Health, Wealth and Stealth Continued: James Lunney and Quackery

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Dr. Stephen Barrett is a retired American psychiatrist, author, co-founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), and the webmaster of Quackwatch. He runs a number of websites dealing with quackery and health fraud, focusing on consumer protection, medical ethics, and scientific skepticism. (Wikipedia)

He publishes a list of 'Questionable Organizations' and the Consumer Health Organization of Canada made his list of one of those he would treat with considerable distrust.

I posted on them earlier as one of the groups that David Lethbridge cornered, as a possible front for fascist activities, given the people they bring to their "health" fests.

The founders of the group Libby and John Gardon, have defended their choice of guests, suggesting that the controversy is good for business. At the time they were speaking in particular, of the late Eustace Mullins, one of the most controversial anti-Semites in the United States. He referred to Jews as furry insects who drink the blood the children.

What was telling was the fact that Libby Gardon called Mullins a friend. She said she has known him for 15 years and described him as gentle and caring. Eventually the Jewish community banded together and Mullins speech was cancelled.

David Lethbridge had suggested that the connection between some of these so called 'Health' experts with their miracle cures, and neo-Nazi fascist organizations, needed further research, especially since some of the names also link to our current government.

So I did a bit of googling to see if there was any merit to that, and indeed there appeared to be. One of the names that cropped up on a regular basis was that of James Lunney. Lunney was a friend of Stockwell Days, who was encouraged to run in 2000, with Day's new Alliance Party (formerly Reform Party). He was given the health critic post while in opposition, but instead of making health his focus, he instead became an advocate for the snake oil vendors, many of whom have been exposed by Dr. Barrett.

Lunney introduced Bill C-420 which has been tossed around for a bit, an attempt to move these "miracle" cures from the restrictions of what he refers to as the "regulatory regime" and move them to food, claiming they are mostly just vitamins and food products. (His favourite EmPowerplus sells for $74.95 a bottle)

The Standing Committee on Health, dealing with the issues surrounding Bill C-420, called in some experts, and one of these experts was Libby Gardon. Another was Trueman Tuck, a purveyor of some of this stuff, whose mission statement is:

“God created Sovereign Spiritual / Human Beings as children of God. God's children cannot and should not claim to have sovereign supremacy with their creator. The Sovereign Children of God created artificial entities, which are all sole or aggregate corporations including rulers, governments, parliaments, senates, judges, etc. THEY do not posess [sic] any sovereign supremacy and cannot and should not claim to be equal or greater than their creators.”

Trueman of the Tuck clan (aka Trueman Tuck), is a son of God and a Sovereign Spiritual / Human Being that is purpose driven to educate, assist and defend the unalienable rights, freedoms and liberties of other sons and daughters of God.

Did I mention that Trueman Tuck was a bit of a nut? But more importantly he dispenses 'herbal' medicines but has no medical degree or training, and even offers legal advice to other 'herbal' medicine businesses, calling himself an "Attorney-In-Fact", when in fact, he is not an attorney at all. He is a salesman. A salesman providing 'expert' testimony to the Standing Committee on Health. That's how low we've sunk.

Wrapped up in all of this is such a maze of organizations, you'll be needing some "herbal magic" just to keep your head from exploding. Most have 'Freedom' and 'Health' somewhere in their titles and are run by people like Gardon and Tuck. This is not to say that Health food stores, etc. don't have a purpose. They clearly do and homeopathy is definitely something that needs to be researched extensively as an alternative to chemical therapy. However, I believe that anything with 'cure' or include the suggestion of a 'cure', need to be regulated by Health Canada. Lunney and his pals do not.

Quackwatch has exposed another dubious character who has been making the rounds, when they discovered that his books and products were being sold on a Neo-Nazi website.

Dr. Cassim Igram, aka Dr. Oregano, Cass Ingram, is a frequent guest .. in Canada. On November 20, 2003 he appeared again on the Michael Coren TV show on Canada's foremost Faith-based family TV cable network CTS-TV. We told Michael that Ingram's products were being sold by at least one neo-nazi web site, but he ignored us completely. In fact, he mentioned at the beginning of the show that people had e-mailed him to basically complain about the show before it aired.

Three days later, Cass Ingram appeared at a rally at the OISE in Toronto to raise money to help pass Bill C-420. On that panel was Trueman Tuck, Helke Ferrie, and MP James Lunney. It seems that the "freedom" to sell nutraceuticals is heavily entwined with right-wing politics around the world. Some of these agendas are anti-gay, anti-semitic, anti-tax, etc. A few years ago the Consumer Health Organization's Total Health Expo, where Cass Ingram regularly appears, was in the spotlight because Eustace Mullins, a self-proclaimed rabid anti-Semite was cancelled after numerous complaints were filed.

... Ingram still wanders around North America proclaiming that he has the answer to SARS, toxigenic E. coli, and other ills despite all of this? Hmmm.........Could it be it improves his bottom line? ... Now Trueman Tuck has hooked up with Nick Jerch in another attempt to support nutraceutical misadventures.

I checked out the website they mentioned; Free American, and it is extremely racial. They have a video touting Hitler as a hero and promote a book claiming that "2000 years ago the bible told us of the coming of the New World Order as the English Beast, the mark of the beast and warned us about the Jews who would say they are Jews but are not. Jesus told us they were liars and of their father Satan." This is quite a racket.

Now I don't believe that Lunney or Tuck are involved with any of that, and as David Lethbridge reminds us: "Wherever we find tendencies to irrationalism and conspiracy-mongering, there we find fertile ground in which fascism can grow, or a movement which fascism can exploit. These tendencies are rife within the ever-expanding and overlapping alternative medicine, New Age, and tax refusal* circles." (2)

But there is another element that binds these groups together: "faith healing". That's up next.

Footnotes:

*Trueman Tuck also runs a site TaxTyranny.ca

Sources:

1. Cass Ingram's oregano oil products and books sold by neo-nazi web site, Quackery Watch Canada

2. Prescription For Fascism: Alternative Medicine and Right-Wing Politics, By David Lethbridge, April 2001

Health, Wealth and Stealth Continued: Religion vs Knowledge

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

When the scientific community discovered that our science minister Gary Goodyear did not believe in evolution, they were in shock, as were most Canadians. How could a man who did not believe in science, be our science minister? It boggled the mind.

And then to add insult to injury, another Harper MP stood up in the House of Commons to deliver the knockout punch.

Armed with the knowledge that exists today, Charles Darwin may not have written the theory of evolution, Nanaimo-Alberni MP James Lunney told the House of Commons this week. "Any scientist who declares that the theory of evolution is a fact has already abandoned the foundations of science," Lunney said in the House on Thursday. Given what is known today, he added: "Darwin would be willing to re-examine his assumptions." (1)

Any scientist who accepts fact as fact, is not a scientist? What just happened here?

An American scientist picked up the story and posted a reply: "Not so smug now, are you Canada."

I confess, we residents of the USA sometimes have a bit of an inferiority complex when we compare our citizenry to those of other nations of the world — we look like such a collection of idiots next to places like Iceland and Australia and New Zealand and Germany and England and Canada ... Of course, none of those other countries are entirely exempt from having dumbasses pontificating on science, so we can still occasionally take a cheap, desperate shot at some furrin' loon.

... Mr Lunney's choices of objections, reveal that he has read the erroneous creationist literature, but has never examined the scientific debunkings of his claims. I have heard this claim that creationists use the same evidence to argue for creation. It is not true. They select a narrow subset of the evidence that superficially supports their claims, and then ignore the broader array of evidence that completely undermines them. (2)

I know I'm not so smug now. We were a laughing stock. But this brings up the question, if someone believes something, do you have to respect that belief, even when it is proven to be untrue? Even when it's absolutely ludicrous?

Lunney went from a virtually unknown backbencher to a media sensation overnight, but not in a positive way. He is a member of our government and he had just stood up to go on record as claiming to believe in a myth. He's allowed to believe in that myth. I have no problem with that. But he is not allowed to publicly announce that myth as fact when he is representing a country whose residents don't share in his myth. It simply makes us look bad, but more importantly, alarms everyone in the scientific field, from researchers to science teachers.

However, what I have since discovered about Lunney, is that his belief in creationism over science, is only a tip of the iceberg. This man is also heavily involved in the quackery industry. And no not because he's a chiropractor. Chiropractors are not quacks. But this one is.


The Case of Lana Dale Lewis

In 1996, Lana Dale Lewis went to see a chiropractor about migraines and had a neck alignment. Two weeks later she died of a stroke and the coroner determined that the cause of her death was a tear in the artery at the back of her neck. (3)

After the decision, the lawyer for the family, Amani Oakley, was asked to appear on the Michael Coren show to discuss the findings. The show's producers also invited an expert to join her. That expert was chiropractor James Lunney, Conservative member of Parliament for Nanaimo - Alberni.

After attacking the deceased, and suggesting that she caused her own stroke because of her lifestyle, he made a shocking claim. Her death could have been prevented if it were not for Health Canada, and it's attack on herbal medicines, and that all strokes could be prevented with the use of folic acid.

After the interview, CTS, a faith-based studio that airs the Coren show, refused to release any videos or transcripts of the interview, since it would clearly have been the end of the good doctor's career.

But it turns out that Dr. Lunney's attack on Health Canada in favour of quack medicine was nothing new. He represents the worst of the herbal medicine industry, making outrageous claims about miracle cures for everything from blindness to hair loss. To put it bluntly, the man is a nut.

"I Can Make the Blind See"

In 2001, James Lunney, then Alliance party Health Critic, stated that "a 'parallel' system of private health care services should be available to take pressure off the public system and reduce waiting lists." (4)

By parallel he clearly meant the quackery industry; an industry to which he is a card carrying member. This is not to say that all herbal medicines are bad, but what Lunney promotes is nonsense, mixed with just enough religious fervour, to make believers of innocent victims.

... this product can grow back brain cells, and because the Creator is a lot smarter than scientists, 90% of poor health would disappear ... Will it help everyone? YES IT WILL....”It's a God given answer!” (5)

In 2003, Health Canada raided the offices of Truecorp, a company selling supplements without government approval:

RCMP officers and Health Canada investigators raided the offices of a Raymond-based health product company, alleging it has been selling a nutritional supplement to the mentally ill without government approval.

About a dozen armed officers surprised employees of Truehope Nutritional Support Ltd. at 10:15 a.m. Tuesday when they swept in and demanded everyone in the call centre stop working and back away from their computers. Mounties from Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal then began downloading information from hard drives and rifling through filing cabinets. Officers also backed up vans to the building's doors and prepared to take stacks of documents away. (6)

The news here is not the supplement's claims, which many in the medical profession debunk, but the fact that the company was breaking the law. The stuff being sold as a miracle cure had not undergone adequate testing and was not approved by Health Canada.

So what did James Lunney do about these law breakers? He attacked Health Canada. On letterhead from his Parliamentary office:

War on Natural Health Products Escalates, "What’s next from Health Canada’s Keystone Cops?"
　
NANAIMO—Dr. James Lunney, MP for Nanaimo-Alberni, reacted with outrage to Tuesdays RCMP/ Health Canada raid on a Natural Health Products company in Raymond, Alberta.
　
"Health Canada’s latest attack on the freedom of Canadians to make their own health choices is intolerable. They have resorted to extreme, unwarranted measures to prevent promising, low risk products from reaching Canadians who require them. This bureaucratic interference is out of control; it is contrary to science and to the public interest."

The public interest would be to make sure that a drug is safe to use before it is sold. Lunney instead backed up the industry that was breaking the law. But the story of Lunney and quackery is very complex, so I'm covering it in a separate post.

Coming up Next.

Sources:

1. Darwin would think again, Lunney tells House of Commons: MP says theorist might draw different conclusions if he had today's information, By Darrell Bellaart, The Daily News, April 04, 2009

2. Not so smug now, are you, Canada? By P.Z. Myers, April 3, 2009

3. Chiropractic patient died 'by accident': jury, By CTV.ca News Staff, January 17, 2004

4. "That should be a no-brainer, shouldn't it?", Vancouver Sun, February 21, 2001.

5. Truehope Conference in Shiloh, Ohio, Founders David Hardy and Anthony Stephan presentation, September 16, 2009.

6. RCMP shuts down supplement firm, By David Heyman, Calgary Herald, July 16, 2003