Last Saturday, I wank-listed a certain Venezuelan doctor who falsely claimed, on two separate occasions, that both Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro were dying. Those rumors have since been roundly refuted, but their purpose was clear: It was all about stirring the pot of political “uncertainty” and “instability”, in the hopes of discrediting both leaders (and, in the case of Chávez, impeding his re-election…another thing that, happily for Venezuela, didn’t happen.) The beneficiary of all this zozobra? Gringolandia, of course. So naturally, their media were all over this guy’s fairy tales. They headlined him as a “respected physician” with privileged access to top-secret information. In reality, none of the “information” he imparted was even the least bit accurate. So, basically, the anglo whore media were giving credence to a bunch of obvious bullshit, from a guy who had no access to either of those leaders, and no access to their private medical information, either. And it was all to serve the interests of the Miami Mafia and their good buddies in the State Dept. Now, let’s take a closer look at the crapagandist who spread all that bullshit around:
José Rafael Marquina, the Venezuelan physician who falsely predicted the death of Cuban leader Fidel Castro a few days ago, as he had done some months ago with the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, was an activist of the right-wing party of ex-president Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP), who was responsible for the Caracazo massacre in the Venezuelan capital in 1989.
While he was a student at the University of Los Andes, where he obtained his degree, Marquina placed himself at the service of CAP’s party, declaring himself to be an unconditional admirer of him.
Marquina maintained his ties to CAP after both went to live in Miami. Witnesses say that the political medico had a picture of CAP hanging in his office, signed “To my friend José Marquina, with love.”
Neither the Spanish daily paper, ABC, nor its counterpart in Miami, El Nuevo Herald, reported these facts when they spread the false information in their pages and on the Web in a disinformation operation synchronized with the media networks by the US State Department.
José Rafael Marquina was secretary-general of the Acción Democrática (AD) party at the University of Los Andes, and everything indicates that he dedicated more attention to his partisan militancy than to science.
In fact, in Miami, Marquina promoted himself in the local advertising rags as a specialist in “sleep medicine”, which “practically cures all patients”.
In an interview with the commercial website D’Latinos, where he bought advertising space, Marquina, like a true charlatan, stated some months ago that “sleep serves us as a detoxification process of the brain, to replace neurotransmitters.”
His hero, ex-president CAP, was the main culprit responsible for the Caracazo of February 1989, which took place in Caracas. The then president ordered the intervention of the police and armed forces to suppress protests. Three hundred dead was the official figure given by the government, whereas unofficial sources speak of more than a thousand dead.
Carlos Andrés Pérez’s ties to the CIA showed in many circumstances. As minister of the Interior under the rule of Raúl Leoni, he was compared to Pedro Estrade, the head of the “Gestapo” of dictator Pérez Jiménez, he of sinister fame.
Under the auspices of the “hero” of “doctor” Marquina, Venezuela experimented with the concepts of “disappearances” and the “theatres of operation” of Cuban-American CIA agents which he himself placed at all levels of his secret police force. CAP was the one who allowed Cuban-born assassins, such as the repugnant Luis Posada Carriles (alias Comisario Basilio), Ricardo “El Mono” (The Monkey) Navarrete, and Rafael Rivas, to take absolute control of the Venezuelan secret police (DISIP).
Carlos Andrés Pérez died on December 25 of last year, of a heart attack, in Miami.
Translation mine. Linkage added.
So, “Dr.” Marquina is more of an AD political operative than a truly respectable physician? Shocked, shocked. And he has ties to the murderous CAP, too! Will wonders never cease?
Meanwhile, a bit of further digging reveals that Marquina lives and practices in Naples, Florida; that he is specialized in critical-care medicine, internal medicine, pulmonology and sleep medicine (all board-certified); that his HealthGrades rating is an okay but not terribly distinguished 3 1/2 stars (out of a possible 5), and that he’s on Twitter. He also produced this perky, but not terribly informative, self-profile on YouTube:
Which is all very nice, I must say. Unfortunately, none of this qualifies him in the slightest to pronounce on the health of leaders with whom he has no contact, personal or professional. He is not specialized in oncology (cancer care, relevant to the case of President Chávez), nor cardiology and neurology (relevant to Compañero Fidel Castro, one would think, if the latter had indeed suffered an “embolic stroke” and been left in a “near-vegetative state” — which he clearly hasn’t).
And if Jean-Guy Allard’s piece, which I translated above, is at all accurate, then he clearly has no grasp of the role neurotransmitters play in the brain, either. “Detoxification of the brain” is a fashionable nonsense term, considering that the only organs that actually do the job of detoxifying the body are the liver and kidneys. And there is no evidence, either, that dreams “detoxify” the brain, much less that they “replace neurotransmitters”. Their relevance is best left to psychiatry…a specialty which, I notice, is also not on Dr. Marquina’s CV.
BTW, here’s his D’Latinos interview about Chávez, in Spanish, if you’re in the mood for a good laugh:
And here’s another in which he’s even crazier, claiming Chávez is relying on Santería, of all things:
I’m still looking for the bit about sleep medicine as a cure-all and brain-detox and neurotransmitter replacer. If any of you can find it, please post a link in the comments below. (It’s quite possible that it has since been removed. Wouldn’t want to look like a quack, would we?)
Like I said, this man is not an oncologist, but here he is, playing one on TV. A lot of his “scientific” claims about the nature of cancer are frankly bullshit. And he’s mixing politics in very shamelessly (or shamefully, for him…CAP is not a politician ANYONE should be proud to have had for a “friend”.)
I don’t know about you, but if ever I’m in Naples and having sleep troubles, I don’t think I’ll be looking this guy up.
