OPEN LETTER: Governor Ige, You Will Be Held Accountable

September 28, 2015 

Dear Governor David Ige: 

This is to alert you to a situation you should know about because the buck stops at your desk and when catastrophe strikes, in the form of an epidemic of vaccine-preventable diseases, you will be held responsible. 

For 15 years I have repeatedly informed the Department of Health about the dangerous criminal activities of a racketeering enterprise that endangers the public health and welfare, and violates state and federal laws every day. Several months ago I sent Dr. Pressler all the information she needs to take action, but she has completely ignored me just as her predecessors have. To them my serious concerns are not even worthy of the courtesy of a reply. 

Instead of doing his job, Dr. Lorrin Pang, Maui’s DOH District Health Officer, has spent years campaigning against the alleged horrors of such GMO crops as rainbow papayas and seedless watermelons, wonderfully nutritious and delicious fruits that have never harmed anyone. Dr. Pang also spends time chasing the phantom environmental hazard of “chem trails”, a delusion favored by UFO true-believers and anti-government conspiracy buffs. Maybe next he’ll campaign to get jet planes banned from Maui County skies because they are dumping weather-controlling, mind-controlling toxins on us.

The enclosed flyer, an excerpt from my blog post

KillerLies.blogspot.com,

sums up the situation.

Thousands here on Maui have been indoctrinated with lies by Alive and Well Health Emporium owners to believe that all vaccines are deadly and that their store has safe and effective nutritional supplements that prevent the diseases vaccines are intended for. This is criminal fraud, but it is only a small fraction of the frauds they perpetrate. They also illegally claim to have cures for HIV/AIDS, various deadly cancers, and whatever else ails you. Still DOH and the Attorney General do nothing. By ignoring these crimes the government gives tacit approval and endorsement to the illegal, fraudulent claims. 

To make matters worse, I recently learned that Alive and Well has, for many years, been illegally accepting EBT payments for their snake-oil supplements and for ready-to-eat juice/sandwich bar products. I informed DOH and the AG, but they have done nothing. So the taxpayers subsidize the scams of people who defraud them. It's loony land.

Why is the Alive and Well Health Emporium above the law? Who are they paying off?

Someday government officials will be held responsible and, unless you do something, you will be among them. 

If you do not reply I will post this as an open letter in my blog.

                                      Sincerely,

Kurt Butler 

Links to all my blogs: www.KurtButlerBlogs.blogspot.com. 

For more detailed critiques of various forms of quackery, including naturopathy, see my book A Consumer’s Guide to “Alternative Medicine”. It was expertly edited by legendary quack buster Stephen Barrett, MD.  The critics say:

"Superb!" -- Dr. Victor Herbert in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Excellent" -- National Council Against Health Fraud.

"Five Stars" -- Cooking Light.

"Thought provoking; a great book" -- American Journal of Health Promotion.  

When the book was published almost 30 years ago it was strongly praised by responsible health experts and the rare responsible media, but trashed by new-age critics and even vandalized in bookstores by new-age fanatics. It is as true and relevant as ever, and has been mostly vindicated by time. Yet my courageous and far-sighted publisher, the venerable Prometheus Books, is still sitting on lots of copies. Please help validate their integrity by buying a copy. Or two or more as gifts. Perhaps 10 for your local school library and health classes. See their website for assorted discounts. Make them an offer. (My royalties are insignificant; this little promo is for the benefit of one of the world's great publishers, Prometheus Books.) 

Maui's future foretold: Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com. 

Open Letter to All Commercial Media

Open Letter to All Commercial Media 

            In 2014 I wrote a letter to Jen Russo, an editor at the weekly MauiTime. I objected to her earlier article that uncritically promoted a very questionable profession. It wasn’t personal; my beefs with her are my beefs with 90 percent of the commercial media. It all about their gross deception: they pretend to be professionals who do real journalism while they routinely and knowingly violate The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics and exploit their readers rather than inform them.

The points I make in the letter apply to all (pseudo) journalists, so here I’ve made it public as an open letter to all those working in media outlets that profiteer from health fraud.

Dear Jen Russo and Other Writers, Editors and Broadcasters:

Back in the 1980s when the HIV/AIDS epidemic was picking up steam and the media were doing lots of stories on it one of the major Honolulu dailies carried a full-page story about naturopathy in Hawaii. Top NDs were interviewed and they all said that AIDS could be cured with “natural” remedies: good diet, lots of garlic, various medicinal herbs, special baths, fasting, acupuncture, “de-tox” regimens, etc. To a man, they blasted the anti-retroviral meds being tried by MDs. They will kill the patients, they all said.

Unless you’ve been in a coma for 30 years you know how that turned out. Magic Johnson is alive and well, as are millions around the world, thanks to anti-retrovirals, which dramatically reduce viral load and prevent mother-fetus transmission. None of the so-called natural remedies does anything to fight the infection. NDs have contributed less than nothing to fighting HIV. They have obstructed progress and harmed patients with their ignorant, lying propaganda. This story has been repeated over and over with infectious diseases (they’re anti-vax nuts), cancers and other serious ailments.

 As the story of naturopathy and the law heats up, please remember that the SPJ Code of Ethics calls for honesty, fairness, and disclosure of economic interests. Your paper makes lots of money from NDs and other questionable practitioners, so you owe it to your readers to guard against a temptation to promote their causes by uncritically parroting their claims in your stories.

Some years ago I wrote a book titled Lying for Fun and Profit: the Truth about the Media. Part of my research was to survey media coverage of fringe medicine. I found that over the last 30 years or so the media (print and broadcast, not including internet then) coverage has been about 100 to 1 in favor of scores of modes of bogus medicine, from ridiculous cure-all fad diets to acupuncture and chiropractic for serious diseases to an endless flood of herbal drugs sold as “supplements” as if the body has some daily requirement for the drugs. They do this because the quackery peddlers buy ads and this influences editorial policy.

I assume you are a person of integrity, and you want to do real journalism and provide your readers with truth rather than dangerous fiction, so I have enclosed some material that may interest you. If you want, you can borrow the book from the Wailuku library or from me. And I would be happy to discuss these things with you – just call or email me to set up a meeting. (The book, which I wrote, is A Consumer’s Guide to ‘Alternative Medicine.

Now to a different but related subject, the other side of this same coin. Imagine the following hypothetical situation:

 A group of anti-vaccine protesters stand on the sidewalk near the Maui Medical Group in Wailuku. They carry signs denouncing vaccines as worthless and dangerous. They are peaceful and quiet, and they are all obeying the county laws regarding sign waving. They had done this several times months earlier. MMG had repeatedly gone to court for a restraining order to stop the demonstrations, but five judges on separate occasions had ruled for the demonstrators. Having exhausted its legal remedies, MMG simply ignores the rulings and resorts to force. It orders its security guards to bodily keep the sidewalks near the clinic free of demonstrators. In an ensuing scuffle a demonstrator is severely injured, resulting in years of pain and disability.

Police officers witnessed the assault, but do not arrest the known assailant. The Prosecutor refuses to prosecute the assailant or even investigate the role of MMG in the entire episode. Later when the victim sues MMG, the police witnesses refuse to testify and the victim loses the case.

Now, I think you would agree that all the media would jump on this story, and the attention would force hearings on the episode, lawyers would jump in on both sides and the issues would be fully aired for months, even years. Whose fault was this outrage to the Bill of Rights? And was it ignorance, corruption or both?

Contrast that scenario with what actually happened to me in the inverse situation. Maui Time is well aware of the case, so I won’t repeat it here, except to enclose the Pussy Riot flyer that sums it up. Fringe medicine, even when it clearly endangers people and blatantly violates state law, is a Sacred Cow, sacrosanct, above reproach, above criticism, above honest journalism, and above the law. This mania for anything that its purveyors label as natural, organic and alternative is a social psychosis reflected in my ten-year struggle for free speech. For, in contrast to how the media would certainly treat vaccine (or GMO) protesters whose rights are violated, not one publisher or broadcaster has made the slightest mention of the travesty in my case, though fully informed of it.              

See also, www.nogivetohawaiipublicradio.blogspot.com, which protests unethical promotion of naturopathy by public radio.

 Sincerely,

              Kurt Butler 

Links to all my blogs: www.KurtButlerBlogs.blogspot.com. 

For more detailed critiques of various forms of quackery, including naturopathy, see my book A Consumer’s Guide to “Alternative Medicine”. It was expertly edited by legendary quack buster Stephen Barrett, MD.  The critics say:

"Superb!" -- Dr. Victor Herbert in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Excellent" -- National Council Against Health Fraud.

"Five Stars" -- Cooking Light.

"Thought provoking; a great book" -- American Journal of Health Promotion.  

When the book was published almost 30 years ago it was strongly praised by responsible health experts and the rare responsible media, but trashed by new-age critics and even vandalized in bookstores by new-age fanatics. It is as true and relevant as ever, and has been mostly vindicated by time. Yet my courageous and far-sighted publisher, the venerable Prometheus Books, is still sitting on lots of copies. Please help validate their integrity by buying a copy. Or two or more as gifts. Perhaps 10 for your local school library and health classes. See their website for assorted discounts. Make them an offer. (My royalties are insignificant; this little promo is for the benefit of one of the world's great publishers, Prometheus Books.) 

Maui's future foretold: Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com. 

Why I Do This and Why He Can't Stop Me

For about ten years before the year 2,000 and ten years after, The Maui News, the only daily paper on the island, frequently engaged in sensationalist, dishonest promotion of postmodern healing miracles and other “new age” fads and frauds. Disease diagnosis by aura photography, the wonders of astrology, miracles of ancient herbs, and feng shui “science” to make you rich – such BS was standard fare in the paper, as it was in hundreds of dailies in those days. This type of quackery is not as fashionable now, so the papers run fewer ads and puff pieces (ads disguised as articles) promoting the frauds.

Over almost a quarter century I have clashed repeatedly with The Maui News about its corruption and dishonesty. It claims to abide by The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, but this is patently untrue, a most brazen lie. Though it violates the code by promoting health quackery and anti-science less often than it once did, it violates the code in other ways more stubbornly than ever.

The sins of the paper are now more of deliberate omission than of commission. As is true of most dailies, the loyalty of The Maui News belongs to its advertisers, not its readers. The island’s economy is almost entirely tourism dependent, so the paper plays cheerleader and propagandist, always projecting an image of paradise. Show the beauty and hide the ugliness.

However, the SPJ code stipulates that ethical journalists investigate and report on issues of importance to the community and do not collude with government officials or industries to ignore, bury or cover up the issues. This is Maui, not Putin’s Moscow where Pravda does the will of the Boss. Yet The Maui News rarely deviates from the county government’s line or reports anything likely to embarrass Mayor-Forever Alan Arakawa or put Maui in a bad light. This means total silence on our most important issues – the rule of law and the protection of constitutional rights of common people and poor people.

For years the editors of The Maui News have refused to publish my letters and commentaries exposing the county’s crimes or to investigate for itself. The facts are not in dispute and are mostly matters of public record, but they are taboo to the paper. Meanwhile it devotes acres of print to trivia (a big front-page story this morning is a slight change in the shape of Oreo cookies)  and puff pieces, including articles about awards and promotions for local cops, some well-known bullies and criminals. This kind of self-censorship and propagandizing is unethical and should be exposed. Thus my demonstrations.

No doubt Mr. Bradley hates my little protests, but there is nothing that he can do to stop them. Any legal action would give me an opportunity to show, in a court of law, that the paper routinely violates the SPJ ethics code. Its pretense of journalistic competence, honesty, integrity and fairness would be blown away. Bradley can’t allow that, so he tries to ignore me. But his inaction might lead some to think the accusation on my sign is true. And so he is trapped.

Similar reasoning holds regarding my signs accusing, “under penalty of perjury,” the mayor, the chief of police, the prosecutor and other county officials of various heinous crimes.

This is another example of a tactic I call “dirty tricks for clean government.” It’s too early to say whether it will prove effective in this case, but it is fun to get big shots into a kind of checkmate where, because of their own stupidity, dishonesty, corruption and arrogance, you get to defame them to the world in the nastiest possible ways with total impunity. That way, if you never get justice at least you get a little revenge. 

Links to all my blogs: www.KurtButlerBlogs.blogspot.com. 

For more detailed critiques of various forms of quackery, including naturopathy, see my book A Consumer’s Guide to “Alternative Medicine”. It was expertly edited by legendary quack buster Stephen Barrett, MD.  The critics say:

"Superb!" -- Dr. Victor Herbert in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Excellent" -- National Council Against Health Fraud.

"Five Stars" -- Cooking Light.

"Thought provoking; a great book" -- American Journal of Health Promotion.  

When the book was published almost 30 years ago it was strongly praised by responsible health experts and the rare responsible media, but trashed by new-age critics and even vandalized in bookstores by new-age fanatics. It is as true and relevant as ever, and has been mostly vindicated by time. Yet my courageous and far-sighted publisher, the venerable Prometheus Books, is still sitting on lots of copies. Please help validate their integrity by buying a copy. Or two or more as gifts. Perhaps 10 for your local school library and health classes. See their website for assorted discounts. Make them an offer. (My royalties are insignificant; this little promo is for the benefit of one of the world's great publishers, Prometheus Books.) 

Maui's future foretold: Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com. 

Huge Scandal: Key Hawaii Legislators Bribed by Racketeers for More than a Decade

As we have documented in previous blog posts, an ongoing dangerous criminal enterprise, DBA “Alive and Well Health Emporium”, with millions in annual ill-gotten revenues, has been allowed to brazenly operate openly and even advertise heavily on radio. County and state officials could have put a stop to the group’s rackets and crime sprees a decade ago, but they have refused to act.

The role of corrupt police and Maui County officials has already been described. But why hasn’t the state stopped the racketeers? Once the Attorney General failed to take action why didn’t the house and senate committees on health hold hearings? The committee members are fully aware of the racketeers’ activities and the dangers they pose to public health, but their silence has been deafening.

Now we know why. Reliable sources have informed me that every house and senate health committee chair and vice chair for the last seven years has accepted cash bribes from the Alive and Well racketeers in exchange for keeping the matter off their calendars. This includes current House Health Committee Chair Della Au Belatti and Vice Chair Richard P. Creagan; and Senate House Health Committee Chair Josh Green and Vice Chair Glenn Wakai. The amounts of the payoffs have ranged from $4,000 to $10,000.

There are indications that some of the more influential members of the two committees may have also received bribes to exert their influence and help keep the lid on. We are still investigating, so we won’t name them. However, we can name all members of the health committees and warn that they should all be considered corrupt or potentially corrupt.

On the House side we have Representatives: Hashem, Jordan, Kobayashi, Morikawa, Oshiro, Chang, and Tupola.   

On the Senate side we have Senators: Baker, Gabbard, Riviere, Ruderman, and Slom.

The Alive and Well Body Count   The racketeers have done more than scam millions of dollars from the public. Their criminal activities have injured and killed people. Corrupt government officials and legislators have aided and abetted these deadly crimes. The body count will be difficult to estimate because of the many ways the fraudsters inflict sickness and death, but it is surely in the hundreds. See www.killerlies.blogspot.com.  In any case, there is no doubt that several state legislators have blood on their hands.

There is generally no discernible pattern to the suffering and death of most of Alive and Well’s victims. An HIV/AIDS patient here, a stage 4 breast cancer patient there. These cases are difficult to document without legal action because neither Alive and Well nor the officials they bribed will cooperate. However, if there is a cluster of cases, as there is in mass food poisonings, the source of the problem can usually be identified.

For many years the Alive and Well racketeers have been vigorously and fanatically denouncing all vaccines, including those that prevent childhood diseases. They tell fantastic lies that scare parents from getting their kids vaccinated and opt instead for Alive and Well’s fraudulent vaccine substitutes consisting of toxic doses of vitamins and herbal drugs. Even in the face of the Wakefield scandal, the Disney measles and other outbreaks, and a flurry of studies debunking the horror stories and strongly supporting vaccinations, Alive and Well continues its anti-vaccination lies. They are practically the only ones doing this in the mass media (naturopaths are quieter about it), so any outbreak on Maui could probably be linked to these racketeers and their corrupt government allies. 

Links to all my blogs: www.KurtButlerBlogs.blogspot.com. 

For more detailed critiques of various forms of quackery, including naturopathy, see my book A Consumer’s Guide to “Alternative Medicine”. It was expertly edited by legendary quack buster Stephen Barrett, MD.  The critics say:

"Superb!" -- Dr. Victor Herbert in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Excellent" -- National Council Against Health Fraud.

"Five Stars" -- Cooking Light.

"Thought provoking; a great book" -- American Journal of Health Promotion.  

When the book was published almost 30 years ago it was strongly praised by responsible health experts and the rare responsible media, but trashed by new-age critics and even vandalized in bookstores by new-age fanatics. It is as true and relevant as ever, and has been mostly vindicated by time. Yet my courageous and far-sighted publisher, the venerable Prometheus Books, is still sitting on lots of copies. Please help validate their integrity by buying a copy. Or two or more as gifts. Perhaps 10 for your local school library and health classes. See their website for assorted discounts. Make them an offer. (My royalties are insignificant; this little promo is for the benefit of one of the world's great publishers, Prometheus Books.) 

Maui's future foretold: Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com.