Because Healing the Sick Is Illegal. . . .

What if I told you there is a two-room clinic where you may be able get cured of cancer, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, or AIDS, or muscular dystrophy, or arthritis, or chronic fatigue syndrome? You will not be cut, drugged, or burned. You will not need anesthesia. You can, if you ask, receive prayer. But prayer is optional. The technique works without prayer.

What would you say? (1) “You’re nuts.” (b) “Someone will soon be going to jail, unless the treatment is available only on some new country-island where avant-garde practitioners pay bribes.” (3) “Where can I sign up?”

I won’t make any such claims. Instead, I will tell a story. I’m part of this story. But I am going to be a bit vague about geographical details.

For most readers, I hope this information will not be personally useful, although I trust you will find it fascinating. For a few of you, it will be a life-and-death matter. The sad thing is this: because of legal reasons, members of the second group are not going to be able to take advantage of my information. Think of this report as a sign:

Dead EndYour Tax Dollars at Work

AN ASTOUNDING CLAIM

My story has to do with a purported cure for a specific form of disease: specifically, virus-borne disease. But, you may think, that’s not just one disease. You are correct.

The moment we move from “a disease” to a broad range of diseases with a common cause, the word “cure” becomes legally actionable. He who promises such a cure in exchange for money is going to have a visit from the Food & Drug Administration or a sister organization.

I speak from experience. My wife once loaned $10,000 to such a victim to hire a lawyer to protect him from the FDA temporarily. This delay strategy worked. The defendant had enough time to escape from the United States, and take his cure with him. My wife never got her money back. Neither of us resents the fact.

The man is now dead. He died in 2001, a decade after his flight from “justice.” That is why I am telling part of his story. I am not telling all of it, because the extraordinary technique that cured so many people — though not all — still exists. I know where it was being offered two years ago.

MY WIFE’S STORY

I have told my wife’s story elsewhere. My article remains on-line. I do not need to tell it again. Here is a brief synopsis.

My wife in 1988 was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as Epstein-Barr disease. She was in constant pain, slept 13 to 14 hours a day, could not drive faster than 15 miles an hour without thinking she was speeding, could not remember anything she read within 15 seconds after reading it, and was getting worse. This had gone on for 18 months.

I sent her to a clinic in California. In three days of treatments, 8 hours a day, all symptoms disappeared. They have not been back.

I wrote up this story for my Remnant Review subscribers. About a dozen of them then went to the clinic. Most were cured. One was not.

At the clinic, my wife met a patient who said she had suffered from muscular dystrophy. She had been crippled by it. Now, she was almost fully functional.

The most famous of the patients was James Coburn, who had been forced out of acting by arthritis. I interviewed him a decade ago for my tape subscription service (which no longer exists). He told his story to me. He had been in so much pain that on some days, he could not raise his arm to comb his hair, which was not good for a man who starred in action movies, he said. I have a file of newspaper clippings on Coburn’s subsequent visits to the clinic, which by then was operating in England. I went public with this story the week after Coburn died. You can read it here.

What was the cure? It was a machine. I called it “the black box,” even though it was really gray. A patient would sit in a reclining chair. An assistant put a series of wires on the person’s toes and upper chest. Then the assistant turned on the machine. Except for a slight tingling, there was no other sensation. There the patient sat, usually for three hours. The main discomfort was boredom.

It took my wife three days to get well. The inventor admitted that this was a record. It took two series of treatments for my pastor friend’s son to get out of a wheelchair to full recovery. The first series took two weeks; the second took a week. I have a BBC-broadcast video of the initial phase of the boy’s recovery, after the first series of treatments. The BBC did not do a follow-up when the boy returned to high school after the second set of treatments. He joined the track team, where he ran the 200-meter race. That would have made a much better news show for the BBC.

A TEMPORARY REPRIEVE

The inventor was a genius and more than a little messianic. He believed his machine could cure just about any disease, from AIDS to Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). He claimed to have done so. The trouble is, he could not shut up. An appearance on a Las Vegas TV show, where he claimed his machine could cure cancer, led to the shutdown of his clinic in 1991.

He had to walk a fine line. He could not make curative claims. The machine was licensed to cure pain, which it did, sometimes (though not always) by curing the disease that caused the pain. My wife was such a person. Any claim beyond this was a red cape in front of a bureaucratic bull. He refused to walk a fine line. The FDA shut him down by placing “do not use” stickers on his machines. What saved him was that they put a 31-day time limit on the stickers and then forgot to reapply them. At 12:01 a.m. on day 31, he loaded the machines onto a moving van and disappeared into the night. The marshals showed up — as bureaucrats do — at 9 a.m. on day 32. Surprise!

When the inventor died in 2001, his clinic was in London. The lady who ran it with him was one of his former patients. She later told me that she had also suffered from CFS, but far worse than my wife had. She was under 100 pounds and was on a stretcher when she arrived at the clinic. It took months of treatments for her to get well. But she did get well. She became a disciple. Let’s call her Margo Lane. That’s because invisibility remains her main defense.

After I posted my article online, she got enough new clients to pay off most of the company’s debts. The inventor could not handle money — a common problem of genius inventors, I am told. She then left London. I prefer not to say where she is today. That’s because I may want access to the “black box” at some point. There is no question that if I were told by three physicians that “you are terminal,” I would go onto the box as my first line of defense.

RIFED FOR LIFE

There is a continuing rumor that a machine invented about 80 years ago by Royal Rife was such a cure-all. Lots of machines, said to be Rife machines, are available. Use Google to search for Royal Rife, and pages of articles will appear. On the right-hand side of the page will be Google ads for Rife boxes. As to how anyone could prove that his box is in fact a Rife box, which was confiscated by the government two generations ago, I have no way of knowing.

His machine is said to have used light to identify and then kill disease-causing microbes. There is a layman’s movement devoted to keeping his story alive and throwing light on the FDA, the way Rife’s machine supposedly threw light on microbes. I call this the light to Rife movement.

I firmly believe that there are electrical ways to treat diseases effectively. The best book for laymen that I have read on electrical-magnetic therapies was written by a physician: Robert Becker’s The Body Electric, which has been available for quite a while. But this approach to health comes into conflict with the three main accepted medical methodologies: drug, cut, and burn, all of which must be licensed by the state to be medically acceptable. So, the best way to get yourself Rifed is to promote electricity-based cures.

I think there are ways to avoid getting yourself Rifed. I wrote on a defensive strategy back in 2002. I sent it to the woman who owns the boxes that cured my wife.

My strategy could be used by anyone who owns some version of an electrical therapy. We hear about such therapies all the time. They are all over the Web. But, sooner or later, the authorities move in, and the sites are taken down or are revised to include a statement that the machine may not work as previously claimed, and is available only for research purposes.

As you read my strategy, understand that I am suggesting it as a way of dealing with unwarranted political power. If the civil government would leave medical care to buyers and sellers, none of this would be necessary. But in a shooting war, you must seek out whatever cover you can. If you can get one branch of the government to keep another branch at bay, I think it’s worth considering.

This outline is in the form of a business plan. You may be uninterested in this electronic cottage industry, but you can learn how to use a business plan from what I told her.

Side note: she took one piece of my advice. She moved from London to just about the lowest-cost location I could imagine in the Western hemisphere, at least where anyone can drive to easily. I have been there. It’s perfect: a nondescript building in a nondescript town in a nondescript region. A quiet information network tells desperate people of the box’s existence. But for how long? She faces the same problems the inventor faced. She must walk a fine line. As I said, invisibility is her main defense.

Here is the business plan that I suggested to her. Before adopting it, a person should hire a lawyer with experience in international business. In fact, he should hire two: one in the United States and one in the foreign country in which he incorporates. I recommend England or the Isle of Man. He should run this plan by them to see what they think will work best.

The goal is not hiding money from the tax man. The goal is to get sick people healed.

Here is the business plan I wrote for her. She operates a small Christian ministry. This can provide a degree of legal protection.

1.GOALS

The first step in developing a long-term plan is to formulate your long-term goals. If you are not clear about what you want to achieve, your plan will not work, or at least not work well.

I propose this goal: the maximization of the effectiveness of this tool in a program of Christian evangelism through healing. This would involve:

International distribution of the toolPrice reductions through competitive productionThe development of training materials on: Using the machineChristian evangelismMarketingA legal structure to shield practitionersCooperation from local authoritiesExtension of the program through timeExpansion of the program through recruiting

If this sounds reasonable, consider the following plan.

2.ASSETS AND LIABILITIES

The question for a marketer is this: How to achieve maximum penetration of the target market with the available capital? There are four ways to get capital:

Borrow the money from a bank or lending institution.Sell shares of ownership.Let customers advance you the money.Get donations to your cause.

You must think carefully about which method best suits your existing assets and ownership structure.

As I see it, you have these assets:

The boxesThe schematic of the boxKnowledge of how to use itPast clients, including yourselfA Web document: [http://shurl.org/coburn]Newspaper clippings about the boxMoney in the bankA location for treating people

You may have other assets. List them.

You also have liabilities. These include:

Hostility of licensed medical practitionersBad publicity (QuackWatch)A single location (expensive)Potential legal threat: licensingNo recognized formal training system for practitionersNo organized marketing programNo cheap replacement of the boxes

If you have other liabilities, list them.

With what you have, how do you propose to bring the healing power of the technology to those people who need the healing that it can provide?

There is an old rule in marketing: “If everybody needs what you have, you will have a hard time selling it to anybody.” Why is this true? Because you can’t afford to advertise it to everyone who needs it. If you try to do this, your marketing budget will be dissipated. People rarely believe advertisers. Only people who are 80% ready to buy will respond. In any case, different people have different hot buttons. You cannot afford to press all of them.

The task of the marketer is to identify a representative member of a target audience and then find a way to sell him the service at less cost than it takes to deliver the service to him. If you can sell it to him, you can sell it to people like him. For a new technology, the standard marketing approach is to sell to the rich, and then use the income to (1) fund the next marketing campaign to the slightly less rich; (2) find ways to lower production costs.

The biggest problem with healing today is that the health-care field is an oligopoly. The state controls patient access, prices, and practitioners’ training. This either keeps prices higher than they need to be or else it leads to rationing by standing in line. Sometimes, it does both: the rich buy services outside of the subsidized system, paying more, while the less rich line up inside the system.

3.MARKETING

You must find a way to do the following:

Get the story of the box to sick people.Motivate them to pay for services.Avoid legal battles in court.Not get shut down by the authorities.Recruit devoted practitioners.Train these practitioners in the technology.Make sure they get paid.Make sure you get paid.Do not violate the ethics of healing.

Healing is a quasi-priestly activity. It involves delivering a service that may be a life-or-death matter. Wherever healing has been involved, healing practitioners have always been divided regarding pricing: (1) high bid wins (free market) vs. the tithe principle: payment in terms of what the sick person can afford. This is why there are medical missionaries who quit successful urban practices to go into the bush.

I suggest a plan that is a combination of the pricing systems, as most healers have also chosen. To maximize initial revenue, sell to the rich. In this world, this means urban Westerners. To help the spread of the technology, offer lower prices to poor people, but only when seats are not being filled at prevailing prices. A healing center should be operating 24×6. Take Sundays off. To lower the per client cost of the real estate, a center should have all-night service. This maximizes both revenue and healing.

You must strive to maximize the number of people healed, for word-of-mouth marketing must be the primary form you adopt. This reduces public exposure. It also lowers marketing costs. You want rapid penetration all over the world. It is better to abandon tight proprietary control over the actual technology in order to maximize the number of practitioners. The secret of success is in the structure of marketing, not the hoped-for revenues generated by a patent, which takes lawyers to enforce and which will run out in a few years anyway.

4.GIVE AWAY THE SECRET

The medical establishment has always counted on the fact that inventors hold on tightly to their inventions. The Establishment can then have the state prosecute the inventor, bankrupt him, imprison him, and thereby scare off imitators who might otherwise use the invention. The Establishment counts on the ego and lack of marketing skills of the inventor to keep his invention in the shadows, where it cannot harm either the prestige or the incomes of establishment heath-care practitioners.

This technique of suppression has worked well for a century. The inventors cling to their inventions. Like captains on a fleet of Titanics, they go down with their ships. Unlike the Titanic, they never send an S.O.S. They always figure that a Sugar Daddy will rescue them and their invention. This rarely happens, and when it does, the Sugar Daddy steals it. So, most inventors are usually one-third evangelist, two-thirds paranoid.

There are two primary motivations in life: to help others and to help yourself. The free market allows people to help themselves by helping each other. Yet a pure free market reduces to a minimum the motivation of service. It converts greed into service, but usually at the expense of converting service into greed.

How can you maintain the balance? You cannot spread the message or the technique based on charitable giving. You are limited by donors who aid third parties. The more third parties who pay, the faster the story spreads.

Here is what I have in mind.

The first goal is to de-fuse the suppression technique of the Establishment. The best way to do this is to publish the schematic of the box on the Word Wide Web. This website’s host should be located in a country that is far from the Food and Drug Administration.

The company that owns the site should be incorporated outside the United States. It should be incorporated in a county other than the one where the web host is located.

Encourage mirror sites, but only outside the United States. Let anyone put up the site. The more flies to swat, the better.

Let anyone copy the schematic. Don’t put it in the public domain. Just let anyone copy it free of charge, but only in the format you select.

A schematic is step one. Create a how-to manual for building a machine. Charge for this manual.

Then there are training-marketing materials. Charge for these, too. The training materials will be both technical and theological. They are written to commit the reader to the both theology and the idea of becoming a missionary.

Readers can sign up to become distributors of the service. If they just want to build their own box, fine. Sell the step-by-step instructions for (say) $200.

Better yet, offer them an opportunity to buy a box from third-party providers, with whom you have no financial contact. Let the manufacturers get 100% of the money.

I call this “playing the China card.” Let some low-cost manufacturer in China build the boxes. Let him develop the market. There is nothing like a flood of cheap boxes around the world to create nightmares for the FDA.

There is no money to be made in the boxes. You cannot compete with Chinese labor. Charge for the training and the service.

The idea here is that almost nobody wants to have the box made locally. He wants to buy one. Offer all manufacturers the right to post their ads on your site. They sell the units. They compete. There is no big money in the box if the box’s schematics are available to everyone.

The idea is to recruit true believers in the technology. Let them learn how good it is at their own expense. Be ready to sign them up as missionaries. If they have a box already, they will be far more prepared to sign up.

Your bank account should be in a fourth country. You would have this structure: (1) incorporated in country A; (2) website in country B; (3) bank account in country C; (4) you live in country D. Pay your taxes. Don’t put your name on the website.

If you are willing to give the schematic away, you can create a distribution system. The idea is to make money selling the information on how to use the box. . . .

Others can imitate you if they have the schematic. So what? That makes the target huge for Establishment suppressors. If they can’t control the spread of the technology internationally, they may decide to ignore it.

[I then went into the details of the missionary organizational structure. I see no reason to reprint this section. My readers are not going to become missionaries. She was ready, and now is one. But she is operating alone. She never posted the schematic. Her 2001 website is gone. She remains a target. Some day, she may get a knock at the door. . . .]

CONCLUSION

I close with this: “No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light” (Luke 8:16).

The trouble is, too many government agencies are in the candle-regulation business. We must all become creative in shining officially unlicensed light.

May 18, 2005

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.freebooks.com. He is also the author of a free multi-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com