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Leonard Horowitz and Valerie Saxion at the University of Toronto |
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Toronto - Come one, come all to the latest Flim-Flam from Len Horowitz and Valerie Saxion. Below, you will find the expensive four-colour brochure that the Consumer Health Organization allowed Len Horowitz to distribute at the Total Health 2000 show in Toronto. We don't know if they were printed in Canada, or if they were brought into this country with their other flyers. The University of Toronto hasn't yet confirmed that Horowitz and Saxion will actually be allowed to use the large auditorium at the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education. But, that didn't stop Libby and George from allowing him to claim that he will be at the U of T. The meeting room seats 500, and they plan to charge $69, but it doesn't say it's Canadian dollars, and they don't say it includes GST. They also don't say that they have a valid GST number, nor do we know if Len or Valerie, who make repeated trips into Canada to sell their stew of primordial crystals and Christianity, actually file Canadian income tax returns for their multiple appearances in Canada. Remember, Len told a group last year in Hamilton's Mohawk College that he is married to a Canadian. Can we assume that since this appearance was arranged by a non-profit company, namely the CHOC group, that not one person is making a dime of profit from this event. On the other hand, why would this entourage of traveling health promoting evangelical Messianic Jewish and other assorted quacksters choose the U of T for their fund raising production? Does the University of Toronto usually rent space to profit making evangelical Christians who want to sell you magic crystals and other potions that helps your own DNA talk to God? I don't think so. What is wrong with the President of the University of Toronto? Is he so used to accepting Imasco money for the University, that he doesn't see anything wrong with rolling out the red carpet to the evangelical carpetbaggers and quacks from the United States? Does the University of Toronto that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on medical research and training of students not care if Horowitz and Saxion come to town? This is not an issue of free speech, this is an issue of a quasi-religious zealot who believes that he has you and the adminstration in the palm of his hand. He manipulates the media, and he manipulates health and dental groups to do his bidding for a piece of the action. If they bring Lenny to a meeting, or a health fair, hundreds come out to hear him, and they make money, too. The essence of their program, and the techniques used to promote them are no different than the kinds of scams that evangelical preachers have used for years. Only this one is very scary. It's an episode molded out of the likes of the X-Files, or Outer Limits all rolled up in a Michael Crichton, or Robert Ludlum plot. And, it's directed by a master storyteller and marketer extraordinaire, Lenny Horowitz. I don't think that Jimmy Swaggert or Jim Baker or others of their ilk ever told young mothers not to immunize their children, or that they held the cure for cancer in the palm of their hand. There have been people like Oral Roberts that attempted to bring religion and medicine together under one roof, and he failed miserably. But Horowitz primes the pump, he ups the ante and he basically doesn't care that he presents scientific facts. He told me so at the Total Health 2000 meeting. He is there to pimp for his own company, and for any promoter who will bring him to town. Scientists ignore him, if they debate him, it will build him up as an evangelical huckster. The only people who love him are talk show hosts and the good people who are so paranoid that they will believe anything that supports their deranged thought processes. Consumer Health Organization didn't tell the University of Toronto that someone had already printed up brochures and that Len Horowitz would distribute them by the thousands at the quackfest show in March? Could the U of T rent the room to someone else, someone who represents the truth, someone who does not scam, or bend science to promote quack cures and Messianic religion? You bet they can. But will they? The only difference between signing an agreement to welcome Pepsi, or Coke to campus is the guarantee that with a soda pop company, there will be little harm done, and the university stands to much a lot of money. But when someone like Horowitz comes to town, the University may make a few thousand dollars from renting the room and catering the event, but they will surely lose credibility and there is a real possibility that some poor mother or father will buy into the anti-vaccine $alebration, and will be convinced to stop letting their kids receive their shots, because of Len's evangelical Christian roots. Who will pay for it? In Len's home county in the panhandle of Idaho, not far from Ruby Ridge, there were hundreds of cases of whooping cough in 1997, last year there were only a couple of dozen, thanks to an immunization program. We as Canadians don't need deranged, American, right wing survivalist, Christian evangelicals who believe that the world as we know it is not what we see, to tell us what we should do. Len Horowitz and the Consumer Health Organization are here to tear down the system, they are at war with public health. They should be kept from coming to campus for that reason, and that reason alone. Will Len, Libby or George, or the 3,000 members of the CHOC dig into their pockets when one of their own kids is crippled or injured for life because of their pronouncements and support. What they say is no different than someone who yells fire in a theatre, and people die in the stampeed. Let these fraudulent representatives and friends of right-wing fundamentalists stay in Idaho, and why don't those who represent the friends of those who would detroy our health care system go with them. How deep are your pockets, Dr. Horowitz? Are you willing to dig into them and pay for a lifetime of pain and suffering because your god told you to come up here in his name to lie to us, to defraud us, to pocket the money that people pay you and your friends because your way is the only way to get to heaven? The tent show, and the snake oil days are long-gone Horowitz. No one at the University of Toronto wants to see you succeed in your attempt to continue this charade. On the cover of your $alebration brochure you say that The Truth You Know Will Set You Free. Unfortunately for you, you don't know the truth. The truth according to the great god horowitz is to make other people believe that you have it all. So Lenny baby, dig into your pocket, and volunteer to pay for every child's health costs that resulted in one of your deranged sermons. I am sure that mothers are eagerly lining up to volunteer to file a lawsuit against you for practicing medicine without a license in Canada. When you talk to a group of men and women, and you give them advice, you are practicing medicine. That's the real crime here. Lenny is up here to practice his brand of medicine. Congenital rubella babies, meningitis victims, polio cripples, await you Horowitz. Their blood will be shed for you. Does the president of the University of Toronto also want that blood on his hands? Let's be reasonable. What does the U of T gain by welcoming Horowitz and Saxion? Let's put some demands on the President to quash the appearance of the evangelical anti-vax folks in May. Instead, let's have a teach-in based on science and reality.
Terry Polevoy, M.D. |