US Federal Agents Arrest Top "Skeptic..."

Saturday, September 17th, 2011

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at things, I, Tim Bolen, have become a primary information source about an organization that, for purposes of intentional misinformation, calls itself "the quackbusters."

I have OTHER NAMES  for them.  So do their victims.  Some of those names, but not most, can be used in polite company.

Again, unfortunately, a current definition of who and what these people are, is not information that sits comfortably with most of my readers.  Why?  Because what I am about to tell you is not conversation for a family Sunday Dinner Table.

The audio tapes, and the video tapes, I link to, to make my case, so-to-speak, will make most people physically ill.  But they clearly identify, in strong graphic rendition, exactly what the psychological makeup of the current quackbuster operation actually is.

But, one must know the enemy.  Even if it's just to know their neck size for the noose, so to speak.

The Definition of a "quackbuster..."

The health care system in the US is junk.  Why?  Because patient care is selected, not on what is best for the patient, but what is most profitable for the provider.  The system is focused ONLY on dealing with health issues that have a highly profitable, patented, and approved by the FDA medication, or an equally mega-expensive surgery available for them.  ALL of the rest are virtually ignored.

All of them.  For instance:

(a)  In the United States alone there are 800,000 victims of Cerebral Palsy - and the official mantra is that "nothing can be done for them.  They should be institutionalized." 

(b)  There are 750,000 victims of Autism Spectrum Disorder - and the official mantra is that "nothing can be done for them.  They should be institutionalized."

(c)  There are 3,400,000 victims of Traumatic Brain Injury - and the official mantra is that "nothing can be done for them.  They should be institutionalized."

(d)  I could go on almost endlessly leafing through the facts and figures of US health care and where it fails:  Autoimmune diseases and disorders, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, mitochondrial disorders, and of course the heartbreak of cancer.

Why?  Because our status quo system of health care has little, or nothing, to offer these people towards resolution - and, with our current health care thinking -  never will.  Because the US health care system is profitable, there is no point - for there is no profit in resolving health issues.  And, we the people have let this happen.

It is the "quackbusters" job to do two things:  (a)  discourage or make certain that no innovation is allowed that would change this paradigm.  They need to make sure that none of these health issues are ever fixed, nor even properly addressed, especially with health paradigms that compete for health dollars generated by drugs and surgery, and (b) demonize those that criticize the status quo (anti-vaccinations, fluoride, mercury amalgam, aspartame, GMO, dental root canals, etc.).

The questions that arise, of course, are: "What kind of people would create this horror for Americans and others around the world? Who would do this to other humans?.  Are they sociopaths, psychopaths, sub-humans with pervasive personality disorders?

I am about to answer those questions.  You are not going to like reading about what I found out.  In short, there has been a "takeover" in the quackbuster ranks.

Most of the "old quackbusters" have disappeared for one reason or another...

The old National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) is completely gone.  Quackwatch's Stephen Barrett has completely removed the names of the old Board Members from the website - and now he seems to run it all himself. 

But, as for the old quackbusters:

Victor Herbert, the screamer, died penniless, of cancer.  Obviously, the mega-screw-up of him, using Michael K. Botts, Esq to sue everybody in the US Health Freedom Movement in the late 1980s, cost him financially, physically and emotionally.  Botts tried another case for Herbert that went all the way to the US Supreme Court, and had an even worse, and obviously more expensive, outcome.

Bobbie Baratz, the "artful résumé" guy, the last known "President" of the NCAHF, you just don't hear about too much anymore.  I guess he hides out in his Peabody, Massachusetts\s hair removal salon these days.  I know he's been ambushed significantly when he shows up to testify, all puffed up similar to his résumé.  I usually have fun helping with that.  That video of bobbie crying, while testifying at a hearing a few years ago, has made the rounds and generated much laughter. 

John Renner,  the one who made the quacklist of 2,500 Doctors,  died on the operating room table of heart problems.    Renner railed against chelation therapy for heart disease (which likely would have saved his life).  Yup.

Wallace Sampson, known mostly for his sneering, seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth since he was roughly humiliated in the Gerson documentary.

William Jarvis, after his exit from Loma Linda University,  is simply MIA.

Terry Polevoy was suing other quackbusters.  He's about as popular as jock itch.

So who is left in 2011?

In February of 2008 I wrote an article called "The Six Components of the 2008 Quackbuster Operation..."  For the most part all of the information there is still good.  What I am doing here is updating it.

I believe that the New York misinformation agency's role, I spoke of in the earlier article, has been diminished. The way I see it the current "quackbuster" operation, almost three years later, is run out of Amherst, New York, and for the most part, its daily functions are completed by a small,  but determined, worldwide group publicly describing themselves as "Skeptics." 

These "Skeptics" claim to embrace several odd concepts, most of which find few constituents in America, nor any nation or community which bases its civilization on the Judeo/Christian Ethic.  In short they are godless.  In that, they have no rules of behavior and even fewer people that will put up with them in their communities.

More, their recruiting appeal designates EXACTLY the kind of people they are looking for, and welcome into their midst.  It says "many skeptics and non-religious people experience a feeling of isolation in their communities, and even among friends and family."

But, as their critics claim, this group are not true skeptics, but pseudo-skeptics - a group of society's ego-deprived losers, those that simply do not fit in anywhere - and never will.  Once embraced into the Pseudo-Skeptic fold they are taught destructive argument techniques and sent off to do battle, primarily on the internet, usually using  anonymity, with those that the central unit has propagandized them to believe are the enemy - those that espouse advances or changes in the health care paradigm..

As I will explain, that godlessness, and their concurrent rejection of our dominant society's belief structure, leads them to reject, also, the idea that we, as a society should help each other, doing the right thing, as it were.  Consequently, this belief system puts this group directly in conflict with proponents of what has been labeled Alternative Medicine - but is, in actuality, Advanced Medicine.

The central unit, calling itself, in years past, CSICOP, and now shortened to CSI, sometimes CFI, is for the most part unsuccessful in its quest.  Started originally, for whatever stupid reason, to confront claims of the paranormal, it was so badly battered by the paranormal scientific community, and nearly spat upon by the US media, that it, wanting to find use for the carefully built cadre of nutcase soldiers, simply shifted its focus from the paranormal to what it describes, by their own definition, as "quackery." 

And that seems to be the organization's savior, for last year's budget, from so-called anonymous contributions, was 3.2 million dollars.

How they operate...

I first came across these people, and their operation, back in 1999 when I took on author/health humanitarian Hulda Regehr Clark PhD as a Crisis Management client.  I found them, using fake names, invading Clark's internet discussion groups spouting the nastiest, most defamatory, scenario's possible - with an obvious attempt to dry up Clark's support base.  I just shifted Clark's discussion groups over to a "monitored" group, and kept the smelly riff-raff off the page.

As you may recall, the attack against Clark was easily beaten off, for, although these people had developed a Modus Operandi, once it was understood it was easy to beat.  In fact the project increased Clark's popularity, and her world-wide book sales by 60%, sending the quackbusters into a rage over this.

At the same time I found that the same people, some using four or five different pseudonyms, had invaded what is called Usenet performing the same kind of nastiness, personally attacking anyone who espoused Advance Medicine.

But, that was then - this is now...

Over the years the quackbusters lost one humiliating battle after another, causing, I think, a shift in who was running things.  Although some of the same people were, and are, still there, including Stephen Barrett, I am convinced that certain things happened.  The quackbusters got more vicious and more focused.

Getting more focused is easy.  Virtually any group can do that.  It's the getting "more vicious" part that raised my antennae.  I had to ask the question "even hiding behind fake internet identities, what kind of people treat others like this?"

And I found the answer.

Then, just last week, the Federal Government stepped in...