Part 2 of 2
In September of 1980, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would remove from the market more than three thousand drugs whose effectiveness had not been proven. During the previous year, Americans had spent more than one billion dollars on these same "unproven" drugs, many of which had been "accepted" by the AMA. In 1962, Congress had passed amendments to the Food and Drug Act which implemented drug effectiveness requirements by 1964. The drug manufacturers resisted all attempts to force them to comply with these amendments, forcing the FDA to remove them from the market some sixteen years later. The average life of an effective drug is about fifteen years; this meant that the delaying tactics of the drug manufacturers had allowed them to milk these unproven drugs for their entire effective market life!
We now come to the most amazing record of criminal syndicalism in our history. After Congress had passed stringent requirements in 1962 to force the drug manufacturers to prove that their drugs were effective (a requirement which in many cases was impossible to observe, since they were worthless), the drug manufacturers were advised by their cohorts in the AMA and the advertising industry that it would be wise to start a brushfire, a diversionary tactic which would draw attention from the fact that they had failed to comply with the new Congressional requirements. This diversionary tactic was to be called "the War Against Quackery." A few months after the new regulations went into effect, the AMA Board of Trustees met to create a new committee, the Committee on Quackery, which was formally incorporated on November 2, 1963. It was originally intended to destroy the entire profession of chiropractic in the United States, the nation's second largest health care group. It soon branched out in search of further victims, as the "Coordinating Conference on Health Information." This subsidiary was the brainchild of a New York letterhead outfit called the Pharmaceutical Advertising Council, which in turn was merely a space on the desk of the President of Grey Medical Advertising Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the prestigious Grey Advertising Company in New York.
Although it was ostensibly merely an advisory group, the Coordinating Conference on Health Information soon launched an all-out war on independent health practitioners all over the United States. Its victims were usually selected by the nonprofit AMA, aided by the charitable foundations, the American Cancer Society and the Arthritis Foundation, both of which had been smarting under accusations that they were killing patients while independent health advisors were saving them. The criminal syndicalists were able to enlist the full police powers of the federal government, through contacts in the Federal Trade Commission, the Post Office Department, the Food and Drug Administration, and the United States Public Health Service. These federal agents were solicited by the charitable foundations to initiate police actions against hundreds of unsuspecting health practitioners throughout the United States. It was one of the most massive, well planned and ruthless operations in which the federal agents ever engaged. In many cases, people were arrested for selling or sometimes giving away booklets which advised such innocuous health practices as taking vitamins! These distributors now found themselves under restraining orders from the Post Office, the Department of Justice, and the Food and Drug Administration. Others, who were distributing various salves, nostrums and other preparations, most of them based on herbal formulae, received heavy fines and prison sentences. In every case, all of the stocks of these practitioners, many of whom were elderly and impoverished, were seized and destroyed as "dangerous substances." It was never alleged that a single person had ever been injured, much less killed, by any of these preparations. At the same time, the drug manufacturers were continuing to sell drugs which produced extensive side effects such as kidney damage, liver damage and death. Not one of them was ever enjoined from distributing these products on the terms used against the independent health practitioners. In most cases, when these dangerous drugs were banned in the United States, the manufacturers shipped them overseas to countries in Latin America and Asia, where they continue to be sold to this day. The stock of Syntex Corporation rose from a few dollars to a high of $400 a share when it started dumping steroids in foreign markets.
Many of the attacks were focused against the distributors of an anti-cancer preparation called laetrile, a fruit product. Extremely sensitive to any rival of their very profitable chemotherapy drugs, the cancer profiteers ordered the federal agents to carry out terror raids against their competitors. Often striking at night, in groups of heavily armed SWAT teams, the federal agents broke down doors to capture elderly women and their stocks of herbal teas. Many of these housewives and retired persons carried small amounts of vitamins and health preparations which they furnished to neighbors or friends at cost. They had no funds to fight the massed agencies of the federal government, who themselves were merely patsies for the Drug Trust. In many cases, the victims lost their homes, their life savings and all other attachable assets, because they had posed a threat to the Medical Monopoly. It was the most blatant use of the police powers by the Big Rich to protect their profitable enterprises. To this day, most of these victims have no idea that they were knocked off by the Rockefeller Monopoly.
Sidney W. Bishop, deputy postmaster general, boasted at the Second National Congress on Medical Quackery in 1963, "I am particularly proud of the excellent arrangements existing between the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission and the Post Office department to maintain coordination in the exchange of information leading to the establishment of criminal prosecution," a laudatory reference to the success of the "war against quackery." It was later revealed that the Coordinating Conference on Health Information had been entirely financed by the leading drug companies of the Medical Monopoly, Lederle, Hoffman LaRoche and others. From 1964 to 1974, their search and destroy campaign was carried on as a total war by federal agents against anyone who had ever offered any type of health food or health advice. The goal of course, was the elimination of all competition to the major drug companies.
In 1967, the AMA received 43% of its total income, $13.6 million, from its drug advertisements. It then issued a letter of agreement jointly with the Food and Drug Administration publicizing a campaign to "enhance public awareness of health fraud devices and products by identifying them as ineffective and potential health hazards." These were the same persons who had been unable to persuade the drug companies to comply with federal requirements that they prove the effectiveness of their drug products! The hazards, as we have stated, lay more with the Drug Trust than from the elderly ladies in California who were advising people to eat more garlic and lettuce if they wished to stay healthy. The death tolls were from "approved" drugs, not from the preparations distributed by the holistic health advocates.
The AMA then sponsored a National Health Fraud Conference, whose principle spokesman was Congressman Claude Pepper. This was an ironic turn of events, because a few years earlier, the then Senator Claude Pepper, one of the most powerful political figures in Washington, had aroused the ire of the AMA because he planned to support socialized medicine in the United States. A longtime spokesman for leftwing interests, who was known as "Red" Pepper because of his political sympathies, Pepper had found himself attacked by the big guns and money of the AMA. They found a candidate to oppose him in Nixon's friend, George Smathers, and Pepper was defeated in Florida. Coming back as a Congressman, Pepper now licked the boots of those who had ousted him. He endorsed their police state methods against anyone who dared to challenge the power of the Medical Monopoly.
Having proved his loyalty to the Rockefeller power, Pepper was allowed to stage another health conference in 1984. It was denounced by informed observers as a typical "Moscow show trial." The new Pepper sideshow was called the Congressional Hearings on Quackery. Pepper claimed that "health fraud" was a ten billion dollar a year scandal, an impressive figure for what was essentially a small cottage industry. He summoned a longtime apologist for the Medical Monopoly, Dr. Victor Herbert, a physician at the Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital. Herbert demanded that the Justice Department use the RICO (Racketeer Inspired Criminal Organization) strike force against "medical charlatans" and "health frauds" by using the same techniques which had been employed against organized crime. RICO allows the government to confiscate all assets of those who are convicted "as a result of a proved conspiracy." In December of 1987, this same Dr. Victor Herbert surfaced again, filing a 70 page complaint in the U.S. District Court in Iowa. He charged that the officials of the National Health Federation, a rival to the AMA, and other alternative health care practitioners had libelled him. Kirkpatrick Dilling, the attorney for the defendants, termed the suit a flagrant attempt to destroy freedom of choice in health care in the United States. Dilling pointed out that Herbert was backed by a shadow group called the American Council for Science and Health, a front for major food manufacturing companies.
Dr. Herbert was joined at the Pepper Hearings by a longtime agent of the Medical Monopoly, Mrs. Anna Rosenberg. She voiced her outrage that there should still be any competition in the United States for the Drug Trust. A longtime vassal of the Rockefeller family, she had served as director of the American Cancer Society during its valiant struggle to restrict all treatment to the orthodox and highly profitable "cut, slash and burn" techniques, which, unfortunately for the patients, usually proved to be fatal. Anna Rosenberg had been married to Julius Rosenberg. She earned five thousand dollars a week as "labor relations specialist" to keep unions out of Rockefeller Center and to keep its underpaid minions on the job.
The Coordinating Conference on Health Information ran amuck for some ten years, sending hundreds of victims to prison on what were in most instances flimsy or trumped up charges. The desired effect, to terrorize everyone who had become active in the alternative health care field, was achieved. Most health practitioners went underground, or closed up their businesses; others left the country. An inevitable reaction against these terrorists operations set in; by 1974, there were public demands for a Congressional investigation of the SWAT tactics used by the Post Office and the U.S. Public Health Service against elderly housewives. Such an investigation would inevitably have revealed that these conscientious and dedicated public servants were actually faceless tools of the sinister behind the scenes figures who manipulated the government of the United States for their own power and profit. Needless to say, no such Congressional investigation was ever held. Instead, the CCHI suddenly went underground. They were immune from countersuits by their victims, because all actions had been taken against the victims by federal agents. They were not immune, according to the statutes, but the chances of recovering against them in any federal court was remote. (The present writer has on numerous occasions sought redress against federal agents in federal courts, only to have a polite federal judge rule against him in every instance.)
After the Coordinating Conference on Health Information went underground, health practitioners in the State of California suddenly found themselves under more concerted attack than ever before. The activist now was the California State Board of Health. It was then found that the stealthy minions of CCHI, still doing the work of the Medical Monopoly, had merely abandoned their national operations for fear of exposure, but had now nested in the California State Board of Health like a group of diseased rats hiding from inevitable retribution. The CCHI has remained imbedded in the California State Board of Health ever since, carrying on a steady warfare against health practitioners in that state. The drug cartel continued to operate unmolested.
This war against American citizens fulfills every requirement for prosecution under the statutes forbidding criminal syndicalism in the United States. It is a classic case of a supposedly nonprofit organization, the American Medical Association, conspiring with certain charitable foundations, notably the American Cancer Society and the Arthritis Foundation, to enlist public agencies to start a war to benefit the national Drug Trust, while denying American citizens the benefits of reasonably priced and effective health care. Not only were there repeated violations of the constitutional rights of citizens who were active in the health care movement, often from a sense of public service rather than from a desire for profit, while the evidence of an active conspiracy (RICO) to subvert official government agencies for the profit of private multinational drug firms is too abundant to ignore. Those who have been victimized by the CCHI conspiracy can also bring actions against Lederle, Hoffman LaRoche and the other drug firms who hired these people to do their dirty work. The trail of liability is plain; it will be simple to establish it in court.
Meanwhile, the effect of the CCHI depredations has been devastating. Millions of Americans, particularly the elderly and the poor, have been forcibly deprived of reasonably priced health care because of this conspiracy. These victims have been forced to do without their modestly priced health advisors, and thrown onto the care of the high-priced physicians from the AMA, who place them on expensive drugs produced by the Rockefeller drug monopoly. The fact that many of these drugs are overpriced, ineffective, and potentially dangerous has been routinely covered up by the federal agencies responsible for protecting the public, particularly the Food and Drug Administration. It is notable that the drug cartels have never been investigated by any government agency under the pertinent provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, because these cartels are the property of the international financial monopolists. This proves what many observers have charged for years, that the government regulations purportedly enacted by Congress to protect the public have, in reality, served only to protect the monopolists. By 1986, this Medical Monopoly had reached a yearly take of $355.4 billion a year, eleven per cent of the Gross National Product of the United States. The Medical Monopoly has long had its critics among conscientious members of the medical profession. In December 1922, the Illinois Medical Journal featured an article which declared that "The American Medical Association has become an autocracy." This was during the heyday of Dr. Simmons' rule in Chicago. The article denounced the dictatorial assumption of power over the entire medical profession. Although it had first organized in 1847, the AMA had not formally incorporated until 1897, when it paid a three dollar fee to the Secretary of the State of Illinois. Within two years after its incorporation, "Doc" Simmons had arrived on the scene to begin his twenty-five year power grab. He soon realized that the medical schools control the hospitals; the medical examination boards control the medical schools, and so he expanded the power of the AMA until he had total control over the medical examination boards.
The records show that coincidentally with the growing power of the AMA, there came a corresponding decline in the quality of medical care and the personal responsibility of the physicians to their patients. The AMA enacted a stern Code of Ethics, which serve to form a phalanx of protection for any physician who faced criticism for his errors, such errors, in many cases, resulted in the crippling or deaths of his patients. This same "code" usually prevents any physician, nurse or other hospital employee from testifying in court about the errors committed by a physician.
One noted physician, Dr. Norman Barnesby, who had long been a prominent member of the U.S. Army Medical Staff and the U.S. Public Health Service, said, "Chaos and crime is inevitable so long as doctors abide by the AMA's code of ethics, the code of silence. (This is akin to the notorious Omerta, the code of silence of the Mafia, which invokes the death penalty to any member who reveals the secrets of the Cosa Nostra. The Medical Gnostics, the AMA, has set up its own Cosa Nostra, which passes a sentence of professional death against any physician who reveals any medical omissions or crimes, the result being ostracism from the profession, denial of hospital privileges, and other drastic forms of punishment. Editor's Note.) The ethics to which doctors subscribe smells to high heavens. It is a disgrace to any vaunting civilization. ‘A peculiar reserve must be maintained by physicians toward the public in regard to professional questions and as there exist many points in medical ethics and etiquette through which the feelings of physicians may be painfully assaulted in their intercourse, and which cannot be understood or appreciated by general society, neither the subject matter of their differences nor the adjudication of their arbitration should be made public."
The last part of this paragraph is Dr. Barnesby's direct quote from the AMA Code of Ethics. Note the arrogance of the AMA in claiming that "medical ethics and etiquette" cannot be understood by general society. Dr. Barnesby continues, "I am convinced that the remedy lies in a full abolition of all codes and practices inimical to society, and a complete reorganization of the system on the lines of legal supervision or other responsible control." Dr. Barnesby's recommendations were ignored by the Medical Monopoly.
An AP dispatch of February 11, 1988 noted that "5% of Doctors Lie About Credentials" a headline of facts discovered by a large health care corporation, Humana, Inc., found that 39 of 727 doctors who applied to work in their clinics during a six-month period, that is 5%, presented false credentials. Even worse, many doctors, convicted of drug or sex charges in one state, simply move to another state and set up practice, protected by the Medical Monopoly. There have been horrendous stories in recent years about habitual sex offenders, convicted in one state, who go to another state and through their professional practice, began their career of violating children once more.
A gifted physician, Dr. Ernest Codman, of a distinguished New England family, addressed the annual AMA convention on March 2, 1924 as follows:
"I have notes on four hundred registered cases of supposed bone sarcoma. All of these four hundred registered cases, with few exceptions, are records of error and failure; I have many of the foremost surgeons and pathologists in the country convicted in their own handwriting of gross errors in these cases. Legs have been amputated when they should not have been, and left on when they should have been amputated."
Dr. Codman's speech left his audience dumbfounded. None of them challenged his statements, but his speech was deliberately hushed up by AMA officials. He wryly records that never again during his distinguished professional career was he asked to address any AMA meeting.
From time to time, other dissidents have appeared at AMA meetings, to engage in a brief skirmish as they voiced their objections, and then disappear, forgotten in the all consuming war to maintain the Medical Monopoly. Time magazine gave a brief summary of one such episode on June 6, 1970, with the headline, "Schizophrenic AMA." The story noted that some thirty to forty dissidents, young idealistic doctors, had rushed the podium and taken over the AMA annual meeting for a few anxious moments. Their leader denounced the AMA from the lectern in vigorous terms, "The A.M.A. does not stand for the American Medical Association -- it stands for the American Murder Association!" Armed guards turned back members of other groups which sought to voice their dissatisfaction. The young intern vacated the platform, and presumably is chief of surgery at some hospital today, having learned that you can't fight the system.
Another dissident, Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn, noted that in 1975, 787,000 women had hysterectomies, and that 1,700 of them died as a result of this surgery. He believes that half of these women could have been saved, as their surgery was needless. The Washington Post noted on January 21, 1988 that "Most heart pacemakers may be unneeded; more than half are not clearly beneficial." The story noted that one American in 500 now has a pacemaker. This business is only twenty years old, but there are now 120,000 implants each year, a business taking in one and a half billion dollars a year. Greenspan complained that "many internists are ordering them without consulting a heart specialist."
Dr. Mendelsohn has also complained that terramycin was an ineffective antibiotic, its major result being that it left children with yellow-greenish teeth and tetracycline deposits in their bones. He quotes the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program, which found that the risk of being killed by drug therapy in an American hospital was one in a thousand, and that 30,000 Americans died each year from adverse reactions to drugs prescribed for them by their doctors. Mendelsohn minces no words in his opinion of modern medicine. He calls it the Church of Death, whose Four Holy Waters are: 1) immunizations; 2) fluoridated water; 3) intravenous fluids; and 4) silver nitrate. Mendelsohn dismisses all four as being "of questionable safety."
By the early 1940s, ranking members of the AMA had come to the conclusion that much of their problems with their membership lay with the abrasive Morris Fishbein. Most doctors were ultraconservative in their thinking, and they found Fishbein's antics repulsive. Nevertheless, he had spun his web at the AMA so fine that it involved everyone in the headquarters. His power was built on censorship, intimidation, and exercise of his powers to the limit. It took his rivals almost a decade to get rid of him. Their opportunity came when Fishbein's able lieutenant, Dr. Olin West, became ill, and was no longer able to maintain iron control of the AMA headquarters for the Fishbein regime. Apparently ignorant of the cabal against him, Fishbein continued his merry life of travel and recreation, continuing to garner many awards and prizes for his medical public relations work. He had been named an Officer of the Cross in the exclusive order of Orange-Nassau, a very secretive organization which commemorated the invasion and takeover of England by William of Orange, and the subsequent establishment of the Bank of England. Fishbein made frequent trips to England, where he was wined and dined by prominent members of the Establishment; they must have believed he could be of use to them.
However, none of these honors proved to be of avail when the man who was described by Newsweek as "the man with one hundred enemies" (surely the understatement of the year), was thrown out even more unceremoniously than his predecessor, the unsavory quack, "Doc" Simmons. Despite repeated public criticisms of his junkets and abuse of his expense accounts, Fishbein confidently announced at a luncheon on June 4, 1949 that he would be around for at least five more years. He counted heavily on the traditional schism between two groups at the AMA, the liberals and the conservatives, whom Fishbein declared would never be able to agree on anything. He was wrong, because they did agree that he should be kicked out. United by their common hatred of Morris Fishbein, they formed their conspiracy to assassinate their Caesar. In describing this episode, Martin Mayer notes that since 1944, a sizeable faction at the AMA had been resolved to get Fishbein out at any cost. He had been exposed on a national radio program, Town Meeting of the Air, in early 1949, as a habitual liar. He claimed that he had been touring England, visiting the offices of general practitioners every day. The radio program revealed that he had actually been attending the Olympics, that he had dined with several members of the British aristocracy and attended a number of plays in London, and then had travelled to Paris for a round of the night clubs, all in the name of promoting medicine. The program, aired on February 22, 1949 by Nelson Cruikshank, demolished Fishbein's reputation, noting that Fishbein had not gone near any doctor's office in England during his stay. As for Fishbein's report about his trip, Cruikshank branded it a lie, calling it "a libel on a profession which is proud of its tradition of service to its patients. Fishbein's life was described as "a constant round of visits to New York plays, the Stork Club, and night clubs in London and Paris."
As a result of this publicity, the AMA at its 1949 convention passed a unanimous resolution that Dr. Morris Fishbein be removed from all posts in which he did any writing and speaking. This resolution provided that it be implemented "as soon as possible," which turned out to be that very afternoon. By evening, Fishbein was gone from AMA headquarters, never to return. One of the literary losses of Fishbein's departure was his column, which he had fancifully termed "Dr. Pepys Diary." It was described by one critic as "a running or logorrhic account of Morris Fishbein's private life. Each Christmas, the Diary was enshrined between boards and distributed as the Fishbein Christmas Card to nearly everyone who had a permanent mailing address." Like all of Fishbein's extravagances, the expense of this largesse was entirely borne by the dues-paying members of the AMA.
For years, Fishbein had used the awesome power of the AMA Seal of Acceptance to force drug companies to accede to his wishes. Harper's Magazine noted (Nov. 1949) that "The Seal is probably the biggest single ‘puller' of advertising ever concocted. The Journal is far and away the most profitable publication in the world. Fishbein's absolute power -- he often talked as if he carried the seal in his pocket -- was also the source of other men's power."
After Fishbein's forced departure, AMA officials moved to dilute the center of power at the Chicago Headquarters. The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry changed its name to the Council on Drugs in 1956; the Seal of Acceptance was dropped entirely. Ben Gaffin and Associates had reported to the AMA, "The advertisers, in general, feel that the AMA, especially through the Councils, distrusts them and views them as potential crooks who would become actively unethical if not constantly watched." This had been Fishbein's paranoid approach, but his attitude had been based on the need to maintain control and to force "contributions" from the ethical drug manufacturers." As soon as the Seal of Acceptance was dropped, AMA's revenues from advertisers doubled in five years; in ten years, it had tripled, from $4 million a year to over $12 million. In retrospect, Fishbein's arrogance and his shortsighted policies had been costing the AMA millions of dollars a year in lost revenues. Dr. Ernest Howard of the AMA offered gratuitous reasons for dropping the Seal, saying "it was too arbitrary, and too much authority was vested in one body ... there were also certain legal problems."
Despite the fact that Fishbein had gone, some aspects of his malign influence lingered at the AMA headquarters for years; costing the organization many million of dollars and a great deal of unfavorable publicity. Especially virulent was Fishbein's burning determination to destroy any possibility of "socialized medicine" in the United States. It was paradoxical that the AMA leadership under Fishbein's dominance should be so vehemently against "government intervention" in the medical field, when they had used government agencies for years for their own purposes, particularly the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the National Cancer Institute. One authority, James G. Burrow, traces the AMA's stance towards compulsory health insurance, which changed from exploratory interest to violent hostility between 1917 and 1920. This stance was justified as "anti-Communism," it being well known that Socialized Medicine had long been a primary goal of the Communist Party. A select group of prominent American leftists had been summoned to Moscow for special indoctrination in this goal. They attended a summer course at Moscow University on "the organization of medicine as a state function." The group included such stalwart liberals as George S. Counts and John Dewey. On their return, they began a campaign of public agitation for national health care. Their first convert was a "liberal Republican," Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. In fact, he represented the New England group of bankers who were allied with Rockefeller in maintaining the Medical Monopoly. On March 1, 1940, Senator Lodge introduced a bill for health insurance, which provided forty dollars a year for health care. The bill was quickly shelved, but the gauntlet had been thrown down. Fishbein had no intention of turning his fiefdom over to any government department. Over the next several decades, the AMA spent many millions of dollars fighting "socialized medicine," all of it raised by special levies on American doctors. It also became enmeshed in several expensive antitrust cases as a result of its activities.
As early as 1938, the AMA had been indicted by the Department of Justice in the Group Health Association case. In 1937, a group of government employees had borrowed $40 from Home Owners Loan Company to start a group hospital. The plan offered group medical care for $26 a year for an individual, or $39 a year for a family. This association, which took the name Group Health Association, hired nine physicians. The District of Columbia Medical Society then refused these physicians permission to use the hospitals or to consult specialists. On April 4, 1941, a jury found the AMA and the District Medical Society guilty of anti-trust law violations. The two organizations and eleven physicians had been indicted for restraint of trade. Those convicted included Dr. Morris Fishbein. Two and a half years later, the Supreme Court upheld their conviction in 1943. A fine of $2,500 was levied, and the AMA was ordered to cease and desist in its interference with the Group Health Association.
The AMA fared little better in its twenty year battle against Medicare. The preservation of the integrity of the local physician was a worthwhile goal; however, he was already under the control of the Rockefeller Medical Monopoly; it is difficult to see how the establishment of socialized medicine in the United States would change anything, nor has it. Time noted on December 10, 1948 that the AMA had assessed each of its members $25 for a campaign to spend $3½ million on "medical education," a campaign to turn people against socialized medicine. It was the first such assessment of the AMA in its hundred years of operation. Almost two decades later, the Saturday Evening Post noted in its issue of January 1, 1966 that the AMA had spent five million dollars in 1964 and 1965 battling the medicare lobby in Washington. It was noted that the AMA had $23 million income that year from its annual dues of $45 per year, and from the sales of advertisements in AMA publications to drug companies and medical supply houses.
Time on Dec. 1, 1978 noted that Judge Fred Barnes, administrative law judge at the Federal Trade Commission, had ruled that the AMA Code of Ethics illegally restrains competition among doctors by preventing them from advertising. He further ruled that AMA ethical guidelines should in the future be approved by the FTC. The AMA issued an indignant press release opposing the decision; "There is no legal precedent in the United States for the federal bureaucracy to write or approve a code of ethics for any of the learned professions."
The subject of the AMA Code of Ethics had already come up several times. Science magazine noted on June 21, 1940 on "the bureau of investigation of frauds and charlatans" that the question was raised, "Should medical ethics be changed? The principle of medical ethics as set down at present, can be improved in wording and arrangement, but it also believes that the present is not the time to do the rewriting. It seems wise to let the muddied waters settle before any consideration is given to so fundamental nature of our organization as our principles of medical ethics." Although the speaker was not identified, this pious pronunciamento could only have come from Fishbein himself. The speaker goes on to admit, rather coyly, that "the principle of medical ethics can be improved" but that ended the matter.
The passage of Medicare, after the AMA had sent so many millions opposing it, apparently changed nothing. It proved to be an unexpected windfall for many of the more unscrupulous members of the medical profession. They had no problem in padding bills for fees to the tune of millions of dollars per year per practitioner. In 1982, Medicare paid out some $48.3 billion dollars, while Medicaid paid out $38.2 billion dollars. The more conservative estimates believe that some 11 billion dollars of these funds were skimmed in illegal profits. The heirs of Morris Fishbein at the AMA may have lost the battle to "stop socialized medicine" but they have won the war.
As we previously noted, the AMA trustees at a meeting on November 2, 1963, resolved to "eliminate chiropractic" their biggest rival, through a Committee on Quackery. The secretary of this committee reported back to the trustees on January 4, 1971 that "its prime mission, first, the containment of chiropractic, and ultimately, the elimination of chiropractic." A more blatant admission of conspiracy can hardly be found in any organization's records. The Committee's special investigative unit, headed by the general counsel of the AMA, Robert Throckmorton, involved using insurance companies, hospitals, state medical licensing boards, public and private colleges, and lobbyists. Every method of intimidation and censorship was used. Dr. Philip Weinstein, a California neurologist, had given many lectures to chiropractic groups on diagnosing illnesses of the spine; the AMA ordered him to stop all such appearances. He sent a note of apology after cancelling a forthcoming lecture, "Please accept our sincerest apologies for this late cancellation due to circumstances beyond our control. We were unaware that delivering medical lectures (to your organization) was prohibited."
Throckmorton also tried to put chiropractic schools out of business by preventing the government from granting guaranteed student loans or grants from the government for research at chiropractic colleges. He prevented them from getting accreditation; lobbied in every state to prevent the establishment of a government created accreditation body, and was furious when the HEW Office of Education, being an agency of educators rather than physicians, resisted his efforts and in 1974 sanctioned the Council on Chiropractic Education as a national accreditation body for chiropractic schools. The AMA brought pressure on C.W. Post University, a division of Long Island University, to drop a course designed for pre-chiropractic students in 1972.
In the late 1960s, the AMA Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals imposed new requirements on hospitals; the AMA Principles of Medical Ethics barred its members from all forms of exchange with chiropractors. A JCAH letter August 13, 1973 to a hospital administrator declared that "Any arrangement you would make with chiropractors and your hospital would be unacceptable to the Joint Committee. This would be in violation of the Principles of Medical Ethics published by the AMA that is also a requirement of the JCAH." On January 9, 1973 the JCAH wrote to a hospital in Silver City, New Mexico, "This is in answer to your letter of December 18 referring to a bill which may be passed in New Mexico that hospitals must accept chiropractors as members of the medical staff. You are absolutely correct -- the unfortunate results of this most ill-advised legislation mean that the Joint Committee could withdraw and refuse accreditation of the hospital that had chiropractors on its staff."
The AMA then forced the Veterans Administration to refuse payments to veterans for chiropractic services. These tactics had been reported to the AMA as positive results. A confidential memorandum dated September 21, 1967 by the Committee on Quackery boasted to the trustees that "Basically the committee's short range objectives for containing the cult of chiropractic, and any additional recognition it might achieve, revolves around four points: 1) Doing everything within our power to see that chiropractic coverage under Title #18 of the Medicare law is NOT obtained. 2) Doing everything within our power to see that registration, or a listing with the U.S. Office of Education, or the establishment of a Chiropractic Accrediting Agency, is NOT achieved. 3) To encourage continued separation of the two National Chiropractic Associations. 4) Encourage state medical societies to take the initiative in their state legislature with regard to legislation that might effect the practice of chiropractic."
Because of the flagrant activities of the AMA, several chiropractors finally sued, charging conspiracy. The case dragged on for years, and on August 27, 1987, after eleven years of continuous litigation, Federal Judge Susan Getzendammer of the U.S. District Court found the AMA, the American College of Surgeons, and the American College of Radiologists, guilty of conspiring to destroy the profession of chiropractic. During the proceedings, the AMA freely acknowledged that they never had, nor have, any knowledge of the content or quality of the courses taught in chiropractic college. Judge Getzendammer wrote a 101-page opinion, and issued an Order of Permanent Injunction requiring the AMA to cease and desist from "restricting, regulating or impeding or aiding and abetting others from restricting, regulating and impeding the freedom of any AMA member or any institution or hospital to make an individual decision as to whether or not the AMA member, institution or hospital shall professionally associate with chiropractors, chiropractic students or chiropractic institutions."
Thus ended the legacy of malice and obstructionism which Morris Fishbein had left to the AMA. Although he had been formally relieved of all duties at the 98th meeting of the AMA on June 20, 1949, the AMA had been bedeviled by his obsessions for four more decades. Another of his obsessions was his refusal to admit any black physicians as members of the AMA. He was often heard to refer contemptuously to "der schwatzers," a Yiddish term of contempt for blacks, whenever the subject of admitting blacks came up, as it did repeatedly during his regime. His policy continued at the AMA for two more decades, until 1968, when the AMA was forced to admit blacks. Previously, the blacks had maintained their own organization, the National Medical Association. In hailing the decision, Time referred patronizingly to "the moss-backed AMA."
The fact that Simmons and Fishbein were able to impose their petty concerns on this national organization for half of a century reflects little credit on its members. One of the most telling comments was made by T. Swann Hardy in the Forum, June 1929. In an article with the title "How Scientific Are Our Doctors?" Hardy wrote, "Medicine, as a profession, is not distinguished for the mentality of its members. The average intelligence is lower than in perhaps any other profession. Organized medicine in America is unalterably opposed to any standard of reorganization which would 1) make the medical monopoly thoroughly scientific; 2) make such therapy generally available to all who need it; 3) menace the incomes of incompetent practitioners."
It is noteworthy that the insignia of the medical profession is two snakes entwined on a staff. However, the University of Rochester, deciding that this was excessive, recently reduced the two snakes to one. The caduceus is the mythological symbol of the Roman god Mercury. He was the patron of messengers, but he also had a somewhat unsavory reputation as the associate of outlaws, merchants and thieves. In the ancient world, merchants were synonymous with the other two categories.