Doesn’T Give

Sir Albert

Two Damns

From JA N- WER NER HENTE in Melbourne The Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, Sir Albert Henry, has strongly attacked Australia’s Health Minister, Mr Hunt, and other medi cal critics of controversial cancer therapist Dr Milan Brych.

Sir Albert stopped in Melbourne in August on his way to the South Pacific Forum in Papua New Guinea.

He had with him his Health Min ister, Dr Joe William.

Asked about statements made by Mr Hunt, recently, Sir Albert said; “I don’t give a damn what Mr Hunt says. I’m talking for my country, and it’s an independent country. I won’t be dictated to by Mr Hunt, or by anyone else.

“If Mr Brych is killing people, as Mr Hunt claims, I would be con demning him. But he’s saving people and 90% of them are Australians.

"I don’t give a damn if he doesn’t have a certificate in other countries, I’ve given him a certificate to save people, and he is legal in my coun

try.”

Sir Albert, 70, revealed that his government had appointed Dr

Brych director of the new Cook Is lands Medical Research Institute, which will start work in a new $400,000 centre early next year.

“We are building a place for him to do his cancer research work, and accommodation for his patients, as well as facilities for him to do research into our own Cook Island tradition of using herbs on pa tients,” he said.

“We are getting the money for this centre from Americans and Australians. Many of them are rela tives of people who have been saved by Dr Brych.

Sir Albert said he had no differences of opinion with Mr Fraser, or Mr Muldoon.

There was a “dark conspiracy” between the Premier of the Cook Is lands, Sir Albert Henry, and a “crook, charlatan and swindler”, Mr Jack Birney, a NSW MP, claim ed in the Australian Parliament early in September. Mr Birney said Australian doctors were openly recruiting patients for a bogus “cancer healer”, Milan Brych.

Mr Birney said Brych.had been struck off the NZ medical register in November, 1974, on the basis that he fraudulently claimed to hold medical degrees. Brych had then set himself up in the Cook Islands under the patronage of Sir Albert Henry.

He drew the attention of the House of Representatives to what he called the “Rarotonga rip-off”, under which Australians and Amer icans were asked to pay $7 000 and $lO 000 a patient. They were people with terminal diseases who looked to Brych for a cure.

Sir Albert had made Brych direc tor of the new Cook Islands Medical Research Institute, which would cost about $4OO 000. Brych ex pected to start work in the centre in 1978. The only possible way to finance the centre was by “ripping off’ money from Australians and Americans worried to the depths of despair by their terminal condition.

Mr Birney said the hospital in which Brych worked had no auto matic suction, oxygen or similar amenities at the bedside of the pa tients. There were no elaborate laboratory or X-ray facilities.

Mr Birney said the Australian Health Insurance Act should be amended to preclude benefits pay ments for services by people such as Brych.