Chapter Eighteen
THE CHARITY PRESCRIPTION

The drug cartel's influence over the nation's medical schools; the drug-oriented training given to medical students; and the use of philanthropic foundations to obtain control over educational institutions.

As we have seen, the Rockefeller group, in conjunction with the hidden hand of I.G. Farben, has become a dominant force in the American pharmaceutical industry.

One of the consequences of this reality is that one almost never finds consumer price competition among prescription drugs and patent medicines. Generally, the only competition we see is along the lines of vague advertising claims such as "Laboratory tests prove Bayer is better," or "Research has shown that Anacin is faster."

Over the years, the pharmaceutical houses have lived up to an agreement to stay within the narrow field of their specialty and to refrain from trying to cut into the established markets of their rivals. It is, as they say, an "orderly" industry.

One of the reasons for this non-competition is that most drugs are patented and are available only from one manufacturer. Another reason is that the prescription is made by a physician who is more concerned with the effectiveness of a drug than with its price. But, in addition, there is the fact that the drug houses bombard the market with so many new drugs each year that the physician often does not know how effective the drugs are that he Prescribes.

All he knows is that he has seen them advertised in the AMA Journal, has been handed a "fact sheet" by a field representative from the company which manufactures them, and may have had some success with them on previous patients.

Because he is a practitioner, not a researcher, he cannot conduct controlled experiments to determine the relative effectiveness of the new drugs as compared to older or similar drugs available through another firm. All he knows is that they seem to help some of his patients. If the first drug does not bring about the desired results, then he will issue a new prescription and try something else.

The result is that it is not unusual for a patient to buy multiple drugs from different manufacturers with everybody getting a piece of the financial action. This point was brought home rather bluntly at a conference sponsored in 1963 by Johns Hopkins University.

One of the featured speakers was Dr. George Baehr of New York, who stated:

As a consultant for many years to physicians in private practice, it has been my experience that many general practitioners and specialists have acquired the habit of shifting repeatedly and needlessly from one drug to another. They are usually motivated to change their prescribing habits by the persuasive propaganda of advertising literature and of visiting detail men.(1)

1. Omar Garrison, The Dictocrats, op. cit., p. 21.

There is nothing about this procedure that is improper from the physician's point of view. He is doing only what he can to help his patients by making available to them what he has been told is the latest technology in the field of drugs. Remember, it is not he who makes a profit from writing the prescription.

There is no questioning the fact that the doctor functions as a salesman for a multi-billion dollar drug industry, but he is not paid for this vital service. He has been trained for it, however. Through the curricula of the nation's leading medical schools, students are exposed to such an extensive training in the use of drugs (and practically none in the field of nutrition) that, upon graduation, they naturally turn to the use of drugs as the treatment of choice for practically all of man's ills.

How the medical schools of the nation came to adopt these uniform curricula is the subject to which we now turn our attention.

The key to unlock this particular door of cartel intrigue is the tax-exempt foundation. The scope of this study does not permit more than a cursory review of the origins and early history of such foundations, but the salient points are these.

The Federal Reserve System, the income tax, and the tax-exempt foundation all were conceived and foisted onto the American people by the same financier-politicians whose story has been traced in the preceding pages. In fact, the Federal Reserve System was first introduced as legislation in 1913 by Senator Nelson Aldrich, and was known as the "Aldrich Plan."

Aldrich was brought into the inner circle when his daughter married John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The senator's son, Winthrop Aldrich, became chairman of the Chase National Bank. Senator Aldrich was viewed as Rockefeller's personal representative in the Senate and, as a result, he wielded far more power and influence in Washington than any other senator of the era.

One thing is certain. He would not have introduced income-tax legislation if there had been even the remotest chance that it would apply to such fortunes as those held by the Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Carnegies, or the Mellons.

The plan was both simple and ingenious. They would transfer the bulk of their visible assets to something called foundations. They would appoint hand-picked and loyal underlings to administer these foundations. They would require that a portion of their assets be dispersed under the appearance of charity or philanthropy.

They would design most of those gifts, however, to benefit themselves, their business enterprises, or to further their political objectives. They would retain full control of their assets and use them just as freely as if they remained directly in their name. They would avoid the payment of any significant inheritance tax upon the death of the "donor," thus insuring that the fortune remained intact and in the hands of family or corporate control in perpetuity.

And they would use the supposedly charitable nature of the foundation as a means of avoiding the payment of most, if not all, of the income tax they then were advocating to be paid by everyone else.

Once again it must be noted that the "socialist" or "communist" nostrums allegedly designed to pull down the rich and elevate the poor - such as the progressive income tax (1) - always work to eliminate the middle class and, ultimately, to produce just the opposite of their advertised objective.

1. The progressive income tax was specifically called for in The Communist Manifesto.

That this has been true in the United States is obvious. The progressive income tax has not hurt the finpols one bit.

Their wealth expands at an increasing rate each year. The business and professional people who fall into the middle class, however, now are increasingly blocked from rising into the selected ranks of the super-rich With each passing decade since the enactment of the income tax the gap widens between the top and the bottom. Again, government becomes the instrument for preventing competition and for preserving monopoly.

And make no mistake about it, it was planned that way.

Ferdinand Lundberg explains:

Recipients of the money must be ideologically acceptable to the donors. There is a positive record showing that, by these means purely corporate elements are able to influence research and many university policies, particularly in the selection of personnel... The foundations are staunch supporters of the physical sciences the findings of which have many profit-making applications in the corporate sphere...

Whether or not these various effects were sought by the foundation creators, they are present, and the realistic observer must suppose they were what the realistic founders had in mind.(1)

What has been true in university research is equally true in government research. In both cases, the pharmaceutical interests are able to benefit commercially from drug research programs paid for wholly or in part by tax dollars.

This reality was confirmed in 1972 by Dr. Frank Rauscher, director of the National Cancer Institute, when he said:

We test about 30,000 compounds a year for anti-tumor activity in animals at the National Cancer Institute alone. Each year, for the past four or five years, an average of about three new drugs have reached the physician's bag for application to the patient.

The program currently costs about 75 million dollars per year, and can be expected to generate six or seven clinically effective drugs each year. That means we're spending tax money at about rate of 10 million dollars per drug... My colleagues, Dr. Gordon Zubrod and Dr. Saul Schepartz, operate probably the nation's biggest pharmaceutical house at the National Cancer Institute.(2)

1. Lundberg, The Rich and The Super Rich, op. tit., p. 469.
2. "New Gains in War Against Cancer/' U.S. News and World Report, 1972, p. 41.

In recent years, the private physician has represented a constantly shrinking portion of the total medical profession. As his influence wanes, he is being replaced by group clinics, HMO's of these state-supported institutions, and research centers.

Many or are the recipients of large grants for specific medical projects and they become very sensitive to the ideological or scientific preferences of those who give the money. It's not that the donors tell them specifically what to do or what to find, it's just that the recipients know in advance that, if they stray too far outside the unstated but clearly understood objectives of those who make the grant, then that will be the last time their name is on the roll call when the free money is given out.

There is the celebrated case, for instance, of the $15,000 grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to the American Bar Association to study the United Nations Genocide Convention. When the ABA had the gall to condemn the convention, the Carnegie Foundation was enraged and demanded an immediate stop to the project or its money back.

Another example of the influence of foundations over the world of academia is the way in which the nutrition department of Harvard has been converted into the public relations department of the General Foods Corporation. For years the head of this department at Harvard was Professor Stare, known within health-food circles as the "Cornflakes Professor."

One of the Professor's dubious achievements was to defend "enriched" white bread and other miracle products of the processed-food industry. He dismissed as "rubbish" and "nutritional quackery" all suggestions that chemical additives to foods may not be safe or that processed supermarket foods are not just as nutritious as anything fresh from an organic garden.

On one occasion he condemned Dr. Carlton Fredericks for his support of vitamin B6 and challenged him to produce even one authoritative reference to support its value. Whereupon Dr. Fredericks sent Stare's own report on B6 written years before he had come under the influence of Harvard and foundation money.

Omar Garrison gives further insight into how this influence came to be decisive:

Perhaps it is without significance that Dr. Stare is a board member of a large can company, and that his department at Harvard has been the recipient of substantial research grants from the food industry.

 

For example, in 1960, the Harvard president announced what he called a "momentous" gift of $1,026,000 from General roods Corporation, to be used over a ten-year period for expansion of the nutritional laboratories of the university's school of public health, where Dr. Stare is professor of nutrition.

 

The seductive question is: Can any scientific research remain wholly objective and untainted by loyalty when it is so generously endowed by big corporations whose commercial future will be influenced by the outcome of such research?(1)

Joseph Goulden, in his authoritative study of foundations entitled The Money Givers, explains how foundation control has been extended to the medical profession:

The medical profession does quiver excitedly when it hears the fast riffle of thousand dollar bills. Since Ford [through the Ford Foundation] began nationwide operations in 1950, it has spent more than a third of a billion dollars on medical schools and hospitals...

Foundations are popular with the medical establishment because they do so much to preserve it. A well-endowed regional foundation - Kellogg in Michigan, Moody in Texas, Lilly in Indiana - can be as influential in hospital affairs as is the state medical association, through grants for construction, operating expenses, and research.(2)

1. Garrison, op. cit., pp. 195,196.
2. Joseph Goulden, The Money Givers, (New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 145, 149.

Bearing in mind that the foundations are precision tools designed to further monopolies and cartels, it follows that they will be used, not only for expanding the wealth of those who control them, but also for expanding the size and reach of government, for total government is the ultimate monopoly and the final goal.

This has been a conspicuous aspect of foundation grants since their inception. The majority of foundation-supported projects in the social and political sciences have resulted in the promotion of expanded government power as the solution to the problems and injustices of the nation and the world.

Plush grants have gone to scholars, researchers, schools, dramatists, churches, theater groups, mass-action organizations, poets, and ivory tower think-tanks. They have been given to those within the Establishment, to those who are anti-Establishment, to those who claim to be in the middle, and to those who plot violent revolutions to overthrow the government.

They have been bestowed upon Republicans, Democrats, New-Agers, militants, pacifists, socialists, and Communists.

The apparent divergence of these groups leads the casual observer to the erroneous conclusion that the foundations are not selective or that they are promoting a kind of melting-pot democracy of ideas. But, upon closer examination, the one thing that all of these recipients share in common is that they promote the growth of government; and that, in fact, is why they have been smiled upon by the forces of monopoly.

There are a thousand examples that could be cited in support of this proposition, but let us limit ourselves only to the field of medicine which is the area of our present interest. Recent studies of socialized medicine in England and Sweden have turned up an interesting fact. Because prescription drugs in these countries are "free" (paid through taxes), the per-capita use of these medications is much higher than in the United States.

The statistics show that, when an individual has no financial interest in his medical bill, he tends to overuse medical services just to make sure that he is getting all the benefits to which he thinks he is entitled.

Doctors, also, tend to write prescriptions in marginal cases of need just to "process" the patient through his office more quickly.

The result is that, under socialized medicine, the drug manufacturers are rewarded with an automatic and maximum market saturation for their products. The pharmaceutical cartel that controls the medically oriented foundations has not overlooked this fact, and we can be certain that the history of foundation pressure for socialized medicine in the United States is no accident.

The Milbank Fund was created by Albert G. Milbank who was Chairman of the Borden Company and also the leading partner in the Wall Street law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hope, Hadley and McCloy. Milbank was no stranger to the cartel.

John J. McCloy, one of his partners, was Chairman of the Chase National Bank, trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, chairman of the board of the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), and a member of the Executive Committee of Squibb Pharmaceutical.

The significance of the Milbank Fund is not that it has been the kindly sponsor of projects supposedly to upgrade the quality of public health, but that it was one of the first foundations to use its resources openly to promote government expansion via socialized medicine.

Richard Carter, in his devastating attack against the AMA, entitled The Doctor Business, recounts the story: During the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, organized medicine encountered little legislative difficulty.

Its worst problems were those posed by the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care and the philanthropic foundations which financed the CCMC's work. The Milbank Fund was regarded as particularly virulent. Despite protests from local medical societies, it continued pilot studies in New York State which illustrated the advantages of publicly organized preventive medicine.

Worse, its secretary, John A. Kingsbury, was an advocate of federal health insurance and so was its president, Albert G. Milbank. With the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, such advocacy became formidable. It was expected that Roosevelt would include compulsory health insurance in his Social Security laws.(1)

The entry of the Rockefeller group into the foundation arena is of paramount importance to the subject of this treatise, for no other single force has been as influential in shaping the contours of modern medicine in America.

One of the first moves in that direction was made when John D. Rockefeller retained the professional services of a public-relations expert by the name of Ivy Lee.

When Lee was called before the Congressional Committee to Investigate Foreign Propaganda and Other Subversive Activities,(2) he testified reluctantly that he had been retained by I.G. Farben to give professional advice to most of the top Nazi leaders, including Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, and Hitler himself.

1. Richard Carter, The Doctor Business, (New York: Doubleday, 1958), pp. 203, 204.
2. This later became known as the Dies Committee after Martin Dies, but in 1934 its chairman was John W. McCormack of Massachusetts.

Lee became famous in later years for accomplishing what seemed to be an impossible task - improving the popular image of John D. Rockefeller.

He had advised the old tycoon to give away a small percentage of his wealth each year in the form of gifts to hospitals, libraries, schools, churches, and other charities, but to do so in the most conspicuous manner possible, usually with a public building to bear his name as a continuing testimony to his generosity and benevolence.

To obtain favorable press coverage, he advised Rockefeller to carry rolls of shiny dimes with him at all public appearances so he could hand them out to any youngsters that might be present. It was largely through following this kind of advice that John D. Rockefeller gradually lost the old (and earned) reputation for cunning and ruthlessness and became increasingly portrayed as a kindly philanthropist who loved children.

The public-relations value of philanthropy did not originate with Ivy Lee. Rockefeller himself had observed how the negative image of George Peabody had been changed almost overnight by conspicuous acts of public charity, and the same thing with his close friend Andrew Carnegie.

Shortly after Carnegie proclaimed his famous "Gospel of Wealth" in which he stated that men of great fortune had an obligation to further humanitarian objectives through philanthropy, Rockefeller wrote to him and said:

"Be assured, your example will bear fruits."(1)

Later, when the first Rockefeller general philanthropic board was created, Carnegie was made a trustee and served for eleven years.

Rockefeller and Carnegie, applying the typical philosophy of industrial cartels, agreed not to compete or overlap in their philanthropic endeavors, and operated their respective foundations as though they were one; a fact which, through the years, has given each of them an economic leverage even greater than would be indicated by their separate vast resources.

The one man who probably deserves more credit than any other for advancing the profitable science of foundation philanthropy was a "modernist" minister by the name of Fred Gates.

Gates was far more of a businessman than he was a man of God. In fact, he openly acknowledged that he held an aversion to fundamentalist religion, and that he entered the ministry in order to promote the "social" principles which, in his view, were implied in Christ's teachings.

He explained:

"I wanted to side with Him and His friends against the world and His enemies. That, frankly, was the only 'conversion' I ever had."(2)

1. Warren Weaver, U.S. Philanthropic Foundations; Their History, Structure, Management, and Record, (New York: Harper & Row, p. 35.
2. Allan Nevins, John D. Rockefeller, (New York: Scribner & Sons, 1959), v. 2, p. 271.

Fred Gates had attracted the attention of John D. Rockefeller as a result of his effective service to the flour magnate George A. Pillsbury. Gates had shown Pillsbury how to dispose of a portion of his estate in such a manner that, not only did he receive maximum public approval, but he also was able to capture control of money from other sources as well.

This was the Gates formula: Pillsbury gave the Owatonna Baptist Academy $50,000 on condition that the Baptist community at large would raise an equal amount. Gates then took on the job of raising the additional funds.

The result was that $100,000 was raised in all, and it was done in such a way that the entire business community, through its own financial share in the venture, was led to personally identify with Mr. Pillsbury and his "noble" project.

Pillsbury put up only half, yet he obtained the same public credit and private influence over how the funds were used as he would have if he had financed the entire venture. That was getting double mileage out of one's philanthropy!

John D. was quick to appreciate the usefulness of such a man as Fred Gates, the creator of this concept, and soon made him a key figure in his business enterprises.

Rockefeller, himself, later described Gates in these glowing terms:

Fred Gates was a wonderful business man. His work for the American Baptist Education Society required him to travel extensively. Once, as he was going south, I asked him to look into an iron mill in which I had an interest. His report was a model of clarity!

Then I asked him to make some investigation of other property in the west. I had been told this particular company was rolling in wealth. Mr. Gates' report showed that I had been deceived.

Now I realized that I had met a commercial genius. I persuaded Mr. Gates to become a man of business.(1)

1. John K. Winkler, John D.-A Portrait in Oils (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1929), pp. 176,177.

One of the first foundations established by Rockefeller and Gates was the General Education Board.

The objective of this "philanthropy" was not to raise the general level of education, as many thought at the time, but to convert the American people into a docile herd of content and uncomplaining workers. In the first publication of the General Education Board, Gates wrote:

In our dreams we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers of mental learning or of science.

We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one: To train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are.

So we will organize our children into a community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shop, and on the farm.(1)

John D. Rockefeller had a passion for efficiency - not only in business, but in the administration of his philanthropic funds as well. In the mind of this man, the word "efficiency" meant more than merely the absence of waste. It meant expending the money in such a way as to bring about the maximum return to the donor.

The Gates "matching funds" formula developed for Pillsbury was refined even further for Rockefeller and soon evolved into a pattern in which John D. often controlled a philanthropic venture with as little as one-fourth of the total capitalization. Scores of volunteer fund-raisers could be recruited to raise the balance from the public at large. But since the largest single contribution came from Rockefeller, he received the credit and was able to place control of the entire fund into the hands of trustees who were subservient to his will.

This was the pattern that produced such profitable ventures as the Charity Organization Society, the State Charities Aid, the Greater New York Fund, and many others. The New York Tuberculosis and Health Association was a classical example.

Originally established by a group of physicians dedicated to a crusade against T.B., it soon fell captive to the financial domination of Rockefeller money.

Rockefeller put in charge of the program a relatively unknown social worker by the name of Harry Hopkins.(2)

1. "Occasional Paper No. I," General Education Board, 1904.
2. Hopkins, like most Rockefeller protégés, moved into government work. He became WPA director, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Lend-Lease Administrator, and personal advisor to FDR. He even took up residency in the White House. Later it was learned that he had been a member of the Communist Party.

Under Hopkin's direction, the T.B. Association grew to international proportions and, by 1920, was collecting many millions of dollars each year. Rockefeller controlled the operation, but most of the money came from the public through contributions and the purchase of Christmas Seals.

One of the great scandals of 1932 centered around the accusation made by New York City Health Commissioner Lewis I. Harris, in a letter to the New York Times of June 8, and by the subsequent admission of the fund's officers, "that all its money had been expended on salaries and overhead." The philanthropy formula worked so well that it was decided to expand.

A multitude of similar agencies were established to exploit the public's dread of other diseases as well. Within a few years there sprang into being such organizations as The Heart Association, The Social Hygiene Association, The Diabetes Association, The National Association for the Prevention of Blindness, The American Cancer Association, and many others.

The American Cancer Society, incidentally, was formed officially in May of 1913 at the Harvard Club in New York. In later years its orientation has been determined by such personages sitting on its board of directors as Alfred P. Sloan (General Motors), Charles D. Hilles (AT&T), Monroe Rathbone (Standard Oil), and Frederich Ecker (Metropolitan Life).

The American Cancer Society holds half ownership in the patent rights to 5FU (5 flourouracil, one of those drugs considered as an "acceptable" treatment for cancer.(1) The drug is manufactured by Hoffman-LaRoche Laboratories which is within the I.G.-Rockefeller orbit. Many donors to the ACS would be outraged to learn that this organization has a vested interest in the sale of drugs and a financial tie-in with the drug industry.

The ACS denies that it has ever received any money for its share of the patent.

When the author wrote to Hoffman-LaRoche suggesting that this was strange in-as-much as such payments would help to fund ACS "humanitarian programs," Mr. Samuel L. Welt, Assistant Vice President and Chief Patent Counsel replied:

"We do not feel that we are in a position to comment on what payments, if any, the American Cancer Society received on account of the patent."(2)

1. See Jones, Nutrition Rudiments in Cancer, op. cit., p. 17.
2. Letter to G. Edward Griffin, January 11,1977; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit.

Rockefeller's first entry into philanthropy on a grand scale was in 1890 when, following the formula established by Gates, he pledged $600,000 to the Baptist University of Chicago on condition that the meat packers and dry-goods merchants of the city also contribute a minimum of $400,000.

Biographer John T. Flynn describes the reaction:

When the news of Rockefeller's princely gift was made known, the National Baptist Education Society Convention was being held in Boston. The announcement of the gift was received with cheers... When the gift was named and the actual sum of money pronounced, the audience rose and sang the Doxology.

 

Men burst out into exclamations of praise and joy.

"The man who has given this money is a godly man," chanted one leader.

Another rose and exclaimed:

"The coming to the front of such a princely giver! A man to lead! It is the Lord's doing. God has kept Chicago for us. I wonder at his patience."

On the following Sabbath throughout the country, sermons of thanksgiving were preached in almost all Baptist pulpits.

"When a crisis came," entoned one minister, "God had a man to meet it." "God," cried out another, "has guided us and provided a leader and a giver and so brought us out into a large place."

In scores of pulpits the phrase:

"Man of God!" was uttered.

A writer to the Independent said:

"No benefaction has ever flowed from a purer Christian source."(1)

(1) Flynn, God's Gold, op. cit., pp. 305, 306.
 

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