Peter Barry Chowka is a writer, journalist, medical-political analyst, editor, and photographer. Since the 1970s he has worked in a variety of media (periodicals, radio, nonfiction films, television, and online) to report on issues and personalities in the fields of national politics, medical policy, popular culture, the environment, and innovative health options.

A particular focus of his work has been to document the history and evolution of innovative and alternative medicine with an extensive emphasis on the War on Cancer and alternative cancer therapies. His reporting has ranged from inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway to the leading innovative clinical centers around North America. He has interviewed scores of thought leaders in the field, including Larry Dossey, MD, James Gordon, MD, Bernie Siegel, MD, and (more often than any other journalist) two-time Nobel Prize winning scientist, humanitarian, and nutritional therapy proponent Linus Pauling, PhD.

Peter has also interviewed many political figures and policy makers, including Sen. Bob Dole, Sen. George McGovern, Patrick J. Buchanan, California Gov. Jerry Brown, Gov. Bill Clinton (when he was campaigning for President in 1992), Gov. George Wallace, and many others.

Peter's numerous articles in East West, Nutrition Science News, Alternative Medicine, Let's Live, New Age Journal, Country Living's Healthy Living, The Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, and other publications have explored the limitations of medical orthodoxy, a broad range of innovative treatment options, and the mainstreaming of alternative medicine.

He has also written for the peer-reviewed scientific literature, most recently "Controlling blood sugar with nutrients & botanicals" published in Advance for Nurse Practitioners (Adv Nurse Pract 2003 Feb;11(2):22).

Over the years, Peter has emerged as one of the most prolific, independent, and probing reporters and commentators in the fields of Altermative Medicine, Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM), and the politics of health care. In particular, his body of work has helped to redefine the role that innovative and alternative therapies play in modern health care.

Peter has appeared as an expert guest on hundreds of radio and TV talk shows all over North America, many of them at the national network level (including NBC-TV, PBS, ABC TalkRadio, and the CBC in Canada), and in major film and television documentaries. On April 24, 2007, Peter was a guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, broadcast on over 500 stations coast to coast. Over the years, Peter has worked with or been interviewed by many other journalists and talk show hosts including Geraldo Rivera, Tom Snyder, Michael Reagan, David Brudnoy, and Tom Leykis. Peter is the subject of a chapter in distinguished Prof. David J. Hess, PhD's book Evaluating Alternative Cancer Therapies: A Guide to the Science and Politics of an Emerging Medical Field (Rutgers University Press, 1999).

In 1999, Peter wrote actress Jane Seymour's on camera narration for the award winning thirteen-part PBS series Healthy Living.

As a widely published photojournalist, Peter has complemented his written reportage with a unique and evocative visual record. For example, Peter's History of Alternative Medicine and the War on Cancer features several hundred of his photographs and personal reminiscences of encounters with CAM pioneers including Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, PhD at his home near Big Sur, California; Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, MD, PhD, another Nobel prize winner and the discoverer of vitamin C; and Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, the co-founder of Orthomolecular Medicine.

Peter is particularly well known for his investigative reporting into the Hoxsey Therapy. He appears prominently on camera throughout the 1987 feature length, independent documentary film Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime, a.k.a. Hoxsey: Quacks Who Cure Cancer? His efforts have been instrumental in helping to bring the promising Hoxsey herbal treatment to the attention of the public, mainstream medicine, and policy makers.

Peter was a consultant to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, co-chaired by Sens. Bob Dole and George McGovern in the 1970s. From 1985-1990, he advised the U.S. Congress's Office of Technology Assessment which examined a variety of alternative cancer therapies for its definitive 1990 report, Unconventional Cancer Treatments. In 1992 Peter was appointed to two of the first program advisory panels of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) new Office of Alternative Medicine including one devoted to CAM databases and information dissemination. His contributions are included in the NIH's 1994 publication, Alternative Medicine: Expanding Medical Horizons.

In March 2001, Peter was invited by Commission Chairman James Gordon, MD to testify on the subject of the Internet and alternative medicine at a meeting of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy in Washington, D.C.

Since he began to work with the Internet in 1994, Peter has published over 500 articles and interviews online.

Since 1992 and the emergence of Bill Clinton on the national scene, Peter has been investigating the political push for "universal health care" which he sees as the most serious threat to Americans' freedom, autonomy, and choice in healing since the time of the Founding Fathers. In May 2007, the Institute for Health Freedom's highly regarded newsletter Health Freedom Watch published Peter's feature article, "Government Begins to Enforce Conventional Medicine Mandates on Americans."

In June 2007, the respected online conservative publication American Thinker began publishing Peter's articles on socialized medicine in the context of the Michael Moore film SiCKO. Peter's articles at American Thinker may be accessed here.