When Healing Becomes a Crime The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics

Description

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 govenment-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. Foreword b y Bernie Siegel, M . D . Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE The Wildest Story in Medical History: The Ballad of Harry and Mildred 1 . Riding the Cancer Underground 2 . "People Wh o Got Well When They Weren't Supposed To" 3. A Formula for Conflict 4. Quacking Around 5 . Gone to Texas: The Medical Wild West 6. Hoxsey vs. the AMA: "Thrice Is He Armed Who Hath His Quarrel Just" 7. Uncle Sam's Quackdown: " A Conspiracy Against the Health of the Nation" 8 . Twelve Thousand Patients in Dallas: "You Couldn't Run Me Out of Here with a Gatling Gun" 1 3 5 9. Endgame: The Government "Liquidates" Hoxsey 1 0 . Mexican Standoff PART TWO A Conjlia of Medical Opinion: The Hoxsey Remedies vs. Conventional Cancer Treatments Tempest in a Tonic Bottle: A Bunch of Weeds? Hoxscy's Eclectic Approach to Cancer 1 3 . The Hoxsey Escharotics: "Like a Pit from a Peach" 2 00 1 4. Nutrition with Attitude 2 09 1 5 . Conventional Cancer Treaonent: "Heroic" Medicine 2 2 3 16. The Hidden Roots of "Heroic" Cancer Treatment 2 44 PART THREE Money, Power, and Cancer: Healing the Politics of Medicine 1 7 . Cancer Scandals in the Capital: The Hoxsey Film Goes to Washington 1 8 . Patented Medicine: A Way o f Business 1 9 . Two Centuries o f Trade Wars: The High Priests of Medicine 2 0 . A Truce i n the Medical Civil War: The Office of Alternative Medicine Looks at Hoxsey 2 1 . Look Out, America ! Here Come Alternative Cancer Therapies 2 2 . "Pay Your Money and Take Your Choice": The Corporatization of Alternative Medicine 2 3 . The Other Heroic Medicine Epilogue 3 5 3 Afterword 3 56 Notes 3 5 8 Appendix: Sources o f Information on Botanical Medicine 4 3 2 Selected Bibliography 443 Resources 446 Index 450