The editor of Healthy and Natural Magazine, Michael L. Keenan, recently spoke with Sir Jason Winters about his experiences and asked him what direction he sees the development of natural/alternative health healing:

Michael L. Keenan (MLK): Our readers are somewhat familiar with the experience you suffered that led you to try alternative therapies in treating cancer. Could you tell us about each of the herbal remedies - the herbalene, the chaparral and the red clover to which you attribute your miraculous recovery?

Jason Winters (JW): Well, you know when they gave me ninety days to live, I went home and climbed into bed. They gave me the opportunity to die at the hospital or at home and I chose home. I started reading religious books and was surprised to find that in the Bible, it mentioned herbs for medicine twenty-seven times. And I was later to find out from the Archbishop of Canterbury in England that the herb referred to in the Bible, he thought, was red clover, and it had been used for centuries to purify the blood. And so that was one herb.

While I was laying in bed, I also read about Buddha - how he told the Indian people 2,500 years ago to use herbalene, a special herb that grows in India, for their tumors. And I didn't know that they had cancer 2,500 years ago. That was the second herb that I'd tracked down.

The third herb I found, was when I was making movies with Audey Murphy (the "B" westerns). In those days we used to hire hundreds of Indian and Mexican actors to attack the wagon trains and we always used to win. But come break time, well, the sophisticated "white people" would have black coffee and smoke cigars and eat jelly donuts and that sort of thing. The Indian and Mexican people would get to one side and they'd cut down a cactus and make a tea of it. One of them was Chaparral and the other was Indian Sage. It Used to smell terrible and I asked them once, "What do you drink this horrible stuff for? And they said, "It's a blood purifier - an ancient remedy." So that was the third herb.

And it turned out that the three herbs from the three continents mentioned by three different prophets have been used for centuries. And I found out while I was giving a lecture the other day that Jason Winters’ Herbal Tea - a combination of those three herbs - are the best antioxidants in the world. How did Jesus and Buddha and Baha ‘i’ ulla and Krishna and Hippocrates know about antioxidants? And so it went around in a complete circle. In fact, I didn't discover a thing, it's just that in terror and desperation I started looking for a way where I wouldn’t die right away and it worked for me.

MLK: Could you tell us why there was such a drastic difference in the effectiveness when you mixed the three herbs together?

JW: I didn’t know it at the time. I was drinking tea made with one herb, either Indian Sage, Herbalene or Chaparral, then rinsing out the pot after each. One morning at five-to-ten, I was lying on the floor and I didn't have enough energy to go through all this another day. I thought, to heck with it, I'll mix them all together because I'm going to die anyway! And as soon as I took the first sip, something happened to me and it was astounding. I drank a gallon of this stuff every day for nine weeks because I didn't have anyone to tell me how much or how little to use. But after nine weeks, I went back to the cancer clinic and they couldn't find one thing wrong with me except for being under weight.

The strange thing Is, Dr. Pierce - an oncologist - came to me to ask if he could test the stuff to see why it worked, or if it worked. I said sure, so he took it to his laboratory in Scotland, and two weeks later called me and said. "I'm sorry to let you know this, but those herbs didn't cure a damn thing!" I said, "what do you mean? I'm better aren't I?" And he said, "Let me tell you something, God didn't throw us down here and say, 'There's 10,000 fast food restaurants, there's pollution in the air, pollution in the water-have a good time.' He gave us something in our body called the immune system to heal our bodies and keep us healthy." It's natural to be healthy - unnatural to be unhealthy - even though we've got that backwards in America today.

He said that, in biblical times, any one of those herbs would, and did, work to purify the blood so that natural immunity could work - but in today's world we are so polluted that it took the combined efforts of the three herbs from the three continents to purify your blood. "Jason," he said, "All that happened is it purified your blood and your body healed itself." He said, "The strangest thing we found, however, was that Red Clover is accepted worldwide for being a health drink and so is the Indian Sage, Chaparral and other herbs. Yet when you mix it with the herb that Buddha spoke about 2,500 years ago - Herbalene - well, that's the difference. The Herbalene acted as a catalyst and it made the other two twenty-seven times stronger."

And he was the one that asked me, "how on earth did Buddha know about this, a catalyst, 2,500 years ago?" and that's why it worked, they didn't cure any illness-they simply purify the blood. He said, "Didn't you notice every spot and blemish disappearing from your body?" And I said, "Yes, I did!" And he said, "That's why blood purification, faith and your body healed itself."

And that's the end of the story. Since that time, C. Everett Coop, the ex-Surgeon General of the U.S., came out with his paper and he sent me the first copy. It said that antioxidants are the best disease fighters in the world today and he was saying exactly the same thing, in different words, that Jesus and Buddha talked about.

MLK: Why was it that these herbs worked together to produce a healing power much stronger than the simple addition of the power of the three? Do you think there's a lesson here about a holistic approach versus a more narrow or single treatment approach?

JW: Exactly, I think if you just mixed a whole bunch of herbs together, it's not so good, but sometimes mixing three herbs together makes it ten times better than taking them separately. Actually, Dr. Ian Pierce and Prince Charles in the hospital, were talking about that with me. I think that you can give people the very best medicine in the world, but if they are going out and eating a ton of meat, and drinking ten cups of coffee and smoking, and have this depressed attitude that most people have after watching TV and reading the newspapers - you can give them the best medicine and herbs in the world and it won't work.

MLK: You've spent some time with heads of state, industry leaders, celebrities and others of above average wealth and power. I know that much of your purpose is to promote alternative approaches to health and to promote natural medicine. I suppose that at some point in their lives, even the most wealthy and most powerful come face to face with the reality that when it comes to solving a critical problem, concerning a degenerative disease, all the money and power are useless if it's expended on a therapy, a science or a philosophy that simply doesn't work. Could you tell us about some of the interesting responses you've had?

JW: Yes, for instance a man named Viscount Hans Buchart Peterson of Denmark, who used to be a high-powered person in the government, fought against alternative therapies until it was discovered he had a terminal illness. Then he made a complete turn around. For a long time he was importing our tea and giving it away free to the people. Now he is an alternative therapy practitioner - that's a complete turn around.

I think that the hundreds of highly placed people around the world who support and practice alternative healing therapies... well we need to talk about them in America because the American public seems to think that the alternative-therapy field is full of nuts and quacks. This isn't true. Prince Charles worked for nine years, day after day, in government to get homeopathy and osteopathy approved by the government through parliament, and now it's available in many hospitals in England and is covered by National Health.

Isn't this most important for the man in the street in America to know that it's not quacks and "hippies," it is highly-placed people - I mean I'm going now to see Lee Kwan Yu in Singapore. I leave tomorrow midnight, and from there on to China. There are so many famous people that I would love to get to contact you so that you can interview them.

MLK: You've written about Prince Charles' work in promoting alternative and natural medicine in the UK, can you tell us something about the British health campaign, its faults, its strengths, and how Prince Charles' campaign figures into the British health system?

JW: Well, the one "unfortunate thing" about the National Health system in England, is that you have to sit for a long time to see a doctor because everyone can get free health. A friend of mine that I went to school with who is the same age as I, sixty-five (his name is Walter Mays), wrote me a letter a couple of years ago, and was complaining bitterly that if he had a triple bypass operation in 1991 it would have cost $7, but today's equivalent of $7 has skyrocketed to $24. I was astounded that he could complain about that. It's amazing, isn't it?

There is good and bad in England's health care system, but at least you don't get a homeless person living under a bridge who needs attention but doesn't get it. The police will come by, pick him up, take him to the hospital for a complete exam with a cardiogram-all free of charge. There we take care of our old and we take care of our young.

Here in America, people think that old is sixty or something and they start getting terrified about "making ends meet' or becoming dependent on their families. In England or China none of that happens. You don't even have to give it a second thought. If you are old and you can't make it on your own, you are taken care of. If you are ill, they will pick you up with an ambulance, for free, and take you to a hospital, where you really do get excellent care.

I was just sitting on the edge of a bed in the hospital, getting a second opinion on how soon I would die, when Prince Charles came in to see the man in the next bed - Mr. Muggeridge, who was dying of cancer. He came up and he looked at my chart and he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Don't worry Mr. Winters, only God can tell you when you're going to die." Unfortunately today the press only publishes his personal problems.

MLK: In your travels around the world, have you found health care systems - governmental or grass roots - that offer good examples to countries looking for ways to rejuvenate failing health care systems?

JW: As a matter of fact, America spends ten or eleven times more money on health research than any other country, and yet there is an astounding thirty-seven other countries more healthy than ours. That’s devastating! If my wife goes into a hospital in the Philippines, she gets an x-ray, a full consultation, and herbal medicine if she requires it-all for about $5. You can't even get a prescription refilled in the U.S. unless you go to a doctor and spend $50. It's a great big mess isn't it?

I was speaking to a Dr. Pan in Singapore, he told me he didn't want to give me a prescription for my sinuses because it causes so many side effects. He would rather give me this herbal remedy. I said, "Well that's good because I'm into herbs anyway." It cleared it up in a couple of days and yet if I'd been given the prescription I'd have had to take it for sixty days, watch out for the side effects, and if I dropped dead, see a doctor right away - It's ridiculous.

MLK: Your son Raymond has told me that your main work is promoting alternative health and natural medicine around the world. What are your goals? What do you want to see happen? What do you want to convey and to who?

JW: Well, they played the "Sightings" show again the other day on television for the second time. They did a segment on us and our herbs, and once again we are deluged with thousands of phone calls because of that. I know that God reached down and started choking me to death to smarten me up about me smokin' and drinkin' and chasin' women. I know that I must make alternative health as available in hospitals, clinics and doctors' hospitals as the so-called orthodox therapies.

My job according to Prince Charles, is to get out and be a peacemaker and get everyone to work together for the benefit of mankind. This ridiculous stuff about the drug company that spent one hundred thousand dollars on developing a drug and then five hundred thousand dollars testing it - it causes them to sell it expensively to get the money back, meanwhile squashing the man down the street who is selling herbs that are "unproven" and "unsafe." Unproven - my God, five thousand years of popular use and it's unproven. It's so ridiculous!

The only thing I enjoy in life is trying to get that idea through to all of the governments in the world - all of us working together for the benefit of mankind - conceit, ignorance, greed pushed by the wayside. If you see someone dying - if you’ve been in his position as I have, my God, I'm telling you he needs help now, we can't keep on putting it off. All of us must work together.