ASAM, Dr. Ruth Fox ‘s legacy is this collusion with private contracts with governmental agencies and private corporations for non NIH research.   Dr. Ruth Fox’s Project MK-ULTRA a CIA mind control program was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission.  George Herbert Walker Bush  was CIA Director from January 30, 1976 – January 20, 1977.   Over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, and native Americans.  Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations." This was sanctioned governmental human rights abuses done by these LSD researchers and sometimes resulted in permanent disability and even death.  The CIA  itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense and monitoring was not done qualified scientific observers.  

Medical doctors are necessary to manipulate public policy and to further the financial interests of the  criminal enterprise of Straight and its progeny,  which use vulnerable patients for profits while ignoring patient's real needs and fostering a system of abusive human rights violations.  So high level medical doctors were used to provide legitimacy such as former White House drug czars Robert DuPont, MD (a former paid Straight consultant) and Donald Ian MacDonald, MD (Straight's former national medical research director) who are members of the International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse (a DFAF subsidiary).   Richard Schwartz, MD, former medical research director for Straight - Springfield is another forum member. 

The  predecessor of Straight Inc. the Seed opened for business in June 1970  in Florida.

  The Seed was a substance abuse treatment center for adolescents and children.   So in 1970 with a start up grant for $1 million dollars  from the federal government's NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse )--a subsidiary of the sprawling NIMH (National Institue of Mental Health) the Seed program was established.  Melvin Sembler's son was enrolled in Seed and Melvin Sembler, (personal friend to George H. W. Bush),  became President of the Board of Straight Inc.  Director of NIDA, psychiatrist Robert L. DuPont, Jr.  had approved the grant. 

The American Society of Addiction Medicine was "founded" by Dr. Ruth Fox,  the architect of the Straight Inc.  rehabilitation centers and the guru of mind control techniques using abusive coercive control and experimental LSD drug therapy.  The CIA had experimented with LSD on prisoners at the NIH's lock-up hospital in Lexington, Kentucky where NIH had set up its own experimental program called MATRIX. 

Ruth Fox was the founder of ASAM — The American Society for Addiction Medicine — that exists to promote A.A. and the 12-Step treatment of alcoholism, this is done by pretending to give doctors helpful advice about what works to treat or cure alcoholism. Dr. Ruth Fox, Medical Director of the National Council on Alcoholism in the United States, had used LSD in alcoholic rehabilitation.  She endorsed the use of the drug LSD for therapeutic use.  She claimed that LSD  made the experimental subjects have a new feeling of compassion and tenderness for others.  Dr. Ruth Fox also felt that LSD was very helpful in changing alcoholics' thinking and behavior:  “LSD does seem to make the patient more willing to undertake the total program necessary for his recovery. After LSD most of the patients who formerly refused to cooperate were willing to take disulfiram, attend group therapy and to affiliate with A.A.”  Ruth Fox,Alcoholism, Behavioral Research, Therapeutic Approaches, 1967, page 775, quoted in Slaying the Dragon, William L. White, page 229.

And Dr. Ruth Fox was such a unethical research scientist that she gave her patients disulfiram and then alcohol, to deliberately make them very sick, in an attempt to build up an aversion to alcohol. Even after she discovered that the aversion therapy didn't work, and even after one patient nearly died from an almost fatal reaction to a single ounce of alcohol, she still insisted on giving each patient at least one session of being sick from the disulfiram/alcohol combination, before she released them from the hospital. (See: Disulfiram (Antabuse) as an Adjunct in the Treatment of Alcoholism, Dr. Ruth Fox, in Alcoholism: Behavioral Research, Therapeutic Approaches, edited by Ruth Fox, M.D., foreword by 'Mrs.' Marty Mann, Springer Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1967.)

The ASAM still collects financial donations to the Ruth Fox Endowment Fund and sends the money overseas where the prying eyes of the FBI can't follow it.   The money of the Ruth Rox Endowment fund is used to pay for continuing education (courses about ASAM philosophy and to fund scholarships for FASAM interns and doctors).  

These techniques of using drugs to force compliance out of patients became the hallmark of the new AA, and American Society of Addiction Medicine programs.  The American Society of Addiction Medicine even wrote their own book based in part on Ruth Fox's pioneering treatment of alcoholics with LSD.  No mention is made of the patients who became permanently psychotic or committed suicide under her LSD treatment.  No accounting for violations of civil rights, privacy or human rights. 

This historical abuse of human subjects by substance abuse treatment doctors was well documented in the Congressional Church Committee report and the Rockefeller Commission.  (Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, April 26 (legislative day, April 14), 1976.)  The published evidence indicated that Project MKULTRA involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function on US and Canadian citizens.   Over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign."     Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations."  Dr. Ruth Fox, founder of the ASAM, utilized a variety of drugs including LSD on alcoholics, homeless persons, enlisted military personnel and even on unsuspecting public citizens,  as part of CIA research into mind control.  LSD and other drugs were usually administered without the subject's knowledge or informed consent, a violation of the Nuremberg Code that the U.S. agreed to follow after World War II.   The congressional committee investigating the CIA research, chaired by Senator Frank Church, concluded that "Prior consent was obviously not obtained from any of the subjects".   Following the recommendations of the Church Committee, President Gerald Ford in 1976 issued the first Executive Order on Intelligence Activities which, among other things, prohibited "experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with the informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each such human subject" and in accordance with the guidelines issued by the National Commission.  Subsequent orders by Presidents Carter and Reagan expanded the directive to apply to any human experimentation.

The coercive violence of the Straight program lived on in a series of other rehabilitation centers long after the United States Congress had ordered the organization shut down for human rights abuses.   The Federation of State Physicians Health Programs came from the state chapters of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.  So the Washington Physicians Health Program is the former Washington State Chapter of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

Surprising to most doctors is that the Federation of State Physicians Health Programs has a State Physicians Health Program in almost every state.  This State Physician Health Program is a non governmental organization with tax exempt status and incorporated to limit their Board of Directors from liability. The State Physician Health Program  is now the predominant investigator of any medical professional who might be "impaired" or even a "disruptive doctor".  Under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act there does not even need to be valid legal evidence to remove a doctors license.  Thus doctors, nurses, pharmacists, chiropractors, dentists, and even veterinarians are now controlled by this organization which is the grandchild of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.  It's practices are related closely to those of the leaders of the Straight Inc and Seed rehabilitation centers.   The same web of patient abuse behind closed doors has now gained official status as a governing agency watchdog with coercive control over medical professional's licenses through "monitoring" and investigation.

The esteemed founder of mind control experiments was strongly condemned by the US Congress but the financial association of her and her colleagues with private funding from undisclosed sources continued unabated.  The ASAM doctors who had lost their medical licenses were more than eager to be reinstated as doctors in order to perform research in newly established substance abuse residential treatment centers and to use drugs on captive patients without proper informed consent.  Who could complain, certainly not the “addicted” patients.  So the pharmaceutical companies found “human subjects” who were controllable and who could be forced in locked facilities to take these experimental drugs.

In return for cooperating with the pharmaceutical industries corporate goals there would be political influence exerted to soften certain legislative language to facilitate the ASAM doctors to regain their medical licenses permanently and to erase their soiled records of addictive behaviors and criminal activity.   The ASAM strategically analyzed how to circumvent the medical quality control system that was preventing them from expunging the addiction behavior from their records.  A Federation of State Physicians Health Program’s committee was established for monitoring the addicted ASAM members who wanted their medical licenses back.  

A few states – notably Texas, Florida and Georgia were particularly favorable to former addicts having the court system erase previous criminal infractions. 

For example in Atlanta, Georgia,   Judge Marsh actually co-owed the Talbott Marsh Recovery Center with the former ASAM President George Douglas Talbott.   Judge Marsh court ordered “impaired” persons to be incarcerated in the Talbott Marsh Recovery Center for “treatment” and also made judgment on sealing records of past addictive behaviors of those deemed “cured” by Dr. George Douglas Talbott.   Dr. George Douglas Talbott was known for severe abusive behavior which led to the suicide deaths of many medical professionals under his “monitoring” program.  While ASAM President of the Board, he was successfully sued by Dr. Leon Masters for false imprisonment and abusive treatment.

In addition the ASAM actively courted law enforcement, promising them to take the “impaired physician” off their hands and quietly spirit them away where they couldn’t cause any commotion or public spectacle.  This even included providing direct ASAM training to the King County Sheriff’s Department in Seattle WA so that officers would handle all cases involving licensed medical professionals by turning them over to the ASAM doctors of the Washington Physicians Health Program.  This allowed a seamless flow of persons through assertion of color of law authority of the ASAM doctors over any licensed medical professional.  The first phone call of the police would be to the nongovernmental organization the Washington Physicians Health Program and the ASAM doctors would immediately respond to control the targeted doctor.  The Washington Physicians Health Program contract with the Washington Department of Health was used to promote color of law authority to the ASAM doctors.   The ASAM knew how to manipulate the doctor with coercive force and threats against their medical license.   Law enforcement would not log complaints by doctors against the ASAM/Washington Physicians Health Program because the WPHP was a subcontractor of the Washington Department of Health.  Law enforcement officers would take as absolute truth any diagnosis presented by the WPHP about any “impaired” doctor and would cooperate fully with the ASAM doctors to force the recalcitrant doctor to obey them.   There would be no investigation into the violations of civil or even human rights.

The ASAM and the Federation of State Physicians Health Programs politically worked to change legislative law in each state to be favorable for them to control the investigation into any quality control issues related to doctors or other licensed medical professionals.  Presenting themselves as experts on the treatment of addictions, the ASAM doctors did educational programs to train others to view “problem” doctors through the lens of ASAM principles built around the Dr. Ruth Fox tradition of abusive and coercive control.   

The Physicians Health Program insists that state medical boards refuse to accept already well documented credentials and force applicants to send credentialing to a independent incorporated centralized agency the ASAM  controlled.  This essentially prevents whistleblowers from seeking a medical license in any state in the USA and shuts down a doctor’s ability to even go overseas with a clean record and obtain a medical license.   The ASAM’s and FPHP control over medical licensing is absolute and is not open to law enforcement scrutiny and also not under the control of any governmental body.  The state board of medicine does not control what goes on behind those closed doors.  The US Congress cannot pierce the covert halls of this power and even the FBI is stopped at the door by the protestations of HIPPA and confidentiality which require a high burden of proof in order to obtain a subpoena.    The ASAM addicted doctors have created a system they control and in which they can hide whatever criminal activity they want.  

If law enforcement wants to prevent medical fraud then we must dismantle this FSPHP system of power and control, and put power back in the hands of elected officials and real medical professionals with clean records and no past history of addictive behavior.

The techniques learned by Dr. Ruth Fox in mind control experiments using alcoholics as clinical subjects were easily adapted to silencing whistleblowers.  These principles became the basis for the “Big Book” or the manual used by the ASAM to train all their followers.  Inherent to this ASAM program designed for alcoholics were the following principles:

• We were powerless
• A power greater than ourselves will restore us to sanity
• We were wrong
• Our problems are the result of defects of character
• We admit/confess our sins to persons we had harmed

This kind of dogma is absolutely false for anyone who is an innocent crime victim or victim of trauma.   For persons suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder one of the most important healing concepts is the concept of empowerment and personal control.    Forcing whistleblowers, victims of sexual assault or combat trauma to admit they were morally wrong and suffer from a defect of character is absolutely contrary to what would be right for their personal healing.   Holding a trauma victim in a locked facility and forcing confessions of “sins” in order to be released is essentially psychological coercion and torture.  But this is exactly what the Physicians Health Programs, ASAM, and other associated programs do to all crime victims, combat veterans, whistleblowers, and victims of bullying in the workplace.   Forcing a whistleblower to admit they are powerless and must obey a power greater than themselves is a way of making the whistleblower be silent and to bend to the political and social power of the criminal enterprise. 

One has only to look at the past history of abuse of this substance abuse treatment method to understand how brutally abusive it is (SEED, Straight Inc., Talbott Marsh Recovery Center)  There have been four US Congressional investigations into these abusive programs but they still multiply and thrive in spite of the exposure of their abusive methods.   Now this abusive program has taken hold of the quality control system within the medical community and entrenched themselves as the “monitors” of proper behavior.   The message is clear to all licensed medical professionals:

• Admit you are powerless in front of the power of the ASAM and the Federation of State Physicians Health Programs and you will never “snitch” on any ASAM member.  
• Admit that the power of the ASAM and the Federation of State Physicians Health Programs will rule your life as a professional doctor.
•  Admit you are wrong and have a defective character and need a “recovered” ASAM addict to tell you how to run your life and what you are allowed to do.
• Admit you have “sins” you are embarrassed about and which can be used by the ASAM and the Federation of State Physicians Health Programs for blackmail and extortion.

Dr. George  Douglas Talbott MD is a former president of ASAM, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, which is yet another Alcoholics Anonymous front organization.  ASAM exists to promote A.A. and 12-Step treatment to doctors, and to fool doctors into thinking that 12-Step treatment and Alcoholics Anonymous actually work to cure alcoholics. 

Right now in Atlanta Georgia at the Talbott Recovery Center Dr. George Douglas Talbott, an admitted "recovered" alcoholic is running a rehab clinic that  is specifically aimed at other doctors and medical professionals who have been forced to go through his treatment program by a state review board or professional society.   But history has proven that his program makes doctors and nurses commit suicide.

"At least 20 doctors, nurses and other health professionals who have gone through the Ridgeview Institute's nationally acclaimed treatment program over the past 12 years have killed themselves since leaving the hospital."
— Atlanta Journal Constitution

In May, 1999, just after Talbott stepped down as president of ASAM, a jury awarded Dr. Leonard Masters, of Jacksonville Florida, a judgment of $1.3 million against Talbott, his daughter-in-law Morrison, and other Talbott associates for malpractice, fraud, and false imprisonment, based on Masters' stay at Talbott's Atlanta, Georgia, treatment facility in 1994. 

• In the Belly of the American Society of Addiction Medicine Beast
• Threats and Indoctrination at Talbott Recovery Campus. Reactions to the ASAM/Talbott Trial
• http://www.peele.net/debate/asam.html

The Federation of State Physicians Health Programs hold a contract with the Medical Associations in each state to provide these services and the cost is paid from both the State Department of Health and the Federal taxpayer as well as heavily financially  influenced by malpractice insurance companies and large medical corporations.  Medical Professionals when they apply for their licenses are unwittingly signing a contract for this non governmental agency the State Physicians Health Program to "monitor" them.   The State Physicians Health Program is not itself monitored by anyone for what they do to the licensed professionals behind closed doors.  Suicides are still common.  The ASAM paid to settle a claim in Atlanta involving multiple suicides of licensed professionals at the Talbott Marsh Recovery Center.  Marsh stands for Judge Marsh who was a part owner and financially benefited by forcing people to go to treatment there.

The State Physicians Health Program, a non governmental entity over which the State Department of Health has little supervisory oversight and control has been given almost police like powers to take away the license of any medical professional they choose to target and in addition have been granted by most of the State Legislatures quasi-governmental immunity from being sued for damages from injured persons.   Thus the Federation of State Physicians Health Programs have prevented the bereaved families of the medical professionals who committed suicide from ever receiving  justice. 

You can identify the members of the American Society of Addiction Medicine by the letters FASAM behind their name. The ASAM website still encourages donations to the Ruth Fox Endowment Fund in honor of their "Founder".  But one can wonder whether the ASAM is an organization that truly is meant to serve the patients needing addiction treatment.  Their stated goal of increasing access to addiction treatment can be translated to increasing income of their FASAM members.  ASAM supports research that furthers FASAM financial goals and is geared to increase use of their misguided principles in the ASAM BIG BOOK more widely.  Financial incentives to keep patients captive in abusive addiction treatment centers while making maximum profit is not good public health policy, nor is it quality patient care which should be based on values inherent in the HIPPOCRATIC OATH.   There is no mention of ethical values of patient care in the ASAM  mission statement,  instead their mission statement makes it clear that the goal is to further the  use of their ASAM brand of Addiction treatment.

Remember that a central element to torture is the enforced loss of control and autonomy of the person and that mind control techniques use denying basic needs to a person in order to force submission to power.  This submission to power is what the corrupt criminal enterprise’s protection apparatus is all about.   The Federation of Physicians Health Programs is a corrupt criminal enterprise that is used to hide medical fraud, patient abuse and neglect, human rights violations, drug diversion and money laundering within the medical community.

"Chapter 3, part 4: Supreme Court Dissents Invoke the Nuremberg Code: CIA and DOD Human Subjects Research Scandals". Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Final Report.http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/chap3_4.html. Retrieved 2005-08-24.

"The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Foreign and Military Intelligence". Church Committee report, no. 94-755, 94th Cong., 2d Sess.. Washington, D.C..:United States Congress. 1976. pp. 392.http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book1/html/ChurchB1_0200b.htm.

"Opening Remarks by Senator Ted Kennedy". U.S. Senate Select Committee On Intelligence, and Subcommittee On Health And Scientific Research of the Committee On Human Resources. 1977-08-03.http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/e1950/mkultra/Hearing01

Hallmarks of a cult are, to name a few: a devotion to secrecy as regards beliefs and membership; a belief system that is so esoteric as to be incomprehensible or so derivative as to be patently false; financial requirements that can become onerous; practices or requirements that isolate members from loved ones or bar contact with anyone outside the religion; an obsession with a particular leader who may be charismatic and authoritarian; and of course any systematic physical or sexual abuse. The end result is an emotional and spiritual dependency that is harmful to a person's well-being.  Charles Manson's community in Guyana was called a cult. The followers of Jim Jones committed mass suicide at their community in Guyana in 1978. It can be argued that the Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, who perished in an FBI siege in Waco in 1993 were considered a cult.  So this is the list of the eight criteria cult researcher Dr. Robert J. Lifton believed were involved in thought reform. 

American Society of Addiction Medicine certification FASAM  is not equivalent to medical board certification. On their website the ASAM admits that the ASAM  " examination is not a Board examination. ASAM is not a member of the Board of American Board of Medical Specialties, and ASAM Certification does not confer board Certification. " http://www.asam.org/ExamHistory.html

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)   is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides diagnostic criteria for mental disorders.  The ASAM conveniently refuses to acknowledge the DSM IV R criteria for various addictive disorders and instead has their own criteria which was concocted by their own doctors with histories of addiction.   Dr. George Douglas Talbott was one of the initial writers of the ASAM manual on addiction.  This book is used by ASAM doctors as the bible to diagnosis people with "addiction".   So they created their own criteria and based that on symptoms which in the real DSM IV R are attributed to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Acute and Complex).  The PHP never gives anyone just a diagnosis of PTSD because that would not allow them to legally prevent their whistleblowing testimony to be heard in a court of law.  It is important to recognize the difference between PTSD which is a psychiatric injury as opposed to what is a mental disease.  This is a legal as well as a medical concept.    

Based on this newly concocted diagnostic manual dreamed up by the members of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the ASAM then started their own credentialing program and called the graduates who learned their new diagnostic approach Fellows and gave them the initials FASAM behind their names.  The ASAM is now trying to grandfather in their FASAM members as being boarded experts in behavioral medicine without going through the strenuous residential internships currently required to call a doctor a boarded expert.   Should allegations of domestic violence and human rights violations be permanently erased from a doctor's record so that he can move into a position of national political influence and power? 

There are specific professional organizations which provide Board Specialty training in medicine and psychology.  These organizations have clear stringent guidelines as to who is given the honor and professional status as a boarded expert. Credentialing in the Boarded specialties as a MD is a challenging process that weeds out those without adequate clinical or academic skills.

Even in the field of psychology which is not the practice of medicine,  there are still strict guidelines for board certification.  The American Board of Professional Psychology was incorporated in 1947 with the support of the American Psychological Association. The ABPP is a unitary governing body of separately incorporated specialty examining boards which assures the establishment, implementation, and maintenance of specialty standards and examinations by its member boards. Through its Central Office, a wide range of administrative support services are provided to ABPP Boards, Board Certified Specialists, and the public.A Specialty is a defined area in the practice of psychology that connotes special competency acquired through an organized sequence of formal education, training, and experience.  In order to qualify as a specialty affiliated with the ABPP, a specialty must be represented by an examining board which is stable, national in scope, and reflects the current development of the specialty. A specialty board is accepted for affiliation following an intensive self-study and a favorable review by the ABPP affirming that the standards for affiliation have been met. These standards include a thorough description of the area of practice and the pattern of competencies required therein as well as requirements for education, training, experience, research bases of the specialty, practice guidelines, and a demonstrated capacity to examine candidates for the specialty on a national level.

This is not true of the new board "speciality" criteria of the newly created Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness (ABHW)  - which was previously the American Managed Behavioral Healthcare Association. The goal of the American Managed Behavioral Healthcare Association was to make money on substance abuse treatment and mental health services.  Instead their CEO and Chairman of the ABHW Board, Pamela Greenberg, is also Senior Vice President in the Stephens Inc. company in Dallas TX which supplies financial services for health insurance companies.  The goal of this alliance is to make money for the financial investors (Stephens Group LLC).  Those making management decisions are not trained in medicine or psychology, they are trained in financial assessment, risk management, cost benefit insurance statistical analysis, economics, public policy, survey research and other related fields. They are not medical doctors or psychologists.  

It must be remembered that part of the funding for the State Physicians Health Programs is provided from medical malpractice insurance companies.  The State Physicians Health Program is not designed to help targeted doctors recover and go back to practice,  nor are they designed to truly protect the vulnerable patients from abuse, neglect and medical fraud. The State Physicians Health Program is designed to make their Directors money and to protect large hospital and medical corporations from medical malpractice suits.  The State Physicians Health Program will readily sacrifice a medical doctor's career for corporate profits. 

The Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness (ABHW)http://www.abhw.org/   organization run by Pamela Greenberg is designed to protect certain financial interests such as Medical Malpractice and Health Insurance companies (Aetna, Value Options, Cenpatico, Magellan Health Services, Optum Health Services, Shaller Anderson Behavioral Health, MHN)  and also the financial interests of Big Pharmaceutical companies ( Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca International, Bristol Myers, Reckitt Beckiser).  ABHW mission can be seen at  http://www.abhw.org/page3.html

ASAM states in their mission statement that their goal is to establish addiction medicine as a specialty recognized by professional organizations, governments, physicians, purchasers and consumers of health care services, and the general public. The American Managed Behavioral  Healthcare Association (AMBHA) and the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) are together promoting this new medical boarding and will be grandfathering those who already have the FASAM credentials in without the need for the normal hospital residency. These newly boarded "experts" in behavioral medicine would then be able to compete for Federal Funding on an equal basis to the already existing Medical Doctor Board  and Psychologist certifications in Psychiatry and Psychology but these new graduates would be trained in the Dr. George Talbott and Ruth Fox traditions.  One can only imagine what Dr. George Douglas Talbott ("recovered" alcoholic) and these other FASAM doctors would then do politically and financially with this new credentialing based on past history of medical fraud, patient abuse and human rights violations. 

Advisory Board

Board Of Directors