Jerry’s academic qualifications:   My academic background consists of 12 years as a student--from 1962 to 70 and 1977-81, including 2 years of graduate school in philosophy.  The 14 undergraduate semesters in science consumed nearly three academic years (I earned 85 credit hours).  These science courses gave me the foundation for a molecular understanding of life and life systems, and philosophy taught me to critically examine a field of knowledge so as to spot anomalies in an overall theory and arrive so as to sculpture the solution to real-world situations.  Unlike science which relies on expert consensus, philosophy teaches problem solving.  For example there are Five Types of Ethical Theory (work by C.D. Broad); I had to examine each theory and then arrive at an overall meta-ethical theory and justify it.  I had 2 years of philosophy as a major, and 2 more years in graduate school, University of Manitoba.  Problem solving was not just the domain of philosophy:  in the 60s undergraduate liberal arts course-work consisted mostly of using evidence to justify conclusions—liberal arts consisted of a minimum of 12 semester course (36 credit hours), I had 15.  I applied those skills to social questions:  human behavior, political science, and economics, and to process such as imperialism, consumerism, religious behavior, and almost everything else that was puzzling to me.  Upon leaving the academic world in 1981, I continued to explore topics as varied as psychology, ethics, the brain as the source of behavior, poetics, the Greco-Roman World, bible mythology, historical Jesus, US Federal court system, health issues, and other topics.  I also had 4 courses in mathematics.  I was like a mathematician, only instead of numbers I think of processes measured by consequences and completeness.   For one year I was a psychology major during the era when the experimental basis of behavior was used as a scaffolding to explain complex behavior.  In 2001 I started the http://www.skeptically.org/, whose theme is to expose beliefs that are not justified by the evidence.  Among such beliefs is cognitive psychology.  There are two sections applying the behavioral approach.  This understanding helps me understand why and how the perverse corporate system produce perverse treatment practices, and thus how the corporate system causes well meaning scientists and doctors to cause harm.  A system which is measured by profits has evolved into a health care monster. 

Jerry’s medical science background:  Those academic skills acquired in university gave me many pleasant, quite hours of contemplation.   The first exposure to the medical literature came in 2 areas in the early 70s, that of birth control and on recreational drugs.  My first medical textbook, 1972, was The Hallucinogens.  In 1982 I bought the Goodman and Gilman pharmacology text book and studied the basics of drug action.  In 1983 I bought two cutting edge summaries, Cancer Biology and another on the research into aging.  I made notes on those books.  During the period from 1983 to 2004, I bought 3 more medical textbooks and read regularly JAMA in the local library.  In 2001 for my website http://www.skeptically.org/, I began setting down over two dozen topics including an evaluation of Chiropractics, psychiatry, and other health related practices lacking a scientific foundation.   (At the high point in 2006 skeptically.org was getting 11,000 pages downloaded daily).  In 2004 I started http://healthfully.org/.  As of April of 2015, I purchased since starting the health website 18 medical textbooks and college level books, plus 4 medical books for a larger readership.  Retiring from business in 2011, I fill my days exploring current medical practices—averaging 50 hours per week.   Pharma fulfills its fiduciary duty; I labor because of the moral imperative to love thy brethren.  

Critical analysis of health science:  It wasn’t a recent epiphany; in the 1960s I was aware of how corporations acted as the shadow government—not one pro-labor figure ever held a cabinet position.  I noticed that corporations and their government could influence academic studies.  I notice that the cold war assault upon socialism, populism, and Keynesian capitalism influenced economic and political science university courses.  I saw the power of bucks in science with big tobacco producing research to show that smoking was not a major health hazard, and the critics were marginalized.  However, I believed that university medical research given its vital value was shielded from corporate corruption.  I often relied upon expert analysis in medical textbooks, just as I did in chemistry and biochemistry.  Other than psychiatry, I trusted medical science—most doctors through the 60s were also critical of psychiatry.  My faith was broken by my work, starting in 2004, on healthfully.org.  Over and over again I came across articles in medical journal and industry news websites that exposed ineffective and/or dangerous drugs, and legal action brought against illegal marketing practices.  The depth of the corruption I discovered through investigating Vioxx which was voluntarily withdrawn after kill over 55,000 US patients, and its competitor Celebrex is still on the US market. I published those articles.  I had by 2006 uncovered examples of their power of pharma to change the practice of medicine thought the examples of HRT, aspirin, and statins.  I learned how what worked for tobacco also worked for Pharm; thus I called it tobacco science. I knew that HRT and aspirin reduced the risk of heart attack, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.  I published in 2007 on the web articles exposing tobacco science used for the assault upon HRT and aspirin.  (Yes, natural HRT prevents not only colorectal cancer but also breast cancer). But it wasn’t until 2008 when I read and reread Prof Marcia Angell’s The Truth About Drug Companies that I was convinced that physicians were systematically being manipulated by pharma to be patented drug pushers.  I started to question basic assumptions used to justify drugs, such as the cause of coronary artery disease and hypertension.  In 2011 I read a NEJM article which had compared for 12 antidepressant agents its clinical raw data submitted to the FDA to the 74 published journals articles on those clinical trials.  The positive bias averaged 32%, and it got worse since just under half of the trials, those with negative results, were not published. Since all of us (doctors and patients) rely upon clinical trials to determine the merits of a drug, we are consistently being misled.  I could only conclude that this pervasive scientific fraud going unaddressed entails that the FDA and our elected officials are in bed with bad pharma, and that this scientific fraud is standard business practice.  In 2013 Prof. Ben Goldacre in Bad Pharma described in detail the extent of this evidence fraud.   As Prof. Ben Goldacre stated in Bad Pharma, “a perverse system produces perverse results”.  As Dr. Fung states what else can you expect from industry funded studies. Over and over again I find spin promoting drug sales. 

Obesity epidemic:  Topics are chosen on the degree of harm pharma causes. Something is very wrong: obesity at over 35%, 30% of the adult population has non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, insulin resistance at 37% and thus classified as pre-diabetic,  and type-2 diabetes at 13% of whom 27% are seniors at 27%.  Type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease which if occurs by the age of 45 shortens life 10 years.  From November of 2013 until April of 2015 I have examined the obesity epidemic with all its comorbidities.  I started with Prof. Robert Lustig university lecture broadcast on University of California TV, Sugar the Bitter Truth, which has gone viral, over 6 million downloads as of April 2015.  Questioning everything, I needed to acquire a knowledge base on the very complex topic of nutrition and the bodily regulatory processes for to evaluate his claims.  I bought his Fat Chance and took notes on it.  He is correct.[1]  I turned to others.  The topic expanded beyond why we get fat to also include how it makes us sick (cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, hypertension, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, type-2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related chronic conditions).  Thus I read widely in journal and books.  Over and over again I found that the food manufacturers and pharma had with the help of the Federal Government sold the public on a low fat and low cholesterol diet, that carbs are empty calories, and that we get fat because we are lazy and can’t long-term control the amount of food we eat—blame the victims not the corporations.  Sixteen months later I have come to the best evidence based answers on what is wrong with the Western diet and its biological consequences and what to do about them—seerecommended healthful and the video documentary page.  Now (spring 2015) in addition to updating earlier articles to make them consistent with what I have uncovered about diet, I am also help people eat healthfully.  I am also trying to increase the web presence of healthfully.org.  And of course, I am continuing my work on bad pharma and warning those who will listen that their drugs aren’t worth their side effects.   

Documentary & university lectures videos:  Since most people lack by practice the ability to examine a topic based on journal evidence and follow the rational conclusions, I have organized a library of documentaries on health topics.  Watching and hearing is a better way to learn than just hearing or reading.  Fortunately most of the documentaries are available on YouTube.  A number of professors have also spoke out on various topics, and their lectures are also available.  I have prepared a list of those documentaries, and lectures, each with between 2 and 7 lines of commentary for to help you in selection.  The best have red stars next to their titles.  Visit the page and enjoy.  A similar page is available on political-economic topics.