The stage becomes a ship in flames Welcome to our holeThrow your body overboard And we'll play some rock 'n roll

 One of the voices in the back of my head has spent the last two hours singing the lyrics of "Spirit" to the tune of "Get a Grip on Yourself" and then vice versa.

Don't make me pull over and stop the body, voices.

How it started

How it's going

Suffering convictions on a two-way stretch insideThe air in here is pretty thin, I think I'll go outside

Letter to Radio Yerevan:
Is it true that David Noakes learned of the mystic molecule GcMAF and its all-curative properties from one Ian Crane holding forth at a meeting in 2009 (convincing him that a role as medical entrepreneur would be more congenial than far-right politics), as Noakes wrote in a third-person puff piece to promote his keynote-speaker appearances at Ian Crane's "Alternative Views" conspiracy congresses?

In the spring of 2009, David Noakes listened to a presentation in Ghent, Belgium on Codex Alimentarius by some guy called Ian R Crane. During the course of his presentation, Ian stated there was a little-known cure for cancer called GcMAF. After the talk, David went home and put it into Google.

In principle, it is true; except that a full account of events would include the webstore 'dcashop.eu' that Noakes had set up by September 2010, pimping 'DCA' (sodium dichloroacetate) as a cancer cure, in parallel with getting his GcMAF scam off the ground. That is, he was already actively searching for ways to insert his snout in the trough of Alt-Med cancer treatments. He had stolen the DCA grift from Jim Tassano - an American vermin exterminator and self-taught oncological consultant - as well as appropriating Tassano's bogus case-studies.



In a unique and enlivening perspective on Noakes' trial, Scott Tips of the Fraternal Order of Med-Scammers National Health Federation complains of a crucial omission from the story: his own part in the golden chain of transmission.

There is much more to David’s background; but cutting to the chase, he radically switched careers after hearing the late Ian Crane speak about GcMAF at a speaking event held in Ghent, Belgium in 2009. Interestingly enough, Ian Crane only knew about GcMAF because of me, since previously Ian and I had been touring western England giving speeches together and I, among other topics, spoke about GcMAF to our audiences. But the chain of knowledge doesn’t even end there, as I myself had learned of GcMAF from Bill Sardi in the Fall of 2008.

In the absence of fluency in French, Tips' report dwelled on the professional appearance of the defense lawyers and the authoritative convincing tones of their delivery. His report was written for an audience of donors, whose generosity may have gone towards paying those lawyers and from whom more donations are sought for the appeals, so it would have been surprising if Tips had disparaged them as a stumbling mumbling shower of pusillanimous plonkers whose incompetence was to blame for the conviction.*

Despite the language obstacle, Tips ended his report in confidence that the prosecution had failed to present even the vestige of a case, the alleged crimes being international in scope with no evidence that any of it had specifically been crimed on French soil. Also, all moneys had been properly laundered, and none of the allegedly defrauded cancer patients had been called as witnesses to testify that they were both defrauded and still alive. So you can imagine his surprise first at the Guilty finding and then at the four-year sentence.

Lynda Thyer received a three-year sentence, half suspended and the other half covered by the 19 months she has already spent in pre-trial custody while Noakes was eluding the coppers as a Fugitive From Justice... a Scarlet Pimpernel without the sword-play or witty badinage. This had been thoroughly signalled by the magistrates after the verdict, but before sentencing, when they released her with permission to leave France.

Scott Tips' donors did not contribute towards the legal defense of Leslie Hutchings and David Halsall so their lawyers did not receive such positive reviews. Even so, their sentences were similarly suspended, the court viewing them as lacking the brains to have had any central role in the crimes (we also learn for the first time that the fifth defendant was one Michael Norton, Leslie's partner, sentenced in absentia as he is evidently in custody in Poland for criming of some kind). Certainly Halsall does not come across as over-endowed with insight.

“I simply did what I was told. I didn’t know that I would have to face a Nuremberg Trial”.

The severity of Noakes' sentence does not speak well for the crowd-funded legal team. From Tips' perspective, it was really the fault of Hutchings, for not taking responsibility for his crimes and for being better-groomed.

While Lyn’s testimony was generally positive and good, her sister’s was not as clear. Probably the best-dressed person in the room, Leslie Banks took the stand immediately after Lyn turned away from the witness stand and then proceeded to deflect blame from herself. “I wasn’t informed” was one of her regular responses to the judge’s questions about the regulatory murkiness of GcMAF.

But in some ways it is better than an acquittal would been, and Tips is even now inviting NHF readers to reach deeper into their pockets and give more money for the appeal. Also too, the more time Tips spends following a legal case in a French courtroom, the less time he can spend traipsing around Europe to speak at antivax rallies.

* Trevor Banks -- brother of Lynda and Leslie -- is also credited with herding another group of donors to pay for the legal representation paid for by NHF donors.

A very last-minute fundraising campaign organized by Lyn’s brother Trevor Banks raised the money needed to pay for Lyn’s expensive, new attorney Olivier Forray.

For an alternative account, filtered through a Gallic sensibility, see here. It mentions a conviction in Switzerland, presumably in absentia: "En Grande-Bretagne et en Suisse, M. Noakes a été condamné pour vente de médicament non autorisé".

As it happens, Swiss media have mentioned a local inquiry into Noakes' activities, which was continuing in November 2017 when "A doctor from a former Soviet republic, employed at this establishment" [Bussigny] was fined for failing to register to practice locally. Any more recent updates have eluded my search.

[Previous episode here. H/t Dora at HIVforum]

Committed for insanity and crimes against the soul

UPDATE: Here is an aspect of the Noakester's business activities of which I was not previously aware: in an English-language Lausanne paper from the period of the Noakes / Ruggiero cancer-cure cash-extraction facility in Bussigny.

It seems as if Ruggiero and Noakes had ideas of starting a franchise, and were recruiting wannabee oncologists for the lower levels of the pyramid.