The Doctor Who Never Practiced Medicine

The Rise of Morris Fishbein

Morris Fishbein was born on July 22, 1889, in St. Louis, to Eastern European immigrant parents. He completed his medical degree at Rush Medical College in 1912. Within months of graduating, he was invited to assist the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). By 1924, he had assumed the editorship — a position he would hold for 25 years.

During that quarter century, Fishbein became the most powerful man in American medicine. He read the 3,000 manuscripts submitted to JAMA annually, personally selecting the 500 that would be published. He controlled advertising revenue from the pharmaceutical industry. He created the AMA's public relations office and became its chief spokesman.

He wrote columns for newspapers and magazines, authored over 40 books, and appeared on the cover of TIME magazine in 1937. His editorials shaped AMA policy more consistently than the rotating Board of Trustees could.

There was only one problem: he had never actually practiced medicine.

The Admission

In 1949, during a libel trial brought against him by cancer treatment provider Harry Hoxsey, Fishbein was cross-examined about his credentials. Under oath, he made a remarkable admission:

He had failed anatomy in medical school.

And he had never treated a patient or practiced a day of medicine in his entire career.

This was the man who decided which treatments Americans could receive and which were "quackery." This was the man who destroyed Royal Raymond Rife, persecuted Harry Hoxsey, and sent John Crane to prison. A doctor who had never doctored.

The Pattern of Destruction

Harry Hoxsey: 25 Years of Persecution

Harry Hoxsey operated cancer clinics using an herbal formula that, according to family lore, originated when his great-grandfather's horse was cured of a leg tumor after eating wild herbs. The treatment consisted of an internal tonic (containing nine herbs including licorice root, red clover, and burdock root) and an external paste for skin cancers.

Fishbein's campaign against Hoxsey lasted approximately 25 years. According to multiple accounts, after Hoxsey refused a buyout offer that would have given Fishbein and associates all profits for nine years, Fishbein used his political connections to have Hoxsey arrested repeatedly.

The numbers are staggering: Hoxsey was arrested over 100 times — by his own estimate, more than anyone in U.S. medical history. He was arrested 119 times between 1926 and 1931 for practicing medicine without a license, and over 100 more times between 1937 and 1939 after opening a clinic in Texas.

In 1947, Fishbein wrote an editorial in JAMA calling Hoxsey a "cancer charlatan." He co-authored an article for the Hearst newspaper chain calling Hoxsey's father "a veterinarian and dabbler in faith cures."

Hoxsey sued for libel. And won.

The Trial Fishbein Lost

In March 1949, the case of Hoxsey v. Fishbein came before Judge William H. Atwell in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Hoxsey brought more than 50 witnesses who testified they had been cured of cancer by his treatment. Many brought before-and-after photographs.

Fishbein and the AMA could not bring a single former patient to testify against Hoxsey.

Under cross-examination, Fishbein was forced to make another damning admission: Hoxsey's external salve actually did cure external skin cancer.

Judge Atwell found Fishbein's statements to be "false, slanderous and libelous." Fishbein had acted from "a mistaken sense of public duty," the judge wrote, but bore Hoxsey "no malice."

Hoxsey won the case but was awarded only $2.00 — one dollar for himself, one for his father. The judge reasoned that there was no monetary damage because Hoxsey had successfully used the AMA persecution to promote his treatments.

When Fishbein and the AMA appealed, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict.

Wilhelm Reich: Died in Prison

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychoanalyst who developed "orgone energy accumulators" — devices he claimed could treat cancer and other diseases. In 1954, the FDA secured a federal injunction prohibiting interstate shipment of the accumulators.

Reich refused to appear in court, instead writing a letter to the judge declaring that courts had no authority over matters of natural science. He then intentionally violated the injunction.

He was convicted of criminal contempt and sentenced to two years in federal prison.

But that wasn't the end of it. The U.S. government ordered the destruction of Reich's writings. Six tons of his books and papers were burned — reportedly the only federal government-sanctioned book burning in U.S. history.

Reich died in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary on November 3, 1957, after serving only eight months. He was 60 years old.

The Chiropractors: A 25-Year Campaign

The AMA's Committee on Quackery, established in 1963, had an explicit mission: "first, the containment of chiropractic and, ultimately, the elimination of chiropractic."

Internal documents obtained in 1975 (the so-called "Sore Throat" documents) revealed the extent of the campaign:

• "Encourage ethical complaints against doctors of chiropractic"
• "Encourage chiropractic disunity"
• "Oppose chiropractic inroads in health insurance"
• "Oppose chiropractic inroads into hospitals"

In 1987, chiropractor Chester Wilk and four colleagues sued the AMA. Judge Susan Getzendanner found the AMA had violated the Sherman Act and "engaged in an unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade to contain and eliminate the chiropractic profession."

She issued a permanent injunction. The Supreme Court upheld the decision in 1990.

The AMA's Antitrust Conviction

Fishbein's AMA had already been found guilty of antitrust violations decades earlier.

In 1937, the Group Health Association (GHA) was formed in Washington, D.C., as a nonprofit cooperative to provide prepaid medical services to federal employees. The AMA opposed this model of healthcare delivery.

In 1938, the federal government indicted the AMA, the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, and 21 individual defendants for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. The charges: conspiring to restrain trade by coercing physicians from accepting employment with Group Health, preventing physicians from consulting with Group Health doctors, and obstructing hospitals from providing facilities to Group Health physicians.

After appeals lasting four years, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 1943. The AMA was found guilty and fined $2,500.

One newspaper reported the verdict was as important to medical history "as the discovery of ether to kill pain."

The Fitzgerald Report: Congress Investigates

In 1953, a Congressional investigation examined allegations of conspiracy in the suppression of cancer treatments. The investigation was initiated by Senator Charles Tobey after his son recovered from cancer using an alternative treatment that the medical establishment had condemned.

Investigator Benedict F. Fitzgerald Jr. of the Interstate Commerce Commission produced a report that was entered into the Congressional Record on August 3, 1953.

The report documented what it called "the weirdest conglomeration of corrupt motives, intrigue, selfishness, jealousy, obstruction, and conspiracy" surrounding cancer treatment research.

Nothing changed.

Senator Tobey died before he could act on the report. It was entered into the Congressional Record by his son. The AMA's power remained intact.

The Connection to Rife

Royal Raymond Rife was not mentioned in the Fitzgerald Report. By 1953, his work had already been destroyed.

According to multiple accounts, after Fishbein learned of Rife's frequency instruments, he sent representatives to negotiate a buyout. The terms were similar to those allegedly offered to Hoxsey: Fishbein and associates would receive all profits for nine years, with Rife receiving nothing. After nine years, if the technology proved effective, Rife would begin receiving 10%.

Rife refused.

What followed was the pattern we've seen repeated:

• In 1939, an engineer named Philip Hoyland filed a lawsuit against Beam Rays, Inc. — the company manufacturing Rife's frequency instruments. During the trial, Hoyland admitted he had been offered money to file the lawsuit.
• While the lawsuit was proceeding, the AMA allegedly visited every doctor using Rife's instruments, threatening them with loss of their medical licenses if they continued.
• The lawsuit bankrupted Beam Rays, Inc. Rife, who had never been in court before, suffered a nervous breakdown and turned to alcohol.
• The San Diego Medical Society banned all Rife instruments, six months after the San Diego Tribune published front-page coverage of his work.
• By 1939, almost every doctor who had attended the 1931 "End to All Diseases" banquet denied ever meeting Rife.

Dr. R.T. Hamer, who had used Rife's instruments, later stated: "Fishbein bribed a partner in the company... we were kicked into court."

The Fall of Fishbein

Fishbein's prominence eventually made even his allies uneasy. In the 1940s, he was three times required to defend his activities before the AMA's House of Delegates.

Following the Hoxsey trial and mounting internal opposition, the AMA Board of Trustees stripped Fishbein of his official forums in 1949, mandating that he only publish on scientific subjects. He handed in his resignation in December 1949.

But the institutional suppression continued without him. The Hoxsey clinic was ultimately banned in 1960 and forced to relocate to Tijuana, Mexico, where it still operates today as the Bio-Medical Center. John Crane was sent to prison in 1961. Wilhelm Reich was already dead.

What This Tells Us

The Fitzgerald Report concluded that a conspiracy existed to suppress alternative cancer treatments. The AMA was convicted of antitrust violations — twice, if you count the 1987 chiropractic case. Morris Fishbein lost a libel lawsuit and was forced to admit under oath that a treatment he had called quackery actually worked.

These are not conspiracy theories. They are court records, Congressional documents, and sworn testimony.

The pattern is consistent: a treatment emerges outside the medical establishment. The AMA demands control. When refused, the practitioner is persecuted — arrested, sued, stripped of their license, imprisoned. The treatment is suppressed.

Whether any of these treatments actually worked is almost beside the point. The question is whether they were given a fair evaluation. The evidence suggests they were not. They were destroyed by an organization that was repeatedly found to have acted in bad faith, led by a man who had never treated a patient in his life.

The Record Remains

Morris Fishbein died on September 27, 1976, at age 87. His papers are held at the University of Chicago Special Collections.

The Fitzgerald Report is available on the Internet Archive. The court records from Hoxsey v. Fishbein are in the legal databases. The AMA's antitrust conviction is in the Supreme Court archives.

The documentation exists. The question is whether anyone will look at it.

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