I'M MAKING PROGRESS WITH YOUR HELP

We have had nearly 300 downloads of Cassandra's Memo

ALERT: I have uploaded a newly edited version to the bookfunnel link. If you can, stop reading on the version you have and grab the new one HERE or at: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/t2feeen29q

Only a few people have contacted me so far, and I appreciate anything you write.

If you have not worked on a 90,000 word book before, I’m sure you underestimate what an effort it is to beat it into shape. My other two were about this length, one took three years, and the other took a year to complete, 40 to 60 hours a week. I work until I get so burned that I have to quit for a day or two. I evolve my ideas and the prose simultaneously. This is not efficient, but it works for me.

Cassandra’s Memo, of course, is not all mine, and that makes it easier and harder at the same time.

Readers underestimate how much their commentary helps an author. After a while, we do not see our own prose very well and cannot tell what works and what may read like gibberish. Anything you say helps me perceive the book better.

Sidebar: I thought that baby in the midst of all those needles on my last (re) post was one of the most persuasive photos ever about the deep evils of the Pharma companies. Please send that around to anyone, everywhere.

Here is a hint if you are a writer. You should check your writing by copying and pasting each chapter into a website that measures grade level, such as the one HERE. The lower the level you get, the easier the essay is to read. My first book was at the 11th-grade level, and my second, written after more practice, was at the 9th. This chapter, and much of Cassandra’s Memo, is at the 7th. That is not easy. If you like ideas like this, you have a whole chapter about them towards the end of Cassandra.

If you do not have time to download and look at the book, here is the new (reader-suggested) first chapter that I am using to further personalize the story. If you have the time to scan through the book, please read the Preface before you view the below.

Chapter 1: HOW I ENTERED THE ARENA (116)

I was a cosmetic surgeon for most of my career. It was a narrow area with limited contact with the rest of medical practice. There were problems, but I liked the independence, and the work had its rewards. The glamor and money were exaggerated, however.

This link has images from my (mostly) virtual trips around the world, including a real polar bear. SUBSTACK LINK

Here is how I woke up and became a modern-day Rip Van Winkle after a career asleep running on the patient-care treadmill.

Over my final years in practice, most of my patients were women over 50 who wanted to relieve their depression and anxiety. They thought cosmetic surgery might be the answer. Most plastic surgeons operate on a string of these people without considering why they are so miserable.

My patients trusted me, I wanted to help, and I concluded after studying the issues that they were almost all hormone deficient. I began to offer appropriate candidates replacement therapy with or without cosmetic procedures. This worked. I soon learned that the FDA was a financial captive of big Pharma and that these two, acting in concert, criminally distorted the prescribing standards for these natural drugs. Hormones are inexpensive, highly beneficial, and we have known about most of them for nearly eighty years. But they were being aggressively smeared to protect the profits from Pharma’s patented medications. This campaign had sabotaged our elders. For more about all that, see the note* at the end of this chapter and read Butchered by “Healthcare.”

My focus gradually broadened to include corruption in the rest of medicine. Because of corporate and government interference, money dominated every consideration, and good health was being ignored. I finished writing Hormone Secrets and Butchered by “Healthcare” when I retired three years ago. I had to explain what I had learned.

After almost four years of writing and promoting these books, I found myself on a podcast with Dr. Peter Breggin. I wanted to speak about healthcare decay, but he insisted on focusing on Covid. I thought Breggin was either a jerk or a little demented, but I was wrong.

He led me unwillingly into today’s brutal reality. Evil forces had been battering our institutions for decades and actively destroying America. We were creeping into fascism—control by government and corporations rather than by the rule of law. I was learning Plato’s words the hard way, “One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

It was as if I had virtual reality glasses ripped off my head. As I looked around, I saw:

✪ Things were so far gone that, initially, all seemed lost. Hugely wealthy players were pressing perverse agendas and eating into our constitution. 

✪ There was still time to act because some of our institutions survived. But they were weakening and might not last long.

✪ The culture had undergone a shocking degeneration. There were “woke” ideologies everywhere, such as sexual confusion and bizarre, divisive racial theories. I formerly thought these were juvenile bad jokes confined to college campuses. But they had captured the left wing, the media, and most academics. Corporations were cynically complying and profiting.

✪ Many institutions I previously respected, such as hospitals, had turned predatory and lost all regard for human life. 

✪ A few people were standing up, but most were either hypnotized by the propaganda or trying to save themselves by covering their heads and pretending to agree. I soon realized that petting a rabid dog would never work—we had to fight. 

By now, I have been swimming through this mess for years. I write, read, and podcast 40 to 70 hours a week. Besides the US, I have traveled virtually to France, Taiwan, Britain, Dubai, India, Australia, and several Eastern Europe and African countries. I have made many friends. I have met RFK, Jr., and am close to some of his core people. 

My job is to get the memo out, but it is up to you to read it.

At a Florida beach visiting Christian Elliot, the author of the Bankster post. His photogenic friend above let me use her image.

A little about me

My central ethic is that you are nothing if you do not put others first. I also believe in both kaizen and praxis. Kaizen is Japanese for continuous improvement, and praxis means taking action in Greek.

Since today’s doctors never have time to come up for air, philosophies like these are nearly meaningless to us. Careers like mine devolve into Groundhog Days repeated ad nauseam. Between patient care, staff management, medical records, financial worries, and many other hassles, we are consumed by work. Personal and intellectual development stand still for decades, and after a certain point, many of us are reduced to getting our medical education from the drug representatives selling us something. Our patient-first principle fades under these pressures.

I am 69 years old now, and I face other challenges. Some of my friends are dying (more than a few from the vax). I see my end coming at me like a wall. I take no comfort from religion, but I find meaning in getting good work done in the time I have left.

*How big Pharma functions today, from Butchered by “Healthcare:”

The immensely wealthy and powerful pharmaceutical companies have become more and more entitled and emboldened over the past three decades. The FDA requires drug studies for patent approval, so “contract research groups” do trials that spoil science and make questionable medications look good. Mathematicians massage the numbers and bury data that do not support the drugs. Industry employees then write up the trials and send them to the FDA. Since more than half of the regulator’s funding comes directly from corporations, approval is rarely an obstacle.

After the FDA gives permission to sell the drug, corporate ghostwriters spin articles for publication. Then the companies pay prominent physicians to affix their names as authors, and medical journal editors with financial conflicts approve them. Since the journals are primarily funded by the drug industry, publication is nearly automatic. The prestigious authors and publications lend credibility to questionable drugs, devices, and physician practices.

While this happens, physician opinion leaders with transparent financial conflicts such as research grants create prescribing guidelines that minimize risks and exaggerate benefits. These standards of practice are poorly grounded in science, but they authoritatively command practicing doctors how and when to use drugs.

The subsequent marketing campaign goes directly to the public and to individual physicians. Few observers believe either is appropriate, but the former is worse. Along with this, another favored strategy is corporate-funded advocacy groups that disease-monger. This involves spinning horror stories that spread fear to sell drugs.

Notes

Podcast basics: Use a cellphone application. The Apple podcast app works, but I like Downcast better ($3). I download and archive my favorites for listening offline. I like RFK Jr.’s, the Breggins,’ Mercola’s, and Fit Rx, among others.

You can listen to what my guests and I have said by searching “Robert Yoho podcasts” or looking at RobertYohoAuthor.com and robertyoho.substack.com.

Finally, here is the full cover. A few final edits are happening now. The yellow CASSANDRA will be white unless I get outvoted.