Hoxsey and Cancer

Thomas writes that the documentary on Hoxsey “raises timely issues about the attitudes of the medical Establishment and the government toward alternative treatments to cancer.” As any reporter who took a serious look at the Hoxsey story would conclude: The Hoxsey “cure” was not an alternative treatment, it was quackery.

Unless my memory serves me ill, it was the Federal Trade Commission, not the Federal Drug Administration, which took the first successful step against the Hoxsey clinics.

The FTC, as I recall, asked the Institute of Medicine to conduct a study of the Hoxsey treatment.

As a journalist, I went over the reports of the investigation with care. Tissue samples from Hoxsey patients were studied by pathologists in various parts of the country. For Hoxsey advocates, the results were devastating. The treatments cured nothing.

I write only from memory, but I am sure that my memory is accurate enough to demolish Thomas’ argument that film maker Ken Ausubel “documents a sorry history of close-mindedness and vested interests that to this day work against a serious consideration of what non-traditional medicine has to offer.”

Poppycock!

JAMES S. HAGUE

San Diego