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Petro-Pharmaceuticals: How We Got Here?



Is today’s mainstream medicine (western medicine or allopathy), with its focus on drugs, drugs, radiation, drugs, surgery, drugs and more drugs, is at its foundation a money spinning Rockefeller creation.


It all began with John D. Rockefeller (1839 – 1937) who was an oil magnate, a robber baron, America’s first billionaire, and a natural-born monopolist. By the turn on the 20th century, he controlled 90% of all oil refineries in the U.S. through his oil company, Standard Oil, which was later on broken up to become Chevron, Exxon, Mobil etc.


World Affairs reports: At the same time, around 1900, scientists discovered “petrochemicals” and the ability to create all kinds of chemicals from oil. For example, the first plastic — called Bakelite — was made from oil in 1907. Scientists were discovering various vitamins and guessed that many pharmaceutical drugs could be made from oil. This was a wonderful opportunity for Rockefeller who saw the ability to monopolize the oil, chemical and the medical industries at the same time!


The best thing about petrochemicals was that everything could be patented and sold for high profits. But there was one problem with Rockefeller’s plan for the medical industry: natural/herbal medicines were very popular in America at that time. Almost half the doctors and medical colleges in the U.S. were practicing holistic medicine, using knowledge from Europe and Native Americans.


Rockefeller, the monopolist, had to figure out a way to get rid of his biggest competition. So he used the classic strategy of “problem-reaction-solution.” That is, create a problem and scare people, and then offer a (pre-planned) solution. (Similar to terrorism scare, followed by the “Patriot Act”).


He went to his buddy Andrew Carnegie – another plutocrat who made his money from monopolizing the steel industry – who devised a scheme. From the prestigious Carnegie Foundation, they sent a man named Abraham Flexner to travel around the country and report on the status of medical colleges and hospitals around the country. This led to the Flexner Report, which gave birth to the modern medicine as we know it. Needless to say, the report talked about the need for revamping and centralizing our medical institutions. Based on this report, more than half of all medical colleges were soon closed.


Homeopathy and natural medicines were mocked and demonized; and doctors were even jailed and this still goes on today. Dr Sebi was a man who not only cured AIDS but was tried 2 times because of his cure and he won both times. Before he could share all his knowledge he was arrested and imprisoned and died mysteriously the first night. When a celebrity rapper tried to do a documentary about Dr Sebi he was murdered just before completion of the deal. “Why do they kill all holistic doctors?” said Nipsey Hussle on the Breakfast Club in 2018, two years after Dr. Sebi became ill in a Honduran prison, where he was being detained on money laundering charges (meaning he was carrying more money than a black man was supposed to have), and, according to the Associated Press, died in his cell. “You’re short stopping their grind.”


To help with the transition and change the minds of other doctors and scientists, Rockefeller gave more than $100 million to colleges, hospitals and founded a philanthropic front group called “General Education Board” (GEB). This is the classic carrot and stick approach.


In a very short time, medical colleges were all streamlined and homogenized. All the students were learning the same thing, and medicine was all about using patented drugs.


Scientists received huge grants to study how plants cured diseases, but their goal was to first identify which chemicals in the plant were effective, and then recreate a similar chemical – but not identical – in the lab that could be patented. Now in the 21st century Millennials and Gen Z free thinkers are realizing how they have been had. They understand that prevention is the only way to lifelong good health a diet based on the needs of the human body, not the marketplace and nutrition, lifestyle and natural remedies that support lifelong health not billionaire pockets.


The American Medical Association (the AMA) was a weak organization with little money and little respect from the general public when George H. Simmons took the reign of the AMA in 1899. The advertising revenue from its medical journal was a paltry $34,000 per year. Then, Simmons came up with the brilliant idea to transform the AMA into a big business by granting the AMA's "seal of approval" to certain drug companies that placed large and frequent ads in JAMA and its various affiliate publications. To get the AMA's "seal of approval," a drug company did not have to conduct any research nor did they even have to prove the safety or efficacy of a drug. The drug companies simply had to do two things:


They had to divulge the specific constituents of their drug (no "secret" formulas were allowed...and this action was a beneficial action), however, to get the "seal of approval," drug companies had one other important requirement...They were required to advertise in every local, regional, and national AMA publication (i.e., the drug companies were forced to pay the AMA a large amount of money)


By 1903, the AMA's advertising revenue increased substantially to $89,000, and by 1909, JAMA was making $150,000 per year. In 1900, the AMA had only 8,000 members, but by 1910, it had more than 70,000. This substantial increase in advertising revenue and membership was not the result of new effective medical treatments, for there were virtually no medical treatments from this era that were effective enough to be used by doctors today or even just a couple of decades later. Some critics of the AMA have called their seal-of-approval program a form of extortion because the AMA did no testing of any products and not even require any evidence of safety!


When George Abbott, owner of a large drug company, Abbott Biologicals (known today as Abbott Laboratories), did not provide "blackmail" money to the AMA and when none of his products were granted AMA approval, Abbott went on the offensive. He arranged for an investigation of the AMA president that revealed that Simmons had no credible medical credentials, that he had had sex charges brought by some of his patients, and that he had had charges of negligence in the deaths of others. After this meeting, the drugs made by Abbott Laboratories were regularly approved, and the company was not required to place or pay for any ads.


Simmons was shrewd enough to have the AMA establish a Council on Medical Education in 1904. This council's mission was to upgrade medical education--a worthy goal, especially because surveys in JAMA itself had consistently shown that the graduates of the conventional medical schools failed the medical board examinations at almost twice the rate of graduates of homeopathic colleges (Robins, 2005,).


However, the AMA actually developed guidelines to give lower ratings to homeopathic colleges, including the homeopathic colleges at Boston University, University of Michigan, New York Homeopathic Medical College (which today is called this same name without the word "Homeopathic" in it), and Hahnemann Medical College (of Philadelphia). For instance, just having the word "homeopathic" in the name of a school had an effect on the rating because the AMA asserted that such schools taught "an exclusive dogma."


In 1910, the same year that the Flexner report was published, the AMA published "Essentials of an Acceptable Medical College" (Report of the Council, 1910), which echoed similar criteria for medical education and a disdain for non-conventional medical study. In fact, the AMA's head of the Council on Medical Education traveled with Abraham Flexner as they evaluated medical schools. The medical sociologist Paul Starr wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book: "The AMA Council became a national accrediting agency for medical schools, as an increasing number of states adopted its judgments of unacceptable institutions." Further, he noted: "Even though no legislative body ever set up... the AMA Council on Medical Education, their decisions came to have the force of law" (Starr, 1982,).


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