This perfect little piece of quack conspiratorial thinking comes from a homeopathy discussion forum. For all to see, is the Great Skeptic Scheme exposed. All I can say is that it is an honour to have my name in this list as an “harbinger of corporate scientific totalitarianism“…
For those who think there is no war going on, here is the proof. Via Louise McLean from Sue Young.
I have several times referred to the attack on homoeopathy as a war. Here is the exposure of how that war came to pass. It goes back to the heady days of the Blair Administration of the UK. It has been a concerted effort ever since. The financiers of this war are the big corprate pharmaceutical giants like GSK, Aventis, Pfizer and other assorted corporate criminals, who see nothing in poisoning the populations for profit and present their “science” – now debunked in JAMA and BMJ – as the ultimate in “scienctific truth”. We face a formidable opponent here in the UK and by extension the US and the world. If these corporations succeed in banning homoeopathy – for which purpose the Codex Alimentarius was formulated – then your and our freedom of choice will go out the window. In the EU, a new directive has been published, banning herbal products, beginning April 2011. A campaign has been started to avoid this happening. Petitions can be signed online and many signatures have been collected already. However, the attacks are undiminished and in the UK the war is getting hotter. As a profession, we should be aware what is happening and who are the major players and where their funding is coming from. The article here is an excerpt from a blog by martin Walker, an untiring advocate for health freedom. It would be in our interest to organise ourselves along international lines, to fight this corporate menace as a collective. As long as we remain divided into different factions – even country-wise – we will pull the shorter straw and will lose this war. My plea to all the homoeopaths of HWC is to unite and close ranks against this corporate menace.~ Kaviraj. Martin Walker’s new article Science is the New Politics “But, most particularly, we must remind ourselves that doctors stopped being scientists when they became drug pushers and they are now some of the people who know least about science of any kind” So here they all are – all the major skeptic players “suited and booted to fight to the death for corporate science”.
~ Sue Campaign Against Health Fraud – On April 3rd 1989 at a Steering Committee meeting held at the Ciba Foundation, two joint presidents were elected: Dr Michael O’Donnell, broadcaster and former GP, editor of GP magazine, and television and radio presenter Nick Ross. At that time, soon after the press launch, the leading Campaign activists included, Dr Christopher Bass, a psychiatrist and committee member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Dr Simon Wessely; Professor Michael Baum and his brother Professor Harold Baum, Diana Brahams and Dr Vincent Marks. Within a couple of months of its launch, the Campaign Against Health Fraud had produced a newsletter. It was not as professional as its American counterpart 8 but it provided a good platform for the Campaign to promote attacks and debunking projects which it had initiated….. The Skeptic 2010: The Editorial Advisory Board members are: James Alcock/Julian Baggini/ Susan Blackmore/Derren Brown/ Scott Campbell/ David Clarke/ David Colquhoun /Brian Cox/ Richard Dawkins/ Sergio Della Sala/Richard J. Evans/ Stephen Fry Actor/ Wendy M. Grossman/ David Allen Green/ Dr Evan Harris (former MP for Oxford West & Abingdon) Liberal Democrat Science Spokesman/ Simon Hoggart/ Bruce Hood/ Professor Ray Hyman/ Robin Ince/ Paul Kurtz/ Stephen Law/ Andy Lewis/ Scott Lilienfeld/ Elizabeth Loftus/ Richard McNally/ Tim Minchin/ P Z Myer/ Mark Newbrook/ Charles Paxton/ Phil Plait Astronomer/ Massimo Polidoro/ Benjamin Radford/ James Randi/ Ian Rowland/ Karl Sabbagh/ Simon Singh/ Karen Stollznow/ Richard Wiseman In 1997, New Labour was elected to power in a landslide general election vote. The party and Blair particularly had fought the election with the support of old Liberal hands and old Liberal money. Following the victory, while Blair got on with nothing in particular, the old Liberals, throwing in their hand with the core of the Revolutionary Communist Party about to call itself after its magazine Living Marxism (LM), completely realigned science policy in Britain and re-invigorated UK lobby organisations. At the Centre of this massing of troops at the start of the scientific revolution, was David Sainsbury, the billionaire GM entrepreneur who donated around £6 million to New Labour before and after the Labour victory. For part of his £6 million Sainsbury was given the job of head of Science at the Department of Trade and Industry. From this commanding position, with the help of his old Liberal buddy and PR agent for the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, by then ‘Lord’ Dick Tavern, Sainsbury built a covert lobby for science, technology and industry that has continued throughout the last decade. The stratagem and ultimately the policies they acted out were closely linked to US neo-liberalism and conspiratorial world government organisations such as Bilderberg and the Trilateral, which the major players attended. The chosen Liberal Peers, aided in this task by LMs ‘grass-roots activists’, funded mainly by the largest corporations, particularly pharmaceutical companies, a range of ‘covert’ black propaganda organisations. These organisations were set up by Liberal Peers and staffed by LM activists. The initial impact of this corporate lobbying style of government can be gleaned from Greg Pallister’s brilliant book The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy.14 However, as the government settled in, the Liberals, ex-Liberals, LM activists, assumed a steadier and more covert role and steered science policy steadily in the direction of corporatism. The joint forum included, Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick, with his 20-year history in Revolutionary Communism and Lord Taverne QC, previously top PR man for GlaxoSmithKline. Other members of the Joint Forum included people influential in academia and media; Peter Bell, former controller of policy, BBC News; Philip Harding, controller of editorial policy, BBC; Steve Connor, science editor, The Independent; Dr. Graham Easton, GP and ‘senior broadcast journalist’, BBC Science Radio; Professor Susan Greenfield, director, The Royal Institution.21 The Guidelines,22 when they were published, were perhaps the most devastating subversion of British democracy ever. They gave complete control of media reporting on ‘health’ to a gang of corporate ‘experts’ all in the orbit of the pharmaceutical corporations. In fact this was corporatism at its most severe in relation to health and the media. It was, however, essential for corporate science if it was to gain the upper hand in, for instance, the battle over MMR and the role of the GMC and Dr Wakefield. With the setting up of a whole group of other organisations, such as the Science Media Centre and Sense About Science, grass roots skeptics and the renovated HealthWatch, the main corporate lobby groups were re-invigorated. Along with the groups came the individuals, chancers like Dr Ben Goldacre and Dr Simon Singh, who emerged out of thin air and were given high profile places without previous experience; suited and booted to fight to the death for corporate science. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, together with various regulatory bodies such as the GMC and the MHRA, these groups and individuals had decimated alternative health and destroyed the careers of a number of caring and thinking doctors and practitioners….. During his parliamentary career, Evan Harris declared some of his obvious ties to industry: he was funded by vaccine manufacturer Aventis Pasteur as a member of an all-party group that attended a Chicago conference, and the corporate lobby group Sense About Science, funded by, amongst others, vaccine manufacturers GSK and ABPI, provided Harris with a secretary/research worker.
His more complex ties to corporate science and industry, remained hidden because the corporate science lobby pretends that they do not actually represent conflicts of interest…. After he lost his parliamentary seat Evan Harris became President of Westminster Skeptics in the Pub group, some of the other high flyers in the skeptics movement, like Ben Goldacre and the LM leftovers from the Science Media group and SAS are also attenders at these meetings. Harris is on the large Advisory Board of the British Skeptics magazine, that throws him cheek by jowl with such notable science cranks as: Susan Blackmore, David Colquhoun, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Wendy Grossman, Paul Kurtz, Andy Lewis, James Randi, Karl Sabbagh and Simon Singh.In November 2009, Harris attended a meeting ‘Evidence-Based Policy or Policy-Based Evidence?’ and later had his photograph taken with Goldacre and Professor David Nutt. In January 2007 Harris entered in the parliamentary Register of Members Interests, ‘I have been provided with the services of an intern to conduct research work and co-ordinate a project by Sense About Science, an independent charitable trust.’ In June 2003 Laure Thomas was Evan Harris’s secretary. Throughout 2007 Laure Thomas was writing film reviews for the Institute of Ideas, an LM off-shoot funded by Pfizer that also organises a web site called Culture Wars.85 In October 2007, Thomas was still senior Press officer at the Medical Research Council, where in 2008 she was a finalist in the ‘Debating Matters Competition’, another LM Pfizer subsidised educational opportunity!
Later that year, however, she was back working for the science czar at the BIS,86 which is where one assumes she probably started in the first place, during the high and balmy days of David Sainsbury.
The Department of Trade and Industry, (DTI) for a decade the lair of Lord David Sainsbury, was turned into the BIS almost immediately Sainsbury left in 2006….. throughout 2007 Laure Thomas was writing film reviews for the Institute of Ideas, an LM off-shoot funded by Pfizer that also organises a web site called Culture Wars.85 In October 2007, Thomas was still senior Press officer at the Medical Research Council, where in 2008 she was a finalist in the ‘Debating Matters Competition’, another LM Pfizer subsidised educational opportunity!… Ms Thomas, Evan Harris, with his parliamentary involvement in health and science, Sense About Science (with it’s pharma funding), ex RCP activists, LM and organisations such as the Institute of Ideas and Cultural Wars (with their pharma funding), the Medical Research Council (with it’s pharma funding) and the governments department for industry, leaves one gazing into the distance wondering how deeply hidden might be some ‘ties to industry’
Amazing that Brian Deer, Harris and their scientific sycophants had managed to turn round the established legal process for damage to over 1,500 children – including damage from Urabe strain mumps vaccine to which the government had all but admitted – and accuse Dr Wakefield of committing criminal offences against the twelve children cited in the Lancet paper.
Martin Walker concludes: I am fed up with hearing people ask, ‘Who are the Skeptics?’ ‘Where does Ben Goldacre fit in?’ Do the work, read the material, watch the videos, wear the T-Shirt, forget about your favourite subjects, the professional focus of your life, for a few days, and arm yourself with information. The example of Skeptics in the Pub is useful here, and our own Arnica groups an inspirational strategy; they must be built. We must aim for a network of groups that cover the country, one that is able to come together for conferences and such things as elections, as well as being able to picket meetings, heckle speakers and publish the truth about their message. These groups have to find slogans that market our cause; ‘Our Science Not Theirs’, ‘Science for People Not Profit’, ‘Keep Scientists in Cages’, ‘Homeopathy is safe, Corporate Science is Deadly’, ‘Corporate Science is not Science’, ‘Corporate Science = Science Fiction’, ‘Beware Corporate Science’. ‘Science = Truth, Corporate Science = Lies’.
Finally, we have to understand that we are on the brink of war, these no-goods are storming the fortress of democracy and freedom of choice, they are the barbarians at the gate. They are the swindlers, cheats and liars, but most importantly they are the harbingers of corporate scientific totalitarianism and the death of the human soul. We have to fight their idea of a feelingless robotic future, a world where the majority are disfigured and disempowered by drugs and environmental toxins.
Though I have paraphrased the article – do please go a buy a copy for £3 to help Martin stay afloat financially and keep writing – there is so very much more in this article… I have barely scratched the surface…..!!!!
This guy Walker is plainly deranged. I particularly enjoyed this part:"The Guidelines, when they were published, were perhaps the most devastating subversion of British democracy ever."and"They gave complete control of media reporting on ‘health’ to a gang of corporate ‘experts’ all in the orbit of the pharmaceutical corporations."Somebody who would say such things needs some kind of help. And, of course, the whole of his output is at this juvenile idiot level.