Assorted Diet Lies and Dirty Tricks. Until about 1974 I had a naïve and idealistic belief in the medical industry. I even believed the lies that the patient always came first and that doctors would never harm a patient for profit.
The cause of SIDS is known, but suppressed
Then I read in an Australian research journal about some brilliant research done by an Australian doctor. As a technician the methodology fascinated me.
The doctor observed that Aborigines had many more cot deaths than white people, so he did blood tests to find out why. He found that vitamin E was absent from the blood of the victims and very low in the blood of the mother.
So he gave free vitamin E supplements to pregnant and nursing mothers and cot deaths disappeared completely. That's right - not the usual 40% success rate that you have come to expect from drug trial, but 100% success rate.
The doctor was interviewed on TV a few days later and then a so-called expert from the drug companies was asked what he thought about it. That was the first time that I had seen the advice of Mr Freud junior demonstrated "If you are caught out attack the qualifications of the person who has caught you out. Don't debate it."
The so-called expert sneered "Well vitamin E has been described as a vitamin looking for something to be good for, but you can't really give any credence to vitamin research that doesn't track the blood levels of the vitamin."
I was amazed because the entire research had been based on tracking the levels of vitamin E in the blood. That was the end of the discovery. I never heard again that the cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome had been discovered and every year we have a "red nose day" to raise money for research into preventing SIDS. All that money would have dried up if the "expert" hadn't succeeded in suppressing the information.
Many years later I saw the same tactics used to hide the cause of hyperactivity. A mothers' group in Eastern Australia cut out all foods that contained additives (that meant a lot of cooking for themselves) and the hyperactivity in their children disappeared.
The "expert" interviewed on TV made some sneering remark and I never heard any more about it. About a year ago an expert had to admit that hyperactivity and other diseases such as asthma could be caused by additives.
Expert attack usually points to something good
Think about it a moment. The drug companies don't need to discredit an alternative remedy that doesn't work...they'll just say I told you so, and advise you not to be caught out by alternatives again. That means that if they go to enormous expense to discredit something it is working so well that it is a threat to them.
My first experience of that was when they banned the sale of apricot kernels from health shops, and took the discoverer of vitamin B17 to court charged with distributing poison. During the case the prosecution was so incautious as to give a direct answer to a question. Dr. Richardson asked "How many apricot kernels would I have to eat to kill me?" He was told that a handful would be enough. So he said "I am now going to commit suicide", and ate two handfuls. He won the case.
For more than a dozen years now I have been eating a tablespoon of apricot kernels each day. They are still banned in the health shops, but they are part of the traditional cooking of Asian peoples, so I get my supplies from the Oriental supermarkets. I still haven't dropped dead from cyanide poisoning.
While the EEC was trying to decide whether to ban the sale of effective amounts of vitamins and minerals the drug companies produced a document full of lies and half-truths about vitamins and minerals. I only remember the outright lie that vitamin C causes cancer. I knew all along how good vitamin C can be, so I wasn't surprised by the attack.
Prevention can't be proved
If an alternative food protects you against colds and flu and cancer and heart attacks how can you prove it? You can't. I only know that I used to get three severe attacks of flu-like disease each year and it doesn't happen now. It could be coincidence!
Get it banned
A nurse in the northern continent of America created a mixture of 4 common weeds that cured cancer. The government promptly banned the sale of these weeds, so the nurse published the recipe so that anyone could collect their own weeds and make the treatment.
An Australian man gave the mixture to a lady expected to die of cancer in less than 2 months. When her doctor found no trace of cancer in her body he asked what she had been taking. She told him. His response was "I'm not having him interfering in my business like that" and soon after the medicine was banned. So the vendor changed the name and continued to sell it under e reservations about the CSIRO diet because it would destroy your liver. The beauty of this attack is that the CSIRO would be too sedate to dignify this with a response, so the public might believe the attack. I think they outdid themselves that time. Sales of the book continue. There are limits to the dirty tricks that the general public can accept.
If you still haven't read about the health frauds that are the biggest killers, read the earlier articles in this series. 
Next in this series (which ends by telling you how to avoid the lies for a healthy diet) you can find out about extreme cases of lies and dirty tricks for money. 