Behind the Bastards

There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities of their lives. Listeners will learn about the young adult novels that helped Hitler form his monstrous ideology, the founder of Blackwater’s insane quest to build his own Air Force, the bizarre lives of the sons and daughters of dictators and Saddam Hussein’s side career as a trashy romance novelist.

Part Two: The Founding Father of Fake Cancer Cures

Part Two: The Founding Father of Fake Cancer Cures

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 11:00

Part Two: The Founding Father of Fake Cancer Cures

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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Wanna say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost, city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? Say goodbye to I don't know. Because after listening to stuff you should know you will listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the podcast that this is which exists. The name is escaping me right now, as is my own name. I am floating amorphously in a jar of pure thought right now, completely lost and untethered from the reality that normally binds me. Sophie. What? What are we doing? Who am I? Are the only Robert Evans. And that's good. And this is. Behind the ******** and we're here with Billy Wayne Davis. Anderson Dog and me thank you. I I I was lost in the Phantom zone. But now I feel grounded and ready to talk about Harry Hoxie some. Oh my God. Thank goodness he's still kicking. He's still he's. Speaking of kicking, Billy, how are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. I got some Gatorade and a pop top. Gatorade, so pop tart. Yeah, well, that sounds like the necessary equipment. Well, let's let's tear back into this. Dirty paper sack of history. He is a ***** ** ****. The American Medical establishment was still quite new in the 1950s, and at first it did not have one stray **** of an idea about what to do to stop Harry Hoxsey. The men of the AMA were studious and learned, but they fought like children of the early 1900s and Harry Hoxie thought like a 21st century grifter. This is a guy who was like, using the same playbook as Alex Jones and like, you know, Mike Adams of Natural News, but he's using it. And like ******* 1950, like he's he's just so far ahead of these people that it takes them a long time to figure out, like, how to actually combat his particular brand of ********. Hoxy sent copies of his new autobiography to every senator and representative in the United States and he also started talking about running for governor. He expanded his touring to members of other fringe groups who hated the AMA and the FDA. His chief ally in this was Gerald B Winrod. Have you ever heard of Gerald Winrod? Billy? No, I'm excited that we're probably gonna have to talk about Gerald Winrod and detail at some point, but the short of it is he was an evangelical preacher from Kansas. Haley winrod? Yeah. He's the sort of person we talk about every single time we do an early 20th century United States episode. He's kind of in the same vein as Father Coughlin. Both men are like aggressive religious fundamentalists who either tip right up to or go right past the line of explicitly endorsing. Fascism in the United States and Winrod is a past the line kind of guy. He'd run for Senate back in 1938 on a platform of I found a masters thesis from Bethel College from a student named James Schmidt, who discusses what his platform was. And I think that's going to do a better job of sort of walking you through this guy's political ideology than than than I could do. So I'm going to quote from that now. Using radio station WIBW in Topeka, Winrod broadcast his program of reform. His seven point proposal called for defensive constitutional democracy against Communism and fascism, reconstitution of the national character, rigid observance of states rights to combat the growing federal bureaucracy, absolute neutrality and foreign policy, return of control of the monetary system from the Federal Reserve Board to Congress, repeal of the New Deal Labor and business legislation, and an attitude on the part of the national government that will inspire. Confidence. In order to encourage the controllers of private capital to create honest jobs, winrod also sent mass mailings using Doctor John R Brinkley is 150,000 named mailing list and drove in a car equipped with the speaker, taking his message directly to Kansas voters. However, because of the apparent anti-Semitism and near support for Hitler's anti Jewish policies in his previous speeches and publications, numerous camps and supposed to scan at AC Oh, the Hitler Guy? No, no. Well no. He opposes fascism. Is just also an isolationist and doesn't think we should do anything about Hitler and also Hitler's kind of right about the Jews. Yeah, that's winrod. Yeah, that's yeah. What? I also said it on the loudspeaker that I put on my car. Why? I am against fascism. But we shouldn't fight fascism by fighting it. And also, the fascists are right about the racist things they say. And and the way they run their government is pretty and the way they run the government. Yeah, I actually am pretty OK with fascism. Ohh, I meant yeah, no, I I thought you meant you said something else. No, I like fascism. Yeah, I thought you were saying, like, for shizzle. And I am not OK with rap talk. No, no, Sir. Rap. No, no. Now Winrod had actually visited Nazi Germany. Back in 1934, and he hadn't exactly been unhappy about what he'd seen there. And no **** when he lost his election. The vast majority of the votes that he got came from parts of Kansas traditionally considered to be clan strongholds, which gives you an idea. This was gonna guess. Yeah, in charge there. They have interesting ideas about what can be done with bed sheets, to put it mildly. Yeah, it looks like he won. Boss Hogg County. Look. Oh Lord, so yeah. He wound up being charged with sedition in the mid 1940s for having, quote, feloniously and knowingly conspired, combined, confederated and agreed with each other and with officials of the government of the German Reich and leaders and members of the Nazi Party. You know, yeah, I but I don't like. That's a great thing to do. But I'm not. I'm against fascism. But I like some fascists. I like all of the fascists. I and I think we should do what they've done here. But I am not in favor of fascism. I am a member of fascism, but I'm against it from this standpoint. That is my signature. Yes. Yes. One of the fun bits of little history here is that when Rod was actually the model for buzz Windrip, the fictional American fearer cooked up by Sinclair Lewis for his book it can't happen here. So that's neat. Wow. Yeah, he's that guy. He said, you gotta say, yeah, that's me. He wrote that about me and he winds up working with Harry Hoxey. See, after the war, history does, yeah. Yeah. After the war, his trial, sedition trial ends on a technicality because the judge dies. Yeah, I think the universe has the best sense of humor. If we're being hungry, it's very fun. That's what an objective sense that that's. I mean, purely objective. Like not being a part of it and being ****** by it a lot sucks. But objectively, that's what this podcast proves more than anything is the universe is is funny. Hilarious. It it's, you know, it's it's funny. And that. What's the name of the guy he played the the parrot in? ******* Aladdin? Gilbert Godfrey. Gilbert Godfrey, yeah. It it's funny in the same way that Gilbert Godfried set right after 911 was funny. Yeah, we're like, it's it is actually very funny, but everybody gets really angry. Yeah, that's the that's the universe is sense of humor. It's Gilbert Godfried making a 911 joke like a month later, just but with nailing it with timing and everything. Absolutely slamming at home, yes, but just really ******* everyone off. You're like, I don't have to go the inside. I don't have to go to the bathroom. So I can laugh at this, but I don't want anyone to see me laughing. That's so funny. That's the definition of funny what he did there. But people are gonna be mad and they're mad. Yeah, they're mad. I knew it. Yeah. Yeah. That is the death. Yes. That is the definition of the. Yeah. Yeah. And I I I learned a lot from him, which is why I decided not to open this episode with what's corona being my viruses? It just figured that was a good call. I would have that would have loved that. Because you read Roberts tweet where it's like 60,000 people died of the flu last year, so I don't think we should freak the **** out just yet. I think it's easier they might be using it to see how well they can control cities and ****. I'm not gonna get into conspiracy talking here, but I do think that like, I I think if you are, for example, someone very close to me as a Chinese citizen and has family over there and they're incredibly worried and it's a very scary time. You were not like a friend of mine is going over to Europe and was worried now, like, you're not going to, you're not going to get coronavirus. You, you'll be fine. You know, like you will be OK. This is not something to freak out about for you anyway. That's very much outside of the. I like, I like weed and conspiracy. So like I do, I do like weed and conspiracies and I would love to. I don't know, there's. We'll do probably a season of hang out. We'll do. And it could happen here. Season, then talk about it. See, here's what Billy thinks might happen. This will not happen. Billy says it could happen here. That's season 2. Billy at 10:00 PM says this could happen. Yeah, we'll watch like one episode of The X-Files first. But not like one of the, not like one of the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the mythology ones want to like one of the ones, like, I don't know. One of the like Monster of the week ones. The good ones. Yeah, good ones. Yeah, those are the ones. Yeah, I'll get bored with the rest of the night. This code means this, right? It just gets to it. Gets to. Anyway, I like a Yeti. I want. I want Yetis in Mothman. You know, that's all I want. I want FBI agents fighting Mothman. I would agree to increase the FBI's budget if they would agree to only fight Mothman. But. Alas, I think you should anyway. There would. Don't say that to the wrong FBI agent. He's like, that's how we're going to get funded. That's smart. I feel like every honest FBI agent would much rather be fighting Mothman. But without a doubt, yes, because they all grew up watching Fox Mulder. We know it. Yeah, that's just the way it is. Yeah, you don't get in the FBI. Just do patterns and ****. No. You want to get to shoot at a moth man in rural Oregon. That's why you are the sweats. That's what we all want. That's why. That's what we all really. Want at the end of the day anyway? Get this little jacket. So we're talking about that guy Winrod. So he the judge dies. His sedition trial ends on a technicality and in the wake of it he launches a newspaper, the defender, which he used to pump out anti-Semitic and anti black propaganda for his audience of 100,000 Americans. He also argued for the existence of flying saucers and ran copious ads for non traditional medicines. In other words, like Doctor John Brinkley, his peer winrod was basically 1950s Alex Jones talking to people about like aliens and racism. And selling them fake medicine and also yelling about fluoride in the water. They he's a big anti fluoride crusader. Really? That early? Yeah, he's just Alex Jones. Yeah, it does sound like the same guy blueprint of that man. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. And like, you know, so winrod gets into this business of like spreading propaganda and ******** medicine and he immediately sees that Harry Hoxsey stupid fake cancer cure might be a goldmine. So Winrod had already made a fortune selling glyoxylic glyoxylate, which is a fake cancer cure from Detroit, and he established the Christian Medical Research League in order to study read market this cure, read poison. Winrod quickly got to work selling hoxie's nonsense, too. He began claiming that he'd been treated with it as a young boy and it had saved his life. There we go. So readers should definitely try this ****. Folk it up a little bit. I don't like the Detroit slander. It's not. It's just it's not slanted. It's just where it happened. That's it. Yeah. You gotta own it. I don't like that. You gotta own your ****. No, look, bad things happen. Not right. Some. Even the closest bad thing to happen in Detroit. That's not even on the list. It's really an upper 40% everybody should visit is bad now. I'm just saying the history. There's been some Detroit. Not great. You see fake cancer cure from Detroit, it means that a lot of other stuff coming from Detroit is completely, that's the point that you continue the bad guys city from this is still Dallas. OK? So we can, you know, we're sort of the D cities. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Been a question, yeah, yeah, so. For his work when Rod was paid more than $80,000 by Hoxie. This was not disclosed to the readers of his newsletter, and it eventually came out in a court case which Hoxy lost rather than show any shame at all. When Rod published a letter to his supporters begging them to let out daily, persistent argumentative prayer for Hoxie, he also asked for donations so he could continue hoxie's anti cancer crusade. Last he asked his readers to. Each sent him. The addresses of five cancer patients they knew. Ohhh. Man. God. Whoa. Oh my God. What a ***** ** ****. Just keep pushing. Just keep pushing it. God, it's really golf. Clap on. That one's A+ level grifting. Adapting. It's it's it's smart. Yep, Winrod and Hoxie were good allies. But Hoxie knew that any good grift had to diversify. So we also started working with the American Rally, an isolationist group dedicated to peace abundance in the Constitution. The members of American rally were outraged at the fluoridation of water and believed the polio vaccine was poisonous. They also believed in flying saucers. The American rally thought Hoxie was not only a great healer, but a potential vice president. And maybe a good bet to run alongside a senator named ****** in the 1956 election. It's just. Everything you said was just like a mad Lib. And then even even Vice Vice president is a funny thing, you know? I know. It's amazing. That's it's like, yeah, yeah, this guys like, he should be the vice president there. He should be the vice president. He's just close *******. And you've got anti vaccine and anti fluoride **** and like a right wing isolationist tea party like group. It's just nothing has ever changed about the United States of America in the entirety of the time it's existed. No, we're just a singer of all of it now. All the times, yes. It's awesome. It's just cool. It is awesome. I mean, that's why I like doing what I do as a trail around the country. People are like, no, there's no way. I'm like, oh, you guys should drive around. There's a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Work somewhere. Whatever dumb thing you can think of. There is a part of this country will it will make you the biggest man in town. Yeah, and you'll find a partner that'll make you guys even bigger. Now they bring him in to America, hoxy into like a merit, this American rally rally because they wanted to be the vice presidential candidate. And they introduced him at a Chicago event by saying the spirit of Lincoln is here tonight. And Hoxie responds by telling the crowd the AMA killed my daddy. The same bunch of rats I've been kicking ever since. Just folk it up. They know what they're doing. It's not. It's not dumb. It's not dumb. It's no disingenuous. Yeah, and the book medical messiahs points out that American rally was one of a number of hoxy supporting organizations, all of whom were united by an idea called Medical Freedom, which is, quote, defined as the right of every individual to seek treatment from hoxie's clinic and other clinics and practitioners frowned on by the Orthodox medical establishment. Two such groups were the American Association for Medical Physical Research in the American Naturopathic. Association Hoxne is associates spoke before their meetings at a naturopathic convention in Chicago. Hoxie addressed himself to the theme who were the real cancer quacks and May God have mercy on their souls. Yeah, the theater. He is good. He is good. He's not bad, no. Now, while Harry Hoxsey couldn't ship his cancer treatment across state lines, nothing, but nothing was going to stop people in other states from advocating for the hoxy method there. In Pennsylvania, his greatest backer was a state senator named John Haluska. So many senators and congressmen get involved in this. He knows the right thing is like people trust. At least at this point, people trust their senator or their congressman, and they don't know anything about medicine. But doctors do. So I'm going to try and convert a bunch of ******* politicians. That's the smart way to spread your ********. And he's right. So Haluska was just as dumb as all the other politicians we've talked about today. But he at least had a little bit of an excuse. He'd lost his mother and baby boy to cancer, and he credited Hoxie with saving his sister's life, claiming that actual daughters had given up on her. She had, in fact, been treated successfully with X-rays. But Haluska didn't like to talk about that for some reason. He probably just thought that the the X-rays had only made it worse. And it was, you know, I don't know. They did this before wife, too, and that didn't work. You know what I mean? Yeah, who knows? Haluska lost his job as administrator of a hospital for trying to convert the nurses there to carrying out hoxy treatments, which is fair. He took this as a no, no. This seems like poison. Yeah. Haluska took this as a sign to open his own cancer clinic out of a remodeled appliance store slash garage. Eventually, this clinic was successful enough that Hoxie himself came to visit. He was greeted by a parade and was introduced to the Pennsylvania Senate by Haluska. After a round of applause, the state senator publicly introduced Hoxie to Kathy Allison, a young girl from Indiana. He said quote. Here is that little Angel who according to medical science, had to meet the Angel soon. Today she's going to school, was X-rayed last week and found to be cancer free and is playing like any other normal child. Fit. You got a good feeling about Kathy, Allison? Billy, don't, if I'm being honest, have a good feeling. Yeah. She died eight months later of chest cancer. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. That's kind of what you expect. The FDA has succeeded in bringing suit against the clinic in Pennsylvania, and a jury ordered its medicine destroyed. In April 1956, the FDA published a warning in the Federal Register revealing that its scientists had thoroughly investigated Hoxie preparations and found that they were both. Useless and potentially deadly, it turned out that the actual content of hoxie's medicine varied widely from day-to-day, and some preparations they'd studied included potassium iodide, which the FDA had found actually accelerated the growth of tumors. They noted that they had found not a single certified cure among all his patients. Not ******* one. That's how they ended that report. They should have included a ******* in there. You're absolutely right. ******* one of them. Not a single *** **** one. Now this was actually the very first time in history that the FDA ever publicly denounced a cancer cure as absolutely fraudulent. In 1957 they doubled down on this by asking US post offices across the country, more than 46,000 of them, to put up public beware posters warning patients about hoxie's cure and this seems to have helped immensely. The agency estimated 3000 people were kept away from Hoxie snake whale in the 1st 30 weeks. It was like it saved lives. Mm-hmm. Thousands, probably. Well, hundreds, probably hundreds of them probably didn't have cancer. Yeah, but yeah. It saved a lot of lives. And you know what else saves a lot of lives, Billy? Hmm. So many lives therapeutically and medicinally guaranteed. FDA backed to save lives. Every single product and service that supports this podcast. Yeah. And if it's a Mike Bloomberg ad that comes up next that will in fact cure your cancer, absolutely. You're dead. That's my. And if it doesn't, Robert, you have to sue Mike yourself. You might. You don't know. It might. There's no proof that it won't. I will say this MM Bloomberg has the ability to cure all of your cancers. He chooses not to, but he could. Yeah, it's not. And that's just charisma alone. That's just all charisma. He is charismatic. Yeah. So here's some products and services. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one meant mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. 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So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on tick tock. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. We're back. So yeah, when we left off, the FDA has like put out 46,000 warnings about the hoxy treatment in post offices all around the country. And this has proved to be very effective in stopping people from buying into his ******** because this was an age in which people still trusted the government to some extent, so. Wouldn't work. Now nowadays, I imagine that would increase your your sales substantially actually if you were a ******** treatment. But it was a different time. So Hoxie saw the FDA's actions is enough of a threat that he sued the government for issuing these warnings. He lost the case and Haluska lost an appeal that he filed in Pennsylvania. By October of 1957, the FDA could happily announce that they had been successful in all federal court cases against Hoxie's treatment with each trial. And more and more testimonials from patients who learned the hard way that Harry Hoxsey was a fraud and I'm going to quote now from a McGill University write up on the Hoxsey treatment quote. A former patient testified that he had been diagnosed with cancer and offered to treatment for $250 in a six week recuperative stay at Huxley's Hospital for $360.00 a lot of money. At the time he recovered but not from cancer. Actually. Later turned out that he had suffered from Barber's itch. Yeah. The other. The other instance, an FDA undercover agent was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer that had metastasized to the lungs and told he had come it just in time for the cancer to be arrested. There was an arrest, alright, but it wasn't of the cancer. Cool, that's awesome. It's just like eyeballing a cop and being like, yeah, you got lung cancer. Absolutely. Umm. Yeah, yeah. So the FDA is very successful in winning all of their court cases against Hoxie. But alas, as they admitted, quote, such actions will not end the menace of this treatment since the federal government does not have the power to stop a clinic in any state from treating cancer patients within that state with the nostrums which comprise the hoxy treatment. Millions of copies of false promotional literature are still in circulation, much of it reporting cures of persons who are now dead. Bummer. And in this, they were lamentably correct. The next couple of years saw the gradual dissolution of Harry Hoxie's US based businesses. Texas court cases saw his license revoked and his ability to practice medicine in the state ended. So it only took Texas, I don't know, a decade and change, you know, well, more like 20. It took Texas a long time, but they did eventually take his medical license away. That had been granted to him probably for $10.00. So that's good. That's good. Yeah. His honorary medical license there. Hey, give us that receipt back. Yeah, I do love that. Like, if his story is true, his dad who gave him the cure was grandfathered into having a medical license and harrys was honorary. It's awesome. Ironed it. Just like my father earned it before me. And. Uh so uh Hoxie was forced to lease his clinic to someone else, but the FDA succeeded in getting a permanent injunction against his treatment from late 1960 on the hoxy method of treating cancer could no longer be legally practiced in the United States. So that's good, that's good, that's good. That's that does not, however, mean that you cannot still get the hoxy treatment if you want some fake medicine to deal with your real cancer, because in the mid 1960s, nineteen 63 to be exact, one of hoxie's nurses moved. You know where we're going here, Billy. Oh, I know where? Yeah, Tijuana, Mexico. That's right. Yeah. She's set up the first cancer clinic in that Grand City, and it is still in operation to this day. Yeah, it is. Well, would you ever stop? So the fact that this clinic has been an operation in Tijuana, Mexico for like 50 some odd years has provided actual doctors with some opportunity to like test how well the treatments work. And I'm going to read a quote from that McGill University paper on that. Now in 1999, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, certainly not an anti alternative organization, examined evidence submitted by a hoxey clinic in Mexico and found that of 149 patients who had been treated. Only 85 could be tracked down five years later and of these only 17 were still alive. Such a 25 six percent survival rate is not exactly the claimed 80% rate and probably could be achieved by an anti cancer diet of frog legs, snails and Mexican jumping beans. They got a little racist at the end there. I was gonna say the point OHS. He's being * **** at the OK, he was being a little bit of * **** at the end, but the point is it doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, that is. Yeah. And it's still, you can still go down there though you can, you can go down there and get it. You can get it right now. You go get your cancer treated. If you're in San Diego, you could be getting cancer treatment by this afternoon. Yep. You could listen to this on your way down, you know, say hi to the Rosarito. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. It's nice. So Hoxie himself stayed in Dallas. He transitioned seamlessly from selling fake medicine to investing in the oil and gas industry. Ohhh, yeah, it's gets ohk. OK, so, so you just selling just holes in the ground? Yeah, that seems to be pretty easy. Now. When I burn people's faces off, nobody even gets angry. They just say that's the way it's supposed to work. And they're like, yeah, that's what we hired him to do. You sometimes their faces get burnt. Umm, yeah. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1967. He attempted to use the Hoxsey treatment, but tragically it did not work. He was under forced to undergo conventional surgery, which saved his life. No, he spent the rest of it hiding from the world and died alone in 1974. He was like, you know what, you guys? I see a lot of you have a point now? Yeah. I can't. I'm gonna go away. I'm gonna go away. Yeah, it is. And again, if he had been a modern grifter, he never would. Gone away. He would have found a way to roll with the punches, but he was an old man by then, you know, he'd he'd rolled a lot. So much rolling. If we're being lots of role, that is the most impressive. I mean, all the ******** I've covered they've been. There's an element of impressive to them all. Sure. Persistence that I do not understand. And I'm a very person. I mean the my have to be to make it in comedy. Absolutely. Yeah, it's purely persistence. After a certain year of skill learning, you're like, well, now it's just persistence. And I, these guys are just like, I'm going to go Mexico and do this, right? What I'm going to, I'm going to burn some faces off, I guess. Go down there. I just don't understand the main goal. Like, because they they keep losing money. A lot of them. So I don't know. I get confused as to like, what drives all these ************* sometimes. What drives all these *************? I don't know, maybe just money. But there's I do think a lot of them don't have a lot of money. Yeah, I think a lot of it is. I think, honestly, most of it in every grifter, most of it is social cachet. And the money is kind of part of getting the social cachet it allows you to be. They want to be a big man. They want to be a big, powerful, important person. Right. That's that's what it always comes down to. I really do think. I think that was that with Elizabeth Holmes. She wanted to be a hugely influential, powerful part. She was always more interested in the, like, sitting on different boards and giving advice to the government sort of thing than actually making anything. And she's always name dropping other powerful people. Yeah, you're exactly. Yeah. And even the the voice thing. That is, she's. She studied powerful people, and that's what that yeah. Is. Yeah. That's a deep voice. People respond to authority that deeper like that. To me, that wasn't fascinating when people Can you believe she changed her voice? I was like, no, that's no, it works. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I change my voice because people take me more seriously when I speak the way that I speak than the way I grew up talking. You know, little people. Like, you can lose your accent. I'm like, no **** but I like to make people laugh so. Well, that's that's. Yeah. I mean, it's. That's what happened. That's the the the only downside of coming from Tennessee. And while we're talking about Tennessee, Billy, you're the only 10 I see. No, I've never gotten to use that line before, and I use it pretty smooth. That's the smoothest I've ever heard that line use. Thank you. I've practiced a lot. I like to shout it at people as I pass from cars. Listen, listeners couldn't see Billy go. Oh, on his face. It lit up. It's nice. Now. The Hoxsey treatment is still very much allowed. Ohh yeah, no. Ohh man, no. There is too much momentum behind this grift for it to ever die. Now in in 10,000 years, the only remnants of our society will be the war in Afghanistan and the Hoxsey treatment. It's just going to be them floating in the void. So hoxie's ******** treatment is very much alive and well. In fact, the move of his nurse to Mexico in the mid 1960s sparked the birth of a new industry in Baja California. By 2002, there were more than 70 alternative cancer clinics in Tijuana and Rosarito, none more prominent than the Hoxsey Clinic today. Billy, if you decide I want to get some cancer cured, but not by a doctor in a way that actually cures my cancer, if you make that call. You know which? Who who hasn't felt that way from time to time, I mean. If you decide, yeah. So if you start looking into hoxy treatment, or like if one of your relatives is like looking in the oxy treatment like people you know, go and be like, just here's what's frustrating. It is old timey enough that it's kind of a pain in the *** to research what the treatment is. If you look at the first page of Google results, there will be a couple of accurate articles by authoritative sources tearing it apart, like the McGill University article, but there are just as many positive. Sources about hoxy on the first page of Google results, including the Amazon page for the book hoxy Therapy when natural cures for science became a legal and right below that, the website. Yeah. ****. **** you. **** that. **** that. Huh? That title right below that is the website for a documentary, Hoxie. How healing becomes a crime. It just and. OK. And now it's hearing stuff like that. It's like, it answers that question like, how can anyone be against the legalization of marijuana? And you're like, well, you hear people defending stuff like that and you're like, Oh well, that's. No, and it makes total sense because people are just like, I don't know this stuff over here, but this stuff. And you're like, ah, you're right, you're ******* right. And I I'm a big marijuana should be legal and in some cases mandatory advocate. But like obviously the the whole medicinal marijuana industry is at least 50% nonsense. Like, I have had it. I've had it advised to me every time I've had it advised for me, to me, for anything but a treatment for like mild pain. It has not done a *** **** thing. Which is not to say there aren't things that can do. There's a lot of really interesting research going on about like the ability of certain cannabinoids to like, you know, fight cancer and stuff that actual doctors, it's not just smoking pot, obviously. Well, and then, yeah, they can't give you a strength. That always cracked me up too. Yeah, this strain is like good for this. And you're like, you don't know that because you don't even. You gotta love infection, bro. You got a lung infection. Smoke this straight. Man, I was at a canker sore. Here. Hit this ****. Yeah, after you. Here's the herpes concoction of **** this I'm not. Yeah. That is, but it is that that. And it sucks because it's also like. You you see this with every good drug, with alcohol. Back in the day, everybody loved alcohol. So suddenly, like, doctors would be like, oh, alcohol will treat this, alcohol will treat that. Getting drunk is the right cure for this, and it's really only the cure for kidney stones. And a lame party. And sad, but yeah, and sadness all three of those doesn't make it worse at all. But it is like that frustrating. Yeah. Like, Yep, it's just this human nature. Exactly that thing that's yeah, you said it best, where we're both just like, it's just that. And then it's just human nature where it's like, yeah, it's like how bacon was really popular a couple of years ago. Remember that? Yeah. Oh yeah. It was huge. And. Yeah, now it's like a Republican thing, too. It's weird, the road that bacon went on. Is it over the last, like, 15 years? Yeah, it's a bit of a people like I eat bacon. Are you triggered? Like, no, dude, everybody likes bacon half off. That's a good thing. People like, it's like the watermelon and black people, things like, that's just good. What are you talking? Yeah, yeah, there's a whole long race. We actually may do a fun episode on, like, all of the Horrible Histories behind those particular stereotypes, but I don't know, this is off topic a bit. But it is like this feeling I have about. I have this. I have this theory that we would not have the problem we currently have with, like, ******** medical treatments if we had never started the war on drugs. Hmm. Yeah. If marijuana had never been this counterculture thing, if it always just been like, Oh yeah, you just go down to the farm across the street and pick some weed and smoke it. Yeah. Like, and no one had ever made it into a thing. I don't think it would have attracted, you know, doctors might would hopefully still be finding useful medical things from it. But it wouldn't be this, like, weird cult in the same way that alcohol doesn't have this weird cult. Like, there's people who like to drink, but there's not like this. It's not the same thing. I don't know. Well, it was never. Yeah. You well, you only had to go away from somebody to use alcohol for a short period and then you got to all use it again in the yeah I think that's what made pot where you always had to go away to use it and you you all. It's also I think this the fact that the path to starting legalization, like I don't think marijuana would have reached the point that it currently reached without that interim where everybody was really pushing the medical aspects of it. Like we would all have to go get like prescriptions and ****. That was critical. We all saw. That was like, this is just a step and except a step. That was a cool part of that. I think the cult of it, yeah, was we all recognize the ******** of it, but we'll just do it. Just do it this way. And then I yeah. But I think to say what to go along with what you're saying, what happened. And it's that snake oil **** where once it's out, it's once CBD. They discovered it and now it's in everything. And I've been talking about this everything. I've been talking about this two ice cream places I can walk. Yeah, they have CBD ice cream. I was like 2 weeks ago. My grandmother was talking to her and she's like, I put some CBD on my elbow, was like, oh, it's going, it's going legal federally so fast now. Oh yeah, because absolutely, that was the smartest thing they could have done because old people call their senators and bug the **** out of them. You get old people using pot, they'll change their laws real ******* bad. And it's happening because the CB. Yeah, that's what we got to get old people on acid next. That I will. Boomer generations coming through there but they're I hashtag somebody drug an old folks home we just gotta we gotta jump start this process let's do it we are off the topic so I was talking about that first page of Google results for hoxy therapy with the Amazon book you know when natural cures became illegal. Right below that is the website for a documentary Hoxie how healing becomes a crime. And at the very bottom of the page Billy Wayne Davis is a PDF on the Hoxsey treatment by Darcy Naturals. An herbal medicine focused clinic in Natick, MA. So the people at Darcy's really ******* love them. Some Harry Hoxie and they're right up. Includes a bio of him that I find fundamentally hysterical. Quote Hoxie and his formula still enjoy popular appeal even though they have suffered 40 years of harsh attacks in the press, relentless prosecutions in the courts. He was arrested more times than anyone in US medical history, 100 times just in Dallas. And they're trying to make him out to be a good like everything they write about him makes him seem like a ******* gigantic fraud. More than 100 times in Dallas in one just in the place he lived. They kept arresting him for doing bad stuff. If you are white, you really gotta work to get arrested in Dallas. I was that was gonna say it was like, I have a white dude. You guys. One of my good friends who listens, whose name will say starts with AJ had to be was driving without like a license or registration for a very long period of time before he got busted. Like. Uh, no. I think you just had tickets against him. I don't know. I think he did have a license. Yeah, well, if you wonder what news in down, there was a period of like a year where every time I got in the car, it'd be like if I get pulled over, I'm going to jail. How did that? For two years? It didn't know I was doing it and driving around the country with suspended license. And then I got pulled over in a couple of this suspended. I was like, no ****. Ohh ****. Yeah, he had to go to jail. Do you know that? I did? Yeah. Boy, yeah. That's not good. Yeah. So. The Darcy Naturals write up continues persecution by government agencies public warning against toxic cancer treatment that the FBI ordered mounted in 46,000 US post offices and a virulent personal vendetta mounted against him by the head of the American Medical Association, Morris fishing. They misspelled Fishbein his fish fishing because these aren't serious people. You know they're not. Details aren't super important in medicine. So now they aren't wrong that Morris Fishbein had a vendetta against Hoxie. He had, famously. Noted in 1965, of all the ghouls who feed on the bodies of the dead and the dying, the cancer quacks are the most vicious and most heartless. Which is a pretty ******* good quote. Yes, it is. Now. You know who won't? Ghoulishly feed on the bodies of the dead and dying. Hmm? Koch brothers. No, they they would do that just for fun. Not even. Yeah, they're not even for food. Yeah. Yeah, and for the ****** thrill. Always forget about that part of it, yeah. No, it's critical. Yeah, the products and services that support this podcast. It's an it's another ad break. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. 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For more than a decade we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. We're back. So Darcy Naturals, the company that this PDF comes from, really ought to be looked into by somebody to see if they are breaking the law by providing hoxie's treatment, because they definitely sell Hoxsey formula pills for 3699 per bottle. It is unclear to me as to whether or not this is technically fine because they're just selling herbal supplements to people with that now. I don't know. Do they just using that name and not the. It's the same supplement, probably, like I'm guessing less toxic than most of the **** he used, because you get the feeling from him that sometimes his guys are just pouring **** in jars. Yeah, so I don't know if they're breaking the law or not. It would be cool if someone looked into that. Maybe somebody. I know. There's a lot of journalists who listen to the show. Here's a fun lead. Look in the Darcy Naturals and see if there's breaking some laws. The site is really entertaining reading, though, and it somehow manages to make Harry Hoxsey sound even shadier while trying to defend him. Quote how did Harry and his formula survive? Why weren't they extinguished? It's an amazing story full of Hollywood like intrigues. They survived by the most amazing truth of all, the testimony of healed patients. This was hoxie's only defense at every trial in Senate committee meeting. He never lost one AMA quack trial or slander trial because of this moving, powerful defense from the experience of hundreds of cancer survivors. Note that they don't include all of the FDA trials they lost. Well, that's not important. Battling against the American Medical establishment of the day, not one cancer patient ever testified against him. Given to carrying wads of cash to be able to post bail at anytime. His fortune coming from oil investments his patients would gather at the jail in a show of support, hastening his release. If I know one thing about someone who's not a criminal, it's that they always have bail money ready. Yeah. Yeah, everyone. I know that. That has bail money ready. It's like, yeah, every all my friends that have bail money in their sock pocket, it's because they're always just chilling, just hanging. Every person I've ever had who informed me of the use of having, I think it was like $20 that the rumor at least going around, if you keep like 20, it was like a 20 or $40 in your pocket. If you get arrested in Dallas, then you can like pay to get bonded out right away or something. I don't know, I assumed it wasn't true, but everyone who told me that and kept 40 bucks or whatever in their shoe was somebody who sold me drugs. Yes, yes. Real drugs. Good drugs, yes. No, not always good drugs. They're legitimate people. Not in, not in the upstanding world. But they are legitimate salesman. Yeah, yes they are. So the write up from Darcy Naturals notes that senators, judges, lawyers and some doctors endorsed his treatment. Three types of people who aren't doctors and a couple of doctors endorse this. It's real medicine. Hmm. Quote hoxie's larger than life personality, unfortunately fit the stereotypical image of a quack coupled by it with a confrontational style set him ahead on to clash with the medical authorities for decades. Yeah, yeah, it's great. It's so good. These people, but he's he's ohh. It's hilarious because they're like, he's a quack. But yeah, people are like being mean about it. Now, Hoxie was obviously not the first person to lie about being able to cure cancer, but you might call him the founding father of the fake cancer cure industry. He invented the way to sell it and the way to turn snake oil into more than just to get rich quick scheme. Before Hoxie, Grifter sold nonsense medicine. After Hoxie nonsense Medicine was its own culture. A series of interlocking fake treatments, bogus medical philosophies, and fringe newspapers, linked together by a couple of colorful figures and a shared hatred of the mainstream medical establishment. Does that sound familiar at all to anybody? Yeah. In the 1970s, LATRILLE treatments became the vogue cancer cure among people who didn't actually want real cancer cures, and latrille is usually marketed as vitamin B17 or amygdalin. What it really is is cyanide. It it turns into cyanide in your body. It does not cure cancer, but the Galaxy of clinics in Tijuana that had followed Hoxy into Mexico. We're happy to poison desperate Americans in exchange for piles of cash. In 1980, Steve McQueen died in Mexico taking the trial treatments. In 2006, Coretta Scott King died from complications from ovarian cancer in a Rosarito clinic. Mexican officials shut down the Santa Monica Health Institute in the wake of this great name for a fake cancer. Neck and Rosarito, though, makes people think it's in California. You are in, you know, the state of California. Yeah, yeah. And in general, though, I will say one of the positives of this episode is that the fake cancer clinic industry in Mexico is on a downswing. 911 had a huge part to do with this. Before 911, traveling to Mexico was basically the same as driving to another state if you lived in, like, California or Arizona. And so people could just kind of, like, drive across the border and get treatment afterwards. It required a passport, which reduced at least the number of poor Americans who could blow their savings in Mexico. And bogus medicine. I'm not generally in favor of this change, but this is 1 positive thing that it did. You know it it it helped kill these clinics. You see George W Bush taking creative hey, hey, I cut down on the fat cancer show. That's not racism. Yeah. I think you should be able to travel to Mexico for whatever reason, as long as Mexico's fine with it. But yeah, this it does make sense that this would reduce the number of poor people getting grifted by this. And hey, we didn't mean. We didn't mean for poor people to hold on to their money. That wasn't. That's a bad side effect. Well, we'll take it away. Don't you worry, we don't get that money out of there. We didn't mean for poor people hold on to the money longer than they need to. We don't worry. Once them poor people get back from Iraq, we will take all the money we gave. We don't. You wear we'll find a way to get that money back. Yeah, that's investment. The Hoxie Clinic is still holding on, though, and I ran across one 2006 article about some of its modern day patients and it's ******* heartbreaking quote. For many, the journey to an alternative cancer clinic in Mexico is their last hope. Some still wear bandages from a recent surgery. Some are weak from chemotherapy or radiation, but others appear healthy. The result, they said, of unorthodox treatments that have struggled for decades to gain acceptance from the US healthcare industry every three months. Norberto Fanwell, 57. And his wife Alice, 56, of Fernley, NV, Drive to the border town of San Ysidro, CA, staying at a Best Western Hotel where they receive a discounted rate and a free shuttle to the cancer clinics across the border. They'll need that discounted rate because back in 2006, the Hoxsey treatment cost $3500 up front, plus additional costs that ran up to $5000. This is more or less in line with the cost of treatment back in Harry Hoxey's day, so that's cool. Just. Yeah. Yeah, and it's a bummer fan. Well, in the article is convinced that, like, the ultrasound shows, his cancer shrunk. Maybe he never had cancer. I don't know. Or maybe he's dead now. I have been able to find any information on whether or not he's alive or what happened with his treatment. I hope he's OK. I hope, yeah. No, it is. He just seems like some poor guy who got conned. If there is one piece of good news about the current day status of the Hoxsey treatment, it's that the actual ingredients used in the Hoxsey treatment seem to have. Stabilized today, there are Facebook pages and web forms where patients discuss the best ways to augment their hoxy treatment with diet, or even administer the herbal ingredients for themselves. So while the actual original hoxy treatment was wildly inconsistent, today's batches are usually a predictable list of substances. That said, they're not the kind of substances you necessarily want to just be ******* around with. Here's what a write up in the memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center says about several of them. High levels of iodine from the potassium iodide can cause pimples, excessive secretion of the eyes of nose, impotence, and inflammation of salivary glands. Buckthorn, one of the ingredients in the herbal tonic, is a violent laxative and can cause abdominal pain, dehydration, anxiety, decreased respirations, diarrhea, nausea, trembling and vomiting. Cascara, one of the ingredients in the herbal tonic, is a laxative and can cause abdominal pain, cramping, diarrhea, discoloration of urine fluid and electrolyte imbalance, softening of the bones, fat in the feces, vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Then vomiting. Whoa. Pokeweed, one of the ingredients in the herbal tonic, causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps. Ingestion has been associated with illnesses requiring hospitalization and has caused deaths in children. I **** my insides out. That's what that means. It's working well. You're fixed yourself to better health with the hoxy tree. I can see my heart beating in the toilet. That's what you gave me. God. Unbelievable. Great stuff, Billy. Yes. You feel like you might have some cancer after all this? I mean, yeah, every time anyone says it, I'm always like, probably. I don't know. Yeah, probably. I don't know. Well, you all heard it here. The hoxy treatment is the flawless, unproblematic way to treat your illness. It's just a thoroughly endorse it. It's just. An industry that you don't even think about, because if you start to think about it first you understand why, how easily people can be conned because it's the most desperate part of their whole existence. Is they're just trying to extend their life and the and everywhere they go that's reputable. Is like, oh, wait, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do. We don't ******* know. It's like, this sucks. Yeah, that'll be $1,000,000. Yeah, we don't know. We will need half of the money you've earned in your entire life. Your whole life because we told, like, yeah, it's so much of this is wrapped up in I am legitimately. I mean, like, obviously, like, we're going to do an episode about black salve in the very near future, which is very much a descendant of all this, but like, two of the places where it's most commonly used. Australia and the UK so obviously the entirety of the solution is not Medicare for all or socialized medicine or whatever, but I do think it helps. Yeah. No, it's yeah. Damn. Good luck, everybody. You want to plug your plegables? Yes. If you want to follow me on any of the socials, just Google Billy Wayne Davis and all that stuff comes up. Your favorite one? I'm on there and then I'm going on tour all over the place. So hit up BWD tour for all those dates. I'm continuing to update them, so holler. And if you wanna find me online, you can just Google Mike Bloomberg for president. Because, Robert, you know, there's really no daylight between. Look, I'm. I'm bloom pilled guys. I've been bloom pilled. I'm on the bloom train. I'm blooming out. I'm a blooming onion of politics now, and there's just no getting around that. Robert. Sophie, don't become the bad guy. Sophie. I have always been the bad guy, and you know that better than anyone. That's kind of true. Oh, you can find Robert on Twitter and I write. OK. You can also check out some of his writing from Bell and Cat. It's really good. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at at ******** pod. We have a website where you can find the footnotes under the episode descriptions if you Scroll down. Teepublic store Robert also is a cohost of worst year ever. Did I do it? You did it. You did a perfect job, Sophie. Thank you so much. Better a job. I am very excited about us transitioning away from me doing the this at all and just collecting a paycheck while you do the podcast. Very exciting. Maybe you are a team Bloomberg. All right, episode over. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's breaker handle the hosting creation distribution. And monetization of your podcast? Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Want to say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast, packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture, and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost, city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? Say goodbye to I don't know. Because after listening to stuff, you should know. You will listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees, the four O months the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.