Part 2: The secret political issue: Health Freedom
A call from the wilderness
by Jon Rappoport
October 3, 2016
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
For Part 1, and, for the backstory regarding the re-posting of this two part series, click here.
(NOVEMBER 10, 2010) Millions of advocates of health freedom see that no major political candidate, with one or two exceptions, voices their concerns or stands up for their right to improve their health by any and all self-chosen methods.
To understand the landscape in which this deafening silence continues, we need to realize that the one industry which could and should make a difference—the nutritional supplement sector—is dominated by ostriches.
Once a powerful voice for health freedom, the industry has stepped back into the shadows. It nurtures the illusion that it is safe from government intervention. It even supposes it has sufficient allies within the government to stave off attacks by the FDA.
Since 1993, I have been calling for the creation of a powerful “PR wing” funded by nutritional companies. This group would dedicate itself to obtaining ongoing media coverage, showing that nutrition scores many victories in preserving and expanding health, that nutrition is a brilliant success.
At first glance, this may not seem very important. But, in fact, it is THE vital way to turn public, media, and political opinion to the side of nutrition.
The FDA and other government bodies see no reason to curtail their attacks on nutritional supplements if the media aren’t even covering the issue.
Every PR campaign works toward a tipping point, where the very idea of opposing its goals is politically suicidal.
If you don’t understand that, you know nothing about PR.
And what is a campaign? Is it a one-time promotion? Is it a vaguely flailing effort to marshal support? Is it a token outreach? For amateurs, perhaps. For dreamers.
But the reality is far different. A campaign is a well-funded, sustained, and highly organized operation, aimed at gradually creating a shift in widespread perception.
In this case, the campaign TELLS THE TRUTH. That is its weapon. That is its intrinsic strength.
NUTRITION WORKS.
Media outlets, editors, reporters are always looking for interesting stories. The brutal fact of life is, they need copy to fill space and time. They must have it.
What about a boy in Arkansas who was ill for three years, unable to learn or play with his friends, who was brought back from the brink by supplements?
Is that a story?
You bet it is.
What about a husband who had to quit his job and go on the dole, because he no longer had the strength to put in eight hours in a factory? And then he regained his strength with nutrients. Is that a story? It sure is.
Does a fledgling PR campaign start from the top of the media chain? Does a story suddenly appear on the front page of The New York Times? In a fantasy world, perhaps.
No, you build up your book of clippings. You gradually move up the ladder.
You establish a foothold. You lay a firm foundation.
You find experts who will give you favorable and truthful quotes.
You shove in your chips for the long haul, and you don’t back out because you wish paradise would come tomorrow.
On the other side of this PR campaign, you tell the truth about your target, your opponent, your nemesis, your threat. The FDA.
You build up an accurate dossier documenting the widespread damage this agency had done over the years. And it’s there, believe me. For the past 20 years, I’ve been finding it and reporting it.
FDA-certified drugs have been killing American citizens at the rate of 100,000 a year. That’s a good place to start. (Starfield, JAMA, July 26, 2000; “Is US health really the best in the world?”)
You put your opponent, your threat back on its heels. You force it to play defense. Instead of trying to limit people’s access to supplements, the agency is busy warding off truthful, pointed attacks.
You obtain the right, correct, and honest coverage of the FDA in the press. On an ongoing basis.
This is the double-pronged PR campaign. There is much more to say about it, but you get the idea.
You want politicians to aggressively support health freedom? You have to show them they would have public opinion on their side. And how do you do that? You obtain TRUTHFUL media coverage.
Coverage isn’t accomplished by waving a magical wand. It’s done through PR.
Over the years, since I ran, in 1994, for a Congressional seat in Los Angeles on the issue of health freedom, I’ve seen the most haphazard, amateurish, wasteful, silly, and delusional PR launched out there, in the stratosphere, on behalf of health freedom. Drunken men with no tools would have a better chance of building a mansion than this kind of demented PR would have in congealing public opinion.
This must change. The nutritional industry must come into the 20th, and then the 21st century.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the basic ideal of individual freedom is under assault from many quarters. Health freedom will not escape this net.
Something EFFECTIVE needs to be done.
Read my long interview with brilliant constitutional attorney, Jonathan Emord of Emord and Associates. He spells out what the FDA is doing and planning to do to nutritional supplements in this country.
Jonathan explains the situation in detail.
Naysayers out there will give you a litany of reasons why the media will never cover health freedom or the massive success of nutritional supplements. “Media ad space is dominated by drug companies.” “Media are controlled by the government.” “Medical power is too great.”
I’ve heard all the excuses. Mostly, they are offered by people who refuse to believe any good change can happen in any sphere. But the fundamental flaw in their arguments lies in a complete misunderstanding about the way PR works.
Here is the secret. Most PR DOES work. If the people behind it are smart, if they have money, if they put in the time and the effort, if they aren’t scared away by a few failures, they will come out on top.
Every PR campaign knocks its head on the ceiling many times. “We can’t break through!” “They won’t listen to us!”
You complain, and then you roll up your sleeves and keep going. Because the goal is worth it. Because you truly want the desired end result. And because PR works.
When I began writing as a reporter almost 30 years ago, I knew nothing about the business. I quickly learned that media need copy. That was the basic reality. Media need stories. They will respond.
PR works the same way. You dig in for the long haul, and you gain success.
Of course, the other advantage of an excellent PR campaign is, no one person has to stick his neck out and take the heat. Instead a whole industry is involved. “You want a battle? Then come after all of us.”
Then can you imagine how the millions of people who buy those supplements would appear in full view, ready to stake their claim for freedom?
In the early 1990s, this is exactly what happened. A few nutritional executives bankrolled a massive outreach program, enlisting American citizens, who wrote millions of letters to Congress demanding a new law protecting supplements.
Congressional sponsors were lined up. They felt confident because the outcry from citizens was huge. The law was passed. It didn’t offer us the guarantees we really needed, but it was better than nothing.
Now we need more. Better laws, and also a PR campaign that doesn’t fold up its tent just because the Congress moved in a somewhat positive direction.
This time, we may need all those citizens to write to supplement companies demanding their action. I have sketched out that action in this article.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.
Jon, that’s one of the most sensible blogs I’ve seen from you. It makes perfect sense and perhaps our only means of survival in the long run. But who is going to marshall the freedom forces? Who’s going to convince supplement companies and manufacturers to work together? What will it take besides lots of money? I know you don’t have these answers right now. As in all groups and all movements, it will take one or more champions. I’m just wondering who that might be. As an ordinary citizen, I stand ready to help where I can; writing letters, signing petitions, etc. But it will take a great deal of long-term leadership on the scale of a National Vaccine Information Center, only with tons of money. I will try to remain hopeful, but why do I picture John Belushi in Animal House trying to get his friends to follow him? (You have to keep a sense of humor.) To arms!
We just have to stop being meek and say things how they are.
Tell a pediatrician that aluminum nanoparticles transfer to the brain via a macrophage/lymphatic pathway. This has been proven: vaccinepapers.org
The three towers did not fall because of airplane strikes. Stop watching television, as it promotes a type of personality that ridicules the obvious. Be like Orwell, and don’t run to the comfort of state and corporate-sponsored popular mindsets that is being shaped and packaged by the media for your consumption.
If enough people become knowledgeable and confident of their knowledge, then the PTB will have to atleast ask for our permission next time they try to fuck us in the ass. Hopefully.
Hello Jon, How about something like this. Suppose every place that sells nutritional supplements asks for signatures on a petition it sends to the the right place in government petitioning they lay off of natural health and protect the rights of individuals to choose how they care for their bodies? I don’t have a clue how this might be accomplished but it would make the health conscious customers aware of the dire need to let government agencies and representatives of government there is an all out attack on natural health and how many voters are out there.
This is just an idea…I have no idea how to approach the stores and retail outlets but I assume it would behove the health food industry to take the lead in getting more people involved.
So every time I make a purchase I sign a petition. Perhaps it could even be automated somehow so all customers would have to do is enter personal id and sign the petition.
Put the supplement companies in charge or the stores how profit from the sale of products.
Ok, that’s all I have for now. I appreciate your undying dedication to this cause.
John in Muskegon
I will talk to Health Hutts in my community about this and we have a Natural Health Group here that meets on the 2nd Tuesday of each month and put it up for discussion. It is mostly health workers and professionals in nutrition.
John, this is what they did in the 90’s. It looks like it needs to be done again. Until the people vote the worthless corporate whores out of office, this type of threat will remain. The government can not have integrity if a majority of its citizens have none. The only question that should matter when voting in a public servant is Will they uphold their oath to the constitution and only pass and write laws that are constitutionally compliant and protect and serve the people’s inherent rights? Any other questions are worthless and only feed drama and the inane media circus.
Howdy Sir:
Great piece. Let me give you a view from inside the nutritional industry and you’ll better understand the lack of truth telling and good PR for the nutritional industry and natural health practices. As a nutritional company owner, albeit of a small but niche specific firm, I’ll tell you that the industry is it’s own worse enemy. There are some 3000+ companies in the nutritional industry from raw material suppliers, to contract packaging firms to finished product firms who mostly sell what the contract manufacturers cook up for them. Having had the unfortunate occasion of meeting over 1000 of the owner’s, CEO’s and head salesmen of those firms at trade shows, conferences and the like, I can flatly state that I can count the trustworthy, sincerely committed to health companies with products they know actually work on the fingers of two hands and have 2 or 3 fingers left over!
To start with most of the owners of nutritional companies are no better a lot than the owners of the drug companies; they just have less money. But they’re trying to make more, even if it means making the rest of the industry look bad. Next we have the sales men: the bulk of them are not health professionals, not even interested amateurs but mainly folks from the used car and furniture selling industry. (I wish I were kidding about this, but unfortunately I’m not). Next we have the behind the screen folks who actually own the nutritional companies and use them as tax write offs. One such from was owned by a pharmaceutical concern in Europe and it owned the nutritional company and a hotel in the US just to show a loss on their taxes back home. Another firm using a US nutritional company as a tax write off was a small Australasia airline. There are likely many more such. Then there are the owners who create schlock products with low grade raw materials, with tons of claims and high prices but zero actual physiological action. These are the firms who sell products to the chain drug or food stores which contain almost no active ingredients in them as had been widely reported on in the last 2 years.
Finally we have Big Pharma moving into the nutritional industry as Cerberus Group moved into the gun industry, buying up company after company. Starting in 1999 Monsanto bought two of the largest and most well established nutritional supplement making firms in the US. The new parent company would often leaving the founding family or former owners in positions of management and or as front men; though in one takeover the owner of the bought out firm retired. Most often the pharmaceutical firm would change the raw materials and flow agents used in the nutritional companies products. My conspiratorial mind sees a nefarious purpose in all of that.
Next we have the super purists who claim that their products are made with out fillers or flow agents. These folks are adamant in their distain for the rest of the industry that does not hold up to their supper pure standards. It needs to be said that these folks are either gullible or deceivers. The equipment for taking super sticky vitamins, herbs, enzymes etc., blending and tableting or encapsulating with out flow agents does not exist!!! I repeat, such equipment DOES NOT EXIST! Period. Think of baking a cake or making cup cakes and not buttering and flouring the pan; it’s exactly the same thing. The super purists have their products made by contract manufacturing so they are not present when the stuff they sell as super pure is measured, blended, tableted or encapsulated and finished. They may be handed a “batch record” stating what is in their product but contract manufacturers will tell a customer what ever they want to hear, so batch records given to finished product sellers have been known to be falsified. Unless a super pure product is independently tested for content, there is no way to know if it’s actually free of flow agents and fillers. Independent testing found one such super pure, flow agent free product had 10% of it’s contents in talc. Talc is a common flow agent. In FDA labeling law it is illegal not to state what the inactive ingredients might be in a product. Nutritional labeling is held to a much stricter standard than drug labeling. So, if push came to shove, all of the super purists firms could be in big trouble with FDA!
In the mid to late 2000’s the industry’s guidance and PR watchdog, the nutritional industry’s trace association renamed itself and proposed stricter oversight of raw materials, and finished goods in its member companies. This was actually an attempt by the larger firms to kill off any product that actually worked or was a major competitor to their own offerings from the smaller firms. It also provided the big firms with advanced information of new and innovative products that might be coming down the pike so they could get into a new product with less R and D and likely beat the smaller firm to the punch. During this change the trade association withdrew from the majority of the advocacy work it had formally done. (Likely at the behest and money, pressure etc. from the drug company owned firms).
Finally we get to the natural health practitioners in the main Chiropractors and Naturopaths These intelligent folks should be leaders in the natural health movement. The “Sold Only To Doctors” own 1 ND school outright that I know of, and have substantial influence (i.e. money sponsorship) in the remaining schools. Those indoctrinated ND’s will mostly pull for what they were taught in school, to the exclusion of most all else. Plus there are two separate ND’ s associations with the politics between them resembling the fight between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland! Of the Chiropractors, only one of their schools offers a comprehensive teaching of nutrition. Most DC’s get only a smattering of nutrition and natural medicine and most DC’s learn the bulk of their nutritional knowledge post grad. and independently. To get ND’s and DC’s together to work on nutritional advocacy is like herding cats.
I won’t even go into the brawl between the different kinds of vegetarians and the vegan vs. omnivore battle, except to say that it would be a very cold day in hell before those various religions work together.
Given all of the separate directions, differing motivations, quasi religious beliefs and just plain greed in the natural health world and nutritional industry, I don’t see anyone forming a comprehensive truth teaching organ to do PR to resist the FDA or to fight off the evil on the outside, as we’ve got too much evil on the inside!
Be well and God bless,
Will Wong ND, PhD.
WAM Essentials.
Hi Dr. Wong. Do you have a mass spectrometer?
I was wondering if you could test, or have tested in the past, JCrow’s Lugol’s Iodine. I have always felt cross after taking it, and I sometimes wonder if there are any undisclosed ingredients.
Howdy:
Nope, sorry, don’t have one of those yet. Don’t know why iodine would make one angry. The increase in thyroxine production would not explain that effect.
Dr. Will
Dr. Wong,
Thanks for your insights. It’s a lot to take in and think about and you’ve helped us take a peek on the inside. I see a Naturopath regularly and I take several supplements consisting of about 20 capsules and pills overall per day. At age 62 (male) I take no prescription drugs, but I have tried implanted testosterone pellets trying to get back a libido and deal with ED. Other than that, my health has been pretty good. But with all the supplements I take, I’ve always wondered how they are made and how one would know what’s really in them. We are mostly very trusting, but very ignorant consumers! We so want to believe these things work. Some of them seem to work for a while, like alleviating chronic knee pain, and then the benefits seem to wane or disappear. Maybe that’s a placebo effect, I’m not sure.
But more importantly what you’ve outlined is that it all comes back to money. That’s why someone (companies) makes supplements and like any other product, the competition is fierce. That leads to desperate people taking desperate actions to stay alive. The consumer’s health is too often a secondary consideration. It’s a no win situation. I’m suspicious of the wild claims for success, yet I want to believe. If someone said they had a magic pill that would take 20 pounds off your belly without intense exercise, I’d have to try it.
I believe your post is truthful and insightful, but also very, very depressing. So what you’re saying is, there’s no hope of organizing this industry to fight back. In the face of big money interests like the pharmaceutical industry, I can see them taking control and doing whatever they want. It might be offering decent products that smaller firms can’t bring to market. But it also might be suppressing low-cost solutions that really work or offering low-cost products with junk ingredients. All we consumers can do is ask a few questions and pray to God we’re not being poisoned.
Howdy:
Unfortunately the older we get the larger the number of pills we’ll wind up taking. The bowl of pills will either be drugs or nutrients. Post 55 – 60 it will be a mix of nutrients and some drugs but it’s best if those pills are mainly nutrients instead of drugs. The T implants are absolutely the best way to replace testosterone levels after andropause. As for the 4 factors that need to be addressed for libido and sexual function I speak to those in depth in this interview: http://mikemahler.com/podcast/episode-118-dr-wong-on-strategies-to-address-ed-as-well-as-ways-to-improve-sexual-health-and-performance
Yes, the industry is just like the drug industry: ALL ABOUT MONEY. And yes, wild claims and long heavy sales pitches are a sign of the johnny come lately companies who’ll sell a useless product for months then when the FDA comes after them with a cease and disist order they’ll shut down the doors of their sales office permanently and go onto some other rip off scheme. For example: You may remember TV adds that aired day and night everywhere for a particular form of calcium that they claimed had even cured cancer. Those adds cost $8 million a week to air, can you imagine how much money those shysters made before the FDA came and shut them down!?
Dr. Wong
Profits from poor health are booming. Why these corporations encourage your illness and early death.
Jon, that is “odd” or perhaps not.
My “lost” comment didn’t register on last thread (part one), so I’ll cobble the gist together again as I think it is important.
Spot on, by the way. Nutrition is everything….almost.
I said last [phantom] comment I felt all commenters were drawn into the “problem, reaction, solution” game and that’s why the hunt is always for “treatments” in place of CAUSES.
Causes are a big problem for every. They imply radical lifestyle changes must be made. For instance, I have been harping on about pollution causing ALL viruses (i.e. keep the bad, non-nutritional stuff out of the body) and brand petrochemical is the cause of ALL cancers for some time now. As just about everyone contributes with their mini’s, SUV’s and sedans, how about a nice drive for cancer?
See what I mean?
I found an interesting website which is a fascinating read offering lots of detail on those usually “fuzzy” areas. WordPress found it so offensive they ejected the comment…..I think.
Here it is again broken into chunks for competent reassembly 🙂
h**p://
petroleum-products-cause-cancer.
weebly.
com/
Hopefully that evades the “gestapo”.
Best
OT
Building an action coalition is always a daunting task. Dr. Wong’s assesment is spot on but that doesn’t mean the task is impossible. All we need to get started is some creative strategy, and a very strong intent for truth and integrity. Advocating for Health Freedom, does not require getting consensus on any one philosophy or practice. The whole point of Health Freedom, is that we are free to choose. A PR campaign only need be committed to telling the truth and disseminating facts. It does not need to advocate for any one field. Telling the stories of individuals and their health journies is a simple task for journalists. People can then make their own decisions based on what they read.
Here’s what I would do:
I’d start with gathering the contact information and facilitating a group email/conference call with the people who commented on this post who are interested in taking action. I’ve included my email with this comment so Jon could facilitate connecting me, Dr. Wong, and whomever else left an email address. Together we identify those handful of companies and people we think demonstrate the level of integrity we are looking for. I can name some right off the bat:
Trivita (supplements)
DoTerra (essential oils)
Tim Bolen (Health Freedom Veteran)
World Wide Choice (homeoprophylaxis)
We contact the owners/organizers/individuals and tell them what we’re up to. Once we have a decent sized coalition – it’s actually better if its smaller to begin with – we invite everyone to an open discussion on strategy. We talk about what we want to accomplish, and how much we think it will cost. Then the initiators take all this information and figure out a snazzy way to communicate the strategy so we can begin a fundraising effort. And so on and so forth. Along the way we just have to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day 🙂
Great idea Erin, I’d like to add to your list of companies. A company I’ve come to find recently and have continually been impressed by is Tailor Made Nutrition out of Woodbury, MN. They are an organization started by 6 natural health/alternative practitioners. They cover many arms of health from a natural perspective. I hope this helps anyone looking for answers.
Also, a PR coalition should include more than just practitioners and nutritional companies. It should include organic farmers and chemtrail researchers. Health Freedom includes clean food and a clean environment.
Remember, it was the farmers who fought the Revolutionary War. They are a powerful group indeed.
Jon, thank you for this article. I’d like to post two personal experiences with obamacare. I have two sons in their 40’s, both with young children. One is self employed very successfully, the other is a successful engineer. Both make around $100K per year. They both homeschool their children which is very expensive, but very rewarding. This accounts for a large outlay of cash before any other home expenses are met. But, they refuse to put their children in government controlled schools. Before obamacare, they had great insurance which paid well and was quite affordable. They all were able to see doctors regularly whenever the need arose. Now, their deductibles are so high (between $5,000 and $6,000 annually) and the percentage they must pay for all medical treatment that, even with their income, they find they cannot afford medical care. My sons both forego their own medical care so that their wives and children are more able to get it. One of them lived with pneumonia until it nearly killed him; the other lived for over a year with a skin mole that looked like (and turned out to be) skin cancer. They barely caught it in time. A friend argued that her unemployed daughter was able to get health care for the first time through obamacare. However, the “care” was very limited and she had to travel many miles to find a doctor that would take it. Who wins in both of these situations? Of course Obama and his buddies who would seek to destroy a decent health care system in order to try to make all U.S. citizens dependent on government insurance. I can only pray that it hasn’t gone too far that Trump cannot fix it.
Hi Faye, thanks for sharing… I have two questions…
* “They both homeschool their children which is very expensive… This accounts for a large outlay of cash before any other home expenses are met.”
Do their wives not do the home schooling themselves? Instead, they bring in for-hire tutors? If their wives do do the homeschooling, then are the so-called “teaching supplies” — to meet the so-called “state regulations for home schoolers”, that expensive?
* “Now, their deductibles are so high (between $5,000 and $6,000 annually) and the percentage they must pay for all medical treatment that, even with their income, they find they cannot afford medical care.”
Have your sons consider going with a “Medical Sharing” arrangement which allows one to legally opt-out from Obamacare insurance (it is in the Obamacare law) while NOT having to pay the Obamacare tax penalty? reference for example: https://mychristiancare.org/medi-share/
Faye,homeschooling doesnt have to be expensive. Libraries and the community at large offer free and low cost resources as well as concerts, classes and other things. I would recommend unschooling which is more natural. joyfully rejoicing is one website as well as the natural child project that offer lots of good advice about this. Not sure what they are practicing that would cost so much. it sounds like they need to see a natural practitioner and focus on their diets(go organic) and learn about nutrition and herbs, which would be great for the kids to learn also. Its much better to pay for good quality food, than to have to pay for inept western medical care. gardening, having your own chickens and/or dairy goats is also a great idea that will make you healthier for many reasons. i think its great they are choosing to take the steps they have, just wanted to make some suggestions for alternative ideas that could help them. just wondering why their medical bills are so high, they don’t have to be.
As far as Obama care and state regulations regarding schooling, the constitution is the supreme law of the land and in educating ourselves we educate our children in how our constitutional republic is supposed to work. Obama care and state regulations are unconstitutional, therefore null, void and without effect.
When you talk about your friends unemployed daughter getting health care even though it was difficult to get to and didn’t help much, you are seeing communism, and your sons are paying for others health care and not getting anything back for what they are putting in. this can never last, and is unfair to those who are productive. We the People must tell our reps that they must represent us and honor the supreme law of the land and repeal all unconstitutional laws that hurt American citizens. If they refuse, vote them out and only vote for those who will uphold their oaths to the constitution and not promote communism.