I have always found trade shows to be fascinating. It is where buyers and sellers converge to sell and haggle and beat the competition and all of that good stuff. It is an interesting, high-powered dynamic. I would imagine that you can find a trade show for just about anything; tires, frogs, underwear and even caskets.
As I write this story, I am reminded of being a guest at a very large natural foods show in Southern California. There was row after row of most anything organic and natural. I happened to stop at the booth of a company that was selling organic frozen dinners. At the same time, and from another direction, there appeared another attendee who was wearing a sort of white tunic.
He wore a name tag; “Dr. So and So –,” it said. I observed him as he carefully studied a package. The salesman in the booth patiently observed. The good doctor pulled out a little keychain with a silver pyramid at the end. He twirled the pyramid around the package and after a minute said:
“This is a good product. It resonates well.”
The salesman had the look of a guy who needed a tumbler full of bourbon. It was a four day show; he was only at day two.
“Peace and light,” or something like that, the “medical professional” said.
The “doctor” left without buying anything. I went over and picked up the same package and found it was empty. As I recall, the print on most of the package was dummied. The doctor had passed the pyramid over a fake empty box with no product.
There are no end to guru’s in this world; no end to flimflam. P.T. Barnum said it best and people who are desperate enough or foolish enough to believe grown men with pyramid key chains or miracle cures are the biggest suckers of all.
Robert Oldham Young
In late January of 2014, a Southern California Naturopathic doctor by the name of Robert Oldham Young was charged by the District Attorney’s Office with 18 counts of practicing medicine without a license. If the charges stick, the good doctor could go to prison for up to 15 years and eight months.
Young is the author of the book, “The pH Miracle.” I have searched, but so far I’ve been unable to find one serious cancer researcher at Harvard or Stanford, or any legitimate medical school or any oncologist associated with any hospital that actually treats patients, who gives guru-doctor Young one shred of credence.
If a pH Miracle exists, it might be the fact that Young was able to buy a 46-acre ranch, called Rancho del Sol, on a choice parcel of land fairly close to San Diego, where he maintains a clinic that “treats” people at the end of their ropes.
In my opinion, he earns his bucks on desperate people who pay him $50,000 and up to get a diet of raw vegetables and to learn how to eat foods lower in acids. His patients die. Sadly, all six of his recent patients have died. Still, his up to date pictures show him grinning like a jackal.
Out Come the Lawyers
Naturally, Young and his cohorts who work at the ranch are represented by an attorney. The attorney said that the good doctor never claimed to be medical doctor. California has something called the “Health Freedom Act” that protects alternative care people who treat people with nothing left to lose. The lawyer claims that each one of those poor souls had a choice.
Of course, they had a choice. The choice was the truth. And while we are at the truth, I might ask the lawyer a question under my cross examination: If the pH Miracle man never claimed to be a doctor, why in the pH was he playing one?
To see a relative or a friend waste away from terminal cancer is awful. It is often a long, slow and painful good-bye. There is no way to make it sound pretty and for the most part, we want to cling to life for as long as possible. We want our friends and family to stay for as long as they can. But there comes a time when the “hope game or the hype game” needs to be shut down. The shut down comes when the bitterness of truth become the hope in and of itself.
Here is what I, Chuck Gallagher, believe. There are a thousand things wrong with healthcare and medicine and with many physicians. However, I do not believe that researchers or physicians or hospitals or pharmaceutical companies intentionally let patients die. There are no drugs for “them,” and drugs for “us.” If that were the case, no one at any pharma company would die of cancer. No physicians or hospital administrators or researchers would die of cancer either; nevertheless, they do.
What many alternative medicine providers fail to admit is that sometimes, we are at the boundaries of solving the riddle of cancer; that we simply do not know. Despite all of our search engines and digital technology and a half-million apps, people still die.
It is sad and none of us wants to admit when we are truly out of options. Ultimately, coming to terms is better than allowing someone to make our healthcare decisions by passing a pyramid on a keychain over our bodies and taking our money.
How many of Dr. Young’s cancer patients died? How many of any medical doctors cancer patients have died? Why are medical doctors and their better than 90% failure rate for cancer not held up to charges of quackery? If one were to exclude certain cancers the failure rate would exceed 97% for Medical doctors. What about young? what’s his rate? Chuck there is more than one type of doctor. It is largely the Medical doctors that don’t want to admit they don’t know everything. If alternative medicine didn’t work , it would not be here but people know it does work and so they spend a little money for wellness. By the way how long do medical doctors live compared to Naturopaths and practitioners of Herbal Medicine? It seems to me you have as good a chance of getting well being treated by a garbage man as you do a Medical doctor for cancer.. I use all Herbal, Medical an Naturopathic. Why should I be limited to a single field?