Part Two: The Founding Father of Fake Cancer Cures

Robert is joined again by Billy Wayne Davis to continue discussing Harry Hoxsey.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. Welcome back to the podcast that this is which exists.
The name is escaping me right now, as is my
own name. Um. I am floating, amorphous lee in a
jar of pure thought right now, completely lost and untethered
from the reality that normally binds me. Sophie, what what

(00:23):
are we doing? Who am I? You are the only
Robert Evans and that's good And this is behind the
bastards and we're here with Billy, Wayne Davis, Anderson Dog
and me. Thank you. I was lost in the phantom zone,

(00:45):
but now I feel grounded and ready to talk about
Harry Hawxy. Oh my god, Thank goodness, he's still speaking
of kicking Billy. How are you doing. I'm good, I'm good.
I got some gatorade and Gator Pop tart. Yeah. Well
that sounds like the necessary equipment. Well, let's let's tear

(01:07):
back into this dirty paper sack of history. The American
medical establishment was still quite new in the nineteen fifties,
and at first it did not have one stray funck
of an idea about what to do to stop Harry Haxey. Uh.
The men of the A m A Were studious and learned,

(01:30):
but they fought like children. Of the early nineteen hundreds,
and Harry Hawxy thought like a twenty feet century grifter.
This is a guy who was like using the same
playbook as Alex Jones and like, you know, Mike Adams
of Natural News, but he's using it in like fucking
nineteen fifty. He's he's just so far ahead of these

(01:51):
people that it takes them a long time to figure out,
like how to actually combat his particular brand of bullshit.
Haxey sent copies of his new autobiography to every senator
and representative in the United States, and he also started
talking about running for governor. He expanded his touring to
members of other fringe groups who hated the A, m
A and the f d A. His chief ally in

(02:14):
this was Gerald b. Win Rod. Have you ever heard
of Gerald b win Rod? Billy, You know, I'm excited.
We're probably gonna have to talk about Gerald b win
Rod in detail at some point, But the short of
it is he was an evangelical preacher from Kansas. Win Rod. Yeah,
he's the sort of person we talk about every single
time we do an early twentieth century United States episode.

(02:36):
He's kind of in the same vein as father Coughlin.
Both men are like aggressive religious fundamentalists who either tip
right up to or go right past the line of
explicitly endorsing fascism in the United States. UM. And when
Rod is a past the line kind of guy. UM.
He'd run for Senate back in nineteen thirty eight on

(02:57):
a platform of I found a master's thesis from Bethel
College from a student named James Schmidt who discusses what
his platform was, and I think that's going to do
a better job of sort of walking you through this
guy's political um ideology than than than I could do.
So I'm going to quote from that now using radio

(03:17):
station w y b W and Topeka. When Rod broadcast
his program of reform, his seven point proposal called for
defensive constitutional democracy against communism and fascism, reconstitution of the
national character, rigid observance of states rights to combat the
growing federal bureaucracy, absolute neutrality and foreign policy, return of
control of the monetary system from the Federal Reserve Board

(03:39):
to Congress, repeal of the New Deal, labor and business legislation,
and an attitude on the part of the national government
that will inspire confidence in order to encourage the controllers
of private capital to create honest jobs when Rodd also
sent mass mailings using Dr John R. Brinkley's hundred and
fifty thousand name mailing list and drove in a car
equipped with a speaker, taking his message directly to Kansas voters. However,

(04:02):
because of the apparent anti Semitism and near support for
Hitler's anti Jewish policies and his previous speeches and publications,
numerous Canston's opposed his candidacy the Hitler and Guy Na.
Although he opposes fascism, he's just also an isolationist and
doesn't think we should do anything about Hitler. And also
Hitler's kind of rite about the Jews. That's when Rod, Yeah,

(04:23):
that's yeah. What I also said it on allowed speaker
that put on my car. Why I am against fascism,
but we shouldn't fight fascism by fighting it. And also
the fascists are right about the racist things they say
and the government and the way they run the government.
I actually am pretty okay with fascism. Oh, I mean yeah, No,

(04:44):
I I thought you said something else. No, I like fascism. Yeah,
I thought you were saying like Faschisel and I am
not okay with rap talk. No, Now, when Rod had
actually visited Nazi Germany back in nineteen thirty and he
hadn't exactly but unhappy about what he'd seen there. And

(05:06):
when he lost his election, the vast majority of the
votes that he got came from parts of Kansas traditionally
considered to be clan strongholds, which they have interesting ideas
about what can be done with bed sheets, to put
it mildly, Yeah, so it looks like he won boss
Hog County. Oh lord, um so yeah. He wound up

(05:34):
being charged with sedition in the mid nineteen forties for
having quote feloniously and knowingly conspired, combined, confederated and agreed
with each other and with officials of the government of
the German Reich and leaders and members of the Nazi Party.
You know. Yeah, I'm not I'm against fascism, but I

(05:56):
like some fascists. I like all of the fascists, and
I think we should do what they've done here. But
I am not in favor of fascists. I am a
member of fascism, but I'm against it from this standpoint.
M hmm, that is my signature. Yes, yes, one of
the fun bits of little history here is that win
Rod was actually the model for buzz Windrip, the fictional

(06:18):
American fearer cooked up by Sinclair Lewis for his book
It Can't Happen Here. Um, so that's neat. Wow. Yeah,
he's that guy, and he winds up working with Harry
Haxey see after the war, Yeah, yeah, after the war.

(06:41):
His trial, sedition trial ends on a technicality because the
judge dies, I think the universe has the best sense
of humor if it's very fun that's what in an
objective sense. That's I mean purely objective, like not being
a part of it and being fucked ID a lot sucks,
But objectively, that's what this podcast proves more than anything,

(07:05):
is the universe is funny. It's you know, it's it's
funny in the what's the name of the guy? He
played the parrot and fucking Aladdin, Gilbert it's funny in
the same way that Gilbert Godfried set right after nine
eleven was funny. We're like, it's it is actually very funny,
but everybody gets really angry. Yeah, that's the that's the

(07:27):
universe's sense of humors. Gilbert Godfried making a nine eleven
joke like a month later, just but with nailing it,
with timing and everything. Absolutely slamming at home, but just
really pissing everyone on. You're like, Hi, I'm gonna have
to go to and so I'm gonna have to go
to the bathroom so I can laugh at this, but
I don't want anyone to see me laughing. God, it's

(07:48):
so funny. That's a definition funny what he did there.
But people are gonna be mad, and they're mad. Yeah,
they're mad. I knew it. Yeah, that is the death. Yes,
that is the definition the out. Yeah, and I I
learned a lot from him, which is why I decided
not to open this episode with what's corona ing my viruses?
I just figured that was a good call. I would

(08:10):
have I would have loved that because you read Robert's
tweet where it's like sixty thousand people died of the
flu last year. So I don't think we should freak
the funk out just yet. I think it's a problem.
They might be using it to see how well they
can control cities and ship I'm not going to get

(08:31):
into conspiracy talking here, but I do think that, like
I think if you are, for example, um someone very
close to me as a Chinese UH citizen and has
family over there, and they're incredibly worried, and it's a
very scary time. You were not like a friend of
mine is going over to Europe and was worried. I'm like,
you're not gonna You're not gonna get coronavirus. You'll be fine,

(08:51):
Like you will be okay, this is not something to
freak out about for you. UM. Anyway, that's very much
outside of the UH. I like weight in conspiracy, so
I do. I do like weed and conspiracies, and I
would love to I don't know. There's well, probably we'll
do when it could happen here season and talk about

(09:13):
it might happen, Yes, will not happen. Billy says, it
could happen here. That's season two. This could happen. Yeah,
we'll watch like one episode of The X Files first,
but not like one of the not like one of
the uh you know, the mythology ones, one of like

(09:36):
one of the ones like I don't know, one of
the Monster of the Weak ones. Those are the ones. Yeah,
I'll get bored to the rest of the it just
gets to it gets to anyway. I like it YETI
I want. I want Yetis and Mothman. You know, that's
all I want. I want FBI agents fighting Mothman. I
would agree to increase the FBI's budget if they would

(09:58):
agree to only fight Mothman. But Alas I think you
don't say that to the wrong FBI agent. He's like,
that's how we're gonna get funded. I feel like every
honest FBI agent would much rather be fighting Mothman. But
without a doubt, because they all grew up watching Fox Molder.

(10:19):
We know it. That's just the way it is. Yeah,
you don't get in the FBI do patterns and ship. No,
you want to get to shoot at a Mothman in
rural Oregon. Yeah, that's that's what we all want. That's why,
that's what we all really want at the end of
the day. Anyway, Jack, so we're talking about that guy,

(10:42):
win Rod. So he the judge dies his sedition trial
ins on a technicality, and in the wake of it,
he launches a newspaper, The Defender, which he used to
pump out anti Semitic and anti black propaganda for his
audience of a hundred thousand Americans. He also argued for
the existence of flying saucers and ran copious ads for
non additional medicines in other words, like Dr John Brinkley,

(11:04):
his peer when Rod was basically nineteen fifties Alex Jones.
So he's talking to people about like aliens and racism
and selling them fake medicine and also yelling about fluoride
in the water that he's a big anti fluoride crusader. Yeah,
he's just Alex Jones. Yeah it does sound like the
same guy print of that man. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. Um.

(11:28):
And like you know, so when Rod gets into this
business of like spreading propaganda and bullshit medicine, and he
immediately sees that Harry Hawxy's stupid fake cancer cure might
be a gold mine. So when Rod had already made
a fortune selling gli oxy glioxylide, which is a fake
cancer cure from Detroit Um, and he'd established the Christian

(11:50):
Medical Research League in order to study read market this
cure read poison, when Rod quickly got to work selling
Haxey's nonsense too. He began claiming that he had been
treated with it as a young boy and it had
saved his life. So readers should definitely try this ship
folk it up a little bit. I don't like the
Detroit slander. It's not out there, it's just it's not slander.

(12:13):
It's just where it happened. That's yeah. I don't like that.
I got to own your ship. Look, bad things happen,
even the closest bad thing top and in Detroit that's
not even on the list. It's really everybody should visit.
It's bad. Now. I'm just saying the history there's been
some Detroit not great. It's it just hurts me to

(12:35):
see fate cancer cure from Detroit. It means a lot
of other stuff coming from Detroit. That's the point. Don't
you continue The bad guy's city from this is still Dallas. Okay,
so we can the d cities absolutely not even a question.

(12:56):
Uh yeah, so um um for his work. When Rod
was paid more than eighty thou dollars by Hoxy, this
was not disclosed to the readers of his newsletter, and
it eventually came out in a court case which Haxy lost.
Rather than show any shame at all, when Rod published
a letter to his supporters begging them to let out

(13:18):
daily persistent argumentative prayer for Haxy, he also asked for
donations so he could continue Haxy's anti cancer crusade. Last,
he asked his readers to each sent him the addresses
of five cancer patients. God, who, oh my god, what

(13:40):
a piece of shit. Just keep pushing, just keep pushing it. God,
it's really golf. Clap on that one A plus level drifting,
it's it's it's smart yea. When Rod and Haxey were
good allies, but Haxey knew that any good grift had

(14:01):
to diversify, So we also started working with the American Rally,
an isolationist group dedicated to peace abundance in the Constitution.
The members of American Rally were outraged at the fluoridation
of water and believe the polio vaccine was poisonous. They
also believed in flying saucers. The American Rally thought Haxy
was not only a great healer, but a potential vice

(14:24):
president and maybe a good bet to run alongside a
Senator named Langer in the nineteen election. Everything he said
was just like a mad li And then even even
vice vice president isn't funny. I know, it's amazing. That's

(14:50):
it's like, yeah, he should be the vice president. He
should be the vice president. He's fucking in. You've got
anti vaccine and anti fluoride ship and like a right
wing isolationist tea party light group. It's just nothing has
ever changed about the United States of America in the

(15:12):
entirety of the time. It's exists now at all times.
It's awesome. It's just it is awesome. I mean, that's
why I like. What I do is a trailer on
the country. People are like, no, there's no way. I'm like, oh,
you guys should drive around. Yeah, yeah, this will work somewhere.
Whatever dumb thing you can think of, there is a

(15:32):
part of this country will It will make you the
biggest man in town, and you'll find a partner that
will make you, guys even bigger. Now they bring him
into a merritt Haxie into like a merit this American
rally rally because they wanted me to be the vice
presidential candidate. And they introduced him at a Chicago event
by saying the spirit of Lincoln is here tonight, and

(15:55):
Haxey responds by telling the crowd the a m A
killed my daddy, the same bunch of rats I've been
kicking ever since. Just folk it up. They know what
they're doing. It's not it's not dumb. It's not dumb,
it's disingenuous. Yeah. And the book Medical Messiah's points out

(16:18):
that American Rally was one of a number of Haxey
supporting organizations, all of whom were united by an idea
called medical freedom, which is quote defined as the right
of every individual to seek treatment from Haxey's clinic and
other clinics and practitioners frowned on by the Orthodox medical
establishment to such groups. For the American Association for Medico

(16:38):
Physical Research in the American Naturopathic Association, Haxey and as
associates spoke before their meetings at a naturopathic convention in Chicago.
Haxey addressed himself to the theme, who are the real
cancer quacks? And may God have mercy on their souls? Yeah?
He is good, He's not bad. No. Now, Well, Harry

(17:02):
Hawxy couldn't ship his cancer treatment across state lines. Nothing,
but nothing was going to stop people in other states
from advocating for the Haxey method. There in Pennsylvania, his
greatest backer was a state senator named John Haluska. So
many senators and congressman get involved in this. He knows.
The right thing is like people trust. At least at

(17:23):
this point, people trusted their senator and their congressman. And
they don't know anything about medicine, but doctors do. So
I'm gonna try and convert a bunch of fucking politicians.
That's a smart way to spread your bullshit. And m hm.
So Haluska was just as dumb as all the other
politicians we've talked about today, but he at least had
a little bit of an excuse. He had lost his

(17:45):
mother and baby boy to cancer, and he credited Haxey
with saving his sister's life, claiming that actual daughters had
given up on her. She had in fact been treated
successfully with X rays, but Haluska didn't like to talk
about that for some reason. He probably just that the
X rays had only made it worse than it was.
You know, I don't know wife too, and that didn't work,

(18:07):
you know what I mean? Yeah, who knows. Heluska lost
his job as administrator of a hospital for trying to
convert the nurses there to carrying out hoxy treatments, which
is fair. No, no, it seems like poison. Yeah. Helusca
took this as a sign to open his own cancer

(18:28):
clinic out of a remodeled appliance store slash garage. Eventually,
this clinic was successful enough that Haxey himself came to visit.
He was greeted by a parade and was introduced to
the Pennsylvania Senate by Helusca. After a round of applause,
the state senator publicly introduced Toxie to Kathy Allison, a
young girl from Indiana. He said, quote, here is that

(18:48):
little angel who, according to medical science, had to meet
the angel soon today. She's going to school, was x
rayed last week and found to be cancer free and
is playing like any other normal fild. But you got
a good feeling about Kathy Allison, Billy, don't, if I'm
being honest, to have a good feeling. Yeah. She died

(19:10):
eight months later of chest cancer. Yeah, m m m, yeah, Yeah,
that's kind of what you expect. The FDA succeeded in
bringing suit against the clinic in Pennsylvania, and a jury
ordered its medicine destroyed. In April nineteen fifty six, the
FDA published a warning in the Federal Register revealing that
it's scientists had thoroughly investigated Haxey's preparations and found that

(19:32):
they were both useless and potentially deadly. It turned out
that the actual content of Haxey's medicine varied widely from
day to day, and some preparations they'd studied included potassium iodide,
which the FDA had found actually accelerated the growth of tumors.
They noted that they had found not a single certified
cure among all his patients, not fucking one, not fucking

(19:54):
that they should have included a fucking in there, you're
right sucking one of them. Not a single goddamn one. Now,
this was actually the very first time in history that
the f d A ever publicly denounced to cancer care
as absolutely fraudulent. In nineteen fifty seven, they doubled down

(20:15):
on this by asking US post office across the country,
more than forty six thousand of them, to put up
public beware posters warning patients about Hoxey's care, and this
seems to have helped immensely. The agency estimated three thousand
people were kept away from Hoxy's snake oil in the
first thirty weeks. It was like it saved lives mhmm, thousands,

(20:37):
probably well hundreds, probably a lot of them probably didn't
have cancer. But yeah, it saved a lot of lives.
And you know what else saves a lot of lives, Billy,
So many lives therapeutically and medicinally guaranteed. F d A
backed to save lives. Every single product in service that

(20:58):
supports this podcast. You that. Yeah, And if it's a
Mike Bloomberg ad that comes up next, that will in
fact cure your cancer, absolutely, that's my If it doesn't,
you have to sue yourself. You don't know, there's no
proof that it won't. I will say, Mike, Mike Bloomberg

(21:19):
has the ability to cure all of your cancers. He
chooses not to, but he could. Yeah, that's just charisma alone.
That's just all charisma. He is charismatic. Mm hmm. Yeah.
So here's some products. We're back. So, yeah, when we

(21:44):
left off, the f d A has like put out
forty six thousand warnings about the Haxey treatment in post
offices all around the country, and this has proved to
be very effective in stopping people from buying into his
bullshit because this was an age in which people still
trusted the government to some extent, so wouldn't work now nowadays,
I imagine that would increase your um your sales substantially, actually,

(22:07):
if you were a bullshit treatment um. But it was
a different time. So Haxy saw the FDA's actions is
enough of a threat that he sued the government for
issuing these warnings. He lost the case, and Alusca lost
an appeal that he filed in Pennsylvania. By October of
nineteen fifty seven, the FDA could happily announce that they
had been successful in all federal court cases against Haxey's treatment.

(22:29):
With each trial came more and more testimonials from patients
who had learned the hard way that Harry Haxey was
a fraud. And I'm going to quote now from a
McGill university right up on the Haxey treatment quote. A
former patient testified that he had been diagnosed with cancer
and offered a treatment for two hundred and fifty dollars
in a six week recuperative stay at Huxey's hospital for
three hundred and sixty dollars, a lot of money at

(22:50):
the time. He recovered, but not from cancer. Actually later
turned out that he had suffered from Barber's itch. The
other the other instance, an FDA undercover agent was diagnosed
with advanced prostate cancer that had metastasized to the lungs
and told he had come it just in time for

(23:11):
the cancer to be arrested. There was an arrest, all right,
but it wasn't of the cancer. WHOA, that's awesome. It's
just like eyeballling a cop and being like, yeah, you
got a loan cancer. Yeah. So uh. The f d

(23:31):
A is very successful in winning all of their court
cases against Hoxie, but alas as they admitted quote, such
actions will not in the menace of this treatment, since
the federal government does not have the power to stop
a clinic in any state from treating cancer patients within
that state with the nostrums which comprise the hoxy treatment.
Millions of copies of false promotional literature are still in circulation,

(23:53):
much of it reporting cures of persons who are now
dead bummer, and in this they were lamented correct. The
next couple of years saw the gradual dissolution of Harry
Haxey's US based businesses. Texas court cases saw his license
revoked and his ability to practice medicine in the state ended.
So it only took Texas. I don't know, a decade

(24:15):
and change, well, more like twenty. It took Texas a
long time, but they did eventually take his medical license
away that had been granted to him, probably for ten dollars. Mm.
So that's good. That's good. Yeah, his honorary and medical license. Hey,
give us back. Yeah, I do love that. Like, if

(24:37):
his story is true, his dad, who gave him the cure,
was grandfathered into having a medical license, and Harry's was honorary.
It's it's awesome earned, just like my father earned it
before me. And uh so uh. Haxey was forced to
lease his clinic to someone else, but the FDA succeeded

(24:59):
in getting a permanent injunction against his treatment. From late
nineteen sixty on, the Hoxy method of treating cancer could
no longer be legally practiced in the United States. So
that's good. That's good. That's good. That does not, however,
mean that you cannot still get the Haxey treatment if

(25:19):
you want some fake medicine to deal with your real cancer.
Because in the mid nineteen sixties, nineteen sixty three to
be exact, one of Haxey's nurses moved you know where
we're going here, Billy, Tijuana, Mexico. That's right. She set
up the first cancer clinic in that grand city and
it is still in operation to this day. Stop. Yeah,

(25:47):
So the fact that this clinic has been in operation
in Tijuana, Mexico for like fifty some odd years has
provided actual doctors with some opportunity to like test how
well the treatments work. Um, and I'm read a quote
from that McGill University paper on that. Now. In nineteen,
the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, certainly not

(26:08):
an anti alternative organization, examined evidence submitted by a Haxy
clinic in Mexico and found that of a hundred and
forty nine patients who had been treated, only five could
be tracked down five years later, and of these only
seventeen were still alive. Such a six percent survival rate
is not exactly the claimed eighties percent rate, and probably
could be achieved by an anti cancer diet of frog legs, snails,

(26:31):
and Mexican jumping beans. They got a little racist at
the end. There was going to the point he was
being a little bit of a dick at the end.
But the point is it doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, And
it's still you can still go down there though, you can.
You can go down there and get it. You can
get it right now. You go get your cancer treated.

(26:51):
If you're in San Diego, you could be getting cancer
treatment by this afternoon. Yep. You could listen to this
on your way down Rosarta. Yeah, yeah, lovely. So Hoxie
himself stayed in Dallas. He transitions seamlessly from selling fake
medicine to investing in the oil and gas industry. Okay,

(27:17):
so so you're just selling just holes in the ground. Yeah,
that seems pretty easy. Now. When I burned people's faces off,
nobody even gets angry. They just say that's the way
it's supposed to work, and they're like, yeah, that's what
we hired him to date is sometimes their faces getting burned.
M hm uh. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in

(27:38):
nineteen sixty seven. He attempted to use the hoxy treatment,
but tragically it did not work. He was under forced
to undergo conventional surgery, which saved his life. He spent
the rest of it hiding from the world and died
alone in nineteen He was like, you know what, you guys,
I see a lot of you have a point now, Yeah,
I can't. I'm gonna go away. I'm gonna go away.

(27:59):
Yeah it is. And again, if he had been a
modern grift here, he never would have gone away. He
would have found a way to roll with the punches.
But he was an old man by then. You know,
he'd rolled a lot, so much rolling that is the
most impressive. I mean, all the bastards, well I've covered
they've been. There's an element of impressive to them all.

(28:23):
A persistence that I do not understand. And I'm a
very person, I mean, the perfect me to make it
in comedy. Yes, it's purely persistence. After a certain year
of skill learning, you're like, well now it's just persistence.
And these guys are just like I'm gonna go Max,

(28:44):
I'm gonna do this right what I'm gonna Yeah, I'm
gonna burn some faces off, I guess go down there.
I just don't understand the main goal, like because they
keep losing money, a lot of them, So I don't know.
I get confused. Yeah, as to like what drives all

(29:05):
these motherfuckers? Some comes what drives all these motherfucker's, I
don't know. Maybe just money, but there's I do think
a lot of them don't have a lot of money. Yeah,
I think a lot of it is. I think, honestly,
most of it in every grifter, most of it is
social cash a and the money is kind of part
of getting the social cash at it allows you to be.

(29:27):
They want to be a big man. They want to
be a big, powerful, important person. That's that's what it
always comes down to. I really do think I think
that was that with Elizabeth Holmes. She wanted to be
a hugely influential, powerful part. She was always more interested
in the like sitting on different boards and giving advice
to the government sort of thing than actually making anything.
And she's always name dropping other powerful people. Yeah, you're exactly. Yeah.

(29:50):
And even the voice thing that is, she's she studied
powerful people and that's what that is. Yeah, that's a
deep voice. People respond on to authority, the deeper voice
like that. To me, that wasn't fascinating. When people can
you believe you change your voice? I was like, no,
that's it works. Yeah, I mean I change my voice

(30:10):
because people take me more seriously when I speak the
way that I speak than the way I grew up talking.
Oh you know, little people like you can lose your accent.
I'm like, no ship, but I like to make people laugh.
So that's that's yeah, I mean, it's that's what happened.
That's the only downside of coming from ten s And
while we're talking about Tennessee, Billy, you're the only ten

(30:33):
I see. I've never gotten to use that line before,
and I and you did pretty smooth. That's the smoothest
I've ever heard that line. You thank you. I've practiced
a lot. I like to shout at at people as
I passed from cars um let as listeners couldn't see
Billy go on. His face lit up. Now, the Hoxy

(30:56):
treatment is still very much Oh no, there's too much
momentum behind this grift for it to ever die. Now,
in ten thousand years, the only remnants of our society
will be the war in Afghanistan and the Haxey Treatment.
It's just gonna be them floating in the boy. So

(31:18):
Haxey's bullshit treatment is very much alive and well. In fact,
the move of his nurse to Mexico in the mid
nineteen sixties sparked the birth of a new industry in
Baja California. By two thousand two, they were more than
seventy alternative cancer clinics in Tijuana and Rosarrito, none more
prominent than the Haxy Clinic today. Billy, if you decide

(31:39):
I want to get some cancer cured, but not by
a doctor in a way that actually cures my cancer.
If you make that call, you know which who who
hasn't felt that way from time to time? Uh? If
you decide, yeah, So if you start looking into Haxy treatment,
or like, if one of your relatives is like looking
at people you know. Just here's what's frustrating. It is

(32:04):
old timy enough that it's kind of a pain in
the asked to research what the treatment is. If you
look at the first page of Google results, there will
be a couple of accurate articles by authoritative sources tearing
it apart, like the McGill article University article. But there
are just as many positive sources about Haxey on the

(32:24):
first page of Google results, um, including the Amazon page
for the book Haxy Therapy. When Natural Cares for Science
became illegal? Website? Fuck you fun? That fun? Huh? That
title right below that is the website for a documentary

(32:44):
Hoxie How Healing Becomes a Crime. Now it's hearing stuff
like that, it's like it answers that question, like how
can anyone be against the legalization of marijuana? And you're like,
will you hear people defending stuff like that? And you're like, oh, well,
that's no. It makes total sense because people are just like,

(33:06):
I don't know this stuff over here, but this stuff
and you're like, uh, you're right, you're right, and I'm
a big marijuana should be legal and in some cases
mandatory advocate, but um, like, obviously the whole medicinal marijuana
industry is at least fifty nonsense. Like I have had
it had advised to me. Every time I've had an

(33:27):
advised for me to me for anything but a treatment
for like mild pain, it has not done a goddamn thing.
Which is not to say there aren't things that can do.
There's a lot of really interesting research going on about
like the ability of certain cannabinoids to like you know,
fight cancer and stuff that actual doctors it's not just
smoking pot obviously. Well, and then yeah, they can't give
you a strain. That always cracked me up to this

(33:49):
strain is like good for this, and you're like, you
don't know that because you don't even got infection. Bro,
you got a log infection. Smoke this straight, yes, just
hit this ship. Here's the herpies concoction of that is.

(34:12):
But it is that and it sucks because it's also
like you you see this with every good drug with alcohol.
Back in the day, everybody loved alcohol, so suddenly like
doctors would be like, oh, alcohol will treat this, alcohol
will treat that. Getting drunk is the right cure for this.
And it's really only the cure for kidney stones, um

(34:33):
and a lame party. But yeah, and sadness, all three
of them. It doesn't make it worse at all, but
it is like that frustrating Yeah, like yep, it's just
this human nature. And I think that's you said it
best where we're both just like it's just that uh
and then it's just human nature where it's like it's

(34:54):
like how bacon was really popular a couple of years ago.
Remember that, Yeah, oh yeah it was huge, and well
yeah now it's like a Republican thing too. It's weird
the road that bacon went on over the last like
fifteen years. Yeah, it's a bit of people like ah,
eat bacon or you triggered like no, dude, everybody likes bacon.

(35:16):
People like it's like the watermelon, and people things like
that's just good. What are you talking, Yeah, it's yeah,
there's a whole long races. We actually may do a
fun episode on like all of the horrible histories behind
those particular stereotypes. But I don't know. This is off
topic of it, um, but it is like this feeling
I have about I have this. I have this theory

(35:39):
that we would not have the problem we currently have
with like bullshit medical treatments if we had never started
the war on drugs mm hmm. If marijuana had never
been this counterculture thing, if it had always just been like,
oh yeah, you just go down to the farm across
the street and pick some wheed and smoke it, like,
and no one had ever made it into a thing,

(35:59):
I don't think it would have attracted you know, doctors
might would hopefully still be finding useful medical things from it,
but it wouldn't be this like weird cult in the
same way that alcohol doesn't have this weird cult. Like
there's people who like to drink, but there's not like this.
It's not the same thing. I don't know, well, it
was never yeah, well, you only had to go away

(36:20):
from somebody to use alcohol for a short period and
then you get to all use it again in the Yeah.
I think that's what made part where you always had
to go away to use it and you you all.
It's also I think this the fact that the path
to starting legalization, like, I don't think marijuana would have
reached the point that it currently reached without that interim

(36:41):
where everybody was really pushing the medical aspects of it,
like where we would all have to go get like
prescriptions and ship. That was we all saw that. It
was like this is just a step and a step.
That was a cool part of that. I think the
cult of it, yeah, was we recognized the bullshit, just
do it, just do it this way, and then I yeah,

(37:02):
but I think to say what to go along with
what you're saying, what happened? And it's that snake oil
ship where once it's a is once CBD. They discovered
it and now it's in everything. And I've been talking
two ice cream places I can walk to have CBD
ice cream. I was like two weeks ago my grandmother.
I was talking to her and she's like, I've put

(37:23):
some CBD on my elbow. It's like, oh, it's going
It's going legal federally so fast. Now, that was the
smartest thing they could have done, because old people call
their senators and bug the ship out of them. You
get old people using pot, they'll change them laws. And
it's happening because the CBD. That's what we gotta get

(37:44):
old people on acid. Next, it's that I will that
boomer generation is coming through there. But there hashtag somebody
drugging old folks film. You just gotta we gotta jump
start this process. We are off the topic, so I
would talking about that first page of Google results for
Haxey therapy with the Amazon book you know when natural
cures became illegal? Right below that is the website for

(38:07):
a documentary Hoxy How Healing Becomes a Crime. And at
the very bottom of the page, Billy Wayne Davis is
a pdf on the Haxy treatment by Darcy Naturals, an
herbal medicine focused clinic in Native Massachusetts. So the people
at Darcy really fucking love them some Harry Haxey and

(38:28):
they're right up includes a bio of him that I
find fundamentally hysterical. Quote Hoxey and his formulas still enjoy
popular appeal, even though they have suffered forty years of
harsh attacks and the press relentless prosecutions in the courts.
He was arrested more times than anyone in US medical history,
a hundred times just in Dallas, and they're trying to

(38:52):
make him out to be a good like everything they
write about it makes him seem like a fucking gigantic fraud.
More than a hundred times in Dallas, just in one
just in the place he lived. They kept ending him
for doing bad stuff. If you are white, you really
got to work to get arrested in Dallas. I was
that was gonna say. It was like I was a

(39:14):
white dude, you guys. One of my good friends who listened,
whose name will say starts with a J, had to
be he was driving without like a license or registration
for a very long period of time before he got busted.
Like uh oh no, I think he just had tickets
against him. I don't know. I think he did have

(39:35):
a license. Well, if there was a period of like
a year where every time I got in the car,
it would be like if I could pulled over, I'm
going to jail for two years. It didn't know I
was doing it and driving around the country with suspended license,
and then that that got pulled over a coplate this
suspended ozen ship. Oh ship, yeah, you had to go

(39:57):
to jail. Do you know that I did? Oh boy, Yeah,
that's not good. So the Darcy Natural's right up continues,
persecution by government agencies public warning against toxic cancer treatment
that the FDI ordered mounted in forty s u s
Post offices, and of virulent personal vendetta mounted against him
by the head of the American Medical Association Morris Fishing.

(40:19):
They misspelled fish beings fishing fishing because these aren't serious people,
you know, they're not details aren't super important in medicine. Now,
they aren't wrong that Morris fish being had a vendetta
against Hoxie. He had famously noted in nineteen sixty five,
of all the ghouls who feed on the bodies of
the dead and the dying, the cancer quacks are the

(40:40):
most vicious and most heartless, which is a pretty fucking
good quote. Now, you know who won't ghoulishly feed on
the bodies of the dead and dying Cooke brothers. No,
they would do that just for not even not even

(41:04):
for food. Yeah, and for the erotic thrill um. Always
forget about that part of it. Yeah, you know it's critical. Yeah,
the products and services and support this podcast. It's an
it's another ad break. We're back. So Darcy Naturals UM,

(41:27):
the company that this PDF comes from, really ought to
be looked into by somebody to see if they are
breaking the law by providing Haxy's treatment. Because they definitely
sell Haxy formula pills for thirty six per bottle. It
is unclear to me as to whether or not this
is technically fine um, because they're just selling herbal supplements

(41:49):
to people that I don't know. Yeah, it's the same supplement, probably,
like I'm guessing less toxic than most of the ship
he used, because you get the feeling from him that
sometimes his guys are is pouring ship in jars. Um. Yeah.
So I don't know if they're breaking the law or not.
It would be cool if someone looked into that. Maybe

(42:11):
somebody I know there's a lot of journalists who listened
to the show. Here's a fun lead. Look in the
Darcy Naturals and see if they's break in some laws. Um.
The site is really entertaining reading though, and it somehow
manages to make Harry Hawksy sound even shadier while trying
to defend him. Quote, how did Harry in his formulas survive?
Why weren't they extinguished? It's an amazing story full of

(42:33):
Hollywood like intrigues. They survived by the most amazing truth
of all, the testimony of healed patients. This was Hawxy's
only defense at every trial and Senate committee meeting. He
never lost one a m a quack trial or slander
trial because of this moving, powerful defense from the experience
of hundreds of cancer survivors. Note that they don't include

(42:54):
all of the FDA trials he lost him Well, that's
not important. Battle against the American medical establishment of the day.
Not one cancer patient ever testified against him. Given to
carrying wads of cash to be able to post bail
at any times, his fortune coming from oil investments, his
patients would gather at the jail in a show of support,

(43:16):
Hastening is released. If I know one thing about someone
who's not a criminal, it's that they always have bail
money ready. Yeah, yeah, everyone I know it has bail
money ready. It's like, yeah, all my friends that have
bail money in their pocket it's because they're always just chilling.
Every person I've ever had who informed me of the

(43:37):
use of having I think it was like twenty the
rumor at least going around. If you keep like twenty
was like a twenty or forty dollars in your pocket
if you get arrested in Dallas, then you can like
pay to get bonded out right away or something. I
don't know. I assumed it wasn't true. But everyone who
told me that and kept forty bucks or whatever in
their shoe was somebody who sold me drugs. Yes, real drugs,

(44:03):
good drugs. Yes, they're legitimate people not in not in
the upstanding world, but they are legitimate salesman. Yeah, yes
they are. Yeah. So the right up from Darcy Natural's
notes that senators, judges, lawyers, and some doctors endorsed his treatments.

(44:25):
Three types of people who aren't doctors and a couple
of doctors endorsed this. It's real medicine quote. Hoxy is
larger than life personality, unfortunately fit the stereotypical image of
a quack, coupled by it with a confrontational style, set
him a head on to clash with the medical authorities.
For decades. Yeah, yeah, it's great. It's so good the people,

(44:51):
but it's hilarious because they're like, he's a quack. But yeah,
people are being mean about it now. Hoxy was obviously
not the first person to lie about being able to
cure cancer, but you might call him the founding father
of the fake cancer cure industry. He invented the way
to sell it and the way to turn snake oil
into more than just to get rich quick scheme. Before Haxy,

(45:14):
grifters sold nonsense medicine. After Haxy, nonsense medicine was its
own culture, a series of interlocking fake treatments, bogus medical philosophies,
infringe newspapers, linked together by a couple of colorful figures,
and a shared hatred of the mainstream medical establishment. Does
that sound familiar at all to anybody? Yeah. In the

(45:39):
nineteen seventies, Latrille treatments became the vogue cancer cure among
people who didn't actually want real cancer cures. And Latrille
is usually marketed as vitamin B seventeen or amygdalin. What
it really is is cyanide. It turns into cyanide in
your body. It does not cure cancer. But the galaxy
of clinics in Tijuana that had followed Haxey into me Pxico.

(46:00):
We're happy to poison desperate Americans in exchange for piles
of cash. In nineteen eighty, Steve McQueen died in Mexico
taking La Trill treatments, and two thousand six, Coretta Scott
King died from complications from ovarian cancer in a Rosarto clinic.
Mexican officials shut down the Santa Monica Health Institute in
the wake of this. Great name for a fake cancer

(46:20):
clinic in Rosaritto, though, makes people think it's in California
or in you know, the state of California. Yeah, and
in general, though, I will say one of the positives
of this episode is that the fake cancer clinic industry
in Mexico is on a down swing. Nine eleven had
a huge part to do with this. Before died eleven,
traveling to Mexico was basically the same as driving to

(46:41):
another state if you lived in like California or Arizona,
and so people could just kind of like drive across
the border and get treatment. Afterwards, it required a passport,
which reduced at least the number of poor Americans who
could blow their savings in Mexico on bogus medicine. I'm
not generally in favor of this change, but this is
one positive thing that it did. You know, it helped

(47:01):
kill these clinics. Do you see George W. Bush taking credit? Hey, hey,
I cut down. That's not racism. Yeah. I think you
should be able to travel to Mexico for whatever reason,
as long as Mexico's fine with it. But yeah, this
it does make sense that this would reduce the number
of poor people getting grifted by this. And hey, we

(47:22):
didn't mean. We didn't mean for poor people to hold
on to their money that one, We'll take it away,
don't you worry. We don't get that money for poor
people cold on the money longer than they need. Don't worry.
Once then poor people get back from Iraq, we will
take all the money we gave them. What don't you

(47:42):
were We'll find a wayne. Yeah, that's investment. The Haxi
clinic is still holding on though, And I ran across
one two six article about some of its modern day
patients and it's fucking heartbreaking. Quote for many of the
journey to an alternative cancer clinic in Mexico, is their
last hope. Some still wear bandages from a recent surgery,

(48:04):
some are a week from chemotherapy or radiation, but others
appear healthy. The result, they said, of unorthodox treatments that
have struggled for decades to gain acceptance from the US
healthcare industry. Every three months, Norberto Fanwell fifty seven and
his wife Alice, fifty six, of Firmly, Nevada, drive to
the border town of San Ya Cedro, California, staying at
a Best Western hotel where they receive a discounted rate

(48:26):
and a free shuttle to the cancer clinics across the border.
They'll need that discounted rate because back in two thousand six,
the Haxey treatment cost thirty dollars upfront, plus additional costs
that ran up to five thousand dollars. This is more
or less in line with the cost of treatment back
in Harry Hawxy's day. So that's cool, just yeah, yeah,

(48:50):
and it's a bummer. Fanwell in the article is convinced that,
like the ultrasound shows his cancer shrunk, maybe he never
had cancer, I don't know, or maybe he's dead. Now
I have able to find any information on whether or
not he's alive or what happened with his treatment? I
hope he's okay. I hope yeah, he just seems like
some poor guy who got conned. If there is one

(49:11):
piece of good news about the current day status of
the Haxey treatment, it's that the actual ingredients used in
the Haxey treatment seemed to have stabilized. Today. There are
Facebook pages in web forms where patients discussed the best
ways to augment their Haxey treatment with diet or even
administer the urbal ingredients for themselves. So while the actual
original Haxey treatment was wildly inconsistent, today's batches are usually

(49:33):
a predictable list of substances that said, they're not the
kind of substances you necessarily want to just be fucking
around with. Uh, here's what a right up. In the
memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer, Sitter says about several of them.
High levels of iodine from the potassium iodide can cause pimples,
excessive secretion of the eyes, of nose, impotence, and inflammation
of salivary glands. Buck Thorne, one of the ingredients in

(49:55):
the herbal tonic, is a violent laxative and can cause
abdominal pain, anxiety, decreased respirations, diarrhea, nausea, trembling, and vomiting. Cascara,
one of the ingredients in the herbal tonic, is a
laxative and can cause abdominal pain, crampic diarrhea, discoloration of urine,
electrine and balance, softening of the bones, fatten the feezs,
vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and vomiting. Whoa poke weed, one

(50:18):
of the ingredients in the herbal tonic, causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,
and abdominal cramps. Ingestion has been associated with illnesses requiring
hospitalization and has caused deaths and children. Ship my insides out,
that's what that means. It's working. Face. No, I'm yourself
to better health with the Haxy treat I can see
my heartbeating in the toilet. That's what you get. Unbelievable,

(50:44):
great stuff. Billy. Yes, you feel like you might have
some cancer after all this. I mean yeah, every time
anyone says it, I'm always like probably, yeah, probably. Well
you all heard it here. The haxy treatment is the flawless,
unproblematic way to treat your illness. It's just thoroughly endorse it.

(51:04):
It's just an industry that you don't even think about,
because if you start to think about it, first, you
understand why how easily people can be conned, because it's
the most desperate part of their whole existence is they're
just trying to extend their life and the and everywhere
they go that's reputable. It's like, I'm sorry, there's nothing

(51:27):
we can do. It's like this, yeah, that'll be a
million dollars. Yeah, we don't know, we will need half
of the money you've earned in your entire life, because
we told like, yeah, it's so much of this is
wrapped up in I am legitimately. I mean, like obviously,
like we're going to do an episode about Black salve

(51:48):
Um in the very near future, which is very much
a descendant of all this, but like two of the
places where it's most commonly used your Australia in the UK.
So obviously the entirety of the solution is not Medicare
for all their socialized medicine or whatever. But I do
think it helps. Yeah, no, it's yeah, yeah, damn good luck. Everybody.

(52:10):
You want to plug your plug double yes, if you
want to follow me on any of the socials. Just
google billy Wyn Davis and all that stuff comes up,
your favorite one. I'm on there, and then I'm going
on tour all over the place, So hit up BWD
tour for all those dates. I'm continuing to update them,
so holler. And if you want to find me online,

(52:36):
you can just google Mike Bloomberg for President. Because you know,
there's really no daylight between Look, I'm I'm bloom pilled, guys,
I've been bloompilled. I'm on the bloom train. I'm blooming out.
I'm a blooming onion of politics now and there's just
no getting on. Sophie. Don't become the bad guy, Sophie,

(52:58):
I have always been the bad guy, and you know
that better than anyone. That's kind of true. Oh. You
can find Robert on Twitter and I write Okay. You
can also check out some of his writing from Bell
and Cat uh It's It's really good. Um. You can
follow us on Twitter and Instagram at at Bastard's Pod.
We have a website where you can find the footnotes

(53:19):
under the episode descriptions if you scroll down, uh T
Public Store. Robert also is a co host of Worst
Year Ever. Uh, did I do it? You did it.
You did a perfect job, Sophie, better a job. I
am very excited about us transitioning away from me doing
this at all and just collecting a paycheck while you

(53:41):
do the podcast. Maybe you are a team Bloomberg. Alright.
Episode over,