Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen
The US “quackbuster” operation, suffers humiliation almost daily these days. When you listen to their leadership discuss this problem they inevitably blame one person for their woes – scientist, and author, Hulda Regehr Clark PhD.
76 year-old Clark, an independent scientific researcher and author of six best-selling books on health care and what’s wrong with it, is clearly the most hated person in quackbusterland. Why? Is it because they can’t beat her down, can’t stop the sale of her books, can’t have her imprisoned, can’t destroy her reputation, can’t frighten her into submission, and can’t destroy her work through innuendo and smear tactics?
Yes, those are reasons, and good ones, but they aren’t what creates the vehemence and the spittle spewing from “quackbuster” lips when they discuss Hulda Regehr Clark PhD.
It’s the fact that EVERY time they attack Clark her world popularity increases. Her book sales increase. Her invitations to speak at world conferences increase. More people quote her. More people want to meet her.
So I laugh at their antics… and almost encourage them to do more…
Her books include: “The Cure for HIV/AIDS,” “The Cure for All Cancers,” “The Cure for All Diseases,” “The Cure for All Advanced Cancers,” “The Prevention of All Cancers,” and the “Syncrometer Science Laboratory Manual.”
The “quackbuster” operation is slick – and well designed by a very good social manipulator who understands propaganda and public relations“black-ops.” When the New York ad agency, that actually runs it, takes on a project for a client, they can show that they have, for years, maintained a successful track record. They can point, with pride, at earlier campaigns where they totally ruined their targets. They can show current projects in operation right now, that are working just as planned.
Current projects? Sure. Everybody saw the “Vitamin E kills people” campaign. It was saturating the media. Of course it wasn’t true – Vitamin E doesn’t kill people. What the ad agency did for their secret client was simply to hire some third-rate hack to write a poorly written paper supposedly “reviewing the literature” on Vitamin E. Then they released the fake “study” via a massive, and expensive, public relations campaign, to all of the US media.
That’s how it works.
But why isn’t it working against Hulda Clark?
Why is it that when Hulda Clark was arrested in September of 1999, hauled across the US, from San Diego to Nashville, Indiana, in her orange bathrobe, in the backseat of a Brown County Indiana squad car, that her popularity increased, and her book sales, the following year, increased by 60%? Good question.
Why is it that when the quackbuster “haters” infiltrated the Clark internet discussion groups and railed against her to her followers that her followers treated them like misbehaving children, spanked them, and told them to “go take a nap?” Good question.
Why is it that when the quackbuster “haters” infiltrated the Clark internet discussion groups and railed against her to her followers that the numbers of followers increased? Good question.
When you meet her, and hear her speak, you find out why. This brilliant, but simple person, lives her Mennonite heritage. Helping others is her creed. Clark is real – the “quackbusters” are a pimply construction.
When I first met Hulda Clark in late 1999, I’d just been hired in my role as a “Crisis Management Consultant.” One of the first things I did was to set up her internal support network – those that would help carry her through the financial and emotional trauma that was coming her way. I organized a meeting of some of her supporters in Indiana and about 150 people showed up, on short notice, at the home of a City Council member of one of Indiana’s larger cities. My intention was to just let Clark bask in their clear, and obvious, emotional, and political, support. But Clark saw the situation differently, and proceeded to give them a two-hour demonstration of her latest scientific findings – and you could here a pin drop during the whole period.
After Clark’s demonstration people were thanking her for her courage, her work, etc. One couple came up to Clark, and the woman introduced her husband to Clark, saying that “he wouldn’t be alive today if we hadn’t bought your book and did what you said.” I was close by watching and instantly noticed a discomfort in Clark’s body language – so I went on alert. I went to her immediately and said “Dr. Clark, I need to speak to you privately for a moment. It’s urgent,” and immediately moved her into a different room. There I asked “what happened there? Why were you suddenly uncomfortable? Was there something I missed?” Clark looked me in the eye and said “I’m uncomfortable with people thanking me for things. I’m a scientist. I’m supposed to do this sort of thing. They treat me like a hero, and I’m just doing the right thing.”
I responded to Clark by asking her two questions “Are you glad that what you wrote in your book actually worked, and saved that man’s life?” She said “of course I am.” Then I asked “are you curious about how well your method worked, and if there were any practical problems that came up?” She said “yes, I am.” So I said “let’s go back in there and get that scientific feedback you need for your next book…” She did exactly that and had the audience enthralled for two more hours as they exchanged experiences and observations. In effect, she had gained 150 new research assistants.
As you can tell – I like Hulda Clark. She and I have been friends ever since that time in Indiana.
So, why, exactly, are they so angry at Clark?
Simple. The quackbusters misjudged her, and her support network. When they attacked her they got beaten to a pulp. They were publicly humiliated. The ran from the battlefield like a beaten dog with their tail between their legs. They were laughed at. They continue to be laughed at.
And now, people no longer fear them. And, they relied on fear to accomplish their goals.
The “quackbuster” strategy, when they first decided to attack Clark was, I believe, as follows:
(1) They arranged with a newly elected Brown County prosecutor’s wife in Indiana to issue a warrant for Clark’s arrest falsely claiming that Clark had “practiced medicine without a license” six years before in Indiana when Clark was researching for her “The Cure for HIV/AIDS” book. The newly elected prosecutor’s wife had investigated Clark when she was with the State of Indiana six years before but couldn’t get anyone to find reason to prosecute Clark. So, when she helped get her husband elected six years later a warrant “magically appeared” on the FBI NCIC computer system claiming that Clark “was a fugitive.” Then, the FBI Agent who investigated Clark told me, “a California attorney called and told me where Clark was living, and we went and picked her up.” Clark was arrested by that FBI Agent, held in San Diego for 15 days – because the Brown County Sheriff had no knowledge of any such warrant ever having been issued and would not send anyone to get her.
(2) Then a lawsuit was filed in San Francisco on behalf of a couple named Figueroa from the Bronx in New York City – a short subway ride from the offices of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) in downtown Manhattan. Christopher Grell, then from San Francisco, now living in Oakland, was the attorney. Stephen Barrett, of quackwatch infamy, had been advertising on his sleazy website for someone to sue Hulda Clark using Christopher Grell. Obviously, they found someone. The lawsuit, convoluted and poorly written, sued a whole bunch of people around the US, including the church that had given the Figueroas a free copy of Clark’s “the Cure for All Cancers” book.
For those of you not familiar with the ACSH, check out this interesting quote from an article by Horward Kurtz from the Washington Post:
“No such identity crisis afflicts the American Council on Science and Health ( ACSH), which bills itself as a conservative public-interest group. It issues a steady stream of reports contending that saccharin does not cause cancer, that the pesticide EDB is safe, that there is no proven link between heart disease and a diet high in fat and cholesterol.
At least a third of the group’s funding comes from food, chemical and petroleum companies – from Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical to Eli Lilly and Shell Oil – that have an interest in the products that ACSH keeps defending. But its director, Elizabeth M. Whelan, challenges the notion that her group is beholden to its financial backers.
“The perception among our enemies is that we’re speaking for industry,” Whelan said. “But we call it as we see it. The funding has nothing to do with it.”
This rationale seemed to evaporate, however, when the ACSH filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a 1982 lawsuit brought by the Formaldehyde Institute. The suit succeeded in overturning a federal ban on insulation made with formaldehyde, a suspected carcinogen.
It turns out that the ACSH ‘s legal brief was paid for by Georgia-Pacific Co., a leading manufacturer of formaldehyde and a member of the Formaldehyde Institute. Georgia- Pacific paid its Washington law firm $40,000 to write the 45-page brief, which ACSH then submitted under its name to a federal appeals court.”
(3) Stephen Barrett, who clearly had “insider” knowledge, put both stories on his sleazy quackwatch internet website.
(4) “Quackbusters” began to infiltrate Clark internet discussion groups calling Clark “a quack, a murderer, etc.” and referring to Barrett’s sleazy website.
Although this assault was seemingly well planned and executed – it failed.
Here are some of the reasons:
(1) The Judge, in Brown County, Indiana looked at the local Prosecutor, and his wife’s, antics with a jaundiced eye and let Clark out on bail. The Judge came in at 4:00 AM, as soon as Clark arrived in Brown County, convened her Courtroom just for Clark, set bail at a pittance, and Clark went to an attorney friend, and Professor at Indiana University’s house, for a rest. The charges were soon dismissed against Clark.
(2) Mark Kruzan, the Indiana House of Representatives majority leader, and personal friend of the Governor, was also a personal friend of Hulda Clark’s – and was calling people and letting them know about that.
(3) The Figueroa lawsuit dragged on for a while, with Stephen Barrett trying to make it sound more important than it was on his website, but eventually the Figueroas refused to be “deposed” and ended up firing Christopher Grell, and Clark’s attorney Carlos F. Negrete filed a Motion to Dismiss, the Figueroas didn’t oppose it, and the case went away.
(4) Stephen Barrett had his role in the cases exposed to the public. Figuratively speaking, he had his pants pulled down and he got his butt paddled right in front of everybody. Observers found, from this exhibition, that he wasn’t the “Big Man on Campus” he claimed to be. He was laughed at.
The Problem was…
(1) This had NEVER happened to the “quackbusters” before. They were not accustomed to being laughed at. They were accustomed to scaring people and having their words unchallenged. Everybody laughs at buffoons. When they attacked Clark they looked like buffoons.
So, they attacked again. This time they sued Clark directly, claiming that she had hired me, Tim Bolen, to defame them. (Insert laughter here). They also claimed that the other Defendants, like Rosenthal, had “conspired” to defame them. And that began the Barrett v. Clark case – the one that has already gone to the California Supreme Court, where that illustrious Court, once again, pulled down the “quackbuster’s” pants and solidly whacked them, publicly, one more time.
Even better, was that most of the world-wide internet leadership filed “Friend of the Court Briefs” against the “quackbusters.”
Once again, with the California Supreme Court action, the “quackbusters” have entered the “public buffoon” category. (Go ahead and chuckle), and this phase is NOT over. Their suffering, and humiliation has just begun. For Ilena Rosenthal, and her band of aggressive attorneys, are going to, forcefully, collect every dime, and every nickel, owed them – with interest, and a pound of flesh. Ilena Rosenthal means business. I can tell she intends to show these scumbags no mercy. I smile in anticipation.
(2) It is apparent that the New York ad agency has abandoned the “buffoons” like Stephen Barrett and Terry Polevoy who lost this case to Rosenthal, putting their money on other players like Bobby Baratz (Robert S. Baratz, MD, DDS, PhD). Baratz has been aiming for the Supreme Command spot for some time, shoving Barrett aside. He has demonstrated his ability at perjury, viciousness, and depravity on a grand scale at every opportunity. Why do I think that the New York ad agency has abandoned them? Because nobody came forward to pay the legal bills for Barrett, Polevoy and Grell. The New York ad agency is letting them drown.
The ad agency may have plenty of money to conduct a “Vitamin E is killing people” campaign, but there’s no money to bail out “buffoons.”
The “buffoons” blame Hulda Regehr Clark PhD for their problems – and frankly, they’re right.
You can see Hulda Clark, in person, in Atlanta, Georgia this April 28th, and 29th, 2007 at the Alive Expo. She’ll be speaking both Saturday and Sunday. Check the schedule.
Stay tuned…
Tim Bolen – Consumer Advocate