When Healing Becomes a Crime

by Kenny Ausubel

A powerful and substantiated expose of the medical politics that prevents promising alternative cancer therapies from being implemented in the United States.

• Focuses on Harry Hoxsey, the subject of the author's award-winning documentary, who claimed to cure cancer using herbal remedies.

• Presents scientific evidence supporting Hoxsey's cancer-fighting claims.

• Published to coincide with the anticipated 2000 public release of the government-sponsored report finding "noteworthy cases of survival" among Hoxsey
patients.

Harry Hoxsey claimed to cure cancer using herbal remedies, and thousands of patients swore that he healed them. His Texas clinic became the world's largest privately owned cancer center with branches in seventeen states, and the value of its therapeutic treatments was upheld by two federal courts. Even his arch-nemesis, the AMA, admitted his treatment was effective against some forms of cancer. But the medical establishment refused an investigation, branding Hoxsey the worst cancer quack of the century and forcing his clinic to Tijuana, Mexico, where it continues to claim very high success rates. Modern laboratory tests have confirmed the anticancer properties of Hoxsey's herbs, and a federal government-sponsored report is now calling for a major reconsideration of the Hoxsey therapy.

When Healing Becomes a Crime exposes the overall failure of the War on Cancer, while revealing how yesterday's "unorthodox" treatments are emerging as tomorrow's medicine. It probes other promising unconventional cancer treatments that have also been condemned without investigation, delving deeply into the corrosive medical politics and powerful economic forces behind this suppression. As alternative medicine finally regains its rightful place in mainstream practice, this compelling book will not only forever change the way you see medicine, but could also save your life.

I was in most respects very impressed by this book. Ausubel did a great deal of meticulous research in order to tell the complete story of Harry Hoxsey's (and his successors) efforts to bring his cancer remedy to mankind. He is a very careful, conscientious investigative journalist. Ausubel puts the story in the context of a centuries-long war between allopathic and empiric medicine. He covers all of the bases and is extremely informative. Ausubel is also a fine, clever writer. Having said all of this, it is very tempting to give the book 5 stars. I would except Ausubel ultimately makes one mistake which detracts from his great history and analysis.

Despite all of the evidence of how corrupt the medical establishment is and the degree to which the regulators have derailed promising alternatives, Ausubel still pins his hope on bureaucrats conducting or overseeing valid medical research which will ultimately determine the appropriate direction for cancer treatment. However, central planning never works, not in the Soviet Union and not in determining medical practice in the U.S. While Ausubel does give it some exposure, he does not enthusiastically endorse the only practical solution to advancing the state of medicine: a genuine free market, where patients can go to whatever type of doctor they want to and use any type of treatment they choose. And where insurance companies are allowed to decide which types of treatments they will or will not cover, whether "orthodox" or alternative. Only medical freedom will allow encouraging alternatives to thrive and for advances in treatments to replace protocols which are seriously lacking.

What about quackery you say? Well, many of the treatments in use today are quackery by any objective standard, so we are not talking about some dreadful contingency, but the reality of today's regulated system / protection racket. And given complete freedom, we would see independent labs conduct their own investigations to determine which treatments to recommend and certify, much as we have organizations like Consumer's Union and Underwriters Laboratories doing in their domains.

D. Saul Weiner

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