BIG PHARMA JUST BOUGHT YOUR DOG AND MIGHT PUT YOU IN JAIL?
PART 2 of 2

 

 

 

Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD, ND and
Elissa Meininger
October 13, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

As for the commonly-understood natural healing arts, the state of Florida has actually defined what veterinarians, and only veterinarians, are now legally-allowed to practice on your animals. We are giving you the details so you can see how unbelievably ridiculous the situation really is. Our comments follow the official Florida definitions.

Acupressure: Applying pressure to specific energy points in the body to promote optimum energy flow. It is a harmless touch therapy that amounts to gently touching somebody. In this case, the Chinese believe it relieves energy congestions in the body, which, once cleared, restores normal energy balance and often relieves pain and spasms.

Aromatherapy: The use of volatile plant oils, including essential oils, for psychological and physical well-being. In human use, these are regulated as food if ingested. Most, however, are used aromatically or as massage oils to enhance various aspects of the human spirit and general health. A little lavender oil on a hanky was commonly used to provide a calming effect on Victorian ladies. A few drops of mint in a cup of tea is a nice pick-me-up. Or, just dab a bit of either on your body so you can smell it and you get the same benefits. Aromatherapy products are considered harmless, over-the-counter products and have been used since ancient times in many parts of the world.

Animal Communication: Interpreting the thoughts of an animal. Biologist and wildlife expert, Marta Williams, in her book, �Learning Their Language: Intuitive Communication With Animals and Nature�, details the history of this healing art and describes it as a developed form of intuition. In addition, �animal communications� could define horse whisperer, Monty Roberts, who is regularly brought to England by Queen Elizabeth for public promotion of his art. Animal whispering involves subliminal communication with animals. This definition could also describe National Geographic Channel�s, Cesar Millan, owner of Cesar Millan�s Dog Psychology Center of Los Angeles, a self-styled dog psychologist who was also featured on Oprah when he helped Oprah cure her dog, Sophie, of �separation anxiety� (in just a few minutes and without the use of any drugs.)

Farriery: Trimming and placing shoes on horses� hooves. Most people are more familiar with the terms �blacksmith� and �horseshoer� to describe this trade.

Flower Essence Therapy: Ingestion of distilled extracts from flowers to enhance emotional health. What this boils down to is a set of formulas developed by Edward Bach, MD, a homeopath who practiced in England in the early part of the 20th Century. Flower essences were developed as over-the-counter products so that ordinary people, consulting any number of books, could use them to ameliorate emotional distresses. Flower essence therapists are people who hang out their shingle so people can get advice on which flower formulas to take. Flower essence dosage means two drops of a very diluted substance put into a glass of water to be sipped or two drops dropped directly in the mouth. Flower essences have been used worldwide for nearly 100 years without any reports of adverse reactions.

Homeopathy: The use of plant, mineral or other substances in minute, diluted amounts to stimulate self-healing. Homeopathic products are inexpensive, non-patentable products that have been available over-the-counter and used round the world for nearly 200 years without any reports of adverse reactions. Homeopathy is an energy medicine so there is only a residue of molecular energy to be found in any homeopathic remedy, which means there is no risk of chemical cocktail effect even if taken with modern medical drugs. Since the 1870�s, Big Pharma has been on a campaign to claim homeopathy is so worthless it doesn�t work at all. The FDA has regulated these products since 1937.

Hands on Healing: Laying hands on the body to channel energy. There are literally hundreds of different touch therapies that fit this definition and for which training is available in the US and around the world. Touch therapies provide direct communication with an animal and can sooth a fearful or angry heart, relax tense and sore muscles and provide any number of other improvements in the mind, body and spirit. Hands on healing has been done on people and animals since ancient times in all cultures.

Magnet Therapy: Using magnets to create a magnetic field that increases circulation, oxygen utilization and energy flow. There are various over-the-counter magnet products that can be used for this purpose.

Nutritional Counseling: Offering advice about nutrition. In some cases this means somebody who sells over-the-counter products who is trained in explaining what the products are used for.

When a DVM monopoly law was passed in Oklahoma in 2003, it merely added �complementary and alternative therapies� to the definitional language of the law without spelling out what these words meant. �Cease and desist� orders went out to anyone in Oklahoma or elsewhere that the licensing board could find who they thought might come to Oklahoma and that they decided was covered by the new DVM monopoly law. Once news of the law became public, it threw the horse industry into a major uproar as Oklahoma City has a $4.5 million�dollar-a year horse show convention business and two race tracks in the state which draw horses from across the US. The law also outlawed dozens of equine massage therapists who had graduated from a state-licensed school of equine massage therapy.

A �cease and desist� order also went out to an Oklahoma-based importer and retail seller of over-the-counter British dietary supplements, homeopathy and aromatherapy products repackaged for animal use. Thanks to the new law, this business had to shut down its website, its principle means of advertising its national business.

As with all states with DVM monopoly laws, horse people, in particular, are put into a big bind, particularly if they show or race their animals. Equine massage therapy is very big business as simple massage techniques or any of the other touch therapies, possibly combined with aromatherapy or flower essence therapy is the fastest, cheapest and most effective way to keep a horse in top physical and emotional health even under the rigors of being hauled all over the countryside then pressed to the limit in competition. Many of these horses are worth tens of thousands of dollars and their owners travel to competitions with an entourage of trainers and handlers who practice natural healing arts. Many drug therapies are illegal in the equine performance world so use of natural products and services may mean the difference between a healthy animal able to perform and an injured animal that may also be suffering from lack of care.

To a horseperson, there is nothing worse than an �ouchy� horse that is upset and not in the mood to cooperate. This is a potentially dangerous situation for the horse and all the people around it (property included) and to realize that Big Pharma, in its �strategic partnership� with the vet industry to create a monopoly put the partnership�s financial interests ahead of basic safety. This shows just how sorry this DVM monopoly game really is.

In another example of the sorry justification of this �strategic partnership�, in the March 2005 issue of The Horse Gazette, holistic DVM, Madalyn Ward, wrote a piece reviewing the cost differences between using natural therapies when possible for a non-competing trail horse that was ridden two to three times a week versus one using strictly modern medical therapies over a period of a year. The cost only differed $139 (natural was cheaper) but it was in the ability to function that told the whole tale. The horse that had access to natural therapies was sick only three days during the survey year versus the horse only treated by modern medicine. That horse was sick 21 days that year.

During an attempt to restore direct access to natural healing practitioners in Oklahoma, an access that had been available since before statehood and which continues to be available BY LAW to parents with children in need of all manner of similar natural therapies, there were several excuses used to stall the bill in the legislature. The most outrageous was the concern, expressed by one vet, that such direct, unsupervised access might mean legalizing cruelty to animals. We are convinced that this statement is nothing more than a smokescreen to suggest that all DVM�s want to do is �protect� animals against harm.

The fact that no one has any recollection of any complaints filed against a natural healing arts practitioner for any reason whatsoever for either man or beast seems to have been missed. In addition, the fact that DVMs� modern medicine brethren, MDs, do not act as gatekeepers or, for that matter, have any regulatory authority over any natural healing arts practice in the state, got ignored in the argument, also.

In short, as the Oklahoma law now stands, any parent can legally take a child to any natural healing arts practitioner in the state without first getting permission from anybody to do so. Conversely, if this same person takes a family pet to a practitioner for the same natural healing arts services the child just received, that same person can be thrown into jail for six months and fined $2,500, thanks to the new DVM monopoly law. Does this make sense?

Out of the 1700 vets licensed to practice in Oklahoma only six practice something called �holistic medicine� according to a national holistic vet professional trade association and not all of them list a full complement of holistic services. Instate veterinarian groups don�t keep any such lists. The state�s veterinary college does not offer courses in such services and it is pretty doubtful many other vet schools in other states are going to go whole hog into the business either.

This lack of commitment on the part of the veterinary medical industry to provide natural healing arts is also reflected in the schedule of seminars and symposiums at the national meeting of the Western Veterinary Conference. This meeting is billed as the largest vet convention in the United States and the Conference is one of the �strategic partners� of the National Commission on Veterinary Economic Issues. Last February, out of 800 seminars, symposiums and the like, only 10 were devoted to �complementary� medicine, of which one was a discussion on how animal owners could be taught to cook homemade dog food. This year�s conference has upped the schedule to 13 �complementary� medicine presentations.

In light of the fact the homemade dog food presentation isn�t listed this year, we have a recipe any natural nutritional counselor would suggest for your dog -- one part steamed brown rice, one part lightly steamed mixed vegetables, and one part lightly saut�ed (as rare as possible) (in extra virgin olive oil) lean turkey, chicken or beef. But please don�t send us any money for this nutritional advice. Elissa would be thrown in jail and I�m not sure what the law is in New York for people like me. I�m only an MD ND who has written lots of books and articles about nutrition and other natural healing arts subjects.

The idiocy of these anti-animal-owner DVM monopoly laws should be obvious. Both Elissa and I have in hand a document called �An Analysis of Relative Risks and Levels of Risk in Canada� commissioned by one of our Friends of Freedom International colleagues. Of the many findings in this study, the most remarkable one is that the risk of dying in Canada from using the services of natural health care providers and using therapeutic products is 14 statistical deaths PER BILLION as compared to an array of modern medical death statistics broken out by each category per real deaths.

I wrote in detail about some of these risks in my book, Death by Modern Medicine. As for putting animals at risk to the dangers of modern medicine, I even wrote about an example of a crossover drug that Pfizer, one of the members of the �strategic partnership� was so anxious to sell. It was its animal arthritis pain killer drug, Rimadyl, which was promoted through a Christmas card $10 discount coupon campaign. Herb, a male Weimaraner owned by the host of the radio show Elissa is on every Saturday (see her bio, below), received not one but several of these cards. Rimadyl, a Vioxx-type drug had big problems from the get go. According to a report put together by The Senior Dog Project, The FDA�s Center for Veterinary Medicine reported that by May 1, 2003, 2,133 dogs had died as a result of using Rimadyl since its introduction in 1997.

An even more alarming article published in USA Today reported that through November of 2004, the FDA received almost 13,000 adverse-event reports about Rimadyl, which was much higher than any other dog pain reliever. USA Today also reported that another dog drug in the same Vioxx-type class as Rimadyl, is Dermamaxx, developed by another of the American Veterinary Medical Association�s �strategic partners�, Novartis. Since its launch in 2002, the FDA has had 2,813 adverse event reports including 630 deaths.

The market for dog arthritis pain meds tops $130 million a year and, according to USA Today, it is growing about 13% a year. However according to the FDA, 3,200 dogs have died and records show there have been almost 19,000 adverse reaction to them.

These are not the only reports about animal drugs and vaccines that are alarming, but they should represent a vivid reminder that if you have a companion animal, you have just been put into a bind�..do right by your pet and risk jail time and a fine, or allow the local vet to treat your animal pal in a way you think might be too risky for you if you and the rest of your family are a regular users of natural healing arts products and services. IF you think these DVM-monopoly laws stink, there are several things you can do about it.

1. Contact Illinois Alliance For Animal Owners Rights to find out what the situation is in your state. www.iaaor.org/home.html This group�s website has lots of key information you need to know along with a list of state contacts.

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2. If your state does not have an animal owners rights group, contact National Health Freedom Coalition. www.nationalhealthfreedom.org This group has affiliated health freedom groups in 40 states and if your state is one of them, these folks may be able to help you protect your rights as what they are doing for health freedom is directly related to animal owners rights. See below for details on the international health freedom meeting these folks are hosting starting October 27. You may want to attend.

3. Send a copy of this article (and other information like it) to your state legislators. They need to know what the real story is regarding DVM-monopoly laws.

 

ACT FOR HEALTH FREEDOM NOW: Go to www.friendsoffreedominternational.org and purchase "Death by Modern Medicine" and view and purchase the new movie on Codex and Free Trade called "We Become Silent" by Kevin Miller. Proceeds from the sale of these products are crucial to help fund our health freedom action. For state action go to www.nationalhealthfreedom.org.

� 2005 Carolyn Dean - All Rights Reserved