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The Current Transcript for October 27, 2017

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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First impressions are crucial in any relationship but especially in an undercover one. You want your subject to go to bed at night thinking about what he can do for you to make you his friend.

LAURA LYNCH: He is a member of a very small club; FBI undercover agents who are Muslim, who could speak Arabic and who are willing to try to infiltrate suspected terrorist groups. Tamer Elnoury though is coming out of the shadows to tell his story. A story that sees him emerge as the agent who befriends two men in Canada who wanted to kill hundreds in the name of Islam. He ensured both of them went to jail for plotting to blow up a Via Rail passenger train. We'll hear his views on the case and his job. That's in our second half hour, after that:

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Today’s medical devices truly work medical miracles but there are some as phony as a $3 bill, like this Z-ed applicator which is claimed to cure the arthritis with Z-rays. There are no Z-rays.

And there are also no health benefits from sitting in a box, or drinking someone else's blood, or a host of other questionable methods or devices used over the centuries in the name of making us well. There are some wild tales of quackery. Today a sampling of some of the crazy ways medicine is misused, abused and marketed as a miracle when it's anything but. But first what to make of using an icon of history to make a buck.

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VOICE 1: This year’s Halloween costume is Anne Frank, for a little girl…

VOICE 2: What is going on?

VOICE 1: They are selling an Anne Frank costume!

VOICE 2: What is going on? That is so wrong.

LL: Anne Frank, holocaust victim famously wrote a diary of her time hiding with her family in Amsterdam. She's arguably the most famous face of the genocide, and so her name and image are in both time and again for a variety of causes some is noble, some not. Today we look at how and why Anne Frank endures as a symbol and what it gives to and takes away from her tragic life and death. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Anne Frank's image 'prime target for exploitation,' says professor

Guests: Ronald Leopold, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

LL: It was an unlikely place for a reading of The Diary of Anne Frank. But under the floodlights of Italian soccer stadiums on Wednesday, a minute of silence was held to honor her. And this passage of her diary was read over loudspeakers, voiced here by one of our producers.

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[Sound: Blowing wind]

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness. I hear the approaching thunder that one day will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better. That this cruelty too shall end. The peace and tranquility will return once more.

[Sound: Whistling]

LL: Players also wore T-shirts with pictures of Anne Frank and the slogan No to anti-Semitism. It was part of the Italian Football Federation's response to an ugly situation earlier this week, when fans attacked a rival team's clubhouse with anti-Semitic messages and pictures of Anne Frank. The young Jewish girl who died in the Holocaust in 1945, remains ever present in our culture today and often controversially so. Just look at the furor caused by the availability of an Anne Frank Halloween costume online this season. For more on Anne Frank's legacy and the power she and her image still hold today, I'm joined by two people Ronald Leopold is the executive director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and that's where we have reached him. And c is the co-editor of Anne Frank Unbound Media Imagination Memory. She's a professor emeritus of performance studies at New York University and she joins me from New York this morning. Hello to you both.

RONALD LEOPOLD: Good morning.

LL: Ronald Leopold we'll begin with you. What was your reaction when you heard about the Lazio soccer fan controversy?

RONALD LEOPOLD: Like many of the people we were shocked obviously because of the clearly anti-Semitic connotation of the act. I think what we are dealing with is actually the flipside of what makes Anne such a powerful symbol a lot of course but first and foremost obviously for the Shoah for the Holocaust. And I think what we saw was that that makes her also very attractive for - in this case - people who want to provoke. And as we know football fans would like to provoke, or for want to make some quick money. And I think this is all part of the same power of her as being a symbol coming obviously from the dark ages of history of - not just to Jewish people - but of human, of mankind. And during the years she has been connected to all kinds of causes. And I expect her to become increasingly so.

LL: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblet. What did you make of what happened? Barbara? I guess we've lost our connection to her. Ronald, so we'll keep going with you for that for the time being. What did you make of the response of the Italian soccer federation later in the week?

RONALD LEOPOLD: I think it was very important to see that that response came not just from the Football Association which were up usually the party which is first and foremost responsible for such a response but it was it came from all walks of Italian society. I think that was very important because when we are dealing with a phenomenon as anti-Semitism we really need a broad coalition of institutions and people from all walks of life in order to challenge and combat that.

LL: Anne Frank as we said is so present in our imagination to this very day. How does a depiction like Anne Frank in a football team's jersey or in a Halloween costume change our understanding of her?

RONALD LEOPOLD: Well I think condemning it is the easy part of the issue. I think it really starts from asking ourselves the question “what can we do about it? What do we want to do about it? And how should we understand the motivation of people who are using it in this way?” And I think this is has been actually the case ever since the publication of the diary. I just heard these iconic lines that were read in the football stadiums. Also those lines has been the subject of fierce criticism in the past because it gives in a way a message of hope and optimism which is always very difficult to connect to the tragic life and death of Anne Frank. And I think the enormous and the massive scale of the history that she was part of has always had a very uneasy connection to what was called her after life, the way she was being used and misused for all kinds of goals. So I think it's just another example of the way people, now 2017 three four generations after the war, are connected to connecting to Anne to her history and to be very honest with you I think talking about the next step after condemning. It's all about thinking of educational challenges and of points of entry to how to understand her history and her meaning for today.

LL: And I do want to get to that. I understand we have Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett back on the line, hello.

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Hi there.

LL: Hi. So we've been talking about what happened at the football stadium and the response to that, but I want to ask you now where else have you seen Anne Frank's image being appropriated globally.

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Everywhere. You see it in graffiti, comics, cartoons. You see it in contemporary artists who are working with the image, stencil art on the streets, graphic novels, musicals films, various versions of the books, some adapted for younger children. I would say Anne Frank is ubiquitous.

LL: Not all historical figures are commercialized this way. What is it about Anne Frank's image that makes her prone to commercial exploitation?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: I think she's a victim of her own success. And I think that somehow - I think there's several things. First of all, she's young and innocent victim, wrote this diary which as we've just heard has this redemptive quality because the diary does not end with her death. The diary ends obviously before that. I think that she, in a sense, the efforts to introduce young people to the Holocaust through the diary and the diaries very attractive and she too is. I should add, you'll find her in wax museums and in museums across the across the globe as well. But in any event, I think that basically, I think that the more that she has been in essence used - as a way of communicating the Holocaust in a variety of media, the more exposed, the more iconic - the more she becomes a - if you will - a prime target for exploitation also for such negative uses as we've seen in the Italian soccer context.

LL: Ronald Leopold, I'm interested in your response to that whether the exploitation good or bad. Is it a good or a bad thing, regardless of whether it's a negative or a positive exploitation?

RONALD LEOPOLD: Well I would say that it's a fact of life and I fully agree with Barbara that we are dealing with the flipside of her popularity and her of her being an icon. I think as I said condemning it, or judging it is one thing. I think the next step that we are increasingly at a challenge with is actually to see where we take it from there. And my concern is that given the fact of the distance in time after the war is increasing that we will have more and more problems to have a clear view of what the history was of the life of Anne Frank. And I think one of the challenges that we face is how do we take the step from all these ways of how she is being used or are abused into taking back the stab to history and seeing or whether we can make it clear also for the generations to come, what the Holocaust and the life of Anne Frank was about. And through that actually I would also add to it what we can learn from that history because that was always been the mission of the Anne Frank has. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is there any benefit to having her out there, her image out there in order to ensure that her story is also out there that for younger generations?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: I honestly I think, at this point, it's impossible to control the Anne Frank icon. I think that it has been released into the wild and it is uncontrollable no matter what we do and I think the more efforts to control it in a sense the more difficult it becomes.

LL: Well who owns her image?

RONALD LEOPOLD: That's I think one of the most interesting questions in these times. What I would like to say always is and Frank is not being owned by anyone. She is - and I fully agree with Barbara. She's out there it is uncontrollable. And I think we better put our energy into seeing all these phenomenon as point of entry and see where we take it from there, and see whether we can put her back into some historical context where it all started. And from there see what we can learn about the history of Anne Frank, about and Frank herself because she has many faces. She's not just a victim of the Holocaust. She has many faces you've named already a few of them. And I think through those faces and through her history we can also learn a little bit about ourselves.

LL: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett do you see any other benefits to having her image out there and used?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Actually I don't think Anne Frank's the issue to be honest. I think the issue is xenophobia racism anti-Semitism that is the issue. And I think it's interesting that the at soccer games at least in one news report, it was not only Anne Frank's diary that was distributed to the young fans but also Primo Levi. And it's quite interesting to read those two. Well to read Primo Levi and Anne Frank together. So I don't think the issue is actually Anne Frank. I think it's really a much broader - It's a much broader issue and the manifestations also are quite different, so that I would not put the Halloween costume that Wal-Mart was selling in the same category as the use of Anne Frank as the sort of ultimate taboo in the insult exchange, at the soccer games. They're not the same. They're not in the same, I would say, register.

LL: Well then tell me what the Halloween costume represents?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Well bad taste. Not anti-Semitism. Simply insensitivity. A tone deaf. Bad taste. And what's more, it's not a very good costume. To be honest with you she looks like a girl scout.

LL: But it also represents cashing in on her image.

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Oh my goodness. Cashing out her image! Everybody's cashing in on her image. This is not the first and it's not the last. And it's not the most egregious.

LL: But then Ronald Leopold, you talk about trying to use it in a way it does [unintelligible]. But how do you do that when her image ends up as a as a bad Halloween costume? How do you ensure that that translates into a discussion about what she represents or anti-Semitism or the Holocaust? How do you do that.

RONALD LEOPOLD: Well we do it in our educational work. We are taking the conversation from its starting point and its starting point could be a Halloween costume. It could be even an anti-Semitic expression for example. We are carrying out several projects here in Holland with football teams who are struggling with the same issues as Lazio Roma. I fully agree with Barbara in terms of there is a clear distinction between on the one hand using an anti-Semitic context or using and simply in a way of bad taste. And we have seen thousands and thousands of examples, also of much nobler aims that still causes uneasiness and difficulties, when you look at what happened to and what happened to people in 2017. One of the issues, let me give you an example, is whether or not we should use an story for anti-bullying programs, which to a certain extent I think everybody could understand, when you look at the mechanisms that were at work. When you look at bullying on the other hand, we should make clear that there is a very important distinction between being persecuted or being bullied.

LL: But do you support and use of Anne Frank's image in that kind of a campaign?

RONALD LEOPOLD: Well I think you know it's being done in the United States. And if it if it's successful I'm I don't object against it. But I think at the same time in these kinds of programs, it's very important to make that distinction, and to make that distinction clear to those who are working with it and to the pupils in the classroom because there is a very important distinction between the two.

LL: To either of you, do you have a sense of how well known Anne Frank and her story is among younger generations?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Oh my sense is that basically it is the point of entry, that if one wants to introduce the Holocaust to a younger generation the starting point is the Anne Frank diary. It's been translated, republished and it is really for a whole range of reasons partly because it's so hopeful, partly because the worst aspects of the Holocaust are not in that book. They come after she stops writing the diary, because she's the same age as those who will start reading it. So I think that it's really I would say almost universally the point of entry for young people who are encountering the Holocaust.

LL: Ronald Leopold?

RONALD LEOPOLD: I think the transformation that we have seen over the decades is that the starting point, the point of entry has been in the decades immediately after the war it's very much the history. What we see now is the starting point is very much the item. So we have to build it. We have to take it from there and going back to history. And that is really different from let's say 20 or 30 years ago when the starting point was history itself. So I think having said already that this phenomenon is in itself uncontrollable, we really should focus on ways of how we can put history back in in the broader picture and within all of these phenomenons that we see around us, when it comes to Anne Frank.

LL: Sorry about that our time's running out. My thanks to both of you.

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Thank you.

RONALD LEOPOLD: Well, my best.

LL: Ronald Leopold is the executive director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. He was in Amsterdam. Barbara Kershenblatt Gimblett is the co-editor of Anne Frank Unbound, Media Imagination And Memory. She is in New York City. I have a moment now to let you know about a story that's coming up next week. It is motivated by a call to The Current special phone in show, earlier this month on inclusion in the classroom. One listener pointed out that when it comes to sex education in schools, she and many other people with disabilities feel left out of the discussion. Well it's a discussion Anna Maria we'll pick up next weekend. Here are two of the people you'll hear. Twenty four year old Jessica Coole who has a cognitive disability and her mother Michelle Morgan Coole talked about the awkward conversation between parent and child.

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MICHELLE MORGAN COOLE: I know in middle school I really went looking for information about sex ed for Jessica. It was very difficult. I went through the middle school the guidance department to try to find something that would be more tailored to Jessica's understanding. And was unable to find anything. So we just talked about it at home.

JESSICA COOLE: So I thought it was gross at first but I saw diagrams and demonstrations and I think: “Hmm. That's interesting.” I am like “how do they do all this? Why is it important?”

MICHELLE MORGAN COOLE: I tell her that it's for a special relationship, that I hope both her and her sister would wait until they had sort of a committed partner.

JESSICA COOLE: I had a boyfriend once. His name was Kirsten and when I go on dates once a week and we share a meal together. We do things together. He comes over I come over. It was 50/50.

VOICE: And how did it end?

JESSICA COOLE: Well I was lying on the bed with Kirsten and he was on one side of me. I was on one side of him, and we're like lying on top of each other. And he said “that feels good”. And the assistant has to open a door said “that's got to stop right now.” So I was like: “Uh oh! I'm in trouble.”

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LL: More on sex ed and young people with disabilities coming up Monday here on The Current. Well the CBC News is next. Then he was instrumental in the convictions of two men for plotting to bomb a Via Rail train in 2013. We still don't know his real name but the undercover FBI agent who infiltrated extremist and extremist cell will join me to tell his story after the break. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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How a Muslim undercover FBI agent foiled Via Rail terror plot in Canada

Guest: Tamer Elnoury

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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LL: Still to come for as long as there have been aches and pains and much more serious ailments, there's been someone happy to sell you a cure in the form of pills, treatments, gadgets or potions. And if they don't make the pain go away they'll at least make their seller rich. Coming up in half an hour from now, we're looking into the long history of quackery and asking why we keep falling for it. But first we're going deep undercover.

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NEWS CASTER: The RCMP arrested 30 year old Chiheb Esseghaier Montreal then flew him to the Toronto area yesterday. He's a scientist originally from Tunisia doing research for his Ph.D., northeast of Montreal. His colleagues were shocked to hear about his arrest. However this fellow student isn't totally surprised. He thought of Esseghaier as an extremist, after the man, now under arrest, criticized him for paying Canadian taxes when he's a Muslim.

LL: The CBC News from April the 23rd 2013 with a report about a deadly plot hatched in Canada targeting hundreds of civilians. Chiheb Esseghaier was just a part of a wider conspiracy that would have the CSIS the RCMP and the FBI all working together to try to break what they saw as a dangerous al Qaeda linked terrorist cell. The key law enforcement player in the game of cat and mouse was an undercover FBI agent known by the pseudonym Tamer Elnoury. Originally from Egypt, he was one of the few Arabic speaking Muslims in the FBI. I covered the case extensively and listened to Tamer Elnoury give evidence. But journalists were barred from seeing his face and I still have no idea what he looks like. Now the older man known as Tamer Elnoury is telling his story of going undercover in Canada, in his new book American Radical, Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent. With his voice disguised, Tamer Elnoury joins me from New York. Hello.

TAMER ELNOURY: Hi, good morning.

LL: When you went undercover with the FBI you developed a number of so-called legends. There were different characters with different backgrounds for different investigations. What was the Tamer Elnoury's legend in the Canadian terrorism case?

TAMER ELNOURY: A wealthy Egyptian American businessman who has hidden jihadi beliefs and was a quote unquote likeminded brother to the terrorists.

LL: How long did it take you to develop that persona and how much of that is based on you?

TAMER ELNOURY: Well obviously you know I do it for a living. And you know that it's all an act, especially the radical mindset. The foundation to any legend that I develop has to be as close to reality as possible, because when you're embedded in a group or you travel the world with these terrorists sooner or later your true colors start to come out. So if your legend is as close to reality as possible that's a recipe for success.

LL: And that came through in what way would you say? How did you translate what was in you to the character that made it effective in your investigation?

TAMER ELNOURY: Well it's one thing to be a wealthy individual that's easy to fake being rich. It's easy to fake companies and businesses. But you have to have what we call a point of radicalization and that is something that happened to you that takes you from mainstream Islam to radical Islam. And again if you want to be successful you need to make that real, emotional and believable.

LL: And you say point of radicalization that is when you tell your story to someone you're investigating about how you became a radical. And it's a turning point for you. That's correct is it?

TAMER ELNOURY: That's exactly correct. And it's not something that you just throw out there, no matter which subject I'm in front of. They have to earn that. You don't offer it up right away. It's a give and take like a normal development of a relationship.

LL: Okay let's talk about this in the context of the investigation into Chiheb Esseghaier, one of the men who was convicted in the Via Rail plot. I want to ask you about him. He was living in Montreal. How did he come onto your radar?

TAMER ELNOURY: He was talking to some known Al Qaeda members. He was communicating with them. His trips to Iran were unsettling. So there was a lot of red flags and indicators early on the investigation that basically led us to putting me in front of him so that we can accurately gauge the threat level that he posed.

LL: And so in a way that still remains a mystery. You managed to bump into him on a plane ride. Tell me about that.

TAMER ELNOURY: Yes. First impressions are crucial in any relationship but especially in an undercover one you want your subject to choose you. You want your subject to go to bed at night thinking about what he can do for you to make you his friend. And that's just part of the psychological aspect of what we do. But it's also based on human nature.

LL: All right so how did you do this. How did you work yourself into his confidence on that plane ride?

TAMER ELNOURY: Giving him breadcrumbs. First and foremost he is in a foreign land and he's sitting next to someone who looks like him and sounds like him. And then I guess the icing on the cake for Chiheb was the fact that he was able to have me jump through hoops, his tests as you, if you will. So when he interprets the religion a certain way I will show him that that's exactly how I interpret it as well. So not only he will be able to speak to me in his native tongue. Not only are we able to talk culturally the same way, but now he feels that religiously we're in the same place.

LL: And he had confidence in you pretty quickly, didn't he?

TAMER ELNOURY: Yes I think because we, as an investigative team, did our homework. We knew what we needed to do to befriend him.

LL: Let's bring it back again then to you sharing your point of radicalization with him. This is where it comes in. Tell me what you told him.

TAMER ELNOURY: Well I used the story of my mother's passing, twisted up some of the facts but at the end of the day her passing I painted it as my point of radicalization, when in reality my mother's words to me on her deathbed was to do as much good in this world as you possibly can. And I will see you in heaven. Instead, I made it so that I twisted up the facts of how she died or the fact that she was led down a different path by doctors and nurses because they didn't respect her for simply being a Muslim. I use the emotion of her actual death and twisted up the facts to use that to gain his confidence.

LL: And he was sold he said he believed your emotion around that.

TAMER ELNOURY: Yes ma'am.

LL: So what was his mission as you understood it, for Al Qaeda?

TAMER ELNOURY: Maximum casualties. His mission was to inflict carnage in North America. He was tasked with the train plot. And when I invited him to New York he started coming up with his own plots and plans to detonate explosives in Times Square. He was here to kill Americans and Canadians.

LL: Tell me what his what he told you about what the mission was regarding the train.

TAMER ELNOURY: The mission was simple; to derail a train over a bridge so that the train would fall into as little water as possible in an effort to make sure that everyone on board the train died.

LL: And he told you - he shared this with you on a long long car ride from Montreal to Toronto. What was that ride like?

TAMER ELNOURY: Well first and foremost it was a ride I didn't want to take it because I didn't want to spend that much time alone with him. But I understood the investigative value in doing so. Once we got on that car ride, it was a deep dive into the terrorist mindset. I learned more from Chiheb than I have from a lot of the schools in radical Islam that I went to, because here's a guy who upon first glance is a jovial world renowned scientist on the precipice of curing Infectious Diseases. He had so much to offer humanity and within two years was one step to move from Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda. So I really got a sense of who Chiheb was and what his motivations were on our car ride.

LL: And what I should say is that this was all your conversation with him, and much of the rest of your conversations with him were being monitored and recorded by the FBI. So they were hearing most of what you were hearing. You go to Toronto; you meet a third person Raed Jaser who Esseghaier has invited to join the group, the plot. And at one point you, Esseghaier and Raed Jesser go to scout a possible location for this train attack which is a bridge outside of Toronto. I want you to tell me what happened when you were on the tracks.

TAMER ELNOURY: Well, first up, it was an RCMP led investigation because everything we did on Canadian soil was obviously led by the RCMP. And once we were on those tracks we were not expecting a train to start making its way our way. So needless to say, there was a bit of nerves on all of our parts - mainly mine and Jaser’s - and we thankfully were able to distinguish which set of tracks it was on so we can get on the opposite side and not get sucked under. The train conductor or the engineer saw us on there and did his dutiful duty and reported it to police.

LL: And what happened then?

TAMER ELNOURY: We sat in the parking lot. Chiheb was dictating our assignments moving forward. Raed and I are probably a little still rattled from almost getting hit by a train. And shortly thereafter it became a felony motor vehicle stopped by Toronto police. They boxed in the vehicle and they approached the vehicle took our information. They asked, you know, they told us that the engineer had seen us on there. I lied to him. I said that we had taken the wrong path. We meant to go on the walkway, in an effort to move along the interrogation as quickly as possible and not risk ending the investigation. And that was that.

LL: You lied because you were worried everything – what - was going to fall apart?

TAMER ELNOURY: Of course. We get arrested, the investigation is over. Everyone shut down. Every piece of intelligence that's in Cheiheb Esseghaier’s brain is lost.

LL: Something has always struck me as curious about this. Shortly after this episode, the police do leave. Esseghaier and Jaser begin to argue with each other. Eventually Jaser drops out of the plot. And I was reading in your book that both men refused to admit that the train plot was - and this is your words - stupid. That's what you wrote in the book. If it was stupid, if it was stupid why were so many officers and resources dedicated to this investigation?

TAMER ELNOURY: You have to understand something, Laura. It comes down to this. I don't care what your plots are. I don't care how stupid or smart or brilliant your attacks are. If your mindset and your intent is to kill innocents, okay, we are going to dedicate resources to getting in front of you, meeting the elements of the crime, and putting you in a position to never hurt anyone. So whether you wanted to blow up a train or poison a water supply or detonate an IED, whether it's brilliant, stupid, never going to happen, most likely going to happen, it doesn't matter. If your intent is to kill innocents - you're absolutely right - we are going to dedicate resources too because that's what we do.

LL: I had a chance to interview Chiheb Esseghaier after his arrest. This was over the phone after meeting him in person. I asked him if he was a jihadist and I want you to listen to this. This is part of what he said to me.

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Because God, in the Quran, Allah, our Lord in the Quran, He described us as Muslims. What are jihadists? This is does not exist in the Quran. So God, He describes us as Muslims, so I am Muslim.

LL: So he says there: “I am not jihadist. I am Muslim” Tamer Elnoury, what goes through your mind when you hear his voice?

TAMER ELNOURY: Well it's a blast from the past. That is probably the first time I've heard his voice since the trial, a couple of years ago. But I will respond to what he has to say, and it's very similar - if you recall - because you were covering the trial. He sat quiet through almost the entire trial. He never ever budged except for when the one time I said that his interpretation of religion is a desecration of my religion. That's when he jumped out of his seat and he yelled to me that he - that there is only one interpretation of Islam. And I would argue ironically enough that he's exactly right. His interpretation is the warped view. And the reason why I call him a jihadi and he wants to call himself a Muslim is because he's not a Muslim. He is against everything that Islam stands for. He has broken every single religious rule and yet he claims to be a Muslim and he's trying to soften it. But I wholeheartedly disagree and so do the majority of Muslims.

LL: I want to get into his state of mind more with you, because forensic psychiatrists described him as actively psychotic after he was convicted and during the sentencing phase. He's since been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He's being treated now. He's appealing his sentence arguing he was mentally unfit. You say you can tell when someone is a big talker, a poser and when someone is truly dangerous and violent. Knowing Esseghaier was sick, how do you know that he was the latter?

TAMER ELNOURY: First and foremost I'm not going to get into any of his mindset, as far as you know talking about whether or not he's this or that. We'll leave that to the courts to decide. His upcoming appeals but I will tell you that, in no uncertain terms, Chiheb Esseghaeir was an absolute threat to society. His goal was to maim and kill as many innocents as possible. So he knew right from wrong. He justified and rationalize that - if you read in my book, Laura, I did the Christian burial speech and that is my way of basically showing remorse for what we're about to do and thinking about backing out. And he rationalized scientifically, religiously in his warped way – okay - that's why we're going to kill people. And even though it's technically haram, which means forbidden, to hurt people, it's a necessity of war based on what we're going through. That is not the mind of a madman. That has a mind of a lucid thinker who is absolutely planning and plotting and he had the intent to kill.

LL: Esseghaier and Raed Jaser are both serving life sentences on terrorism related convictions. Do you think then, that justice was served? I would say in your answer is yes.

TAMER ELNOURY: Absolutely. I wish I could ask you that same question because your tone suggests that you disagree with that.

LL: I'm just asking questions. I want actually also asked you about the way that the investigation ended. You weren't happy with the way the Canadians ended this investigation. Why not?

TAMER ELNOURY: I felt that there was so much more meat left on the bone. I understand it, though and I expressed in the book, the Canadian government and our government our best of friends and allies and we are partners in the war against terror. So when the resources are separated - Mind you Laura, the Canadian investigation for all intents and purposes was wrapped up in about three and a half weeks. They extended this investigation for seven months, in an effort for us to do our due diligence. So it's not like they just wrapped it up and pulled the plug. They were very supportive from day one. They gave me the protections I needed during trial. They supported me 100% and their fight is our fight and vice versa. I still have many friends in Canada that I consider lifelong friends to this day. It is just we ran out of time.

LL: I should background this a little bit by saying what you're speaking about is the fact that Chiheb Esseghaier mentioned to you that there was an American sleeper fellow who had also been recruited by al Qaeda in the United States. Esseghaier didn't know who it was. You kept going because you thought he would be able to reveal that to you. What worries you today about that sleeper?

TAMER ELNOURY: Well you know there hasn't been a day since April 22nd 2013 where I haven't thought about him. What worries me, professionally and personally, is missing one more. That's what it comes down to. I don't want to miss a single one. I believe that there is evil out there, everywhere and I'm thankful and happy and proud to be a part of an organization that dedicates all its resources to stopping that evil war every day.

LL: There was another man involved in this investigation. His name is Ahmed Abbassi. Tell me how he was connected to Esseghaier and Jaser.

TAMER ELNOURY: Well, to sum it up, basically we found out that he was essentially Esseghaier radicalizer. He was the one that turned Shehab into this individual that went overseas to train and become an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. And Abbassi’s temperature, if you will for lack of a better word, was much more cunning and slow roastinh than Chiheb’s. He was in it for the long game and he was training here, and being educated here to hurt Americans on a much grander scale than Chiheb was planning to.

LL: He was he was arrested the same day as Esseghaier and Jaser but he was arrested in the United States in New York and charged. And his defense lawyer is Sabrina Shroff. And I want to play you some tape of her. She's the lawyer for Ahmed Abbassi and this is her speaking to the Fifth Estate.

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But they never turned him. They never turned him into the man they wanted him to be. Thet never turned him into a terrorist. He did not do anything. Repeatedly, four months at a time, despite great pressure, Mr. Abbassi never did anything. I'm quite puzzled. Does the undercover [unintelligible] see this? Had Mr. Abbassi done anything at all, wouldn't that be in the charging instrument? I mean you are talking about prosecutors in the southern district of New York. They are very smart people, correct? I mean whatever else you may want to say about a federal prosecutor in the southern district. They know what they're doing in terms of drafting up a charging instrument.

LL: Let's make this clear. He was originally charged with terrorism related offenses and they were eventually dropped. Tamer Elnoury, how do you respond to her allegations that you tried and failed to entrap her client?

TAMER ELNOURY: Well first and foremost they were dropped, they were reduced. Second, when I met that man in Quebec City his true colors came out. He was much more cunning and was in it for the long game. His hatred for the United States was seeping through his pores. There was no ifs, ands or buts about it. Now granted in and of itself it wasn't a crime, but he had grandiose plans of destruction, but he was slow rolling them. So, the man that I met in Quebec City then traveled to Tunisia, and the plan was to continue this conversation in Canada when he returned, where I would have been able to truly vet his intentions and the threat level. But his Canadian visa was polled by the Canadian government, again understandably, my personal opinion; you can't put a Band-Aid on terrorism. So just by keeping him out of the West does not him more or less of a threat. The world's too small for that. So by the time I got him to come to New York City he was a shell of a man that I had met. And oh by the way I had three weeks to get proper charging and bring back the man from Quebec City. And just in time, just as soon as I started to see the true Abbassi and his true colors coming out, he's talking to Al Nusra, Al Qaeda affiliates overseas in Jordan, regularly having conversations with some of the worst people on the planet. He was getting there. But like I said we ran out of time.

LL: It's interesting that in the position you're in in the work kind of work that you do and you are a rare catch for the FBI - that you're actually you speak Arabic. You can you can actually live in both worlds obviously you're able to do this. How do you stop yourself from - You say you can differentiate. How do you stop yourself from seeing terrorism around every corner? Your senses must be heightened about that sort of thing.

TAMER ELNOURY: Well I think being on a job for 22 years you ask anybody that's in my line of work. Sure. We see the world differently, but at the end of the day we all follow the evidence. Yes there's a certain level of gut instincts that you develop over the years, a sixth sense if you will. But that's a testament to the work that we do. Do you know how many people I've been in front of that you'll never hear about, whether they were truly terrorists or not? The point is - it's not like I get in front of someone and the next thing you know they're getting arrested. No. We evaluate threats when we think they are and we continue to move on.

LL: It is extremely rare for an active FBI officer to write a book about a case while he's still in the bureau and still doing investigations. Why did you do it?

TAMER ELNOURY: Well as you are aware this case was declassified for trial. None of my cases get the crossfire for trials. It's very rare for me. It gave me an opportunity, Laura, to be a voice for those that don't have one. I offer a unique perspective on a socially relevant topic that's talked about a lot but often misunderstood. I mean it's a real window into this world that most Americans and Canadians know nothing about. So I'm hoping to honor the brave men and women of the RCMP and the FBI that are combating terrorism every day to keep both of our countries safe.

LL: Tamer Elnoury, or whatever your real name may be, thank you very much for writing the book and thank you for talking to us today.

TAMER ELNOURY: Thank you Laura.

LL: Bye bye.

TAMER ELNOURY: Bye now.

LL: I've been speaking with the FBI undercover agent known as Tamer Elnoury. He is the author of the new book American Radical Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent. And you can hear more from Tamer Elnoury, tonight on the Fifth Estate. Well coming up in our next half hour, arsenic, mercury and goat testicles, just a few of the terrible ideas peddled successfully by quacks through the ages. We're diving into the history of quackery right after the break. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

From arsenic to goat glands: A history of the world's worst medical cures

Guest: Lydia Kang

LL: I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Music]

Today I'm going to teach you how to build an organ accumulator that's literally as easy as reading a newspaper. And you do not even after read so it's even easier. You're just going to make layers of newspaper and aluminum foil and that's how easy it is. Strip off a layer of aluminum foil. Just regular Reynold's wrap here. Then you just lay down, flip to the next page.

[Sound: Music and aluminum foil rustle]

Flatten it out. Nice and neat. There you go. You know free energy from the atmosphere for healing.

[Sound: Music]

LL: And that is how you build your own orgone accumulator box. Follow those steps and you too can restore your life affirming energy and boost your health. At least that was the idea behind the box, which was actually popular with the beat generation in the 20th century. It's just one of the countless number of medical gadgets, treatments and pills throughout history that promised much without the science or results to back them up. What they have done again and again though is make their creators very rich. And despite the march of scientific progress we seem just as susceptible to snake oil salesman today as we have ever been. Dr. Lydia Kang is a physician who's looked at why that is. She is the co-author with journalist Nate Peterson of Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything. And Dr. Lydia Kang is with us from Omaha, Nebraska. Hello.

LYDIA KANG: Hello, how are you?

LL: I'm fine thank you. Tell us what is an orgonre box?

LYDIA KANG: So the organ box was invented by a certain Dr. Wilhelm Reich who was hoping that if you could sit inside this box you could sort of re-energize yourself. It could help with depression. It could get your libido up in your sex life just right. Doesn't really make any sense if you really sit and think about it for just a little bit. But it was wildly popular for a little while.

LL: But it really is just an empty box that you sit in right?

LYDIA KANG: Yes. It is just an empty box [laughs].

LL: That accumulator we were hearing about in the tape, there was a do it yourself version. But people paid for these didn't they?

LYDIA KANG: They did. They were very very popular for a while. People were really hoping that these boxes would help you accumulate your sexual energy or increase “orgone levels” by building up your libido. You know it's kind of funny. I can imagine that if someone sat in a box thinking about sex for four hours. at the end of the four hours you might actually feel like your libido was up again.

[Laughter]

LL: But I feel like I just want to get out of the box.

LYDIA KANG: Yes.I think so too.

LL: And was there any scientific proof that it had any effect at all?

LYDIA KANG: Not that I know of. But we do know that with a lot of the treatments that are in this book there are a couple of things that probably made people feel like it really did do some good. One is biased. You know you put some money toward something and you have this post-purchase rationalization that makes you think “Well, it must work because I paid some money for it” or you have friends who use it and they think it worked great, too. And you know that could be some confirmation bias or the bandwagon effect. So a lot of very strong yet hidden powers over why people thought things worked incredibly well.

LL: Mind over matter.

LYDIA KANG: Uh hmm.

LL: Is that is why people would be willing to pay for that empty box or countless other cures that don't have any scientific backing?

LYDIA KANG: I think so. I mean I think honestly hope plays a big part into why people are willing to overlook either scientific research or some of the obvious, like sitting in a box stage to heal things. People would like to see something that's going to give them exactly what they want in the absence of other cures that are just not out there, because we don't have a cure for everything. So it's not a surprise that people will reach for these things that are you know quasi medical or just complete bunk because there's a very intense desire to get better.

LL: Do the people who are inventing and selling these cures, do they genuinely believe that the products work?

LYDIA KANG: You know that I think is it really depends. I think there are some people out there who are selling what they know is false and they're trying to make money and they know they're going to make good money, so they keep doing it. And there are other people who honestly believe that there's a large conspiracy with mainstream medicine, that these are very good cures and treatments and they're not getting the attention they need. So the intent is good but you know the science doesn't back it up. And I've heard from a lot of people since this book came out, you know the sort of frustration of there are a lot of things that are out there but there's no money to back the research. So we just use them anyway. And that's a real problem because I think there are a lot of things that are out there that have been uninvestigated. But you know there's only so much money that goes around when it comes to doing research on these things. And so a lot of people are left thinking “this is a possibility. There's a tiny bit of science behind the theory but there's nobody to prove if it works or not. So we're just going to go with it anyway”. So that happens quite a bit out there for sure.

LL: Let's look at a few of the other supposed cures that you researched. What is antimony and what was it supposed to do for people's health?

LYDIA KANG: So antimony is this grayish colored metalloid element that people thought for a very long time was a fantastic way of evening out your humors.

LL: What are the humors?

LYDIA KANG: So for millennia people believed in this ancient theory of medicine that started with Hippocrates, was reinforced by Galen but basically it's this idea that your body has a balance of four different elements so to speak blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. And when they're off then you need to put them back in order by purging in one way or the other and that purging could be in the form of diarrhea, vomiting, sweating, salivation, bloodletting and antimony was an element that was used for vomiting. It's an incredibly potent amidic. It was used for a very very long time because people thought if I can just throw up, because I'm not feeling well it will bring all my humors back into balance and I'll be better.

LL: Ok apologies to everyone out there who may be having breakfast but only is far from the only poison that's been used as a cure. There have been treatments that are used mercury strychnine arsenic. Why are poisons popular medicines or why have they been in the past?

LYDIA KANG: Well you know nowadays we can look back and say “This is unbelievable. This is ridiculous. I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole.” And yet back then they did have a good understanding that a little bit too much could kill you but they also didn't have a better way of really making sure the doses were going to be just so. So we read about antimony deaths for people who are drinking out of antimony cups and people who are dying from arsenic. And yet because they didn't have better treatments and there was a lot of discussion saying well these things do help if you use in the right way, they continue to be used for centuries and centuries and a lot of cases these diseases would get better on their own. And people thought well look they really worked.

LL: But some people were dying. Wouldn't the deaths of patients be a clue the doctors that, you know, this isn't working.

LYDIA KANG: That is probably true but given that you know the death rates and the mortality levels were so terrible for a long time. It was also a matter of well you know most people don't live past their 40s or 50s and “this thing is going to kill me anyway. I'm going to try something” because people cling so desperately to trying to stay healthy and live as long as they can. Which still is you know a desperate cling that we continue to have to this day.

LL: I can understand that on the part of the patients but what about the doctors who were supposedly trying to advance the cause of medicine and science?

LYDIA KANG: Well you know the scientific theory didn't really come into play until past the Middle Ages. And so before that it was just about what they think caused this, what made sense to them. And they really clung to it and these theories were - these you know huge numbers of people and information that's passed down from generation to generation and they were incredibly strong. So for example you know humeral theory, which is ancient, we were still in the 1800s, when we were still doing things like bloodletting and using leeches because we still believed that blood was the dominant humor that was causing a lot of trouble and it was the one that needed to be put in place a lot. I mean that's a long period of time and by then we understood a lot more about anatomy. And yet they really stuck in the scientific and cultural consciousness in a very very tenacious way.

LL: Almost as popular a cure as poisons and bloodletting at various times have been various animal bits. And I want you to listen to this bit from a 1986 documentary called Goat Gland Doctor. It almost sounds like a reality show from current day. Well here Carrie Blake who was the Secretary of John Romulus Brinkley who was the creator of the goat gland transplant.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Music]

Patients will come there. You can see they came in. They came on crutches, canes and walked out like young men. I have seen many of them coming in that condition. People who [unintelligible]. People who are, men who are very senile and by the time they left the hospital, they were just like different people and I can really believe in the Goat Gland Transplant.

LL: Okay. The goat gland transplant treatment. What exactly was being transplanted here?

LYDIA KANG: So Dr. Brinkley and we used Dr. in quotes there, he was transplanting pieces and parts of goat testicles into men who are looking to enhance their masculinity, so to speak. So we know now it probably didn't work. I mean there was a certain amount of testosterone that was probably in those testicles that was maybe released into the body. But when you implant something foreign into a human body your human body likes to get rid of it as soon as possible, just destroy it scarred up. And so the idea that these implanted testicles would continue you know churning out huge amounts of testosterone or other hormones was just not going to be the case.

LL: And where were they being transplanted into in the male body?

LYDIA KANG: I believe they were planted implanted in the testicles. It was an expensive surgery you know for several hundreds occasionally thousands of dollars. He would go around doing this and people were very very happy to hand over their money to do this.

LL: You know I've got to tell you can't see me but I am cringing [laughing] on the other side of the mic here. People bought this and other treatments like it were a good idea?

LYDIA KANG: Yes they did. It was really, I have to say it was a very hot thing. People will talk about it at parties and discuss getting monkey gland transplants because that was also going on at a similar time by a different surgeon named Voronoff. They even made a monkey gland cocktail recipe because it was a very trendy thing at the time. But you know by the late 1930s and 1940s Brinkley was getting attacked left and right. The A.M.A. was shooting him down. They were asking a why do you think this works. And he would say “I don't know”. Now not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear by the surgeon who's implanting things into your body.

LL: And you put quotes around Doctor, was a medically trained doctor?

LYDIA KANG: No he wasn't. Instead of going to a medical school that was sanctioned by the A.M.A. he went to a cheaper quack route the Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City. So he was a sort of doctor but you know those were not considered mainstream institutions of medicine, so.

[Laughter]

LL: On yesterday's show Anna Maria Tremonti talked to biologist Bill Schutt about what he calls medical cannibalism, and that is eating parts of human bodies as medical treatments. And they talked about the current trend of women eating their own placenta after birth, as well as the use of Egyptian mummies as medicine in centuries past. Well what other examples of medical cannibalism did you find?

LYDIA KANG: Well this is actually like one of my favorite chapters of the book, because it's so particularly strange and gruesome and actually magical, because that's really what a lot of this comes down to as a sort of magical thought that what you are what you eat. Right. So it comes down to the thought that if you can consume something that has magic in it or a strength or vitality it will give you that as well. So the other kinds of cannibalism we saw was drinking blood, drinking the blood of falling Gladiator's was popular for a time. Patients who had epilepsy would try to see if they could cure their epilepsy that way. On occasion in the Middle Ages, when executioners hung their prisoners people would come by the swinging bodies and rub their skin afflictions against the hanging dead bodies because they believed it would make it go away. Sometimes they would drink blood from these recently executed people and on occasion the executioners made a good amount of money selling the bodies, harvesting the fat and selling the fat as a medical self.

LL: Ugh. Okay.

[Laughter]

LL: You actually you portray this image in the book of people bringing young babies by the freshly executed criminals corpses as well. Tell me about that.

LYDIA KANG: Yes yes. It's an issue of a magazine from 1758 where a nine month old child was put into the hands of the executioner who nine times with one hand of each of the dead bodies stroked the child over the face because the child had - what were probably boils - on its face. And this is what you did to try to cure them because it was thought to be a pretty standard treatment.

LL: Wow. Okay. On to more - another scene another regime that's actually used in modern day. This is the actress Shailene Woodley speaking to David Letterman in 2014.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID LETTERMAN: I remember what you do as a health regimen and maybe you don't do this anymore. But for a while you were eating a certain amount of clay each day.

SHAILENE WOODLEY: Yes.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Do you still clay?

SHAILENE WOODLEY: Yes. It is not like I have like a ball of ...

DAVID LETTERMAN: No. I am just talking about a like a teaspoon of …

SHAILENE WOODLEY: Yes. Yes. Yes. Like a teaspoon of clay. It binds to heavy metals and it helps your body rid of these heavy metals essentially.

LL: So was this some kind of flaky Hollywood attraction or does Clay actually do people any good?

LYDIA KANG: Well it's interesting because Clay is actually been part of a pharmacopeia for a very very long time. And she is partaking in something that's been going on you know since time out of mind. But it's the practice of what we call Geophagia, which is eating dirt, goes back to at least 500 B.C. The idea is that if you can eat these special kinds of dirt or clay they will bind to toxins or heavy metals and just pass them out through your body. Now what we do know is that we don't think it works nearly as those as people think they do. I believe that there is a certain amount of binding going on but not at a point where it can for example replace unofficial CuLator if you were to actually have serious heavy metal poisoning.

LL: The CuLater is an actual medical.

LYDIA KANG: It's an actual treatment for finding harmful toxins and heavy metals in the blood. But it's been used for a long time and I remember as a child being given something called Kaopectate which is like a clay containing medicine to help with stomach aches or diarrhea. It got taken off the market because it was found that it didn't actually help. So I think that it makes sense again a lot of these treatments if you look at them in a certain perspective, they make a certain amount of sense. But then when you bring you sort of shed the light of modern scrutiny and well what does this actually do, and can we measure these things, they don't actually end up panning out to be as helpful as we would like them to be. But I believe clay eating is still pretty popular these days as an alternative treatment.

LL: And as you said ingesting clay isn't a new fad. Tell me about the story of Wendel Thumblardt, great name, a robber who had been condemned to die in the 16th century.

LYDIA KANG: So there's this young gentleman who was condemned because of a string of robberies. And at the time there was another gentleman named, Wolfgang 2nd who was a prince in the district, who was hoping that he could prove that Clay would actually work very well as a poisoned antidote. And so they gave poor Thumblardt a bunch of mercury supplement which is this incredibly corrosive mercury compound. And he got the mercury, was given the clay to see if this would actually kill him or not. And surprisingly Thumblardt actually survived. Of course the poison was incredibly difficult for him to deal with and he felt incredibly sick. But after that it was this proof that clay could actually do some good. So actually Thumblardt was let go. He was given back to his parents. And Wolfgang the Second end up buying a lifetime supply of these clay tablets because he thought this is great. “Nobody is going to poison me. I'm going to go here”.

LL: Was the prince that paranoid about being harmed by poison?

LYDIA KANG: Well it was a really common problem. I mean arsenic was around it was called inheritance powder and the king's poison because people were poisoning each other left and right to get into positions of power. So it was really a big fear and it was a very big thing for people to try to find ways to really protect themselves against poisoning. So clay was one of those treatments that people had a lot of hope for. But you know in that case people would ask “why is it possible that he survived from eating such a dose of mercury?” All poisons have a range of doses for which they might kill somebody or might not. And if that person just got a little bit less than what was the toxic amount, they would have survived in you know Wolfgang would believe “Yup. This clay absolutely worked.” Or perhaps it helped get it through a system a little faster. So there's a lot of explanations for why it might have fooled him into thinking that it was a fantastic antidote.

LL: Lucky Wendel Thumblardt then. I mean, was normally [unintelligible] like this people who were in prison, who the cures were tested on? Or are there others who were generally those who were the guinea pig?

LYDIA KANG: Well you know throughout time when there were prisoners, the poor, the desperate and animals as well. You know when they were testing anesthesia, a lot of times you know people's pet dogs were getting tested on and of rats that were running through their laboratories. So you know kind of anyone and anything would get tested. But a lot of it was also just handed down from generation to generation about what we know this worked “It worked on my grandma. It worked on your cousins so we'll keep using it.”

LL: One of the things that really struck me was how treatments were given to women who were pregnant. Talk to me about that?

LYDIA KANG: Oh you asked me about that. Well there is an interesting information on you know how women's health in general was done and a lot of it is about the fact that women's bodies were a bit of a mystery. Much of that is because medicine was in the hands of men. But even so some of the ideas that came out for how to treat and take care of women just didn't make any sense to me. A lot of it I think was about a power play of trying to suppress women and keep them in their place. But some of the remedies - there's some animal remedies which were unbelievable. In the first century, Pliny the Elder thought that putting the foot of a hyena on a pregnant woman would help her with the delivery.

LL: Okay [laughs].

LYDIA KANG: I know which brings up all sorts of questions. An example, where did they get the hyena from? How did they get the hyena to do this do this? There's a corollary which is that if you use the left foot of the hyena it would cause death.

LL: So it had to be the right foot.

LYDIA KANG: Right. I mean you have a struggling high you know what if the entire thing is just… It's comic and unbelievable. But yes this is what the forefathers of medicine. This is what they were thinking.

LL: So we don't try to cure ourselves with arsenic anymore. But as we just heard people do eat clay. They use anemas for detox. They take diet pills and all kinds of other fads. How widespread is quackery today compared to in the past?

LYDIA KANG: So it is very much widespread. And I just want to make a little comment about arsenic which is that arsenic is still used today as a therapy for leukemia. So even though a lot of these treatments are very much staying in the past because we've been able to study them and find out that and on occasion they have really fantastic uses in the modern day. So it was a little surprising for me to find that arsenic is used in promilacidic leukemia, that radium is still used for certain types of prostate cancer. But the vast majority of the reasons why they were used are behind us. Now today quackery is very much everywhere. A lot of that is because even though we tried to pass a lot of laws and make sure that we're being safer with what we consume, because there isn't a cure for everything and because we are so prey to our biases, it's very easy for snake oil salesman to step out there and say “well I have something that could work that's far better than what modern medicine has to provide. It has better side effects. And look at all these people who tell me that it's worked really well. These anecdotes just are incredible.” And anecdotes are very very powerful but they are not a substitute for research. To be honest I don't think quackery is ever going to go away.

LL: But do these - sometimes seemingly outrageous ideas - do the ever lead to real medical progress?

LYDIA KANG: You know I think they lead to medical progress because I think that knowing if we look at them with a critical eye and give them the chance to prove themselves, I think that is the fair thing to do. And if it comes out that there is a negative result, meaning that it doesn't work, that's just as valuable as if something does. So I think that many of the treatments that have been out and about and people have been very excited about, if they get their day with getting locked out in a very appropriate way, I think that is absolutely fair. And if it turns out it doesn't work that's still incredibly important information for us.

LL: Now some of the cures in the past do seem easy for us to dismiss but it does get more complicated when we're looking at high tech companies in Silicon Valley. They're spending billions on research to eliminate all diseases, to make us live for about 10 years or cure death. And how do those of us who are not doctors know what to believe?

LYDIA KANG: That is hard. One is that it takes a certain amount of scrutiny. You really have to be willing to not just accept was given to you but ask about it. Ask about what the side effects are. Asked about the costs and make sure that what you're looking at isn't just substantiated with anecdotal reports of all these people saying that things are good, but there are studies. And one of the things where I think quack medicine gets particularly difficult with the everyday person, is that sometimes you'll go to these Web sites and they will list articles that say this was studied and it was proved to be useful. But anyone who knows how to read the medical research can look at that in a few minutes and know immediately that it's a terrible study. It was only done on mice. It only included eight people and it didn't include people who were anything like you and I would love it if people could take things a step further and not just say “oh there's evidence” but actually look at it and understand a little bit better about why certain articles are better than others. And one article in and of itself does not prove that something is fantastic. You have to research it over and over and over again. And you do have to be wary when you have a medical professional who says that they are an expert in the area and are pushing and trying to sell something that should automatically get your hackles up. When someone's trying to push a product with the hope of sales and the sale seems to be the final most important thing, that should make people very very wary. A quack by definition isn't always someone who is touting what they think is fake. It's oftentimes person who is pushing the sale above all else.

LL: You could do worse than go to your book and just look at the origin story of the snake oil salesman as a start. It's a great compendium of all of these different things that have been done over the years and it gives you a lot of good background to become perhaps more medically literate. So thank you for writing the book Dr. Kang.

LYDIA KANG: Thank you so much. We had a lot of fun writing it and we're hoping a lot of people can learn quite a bit from it as well.

LL: Bye bye.

LYDIA KANG: Bye.

LL: Dr. Lydia Kang is the co-author with journalist Nate Peterson of Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything. She was in Omaha, Nebraska. Now before we go a note to follow up on a story we brought you last Friday about a drug testing program at the hospital for sick children's mother risk lab in Toronto. Tens of thousands of tests were done on parents in child protection cases across the country, for more than two decades. But a government mandated investigation found the tests to be unreliable. We heard from several families who lost their children in decisions that relied in part on Mother risk drug tests. It was a joint project by The Current, CBC's fit the state and the Toronto Star. And the three lead journalists, including our producer John Chipman, took part in a Q&A about the project and what they learn. You'll find the video on our Facebook page. Search for CBC Radio The Current. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Q. Comedian Tom Green is on the show today ahead of his new Las Vegas residency. Now after our conversation about quackery, we will leave you with Steve Earle and his song Snake Oil. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current one.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Snake Oil by Steve Earle]

Ladies and gentlemen, attention please

Come in close so everyone can see

I got a tale to tell

A listen don't cost a dime

And if you believe that we're gonna get along just fine

Now I've been travelin' all around

I heard trouble's come to your town

Well I've got a little somethin'

Guaranteed to ease your mind

It's call Snake Oil why y'all

It's been around for a long, long time

Say, your crops will burn if it don't rain soon

Ain't seen a drop since the tenth of June

Well I can open up the sky

People never fear

If you ain't impressed yet, just tell me what you want to hear

Well you lost your farm…

[/ac]

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Friday October 27, 2017 Full Episode Transcript

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