As is detailed in articles I've written on this topic (click here to see the latest), the FDA has spearheaded many armed raids against natural medicine clinics, vitamin companies and even pet stores. Did you ever wonder how the armed agents who lead these assaults are trained in such tactics? In this CounterThink cartoon, I imagine there might be a live fire training facility where potential FDA agents with automatic rifles practice armed assaults on herbalists, naturopaths and Chinese medicine practitioners. What would a new trainee think about who they're supposed to shoot? Most people would probably think you should shoot the drug dealers and spare the natural healers, but in this cartoon, I depict the FDA as reversing the situation and demanding that the trainee "shoot the herbalists!" Of course, this is an exaggeration. In reality, FDA agents don't shoot herbalists. They merely threaten to shoot them while they arrest them. And in reality, the FDA doesn't truck around the country with an assault wagon full of armed agents. They simply team up with local law enforcement officials to do the dirty work for them: Sherriff's departments, police departments, and even federal DEA agents. The guys who work for these organizations never really question the validity of any FDA raid request; they simply rally the troops, lock 'n load, and smash down the doors of any building the FDA says is being used to "commit nutritional crimes." That's what the FDA is really going after, by the way -- individuals and companies that commit nutritional crimes. That's a crime committed by anyone who dares to tell the truth about the healing effects of nutritional supplements or superfoods while, at the same time, selling such products. In the eyes of the FDA, anyone engaged in education who also markets healing products is breaking the law. Unless, of course, the products they're pushing are harmful medications, in which case it's all perfectly acceptable. Kind of makes you wonder what kind of world we live in, doesn't it?

The suppression of natural medicine

With the FDA spearheading the effort, herbalists, naturopaths and traditional healers have been prosecuted, arrested, and run out of the country. The FDA, in association with the American Medical Association and the enormous influence of Big Pharma, has managed to suppress nutritional knowledge and natural medicine for decades. Thanks to that effort, most members of the public -- and the majority of medical doctors in practice today -- remain nutritionally illiterate. Natural cancer clinics have been shut down, medicinal herbs are routinely discredited, and the population remains in a state of perpetual disease. Which is, of course, the whole point of all this: Keep the population diseased, and you maximize the profits for drug companies. The only way to keep the population diseased is to isolate them from cures that really work. And that's the whole point behind nutritional censorship by the FDA, the discrediting of vitamins and herbs by on-the-take researchers working for Big Pharma, the hijacking of med school curricula by drug companies, and the complete subjugation of the mainstream media with a pro-drug agenda that routinely discredits vitamins and supplements while pushing patented chemicals as "miracle" cures for everything from limp erections to shyness. Keep the people sick, and you keep the drug companies profitable. That's why there's really no effort whatsoever in the United States to prevent disease. You don't see "Cancer Prevention Centers" being built anywhere in the country; they're all "Cancer Centers!" (Meaning they focus on cancer, not cancer prevention.) The American Diabetes Association isn't called the American Diabetes Prevention Association, and the American Cancer Society isn't the American Anti-Cancer Society. Most of the institutions in this country with disease names are actually invested in the continuation of disease, in my opinion. They NEED the disease to justify their own existence, and the idea of actually curing people or preventing disease simply isn't on their list of priorities. That's because the screening, treatment and "management" of disease is their bread and butter. What business or non-profit would want to take proactive steps to lose customers and shrink its influence base? Cancer is too profitable to cure or prevent. Treating disease drives a significant portion of the U.S. economy (which is, of course, one reason why the U.S. is headed for financial collapse). Someday, the FDA's attacks on natural medicine will go down in history alongside the Catholic Church's persecution of Galileo for defending the Copernican idea that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the solar system. (The Pope apologized about the whole persecution thing in 1992, admitting that the Church's persecution of Galileo was a "sad misunderstanding" that "now belongs to the past." His announcement came 350 years too late to save Galileo.) The FDA, sadly, won't be around for long enough to apologize for its persecution of natural medicine. Why? Because the FDA is a branch of the U.S. government, and the U.S. government won't be financially solvent much longer if we don't quickly find a solution to the nation's ballooning health care costs. This country is headed towards near-certain bankruptcy at the hands of drug companies, the FDA and a medical monopoly that simply refuses to loosen its grip on the wallets of American consumers and businesses. Companies are actually fleeing America due to the cost of providing health insurance for employees. If such a scenario does unfold, it is likely that individual nation states will rise out of America's ashes, emboldened with greater respect for individual liberties and health freedom. Many of the Eastern states, where pharmaceutical companies rule local politics, may remain zombie drug zones, where infants, children, adults and senior citizens are drugged from birth to death under the oppressive policies of a Big Pharma-operated Plutocracy. But Western states like California, Oregon and Washington, will likely throw off the shackles off health tyranny and mass medication, turning instead to disease prevention, nutrition, natural therapies and health freedom. So don't expect the FDA to be around to apologize to anybody. Only history will be the true judge of the great American medical tragedy of the 20th and 21st centuries. I call it, "The Dark Ages of medicine." And we're all living it.