Jack's Late Night Musings

My Friend Greg Caton

The gentle giant Greg Caton is in prison somewhere in the southern U.S. Again. He is yet another “victim” of the United States Food and Drug Administration enforcement division that jails people who offer treatment or cures for cancer patients. This is practically a capital crime. I believe in alternative treatments. I’ve used them. They work. I value my freedom so I don’t sell them. But I honor the anguish that practitioners face who try to heal those whom traditional medicine has abandoned to their fate or who cannot afford conventional treatment – treatment that mostly doesn’t work anyway.

You can visit the Caton website at www.altcancer.com. Greg’s wife Cathryn is carrying on his practice as best she can in his absence from Ecuador.

I consider myself his friend. I know his family. I know how brilliant he is. I know his battle to escape the clutches of the FDA by leaving the U.S. for Ecuador where he could practice his profession without fear of imprisonment. Third world Ecuador has freedom of medical treatment actually written into its Constitution. It is there to protect native shaman healers. Ecuador treats its population as adults who can make their own decisions about healthcare.

Greg Caton is “famous” for his Cansema™ product. He spent three years in prison for it. This is based on an old United States patented product based on bloodroot – a folk remedy that’s been around for a hundred or more years. I first met Greg via mail when he was in prison and I was trying to find a product to save my dog who had cancer. Greg has modified the folk product by the addition of zinc chloride (I believe) to make it even more alkaline – many cancer healers believe that alkalinity kills cancer. This product is real simple. It is especially effective for skin cancers. You dab it on, it attacks the cancer cells, it forms a scab, the scab eventually falls off and the cancer is gone. It will often “follow” the cancer to wherever it has migrated, killing it along the way. A LOT of healers know about this cure but Greg was very successful in marketing it. There is a testimonial by astronaut Brian O’Leary about how it cured his skin cancer on Greg’s website.

Greg’s success proved his undoing. It’s pubic record (so I’m not revealing confidences) that Greg spent time in prison after the FDA raided his plant in Louisiana years ago and arrested him for selling cancer cure products. Having served his time he just wanted out of the U.S. and out of the clutches of the FDA. But he was given three years of supervised release – federal probation – after his prison time was completed. With court approval he was able to travel back and forth to Ecuador and moved his business and his family there. Then he asked to have his “tail” cut and released from probation pending his relocation to Ecuador. His request was denied but he left anyway.

Greg not only sold his products from Ecuador back to the U.S. and around the world, but he wrote continually about the criminality of the FDA and posted it on his website. This did not endear him to them. According to Greg and his wife, the FDA mounted a “kidnap” attempt to do a “snatch and grab” in Ecuador – in violation of Ecuadorian law it would seem. (As a lawyer I’d say it was in violation of U.S. law, too, but who knows anymore.) Long and short, the “team” got the wrong guy and had to release him. Oh, they allegedly kidnapped a child, too, whom they thought was Greg’s son. I have no idea if the incident was related, but a couple U.S. embassy officials were deported afterwards. The FDA came back again, however, this time through the court system, and with a speed and cunning heretofore unknown in Ecuador except when obtained through nefarious means, got Greg arrested based on a U.S. warrant and then deported within days.

Greg has, I have heard, about 20 more months of sentence to serve. I have no idea what for. But he did violate his probation.

There are lessons here. Selling curative products has attendant risks. Healing cancer is an underground activity for a reason. Clinics across borders have saved lives. They also lend themselves to abuse and chicanery. And they have probably “killed” people. But under the same criteria so has every doctor and hospital – they just did it with FDA approval – meaning they followed approved protocols that still ended with the patient’s death.

Asking that the FDA be more an information center, sort of Good Housekeeping seal of approval for “big pharma” and efficacious protocols, rather than a policeman, seems an idea not yet ripe for reasonable discussion.

Asking that alternative treatment providers simply “register” with the FDA and describe their treatment protocols and supply success/failure data, if known, would allow us, people who want to use their treatment, to make informed decisions as adults – not children who need parental control over our own bodies that the FDA provides at gunpoint. The only requirement of registrants would be “the truth” and the only crime would be to knowing withhold truth.

The FDA, one man’s opinion, is an “administration” that needs a new mission. Maybe it could help Muslim nations, too! NASA can’t be expected to do everything, right? But if it wants to stay in the “healthcare” business – maybe it could be more a clearinghouse of information about “FDA approved” treatments as well as “alternative treatments not FDA evaluated”.

The FDA’s history is replete with stupid and arrogant decisions that go back to its founding. You’d think they would have a bit more humility. But they don’t. It is said that their approved treatments have killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children over the course of their history. They don’t need humility, they have guns and badges, instead. It works out much better for them. And much worse for us.

For any of you who read this that are in the business of supplying healthcare products that are not FDA approved, may I suggest a few things.

Go to www.lef.org and read about their history. LEF is the Life Extension Foundation. This company and its founders are now “sort of” mainstream. But they were persecuted relentlessly by the FDA. Threatened with life in prison if they didn’t “cave” to FDA demands. But they didn’t cave. They won. They developed a model that for the most part works. If you sell curative products, you need to understand everything LEF does. The FDA now leaves them alone.

2. If you sell a “cancer” cure or any other “cure” then you have only one method that will keep you out of prison. You must tell the world about your product BUT NOT SELL IT on the same site where you sing its praises. Then you could suggest, in your information post, that people google the product name if they want to buy it. By choosing a unique name for the product, it’s likely someone will find the site that sells it. On the site that sells it, you make no claims at all except “general feeling of wellbeing” or something innocuous. It’s best if the info site and the selling site are owned by different people. A disclosure is required if the sites are “linked” per new Federal Trade Commission regulations. Linked by friendship or “for the cause” does not require a disclaimer. It would also be nice if the info site was located outside the U.S. If the selling site is also located outside the U.S. you’re probably golden but the U.S. produces a lot of the products that you might like to sell. The third option is to keep the info site offshore, the selling site offshore, and then let fulfillment be from within the U.S. Each has attendant advantages, costs, and risks. Adult decision time.

I hope it goes without saying that if you’re in the business of selling anything but the most innocuous healthcare products, that it’s probably time to see a lawyer conversant in FDA matters. This is probably NOT your local family lawyer. This is going to cost money. It may save all your assets and three years or more years in prison. In the end, you’re going to have to make what I call an “adult” decision. The lawyer is going to save his own ass in the advice he gives you. You are on a mission that has a noble purpose. Your challenge is how to get away with it and not get eaten alive. This will take legal advice, cunning and luck. You will want to find a lawyer with FDA litigation experience.

For a lot of sellers of cancer cures, it is not about the money. It is about saving lives. This is a crusade. And by any ethical standard, the crusaders are right and the FDA is wrong. But the FDA is armed with the “law” and with the coercive power of the courts. The FDA is one more example of how “we” let a non-elected bureaucracy control our lives and yet our elected representatives do nothing. I’m not sure how many more of these juggernauts we can afford. But this one is literally killing us.

I wish Greg Caton a safe stay in prison and a long, prosperous life on the other side. He’s a good guy and a small “national treasure” in his own right. Of course he’s a national treasure that must live in exile. Thanks to the good folks at the FDA.

At the risk of seeming too “self-serving” I have a booklet for sale called the FDA Report full of disclaimers, cautions and ideas for web-marketers. www.AscoliBooks.com/FDA.html It’s about $30. For the “complete meal deal” go to www.InternetLawCompliance.com. It includes the FDA Report and the FTC Report to show how enforcement fits together as well as purchase agreements with language to give you a fighting chance. About 300 pages in total of “information” and forms for web marketers. [Attn ILC members: you already have these reports!]

~Jack

Disclaimer: The author is a lawyer, but not your lawyer.  While he thinks this information is correct, it’s up to you as adults to verify it to your own satisfaction and/or seek legal counsel where you live.