WHO's Global Push for Traditional Medicine Runs Ahead of the Evidence

A landmark BMJ editorial (Philips, Caulfield, de Jong, Qi & Chethipadath Narayan, June 2026) warns that the WHO's own Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034 quietly lowers the evidentiary bar for complementary and alternative medicine — letting member states fund and roll out CAM before safety and efficacy data exist. The human cost is already on the record: an eightfold rise in US herbal-linked liver transplants since 1995, a third of tested Indian traditional products contaminated with toxic botanicals, and traditional medicines now behind more than a fifth of all drug-induced liver injury cases in China.

Hulda Clark's Tijuana Cancer Clinic: The “Zapper,” the Parasite Theory, and the Patients Who Paid With Their Lives

Hulda Clark — an unlicensed naturopath with no accredited medical degree — claimed that all human disease, including every form of cancer, was caused by parasites and could be cured within days using a low-voltage “zapper” device and herbal formulas. Her Century Nutrition clinic at 102 Calle Larroque, Tijuana, Mexico, attracted desperate cancer patients from across North America, shuttled across the border from a Bay Boulevard office in Chula Vista, California.

Clark faced FTC action and a criminal charge that was ultimately dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. A California court later reinstated a malicious prosecution suit brought by Dr. Stephen Barrett after Clark and her attorney publicized baseless allegations against him online. The full record — including patient accounts, the parasite theory's total lack of scientific support, and the clinic's operating history — is documented here.

Brian Clement & the Hippocrates Health Institute: How a Florida “Massage Establishment” Marketed Itself to Dying Cancer Patients

Brian Clement holds no legitimate medical degree. His Florida licence (NC462) is as a nutrition counsellor. Yet for decades he toured Canadian communities — Waterloo, Port Colborne, Newmarket, Calgary, and Six Nations territory — claiming his raw-food and laser program could reverse cancer, and charging families up to $18,000 per patient.

Two First Nations girls with acute lymphoblastic leukemia — a disease with a 90% survival rate with standard treatment — were withdrawn from chemotherapy at McMaster Children's Hospital and sent to HHI. Makayla Sault died on January 19, 2015. The second girl, J.J., relapsed and returned to chemotherapy. Dr. Terry Polevoy filed complaints with Florida DOH, Canadian Border Services, Health Canada, and CBC News. Regulatory response: near-zero. Only COVID-19 ended Clement's Canadian tour circuit.

Stem Cell Centers: A U.S. Clinic Chain Recruits Elderly Canadians at Kitchener Hotel Seminar — March 2019

On March 14, 2019, Stem Cell Centers held two sold-out “educational” seminars at the Radisson Hotel in Kitchener, Ontario. The primary presenter, Amer Berhanu, held no medical credentials — a former energy and telecom company speaker who had been promoting stem cell seminars for approximately one year. Attendees were recruited to travel to the company's Detroit, Michigan clinic for treatments costing up to $14,997 USD, with a “Canadian dollar parity” discount expiring within the week.

Treatments were explicitly acknowledged as unavailable in Canada and not FDA-approved — a fact Berhanu attributed to pharmaceutical industry lobbying rather than insufficient evidence. Testimonials claiming recovery from macular degeneration, elimination of supplemental oxygen for COPD, and improvement of diabetic control were presented to approximately 40 retirement-age Canadians without independent medical verification. The complete audio recording was professionally transcribed and is part of Dr. Polevoy's archive.

Michigan Integrative Health: Chiropractor Pitches Stem Cell Injections to 80–100 Elderly Kitchener Residents — January 2020

Eight months after the Stem Cell Centers Radisson seminar, a separate U.S. operator — Michigan Integrative Health of Shelby Charter Township, Michigan — held an “Arthritis & Stem Cell Care” seminar at Bingeman's Conference Centre in Kitchener on January 18, 2020. The presenter, Roy J. Picard, DC, is a chiropractor who did not disclose his title or qualifications at the outset; only partway through the 67-minute presentation did he acknowledge his “degree is in chiropractic.”

Between 80 and 100 people attended — approximately 90% over age 65. Attendees were asked to provide complete credit card information on a non-refundable $160 CAD deposit form before leaving the room. Treatment costs of up to $6,200 USD were revealed only after an hour of fear appeals and video testimonials. The seminar was covertly recorded by a licensed Ontario private investigator commissioned by Dr. Polevoy; the evidence package includes full audio and video, still images of all slides, and originals of all handout documents.

Mark Yarnell & the Legacy for Life / Immune26 Conference Call — December 6, 2001, in His Own Words

Mark Yarnell — the network-marketing trainer and former top Nu Skin distributor who reportedly made $18 million in a previous MLM venture — hosted a recorded telephone conference call for prospective distributors of BioChoice Immune26, sold through Legacy for Life. On the call, Yarnell explicitly disclaims that the product cures cancer, fibromyalgia, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, or attention deficit disorder — then in the same breath claims it “balances the immune system,” is backed by 112 patents, and appears in the Physician's Desk Reference.

Dr. Polevoy recorded the call after being invited to join by a distributor identified only as “Chad.” A full, speaker-labelled transcript with timestamps is published below, alongside a companion career chronology examining Yarnell's role at Nu Skin, 21st Century Global Network, and Legacy for Life, and what the available clinical evidence for hyperimmune egg products does and does not support.

David Gilbert, Synergy Group / Truehope & the Pitch at St. Joseph's Hospital — April 10, 2001

David Gilbert, a self-described “medical liaison” with no medical credentials, spent two hours pitching EMPowerplus to a room of psychiatric patients and their families at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton — describing, in clinical detail, how he guided patients off antipsychotics, antidepressants, and mood stabilizers while on the supplement. When challenged on the product's founding “pig pills” origin story, Gilbert had no answer.

The full recording and transcript excerpts are published below, alongside the Truman Tuck harassment campaign that followed — targeting Dr. Polevoy directly — and an epilogue tracking where Gilbert operates today, twenty-five years later.

Gabriele Sutton and the CAM Franchise Network: A Decade-Long Trail of Fraud, 1997–2009

Gabriele Sutton, a German-born nurse, built a franchise alternative-medicine training network in Ontario, invented her own regulatory body — the “National Regulatory Council of Preventative Health Care Practitioners” — to license her own graduates, and charged up to $14,990 for a two-year program leading to a credential with no legal standing in the province. She repeatedly rebranded to evade scrutiny, from human complementary medicine to equine nutrition, all while falsely claiming affiliation with the University of Western Ontario and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

A 2005 letter from former graduate Dawn Henderson describes being threatened with termination for warning clients away from unlabelled herbal products and pressured to withhold her own asthma inhaler in favour of chiropractic treatment. By 2005, Sutton had rebranded again and was specifically targeting Indigenous and low-income women in Kitchener for the same unaccredited certificate program.

Leonard Horowitz at the University of Toronto: An Anti-Vaccine “Healing Celebration” on Campus, May 2000

Leonard Horowitz, a dentist-turned-vaccine-conspiracy speaker touring under the banner of the Consumer Health Organization, was booked to speak at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education — the same institution that spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on medical research and training. Dr. Polevoy's direct challenge to the university's Dean of Medicine, and a companion piece breaking down the $69 registration brochure, are archived in full.

Independent corroboration: even Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the (relatively mainstream) National Vaccine Information Center, was uncomfortable being lumped in with Horowitz's rhetoric by a 1998 New Republic cover story — illustrating how far outside the mainstream his claims sat, even among vaccine skeptics.

Adam Dreamhealer: The Ronnie Hawkins Story, Discovery Health, and 25 Years of Unproven Healing Claims

A Vancouver-area teenager claimed he could diagnose and cure cancer from a distance by looking at a photograph. Rock legend Ronnie Hawkins became his most famous “cure,” and Discovery Health Canada's Avery Haines, CTV, ABC's Primetime, Global TV, and CBC's The Hour all gave the claim a national platform with no critical scrutiny. A Curezone.com solicitation trail, a trademark-based intimidation campaign against this site's ISPs, and James Randi's unclaimed $1 million challenge round out the record.

Update: Adam McLeod's British Columbia naturopathic registration ended in early 2026. He is now confirmed as a Family Medicine resident at Summit Pacific Medical Center in Elma, Washington.