Part One

Casualties of Corporate Medicine, The Jennie Burke Story
Written by Eve Hillary. Filed November 1, 2003
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Do not read this article unless you agree to the following conditions: This article should not be construed as medical advice which should be sought from a qualified medical practitioner. Medical issues mentioned in this article do not refer to appropriate life saving procedures and drugs, but to harmful and unnecessary ones. The author asserts copyright. This article is deemed to be in the public interest and may be distributed for assessment and commentary by authorized persons and stakeholders in the public interest.

[Part 2] [Part 3]

Humble Beginnings
Build it and they will come. - Field of Dreams 1989

Jennie Burke spends most of her work days peering down a microscope, but she isn’t sure how long she will be allowed to continue her work. She is known in international scientific circles as having achieved groundbreaking work in the field of environmental sensitivity testing and in observing aberrant cell behaviour in patients with chronic illness, including cancer. Born and raised in Australia, Jennie has been bestowed with many honours including an Honorary Doctorate for her contribution to wholistic medicine, a field of medicine that treats patients on the levels of mind and body using both alternative and orthodox approaches. None of the accolades however, have come from the Australian medical and scientific community. On the contrary, her achievements have made her some powerful enemies.

Jennie Burke was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1951 when it was still a sleepy town built around the scenic Brisbane River that meandered through its central district. Jennie was robust compared to her sister who suffered major illness as a child. She developed an early protective instinct for her siblings along with hurt or sick people and animals. But she had also inherited her father’s temperament. He was a school teacher, descended from a long line of Irish school teachers. There wasn’t a great deal Burke’s family couldn’t do once they’d set their minds to it.

By the age of 18 Jennie had made her career choice as a laboratory technician. After her training, she rapidly rose through the ranks, including a stint at the Commonwealth Health Laboratories, to become a department head in a major laboratory less than 10 years later. Her rapid ascent was not due to having a good nose for office politics. In fact, Burke claims to have a keen dislike of palace intrigues. She subscribed instead to the notion of hard work, a fact that is borne out throughout her career. Her orthodox approach early in her laboratory work gave no clue as to her later career when she took a turn into a novel area of scientific enquiry. She concedes she would still be conducting routine pathology testing were it not for the fact that she married and had two daughters.

Jennie observed that one of her daughters displayed behavioural changes after eating particular foods. She was motivated by her desire to help after a number of doctors were unable to find a cause for the child’s symptoms. Strictly adhering to her laboratory technician’s training in scientific observation and methodology, Jennie went on to help her daughter by adapting laboratory tests for food intolerance and offering the test to Australian patients. Later she modified it, and developed it to use in testing for chemical sensitivity and for dental material sensitivity testing. Over time the tests helped countless other children and adults. For the first time these patients could be appropriately treated, by avoiding offending foods, or other substances, which allowed them to live a normal life free from behavioural symptoms. This unique testing became known to various doctors who specialised in the field of environmental sensitivities. Burke’s was the only specialised laboratory testing for food sensitivity in Australia during the early 1980’s, a time when the behavioural effects of sensitivity reactions were escalating but barely documented in the world scientific literature.

Rise of Corporate Medicine
The power of special interests influencing government policy has brought us this managed care monster.
- Congressman Dr. Ron Paul of Texas, 1999

"A patient cured, is a customer lost." Anon

The 1980’s marked a crucial transition in medicine, when massive market driven health care corporations infiltrated the US public hospital system, bringing with it managed “care”, a system where profit is the bottom line. The system was heralded in by corporate lobbyists claiming to reform health care but in reality, it merely privatised the hospital system, which then funnelled taxpayers’ Medicare money into the coffers of profit-driven health care corporations. The corporations’ voracious appetite included the takeover of pathology laboratories, aged care facilities and other allied health services. This did not bring efficient health care to the US system but instead made it the most expensive health care in the world (10). The system thrived on profits from sickness and guaranteed the predominance of pharmaceutical and high tech approaches to medicine. Powerful vested interests depended on an ever expanding market of sickness to drive profits ever higher. The result of this was that doctoring, including unnecessary procedures and drug side effects became the third and fourth highest causes of death. (9)

The increasingly corrupt system was not seriously investigated and there was fierce resistance against genuine reform because vested interests had infiltrated positions of power. The proof of this occurred when President Clinton started to overhaul the monstrous insurance-based managed care industry that drained the public purse and failed to serve the public with adequate health care. His proposal was sabotaged by the insurance and drug industries who’d hired expensive PR companies that used dirty tactics, such as forming bogus consumer and watchdog organisations. The Clinton healthcare reform package sank without a bubble (21). Once firmly rooted, corporate medicine grew increasingly intolerant of competition from wholistic health practitioners using scientifically-based natural health modalities such as nutritional medicine. Alternative practitioners were increasingly isolated when doctors, specialists, dentists and physiotherapists were rafted together into corporate medical centres and promoted as “multi-disciplinary” approaches to health care. Even the solo orthodox practitioner was leveraged out of the market and the family GP had to join corporate medical centres or go out of business. With the move came a new way of practising medicine. The average number of consultations per doctor in a large multi-disciplinary urban medical centre was 60 patients per day. With the birth of five-minute medicine came the decline of patient care.

The patients, however, voted with their feet. Less than a quarter of all patients required acute care, which orthodox medicine was superbly able to administer. However, most patients sought treatment for chronic and degenerative diseases which were better served through wholistic approaches including orthodox, alternative and complementary treatments. In 1993 mainstream medicine became aware that the majority of patients were consulting alternative health practitioners for the treatment of chronic disorders. This cut a swathe into corporate health profits and market share. What followed became a systematic attack on alternative and wholistic medicine under the guise of “public health and safety” (38).

The Quackwatchers
Today, ‘councils’ ‘coalitions’, ‘alliances’ and groups with ‘citizen’ and ‘consumer’ in their names could as likely be fronts for corporations…” – John Stauber

Many US health care practitioners did not take the arrival of corporate medicine lying down but found they had stiff opposition from some unexpected quarters. Wholistic doctors were targeted by government organisations and many found themselves listed on shadowy front organisation’s websites such as Quackwatch, hosted by Stephen Barrett, a self appointed health watchdog with a rabid dislike of wholistic medicine. Other “Quackbusters” like Barrett have infiltrated government departments and are in positions to influence official policies. (37) A publication entitled War Against Alternative Medicine states: “The Quackbusters were spun off from the AMA in 1976 in response to a racketeering lawsuit filed by a group of chiropractors. They [Quackbusters] are now professional propagandists - debunkers of any type of health care other than conventional drugs and surgery, with enormous web sites, a publishing house with an inventory of 900-plus titles, and a network of fifteen to twenty affiliated organizations.” 

Another method employed to remove dissenting doctors and alternative practitioners from the US healthcare landscape is by way of governmental instrumentalities such as the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). In 1997 this organisation published a step by step plan outlining the way in which State Medical Boards can weed out doctors who practise wholistic medicine (37). The Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC) also enforces medical standards that mandate ‘uniformity of medical care’ along the lines of corporate medicine. Doctors do not dare deviate from narrow treatment protocols, for fear of prosecution by the OPMC even though the treatments might mean the death of their patient. Once the corporate medicine “standard of care” has been observed, doctors and institutions will be virtually blame free in the event of malpractice because “approved” procedures have been followed. These OPMC standards are set by the managed care and pharmaceutical industry and not by doctors (37). This greased the slide for corporate medicine to settle in. Since this stealthy restructuring of the health care system, quality, affordable and safe health care has all but disappeared while medical treatments and drug side effects have escalated to become the third and fourth highest causes of death in the US (9) (4).

Few were aware of corporate medicine’s arrival into Australia, least of all Jennie Burke, who was just beginning to find her pace in what came to be an extraordinary career.

Burke’s Rising Star
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. " attributed to Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

In 1985 Jennie Burke set off to the Bradford Research laboratory in the US to look for new tests for environmental and food intolerance, only to discover that their testing was the same as her own. Moreover, she was conducting far more tests per week in her Sydney lab. Jennie saw her first live blood analysis and Bolens Clot Retraction test done at Bradford Laboratory in San Diego. It was the first time she had ever observed white blood cells at work, oozing along the field of vision, scavenging viral and bacterial particles, ingesting them, and sometimes ejecting them. Other times these amorphous cells seemed propelled by their own intelligence, wrapping themselves around red blood cells appearing to check them for some unknown factor before setting off again in search of another cell. She discovered strange anomalies in the blood of cancer patients and observed their gradual improvement through follow-up tests while some patients underwent naturally based cancer treatments at a nearby wholistic cancer hospital. As an orthodox trained laboratory technician Jennie had conducted thousands of haematology tests where doctors merely ordered blood counts of white and red blood cells and platelets. Live blood and clot retraction testing opened up a new area of discovery and Jennie was immediately intrigued by the predictable patterns formed by the dried blood which seemed to consistently point to various health problems. By far the most unexpected discovery for Jennie was the fact that many cancer patients, some terminal, were recovering using wholistic and natural treatments including herbs and nutritional supplements, and the patients’ clinical improvement was evidenced in their pathology results. Jennie had not previously known that haematology tests could be used to glean nutritional information and the general condition of a person’s health. “This was my first intro to wholistic medicine,” she says of her 1985 experience with Professor Bradford, who is now Professor of Microscopy/Oxidology at the Capitol University of Integrative Medicine, Washington D.C. “But I didn’t just take all of his work as gospel,” says Jennie, “over the years his statements were confirmed repeatedly by our work.”

Jennie Burke was the first to import Live Blood analysis and the Bolens Clot Retraction tests to Australia where they soon became popular with naturopaths and doctors who were interested in offering scientifically based wholistic approaches to their patients. Soon after returning from her overseas study trip Jennie opened her own Laboratory in Sydney, Australian Biologics Testing Services. During the following years she noted that her findings from thousands of live blood analysis and clot tests per year since 1984 produced high correlations with the patient’s actual pathology.

“Reforming” the Best Health Care in the World
“If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” Anon

Managed care was in full swing in the US when the funding decline of Australian public hospitals began during the Hawke era in 1985. Perhaps deliberately, this created an ideal opportunity for those wishing to “reform” the system (1). By the end of the decade major public hospitals closed beds and downsized jobs as the money-starved public health services teetered on the brink of serious decline. Most ordinary people could not understand why the hitherto excellent Australian universal health care system was declining or who was at fault. Among the general confusion a flurry of agreements were entered into at the highest levels of government, contracting public hospitals out to private corporations, as powerful lobbyists exerted pressure on governments through key contacts. It was a time of intense debate, both public and private (3). Dr. Michael Wynne, an analyst who has tracked Australian health care privatisation, writes of that time, on a whistleblower website: “Health care corporations undoubtedly took part in the debate. They had close political contacts so had no need to do so publicly. Corporate advocates must have had a strong influence on government policy – playing on political pain and offering corporate solutions. With strong government support the market became more involved. As in the USA advocates claimed that market forces would result in improved care.”

The Rise of Doctor-Politicians - Aussie Hospitals For Sale
He who pays the Piper calls the Tune - Old Proverb

In 1985, Dr. John Dwyer, an Australian trained doctor, returned from a long stint at Yale University. He had gone to the Ivy League school on a scholarship. Ivy League and most other universities had been thoroughly overhauled and vastly enriched since early last century by grant money from influential benefactors such as: Carnegie, Rockefeller and Sloan foundations. Since then, medical faculties in most universities have been even more deeply funded by pharmaceutical industry money and “research” is most often conducted with a view to maintaining grant money (36). Graduates from these institutions are quick to understand, embrace and further the unspoken agendas of their benefactors. For rebellious types the agenda is spelt out in plain language as in the case of Dr. Krebs who verified the pressures brought to bear on him in his own words; “I was assured by my academic mentors that if I refused to obey, conform, and be controlled - be a member of the Club - I would pass into oblivion. I would be denied academic recognition, degrees, jobs, institutions, etc.” (36) Author Edward G. Griffin has documented the funding of American medical institutions and notes that this system has bred a stable of doctor-politicians; “…atypical physicians; men who enjoy the limelight and the thrill of accomplishment through medical politics.” (36)

Well-connected individuals often rise to prominence quickly, being selected and installed into key positions by the establishment. Immediately after returning to Australia, Dwyer was appointed Professor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales and Director of Medicine at the Prince of Wales Hospital. It wasn’t long before he was appointed to numerous committees. His connections and an affinity for politics were matched by his intense mission to impose widespread “reform” on the Australian health care system. By the early 1990’s global privatisation of public hospitals continued unabated despite the serious problems of accountability, escalating costs, unnecessary deaths and deteriorating services in privatised hospital services. Professor Dwyer was a dedicated “reformer” and soon tackled Australian health care “reform” head on with an article he wrote in the 5th April, 1992 edition of the Sun-Herald entitled “Why public hospitals need private money”, a call to privatize the Port Macquarie hospital (2). After privatisation, the hospital was generously funded by NSW taxpayers but soon needed bailing out financially. A few years later the Sydney Morning Herald summarized: The privately managed Port Macquarie Base Hospital has waiting times for elective surgery patients more than double the State average and is the worst hospital performer in NSW, according to a range of health department indicators. - Private Hospital Rated `worst’, Sydney Morning Herald 30 May 1998

Professor Dwyer remained undeterred as he doggedly pursued another plan to reform the NSW hospital system. On March 17th 1994 Mr. E. Page, Parliamentary member for Coogee, argued forcefully in the NSW Parliament against the downsizing and privatising of the NSW hospital system. According to Mr. Page, professor Dwyer seemed to occupy centre stage in the thrust toward privatisation. The Hansard quotes Mr. Page as saying: Mr E. T. PAGE: … A massive private clinic is to be built at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Royal South Sydney Hospital, a centre of excellence, is being run down, and the services at Prince Henry Hospital are being run down. There has to be an agenda, and of course there is one: it was publicized in October 1992 when a document came to light which indicated that Prince Henry Hospital was to be sold off privatised. The proposal is for Club Med style surgery and holiday packages for overseas patients and tourists. A multimillionaire from an Asian country, for example, could book into the hospital for an operation, bring the family to Australia and have the operation while the family are having a holiday in the tourist section.

None of my constituents would be going there; it would be a private enterprise, money-making proposal. The report said the proposal was prepared by the head of the Department of Medicine at the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry hospitals, Professor John Dwyer, who is an outspoken supporter of privatisation. That is the agenda: to run down the services at South Sydney Hospital and Prince Henry Hospital so that
quietly – the Government would hope – in a few years time they could be sold off and, at the same time, public money could be put into the Prince of Wales Hospital so that it could be privatised at some future date. As part of its proposal for privatisation, the Government was keen to privatise the cleaning service and food service at Prince of Wales Hospital and it called tenders. Corrected Copy NSW Legislative Assembly Hansard Article No.43 of 17/03/1994.

During the 1990’s the professor became active on a variety of fronts in his efforts to create “structural reform in the Australian health system”. His busy professional life was offset by his involvement, in his spare time, with the Australian Skeptics, where he met up with Skeptic Cheryl Freeman. Professor Dwyer describes Ms Freeman as; “[ex] nurse, medical detective, consumer advocate…” Together they would collaborate in novel ways to “reform” the health care system.

Finding Real Science Outside the Corporate Square
We shall seek the truth and endure the consequences. - Charles Seymour

Jennie Burke was hardly aware that the health care system was being radically rearranged, let alone that one day her world would collide with the powers that shifted the goalpost. By the late 1980’s her busy professional life placed impossible demands on her personal life, and she found herself a single parent of two lively daughters. She remained undaunted throughout the next decade. When she wasn’t parenting her daughters, she was actively searching the world’s knowledge base for new and effective technologies; for any information that gave her a chance to make a difference. Despite huge corporate cash injections into research facilities that provided studies for large pharmaceutical companies, there still prevailed pockets of academia that produced astonishing independent research that supported wholistic and natural approaches to healing with a solid evidence base. During the 1990’s Jennie Burke travelled overseas regularly in search of new international scientific research. During school holidays Jennie took her girls along and showed them the sights of Europe and the US.

Before too long Burke increasingly found herself in the company of leading edge scientists. She admits to feeling enthusiastic about their “exciting new scientific discoveries that enabled doctors to bring about true healing rather than just getting rid of symptoms”. Her friends and colleagues included Professor Emeritus Lida Mattman, a world expert on cell wall deficient bacteria, and Professor Lyn Margulis, ex wife of Carl Sagan, herself an expert on cellular mitochondria, both based in the US. She collaborated with Professor Walter Url, head of cell physiology at Vienna University. They worked together on live blood specimens on the Univar microscope at Vienna University. In 1994 Jennie was invited to present a scientific paper at Vienna University for the Austrian Society of Oncology on live blood indicators in cancer patients. She was given a life membership from the Austrian Oncology Society. Dr Eugene Stradenko, head of Oncology at Moscow Hospital was also impressed by her work with live blood of cancer patients. In 1991 in Moscow she was awarded an honorary doctorate of Alternative Medicine for her contributions to the field of wholistic medicine.

The international scientific community acknowledged Burke, and from 1994 to the present, she has been in heavy demand as a presenter at international scientific conferences and symposia. During a European lecture tour for the Austrian Society of Oncology, Dr. Andreas Oberhofer introduced Burke to thermography, a device that measured body temperature variations and was used as an adjunct to the diagnosis of breast cancer. Dr. Oberhofer had used it in his practice for over a decade because it was non invasive and did not emit radiation. The thermograph had the added advantage of being used to scan the entire body to check the overall health of the patient. Jennie imported the first thermograph device into Australia and sought the expertise for its use from Dr. Friedrichson and Dr. Von Lennart of the German Society of Oncology, the specialist who had worked with the manufacturer of the device. Burke was particularly encouraged when she applied for and received TGA listing for the thermography machine. The device was also FDA approved and its scientific basis was documented in thousands of scientific studies. She later posted these expanded services on her website citing the statements made about thermography from the U.S. distributor of the equipment. Burke set about offering thermograms to doctors as an adjunct to diagnosing patients who did not wish to be exposed to radiation. The tests also provided information about the patients’ general health. She had an all female technical staff including a female physician who reported on the thermograms.

If Jennie Burke had not yet caught the eye of the Australian medical profession, she was just about to take centre stage, with her 1994 launch of the first Australian World Congress on Cancer, in Sydney. As usual for Burke, she brought the first such event into Australia and it was such a success that she followed it with the 2nd and 3rd World Congress on Cancer in 1995 and 1997. Dozens of eminent scientists from around the world brought with them scores of scientific studies that supported various nutritional, herbal and bioelectrical approaches to cancer treatment. It was the first time in Australia that links between cancer, radiation, toxins, chemicals and other environmental causes such as inadequate nutrition were discussed with such devastating credibility. Judging by the lively discussions and audience participation, the attendees appeared to leave Burke’s events excited about the non toxic cancer treatment options. When word got around, one or two were not in the least bit pleased.