles.

All of the Main Page articles are short introductions to the real article which can be accessed by either clicking on the article title or the blue word "More" at the bottom of the introduction.  The articles are, more or less, in chronological order, with the newest articles at the top of the columns.

If you are looking for a specific name, or topic, use the "Search This Website" section in the far left column.

Words in the article text highlighted in BLUE are always hyperlinks to other web pages to be used for further information relating to the article.  When using these hyperlinks you must use your back key to return to the article.

I do have a system, somewhat, to run a track of related articles.  I use "Inline Frames" on article pages so the reader can see a list of other articles in series.  For instance, to the left on this page, under the black link box is a column labled "Other Articles of Interest."  You can scroll down through this column and find articles of interest in a reverse chronological order.  Just below that is a series about the Doctor's Data v Stephen Barrett Federal court case in ACTUAL chronological order wit the the dates they were published on the website.

Then too, for the series about vaccinations I call "More Articles About the Geier Case" I have embedded an article table in the right side of every related article, so that the reader can refer, at will, to earlier, or later pieces.  See the example to the right.

I, Tim Bolen, am an Opinion Writer meaning that I tell the story from my viewpoint.  I am most definitely biased in certain directions.  Stephen Barrett, of Quackwatch, and Terry Polevoy, Barrett's low budget Canadian copy, actually sued me and dragged the case on for nine-and-a-half years - until the Judge in the case, finally threw out their complaint.   Instead of stopping my critiques of their operations, as they wanted me to do, I radically INCREASED the attention I gave them, the whole time.   I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, but I don't think THEY did.  I wrote a whole series on the delightful experience.

I VERY MUCH like what I do.  I thoroughly enjoy the companionship of the people in the North American Health Freedom Movement. 

So, What is my Opinion based on?

I was raised, in Michigan, in the Roman Catholic Church, and survived nine years of Catholic School under the Dominican Sisters, before escaping (insert humor here) to a much smaller public high school.

Since Michigan was always subject to the current conditions of its major employer, the auto industry, there always seemed to be a recession or depression.  Of course, to add insult to injury, there was all that damn snow.

And then there was a whole lot more of that damn snow.

And then it snows again.

I make a joke that "It wasn't until I moved to California that I was able to realize that there was a different body shape to boys and girls - as in Michigan, everyone wears a slightly different colored version of a Pillsbury Doughboy outfit all year long."

In my Senior year of High School my teachers were pressuring me to make some decisions about what I was going to do with my life.  My parents were a little curious also.  Frankly, I didn't see much of anything in a Michigan-based career that grabbed my attention.  My father was a Pharmacist in a partnership with his brother, also a Pharmacist.  They had other business interests.  So, I worked, from the time I could get a work Permit at fourteen, in a big drug store doing everything the owners son should do.  I worked the same hours as my dad, most of the time, and my cousin Jerry Junior worked with his dad.  It was there that I found that I liked dealing with people a whole lot - and that whatever I decided to do in life, it would involve dealing with people.  All kinds of people.

My grandfather, and I, had a special bond.  He was my buddy, I miss him terribly.  From the time I was five years old I spent my whole summers with my grandparents at their summer cottage on Lake Avalon in Montmorency County in Northern Michigan.  There he taught me how to use tools, and to fix things.  My grandfather was a top executive in an automotive company.  He took me all kinds of places.  I met the president of Chrysler Corporation when I was eight years old in the lobby of the Detroit Athletic Club and he said "Tim you have really grown a lot since the last time I saw you."

So, it was my grandfather who I went to with my decision about what I wanted to do after high school, for advice.  I told him my dilemma.  Basically he said "There isn't enough in Michigan for you.  You'll never be happy living here.  You need to see what else there is."

He knew I wanted to "Join the Navy and see the world," as they advertised at the time.  So I did, and I did.  What a shock all that was to an upper-middle-class-white-boy-suddenly-thrust- into-a-different-world.  And, what an education that was.  It was incredible fun, and an intense learning experience about what's real in the world.

When I got out of the Navy my parents had sold their interest in the business and moved to the California desert.  My mother had been in a horrible automobile accident in 1939, four years before I was born (and I am the oldest child), and had, virtually, broken every bone in her body.  By 1962, Michigan's wet cold weather was catching up to her.  The pain level was intense.  Dad said "that's enough of that..." and moved to the California high desert.

So, when I got out of the Navy there, waiting, was the high desert, and, there was this girl I had met while visiting home on leave.  And, California is a seductress.  It is a world of its own.

So, after a couple years of college, I married this sweet young nineteen year-old in October of 1965, and by last count we've been married for forty-six years now.  After we were married I went to work, rather than finish college.  Taking advantage of advancement opportunities, we moved seven times in the next five years.  Kept taking college classes when I could.  Crisis Management is an exhausting career choice, requiring constant attention to the problem(s) at hand.  But, it is an interesting life.

I get to meet, not only some of the finest people in health care, trying desperately to improve the human situation, but I get to meet the total slime - like the pseudo-skeptics.

I have my mother's sense of humor.  I have added much more irreverent bite.

I'll be adding on more sub-sections now and then...

I write about difficult subjects.  Surprisingly,  I will make you laugh, perhaps at just the absurdity of the situations.  Perhaps, just to let you know that there are answers to the reasons you came to read my articles.

Tim Bolen - Consumer Advocate