How Do You Trap A Quackbuster?

It’s easy.  You set out cheese.  

Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen

Our project in Wisconsin is a prime example of how to deal with quackbusters, correctly, and efficiently.  First, understand who, and what, you’re dealing with.  Once you know that, you’ve installed a ring in their nose, which you can use to lead them to their end.  That’s what we’re doing to Robert S. Baratz MD, DDS, PhD, the current President of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) in Wisconsin.

Quackbusters are so arrogant, and predictable, by nature, that it’s easy to lead them to their downfall.  Individually, they’re like one of those pull-string dolls I bought for my kid when she was three years old.  Pull the string and you get a message like “I’m going to be a big girl some day.”  And then it wets it’s diaper.

I call the rank-and-file quackbusters “Barrett’s Parrots.”  If failed MD Stephen Barrett says it, the minions say it.  Like the pull-string doll, there’s only one message – and that’s ALL there is.

Except for the diaper part.

Hair Removal Salon owner, Robert S. Baratz, is sort of an UPGRADED quackbuster.   Made in a laboratory, Baratz is sort of a combination pull-string doll, and rodent.  Watch videos of him, and you’ll see what I mean.

I’ve helped nail little Bobbie in Florida twice, Texas twice, California twice, and some other places.  He’s easy to beat.   I’m not surprised he broke into tears in Wisconsin.  He ran twice in Florida, had a jury laugh at him in Texas, dropped a case in California to avoid being deposed, and more.  If he’d had any idea that a trap was being set in Wisconsin, he’d have stayed home with the drapes drawn, with his Mom answering the front door..

Quackbusters, individually, or together, aren’t much.  Their hallmark is the “fake resume,” designed to make quackbusters look like they are in the same world as those they criticize – when they aren’t.  Almost all of them do it – to try to give some credibility to their dubious pronouncements about health care.  In Robert Baratz’s case, the resume is a major issue. His resume is literally, a fantasy world.  For details click here.  But Baratz isn’t the only one.

Wallace Sampson, who parades himself on the internet as the editor of “The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine” (belch) claims as his descriptive title“Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.”  The fact is, this rancid old fart probably couldn’t even FIND Stanford University, if he had to…  He’s NEVER taught an alternative medicine class at Stanford, or for that matter, ANY class at Stanford.  He got his title (“Clinical Professor …) when he was required by his former employer, Santa Clara Medical Center, to sign off on Stanford medical students, working weekends, cleaning bedpans.  Sampson performed that function in the 1980s, and he’s been using the title ever since.

I guess, on a quackbuster resume, it sounds better to say “Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford University,” then the reality of “bedpan cleaner signer-off-er.” What we should all make note of is the significant fact that Sampson uses this self-description FIRST and FOREMOST, which would indicate that, to him, being a“bedpan cleaner signer-off-er.” was, and is, the high point of his professional career.

Sampson is typical of quackbuster leadership.

Anybody can see that the first qualification to be a top quackbuster is to be hateful, and resentful of other’s accomplishments. The second qualification is to be vicious.  The third is to be willing to lie, and misrepresent important issues.  The fourth, and very important, is to LIKE hurting others – the ability to revel in the knowledge of how much damage they are doing to Americans.

Knowing the quackbuster’s personality traits makes it easy to set a trap.

The Trap…

In the Wisconsin case, Baratz came in thinking the case was going to be a slam-dunk. For Baratz, and prosecutor Arthur Thexton, knew that Eleazar and Genia Kadile were suffering the financial and emotional devastation of having two of their grown children beset by lupus, an incurable disease.  They knew these two kind, caring,  people had each given one of their children more life by donating each of them a kidney.  They knew that only one of those children survived.  Baratz figured he’d come in, get a quick $50,000 in fees, take the Kadile’s home, their business, their retirement, their very lives, away from them, and go on to his next victim.

But it didn’t work. Baratz and Thexton didn’t count on Eleazar and Genia’s friends coming to their aid.

In Wisconsin, Baratz sunk his teeth into the cheese… and we slammed the trap shut.  And now HE, Robert S. Baratz, MD, DDS. PhD, is on trial for his life.

Never before, in any trial, anywhere, of a leading-edge health practitioner like Eleazar Kadile MD, has the situation been reversed – where the accuser is on trial, except here.  But it won’t be the last time.  Look what happened to quackpots Wallace Sampson, and Stephen Barrett, when they showed up in Los Angeles Superior Court (NCAHF vs. King Bio), didn’t like the Court’s decision, and filed an appeal.  The Three Judge Appeals Court labeled them “biased, and unworthy of credibility.”

What we did in Wisconsin was a simple tactic.  It can be used on any quackbuster who comes to testify in any case. Just keep them talking.  Keep them writing down answers.  Keep asking about the claims they make on their resumes.  It doesn’t take long before they run out of stock answers.  Then, like Baratz did, they’ll start to make things up.  Keep going.  That’s when you’ve got them.  Keep going some more.  One bad answer, or two, can be written off as a mistake.  Thirty bad answers, or fifty, or a hundred, become a pattern of Perjury and Fraud.

As an example, Baratz claims on his resume that he’s a “Consultant to the FDA Office of Criminal Investigation.”  When it was pointed out that we have two different letters from the FDA saying they “never heard of him,” Baratz responded that he was “a secret agent,” and that “he couldn’t tell us what department, or Supervisor, he worked for”  (insert laughter here).  Agent double-O Goofball?  Do you suppose he has a shoe phone?

This is what Baratz is facing July 14th, 15th, and 16th.  And maybe the 17th, and 18th.  He’s going to be cross-examined ONLY on his RESUME and his CREDIBILITY, on those days.  If he survives that, and I doubt that he will, then he’ll face a whole week of cross-examination on his “expert witness” statements.  His “expert witness” statements were so ludicrous, that top MDs and Scientists reviewing his documents, and the statements within those documents, at first thought “this guy knows nothing about science, or medicine.”  But then reality struck.  Baratz has three doctorates.  He has to know.  He was simply lying. Lying under oath is called Perjury.  Perjury is a Misdemeanor.  In volume, it’s a Felony.

This is a landmark case…

Have you ever heard of a case where the Judge assigns THREE DAYS of cross-examination on the “expert witness’s” resume and credibility, before?

When I say that Baratz is on trial for his life, I mean exactly that.

 

Tim Bolen – Consumer Advocate