RISE AND FALL OF UBT
Professor Niels Ryberg Finsen (1860-1904) was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for showing in 1897 that ultraviolet light could treat lupus volgaris (cutaneous tuberculosis). He demonstrated that the rays from sunlight or an arc lamp had antibacterial actions and that, under appropriate conditions, cured the disease.
Emmet Knott, PhD an engineer, refined the UBT protocol with dogs and demonstrated that he could cure viral and bacterial infections by exposing blood to UV light and reinfusing it. UBT’s first use on a human was in 1928 when UBT cured a woman, apparently moribund from septic abortion complicated by streptococcus septicemia. She went on to bear two children. Knott used UBT in the 1930s to cure polio and more cases of septic abortion which would have otherwise been fatal. By 1950, UBT was in use by several prominent physicians at highly regarded institutions and was used successfully to treat a wide variety of bacterial and viral infections. There have been no reports of significant adverse side-effects of UBT to this day. The advent of the Salk vaccine for polio and mass-produced Penicillin by the early 1950s provided alternatives to some of the conditions that UBT treated but there was still no cure once a viral infection had become advanced.
With UBT no longer the only effective treatment for bacterial infections and with the development of vaccines, interest in UBT declined. However, the AMA and orthodox medicine recognized that UBT was a threat to their livelihood and campaigned to drive UBT out as they had for several other protocols which did not conform to the views of orthodox medicine. For example, in 1951 the AMA refused to publish a report attesting to the efficacy of Knott’s equipment and protocol for UBT and in 1952, JAMA published a report purporting to show that Knott’s protocol for UBT didn’t work. That investigation team in Chicago was chosen by the AMA and was led by a doctor who had received a patent for a piece of equipment that was a potential competitor to Knott’s. By withholding its approval, the AMA could black-list a treatment, which it did for UBT. The AMA could also significantly influence the licensing of doctors to practice and essentially forced MDs who were using UBT to stop doing so or risk losing their license to practice. It is an open secret that JAMA’s editorial endorsement of a drug or device was proportionate to the associated advertising revenue.
In the early 1950s, Benedict Fitzgerald was appointed Special Counsel for a United States Senate Investigating Committee and charged with “Making a Fact-Finding Study of a conspiracy Against the Health of the American People”. The precipitating event was the AMA’s attempt to destroy the reputation and cancer cure business of Harry Hoxsey. The AMA ultimately succeeded and in the meantime, had destroyed several other important breakthroughs including those of Royal Rife and Emmet Knott’s UBT using the same practices.
On August 3rd, 1953, Fitzgerald made his report to the US Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. The report became known as the Fitzgerald Report to Congress. It castigated the AMA for its dishonesty and conspiracy against non-orthodox treatments. Specific rebukes included:
“There is reason to believe that the AMA has been hasty, capricious, arbitrary, and outright dishonest.
“Behind and over all this is the weirdest conglomeration of corrupt motives, intrigue, selfishness, jealousy, obstruction and conspiracy that I have ever seen.”
“My investigation to date should convince this Committee that a conspiracy does exist to stop the free flow and use of drugs in interstate commerce which allegedly has solid therapeutic value. Public and private funds have been thrown around like confetti at a country fair to close up and destroy clinics, hospitals and scientific research laboratories which do not conform to the viewpoint of medical associations.”
“Is there any relationship between approval by these experts and the operation of the advertising agency in the offices of the American Medical Association? In this connection, this Committee should investigate the advertising agency which controls all advertising in the Journal of the American Medical Association as well as the various State Journals. Why is the stamp of approval, by the so-called nutrition expert and their Council on Foods, placed on certain foodstuffs, denied to others, and others condemned, without a reasonable investigation? Is there any relationship between approval by these experts and the operation of the advertising agency in the offices of the American Medical Association?”
The Fitzgerald Report was buried. The AMA and drug companies had won and UBT fizzled out. Knott stopped producing his UBT device and he died in 1961. Hundreds of existing devices in hospitals and doctors’ offices stopped being used as they (or the doctors) wore out or the doctors succumbed to the pressure and abandoned UBT. As a direct result, tens of millions of people in the USA have suffered unnecessarily with viral diseases or died prematurely. Superbugs have now been added to the list for which there is no effective approved standard of care and more Superbugs are appearing every year.
When UBT was driven underground in the USA, it was picked up by Russia and its satellites, particularly East Germany and Ukraine. Almost all the recent research on UBT has been done over there. There are now thousands of physicians using UBT abroad. In the 1990s, UBT began to be used again in the USA by alternative/complementary/integrative doctors using devices manufactured abroad. A thousand or more doctors in the USA are now using UBT to cure viral and Superbug infections.
UBT is exempted by the FDA for out-patient use by a doctor in their office but the threat of persecution by the authorities, ostracism by orthodox colleagues and the risk of tort lawyers filing trumped-up lawsuits claiming use of a treatment not authorized by the FDA, effectively prevents doctors in most states from using UBT even when they believe in it.
Conclusion
With the extraordinary 90-year record of UBT’s efficacy and safety in treating virtually any infection, including viral and Superbug infections for which there is no other effective treatment (except perhaps in the early stages), one would expect that the FDA would approve UBT and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who die with infections in the USA every year and many more who suffer unnecessarily. However, the FDA insists on a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial before it will approve UBT; such a trial would probably take years and cost tens of millions of dollars particularly when they insist on animal trials again – as they have. No one with a profit motive will make the investment because UBT is branded as a natural cure and the equipment and protocol have been in the public arena for decades. Therefore UBT, when found to live up to expectations, cannot be patented and there would be no return on the investment from monopolistic prices protected by a patent. In the meantime, people are suffering and dying.
A first step would be for a Principal Investigator (PI) to conduct a small trial of UBT for “untreatable” (by orthodox methods) infections under the auspices of an Institutional Review Board (IRB). Funding should be available. “Untreatable” viral and antibiotic resistant bacterial (“Superbug”) infections are obvious trial subjects. Acute septicemia (Sepsis) is another one with a 30% mortality rate leading to 200,000 deaths in the USA every year.