Part I

by Patricia Ann Rattray

SO ON THURSDAY NIGHT, MARCH 20, 2008, Terry Moran pulled Nightline’s clattering train into the Environmental Health Center, Dallas and tricked millions of American people into continuing to harm and disable themselves.

Dr. William Rea and the world-renowned treatment center for the chemically injured in Dallas, Texas were the subject of Nightline’s attack.

If you were watching and felt a comfortable superiority that David A. Khan’s smirky pronouncement of mental illness on 45 million people, the last estimate of the chemically sensitive in the United States¹, was directed at someone besides yourself, you missed the subtle threat it implied that anyone who claimed chemicals made them ill and avoidance and homeopathy made them well would be labeled insane by powerful interests.

You would be forgiven for missing this subtlety at the time since the word “chemical” was never mentioned. Nightline’s host, Terry Moran immediately annexes everything polluted for the polluters by stating the problem is “the world”. Here is the first opportunity to signal the conductor that you want to get off at the next station called “Reality”. “Toxic chemicals” are not “the world” and if they have become so close as to become indistinguishable, then that is what we need to unravel. Unfortunately, it is in the interest of some powerful people that this not happen. But more about that later.

If you do get off this clattering train at the first stop, you’ll be in good company. Astronauts in the NASA Space Program began coming down with flu-like symptoms, named “space flu”. It was discovered they suffered from a high concentration of chemicals in the air of the shuttles due to outgassing, a term used to describe fumes that come from many types of materials. Once this was remedied and the air quality improved, so did the astronauts health.² John James, NASA’s chief toxicologist at Johnson Space Center reported in an interview with Space.com, “Air pollutants can affect your health, and some people are more susceptible than others.” Johnson added that the effects people experience due to pollutants can vary also, “Sometimes they’re non-specific, and only cause reports of headache or mild, flu-like symptoms.”³

So Moran failed to report to the public that our own astronauts and our space program have benefited from Dr. Rea’s techniques; techniques like porcelain walls and aluminum-lined ceilings to prevent outgassing which Moran looked askance at as if he were an adolescent on the television program 90211, instead of anchoring a major news broadcast.

Poor and Middle-class Trapped

Which brings up the next point. If you’re intelligent enough AND wealthy enough, you’ll always be able to get off this night train when you want—ride as long as you like. It’s poor and middle-class Americans that will be trapped till the end of the ride. This will be accomplished via computerized health delivery systems and limited insurance coverage, not to mention disposing of doctors like Rea.

For example, if you were like 400 Boeing employees at the Auburn plant in Seattle Washington⁴, who filed insurance and compensations claims saying chemicals at the plant had disabled them, the computerized health system would diagnose you as having a “psychological condition” because you thought chemicals made you ill. Then you would be referred to a psychiatrist. This would be much more financially beneficial to Boeing than providing you with high potency vitamins, and air and water filters, and safe housing in which you can get well. The human suffering that this little trick entails is beyond the scope of this article to compass. John E. Bryson, who sits on the Board of Directors at Disney/ABC, producers of the Nightline show, also sits on the Board of Directors at Boeing. If Dr. Rea has no license to stand up and testify for people like the Boeing employees, that just makes it that much easier to deny the rights of the chemically injured. I hope you begin to see that Dr. Rea is not the real point of attack on this broadcast.

In 1994, an investigative report in Washington Free Press stated that Boeing and ‘Big Medicine’ were working together to discredit the chemically injured. The report stated, “Key to their strategy is framing MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) primarily as a psychological condition.” Dr. Gordon Baker, an allergist who saw many of the Boeing workers at the time, was also threatened by the State Licensing Board in Washington state.⁵

Anonymous Complaints Filed Against Doctors Who Practice Alternative Medicine

Nightline’s coverage of the review of Dr. Rea’s practice was misleading. Moran did not report that the review was initiated by a single anonymous complaint filed regarding treatment for five patients who aren’t complaining. In fact, all five are still patients of Dr. Rea’s, two of them reporting he was responsible for saving their lives. All five patients have written to the Texas State Medical Board protesting the complaint filed about their treatment. The broadcast also fails to inform the public that these same types of license reviews are going on all over the country against physicians practicing alternative medicine, initiated by the same type of anonymous complaint. Nor does it mention the fact that Sherry Rogers, M.D., author of “Detoxify or Die”, has called Dr. Rea a “doctor’s doctor”; meaning it is frequently Rea that other doctors go to when they are chronically ill or diagnosed with cancer.

The show implied that the Texas State Medical Board had initiated the review based on some sort of consensus or research and that they had a general proactive state of concern for the health of the public. “The treatments that he’s giving we believe can be dangerous to the public health,” states Marie Robinson lawyer for TMB. One might be suspect of the Texas Medical Board’s real concern for public health since no one has died from homeopathy or sauna at Dr. Rea’s clinic and yet 103 people have died in the state of Texas since 1995 in either bizarre murders—usually by family members—or suicides (many times children) that are directly attributable to the side effects of psychiatric medication⁶ and the Board is taking no action on this. [http://ssristories.com/index.php]

The Nightline broadcast highlights a real need for the public to find alternative sources of media today, especially regarding their health.

see also:
Nightline ABC’s Clattering Train – Part II
Owners at Nightline’s Disney/ABC also Own Psychiatric Hospitals

Nightline ABC’s Clattering Train – Part III
Environmental Medicine vs Psychiatry, A David and Goliath Story

Protect your health rights and those of others by writing to Texas Legislature Representives and the Texas Medical Board to protest the review of Dr. Rea’s license. For background information in composing your letter see: “Letter from Dr. Rea to Patients”

Texas Legislature Representatives:

Senator Jane Nelson
Chair of the Senate Health
and Human Services Committee
P. O. Box 12068
Austin, TX 78711
TEL: (512) 463-0112
[email protected]

Representative Fred Brown
Room CAP GW.4
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, Texas 78768
TEL: (512) 463-0698
FAX: (512) 463-5109

Texas Medical Board:

Donald W. Patrick, M.D., J.D.
(Executive Director)
Texas Medical Board
P. O. Box 2018
Austin, Texas 78768
TEL: (512) 305-7030
FAX: (512) 305-7051

sources:

⁶SSRI Stories: Antidepressant Nightmares

photo credits: Clattering Train © Jeff Comfort / iStockphoto

Patricia Ann Rattray is a writer specializing in issues of holism and social justice and is actively engaged in creating a healthy sustainable world.