BUILDING HEALTH FREEDOM FROM THE GROUND UP

 

 

 

Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD, ND and
Elissa Meininger
November 3, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

Elissa and I participated in a health freedom conference in Minnesota over the weekend (October 28-30, 2005) attended by heath freedom fighters from France, England, Canada and the US. These people all want unfettered access to vitamins and other dietary supplements, the right to use the services of natural healing practitioners, and, frankly, want to avoid getting suckered into the rapidly-advancing forced march into the hands of Big Pharma and modern medicine.

Attendees included some of the greats in the health freedom movement who have been leading the charge for more than forty years. In columns to come we will highlight the career of Clinton Miller, a health freedom lobbyist for the past four decades; Wendell Whitman who runs Trinity College of Natural Health and has turned out about 60,000 Certified Natural Health Professionals; and Jim Johnston PhD., Director of the American Health Science University, offering a Certified Nutritionist program and Master's Degree in Nutrition Science since 1980. I mention these two natural healing arts schools because, through their auspices, students of all ages can learn about non-drug-based medicine, which is our only hope for a healthy future.

Other participants at the health freedom conference were manufacturers of natural products, legislators, authors of health books, sales people, educators, lawyers, medical doctors, naturopaths, a full array of natural healers, and folks who are consumers of natural health products and services who all want to do something to protect their health interests. We all came for one purpose - to form a mighty army to work on both the offensive and defensive and to establish TRUE health freedom in America and around the world.

Along with Diane Miller JD, and former Assemblyman Dan Haley, I was honored to be a keynote speaker at this historic event. I say historic because significant health freedom seeds were sown in Minnesota on very fertile ground.

Diane Miller, Director of Legal and Public Policy for the National Health Freedom Coalition, was our host. Diane is a lawyer of uncommon skill in communication and group dynamics. In the past decade she has built a network of dozens of state health freedom leaders and managed to get bills passed that protect the rights of individuals to both practice and obtain the health treatments of their choice. Her unwavering commitment to honor everyone�s position, focus on a common goal, yet keep her own ideals and ethics intact is truly remarkable.

Dan Haley, who you will read about below, is an outspoken critic of Big Pharma and its suppression of cancer cures. We have talked about his book, Politics of Healing, many times in our NewsWithViews.com column. It�s the type of book that you both hate and love. You hate hearing how bad the system is yet you love knowing that there are safe and effective alternatives to the drugs, surgery, and radiation that are the only tools of modern medicine.

For decades, particularly in America, there has been a battleground between allopathic medicine (or what I call �modern medicine� in my book, Death by Modern Medicine) and all its competitors whose modalities are largely based on the laws of nature, not theoretical ideas that go in and out of fashion like Thomas Jefferson described as some �fanciful theory of corpuscular attraction�.that lets him [the modern medical expert] into all nature�s secrets short hand.�

While it is downright American to have lively debates over the strengths and weaknesses of all manner of medical ideas, protocols and products, what has happened over the last century is the blatant suppression by just about any means possible of ideas that interfere with the economic success of Big Pharma and its fellow travelers. What we have is a monopoly on medicine without regard to whether or not it is the best medicine possible for the patient.

This suppression has prevented countless millions of sick people from having knowledge of and/or access to low-cost, highly effective and extremely safe modalities that do not employ the use of drugs or any high technology. Instead, thanks to a century of political maneuvering, modern medicine has become the only officially-recognized mode of diagnosis and treatment of all human ills here in America and in other countries around the world. Not only that, but to get a simple deduction on your income tax for vitamins that you use for health, your doctor, who may not even �believe� in vitamins is the designated gatekeeper for that activity.

There are two major battlegrounds: The first is the manufacture, sale, and what manufacturers can claim their product can do for the customer. The other is the question of who is allowed to provide services to the customer.

The Food and Drug Act of 1906 established that the definition of drugs �shall include all medicine and preparations recognized in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary for internal or external use� and here�s the kicker, �any substance or mixture of substances intended to be used for the CURE, MITIGATION, OR PREVENTION OF DISEASE OF EITHER MAN OR OTHER ANIMALS�!

The definition of food is �shall include all articles used for food, drink, confectionery, or condiment by man or other animals, whether simple, mixed, or compound.�

The fact that a vast array of natural products are basically food substances that are known to have the ability to prevent disease and/or cure disease makes the definitions, upon which to base a whole body of laws and regulations, ambiguous. In 1994, thanks to a major citizen uprising by the public, Congress unanimously passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) to help clarify things.

DSHEA established that dietary supplements and herbs are legally defined as foods. This law had other provisions which the FDA has had a history of ignoring but that�s a story for a future News With Views article.

Meanwhile at your state capital there are ongoing fights about who should be allowed to practice medicine. Until the 20th Century the idea of having restrictive licenses to limit who could practice healing arts and what they could practice was not an issue. There were no laws. What few laws about the medical business that existed in Colonial times had been repealed by the lobbying actions of the people. Consequently, we not only had a Golden Age of Health Freedom throughout the 1800s but we saw the massive growth of all manner of natural healing arts and citizen-driven interest in healthful lifestyles, development of natural health products, and the creation of what we now know as the health food industry.

However, at the beginning of the 20th Century, with financial support from Big Pharma, the American Medical Association, (the principle trade association promoting the economic interests of MDs and the only medical group that endorsed Big Pharma�s products), cooked up a scheme to reorganize its state chapters and have its members go to every state legislature to create an allopathic monopoly from sea to shining sea. Today, you will see in your state medical licensing act for MD�s words to the effect that only MDs can provide �diagnosis, treatment, prevention, cure, or relieving of a human disease, ailment, defect, complaint, or other physical or mental condition, by attendance, advice, device, diagnostic test, or other means, or offering, undertaking, attempting to do, or holding oneself out as able to do, any of these acts.�

Consequently, anybody else is out of luck unless their medical trade group lobbies for an exemption in the MD medical licensing monopoly law, by passing a licensing law of their own to carve out a piece of the action. In many states, however, the MD monopolists met with resistance from the local populations and what resulted is a hodgepodge of laws in every state that do not actually establish a clear-cut monopoly. To clean up this confusion, there are citizen groups, many of them, as mentioned above, consulting with Diane Miller, in over 40 states that are actively working toward state laws to free health practitioners from being harassed by the medical monopoly so that they can practice natural healing arts without fear of arrest and imprisonment at the same time not burdening them with unnecessary regulation.

If all this is a bit confusing to you, Elissa and I suggest you do three things:

1. Read Dan Haley�s book, Politics in Healing � The Suppression and Manipulation of American Medicine. Dan is outraged that such suppression exists and in his book he details how twelve effective cancer treatment protocols have been summarily suppressed. http://politicsinhealing.com Ironically, a year ago, Dan suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire left side. He was told by modern medicine doctors there was nothing they could do for him except teach him how to hop around on one leg or be satisfied with sitting in a wheel chair the rest of his life. Like so many of us in the health freedom movement, he knew to look for a better idea. So Dan called around and first he went to an acupuncturist who got movement back in his hand in a few days and then located a practitioner who offered hyperbaric oxygen and intravenous magnesium and other nutritional supplements. So�for less than $1,000 and five days of treatment as an outpatient, Dan is now walking, driving his car, and traveling around the world again. You can read about the clinic treatment at: [Read].

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2. Go to Diane Miller�s National Health Freedom website where you can find information on eighteen states that either have health freedom laws or are in the process of ruling on them. Get involved with your local state�s health freedom action.

3. Attend a Health Freedom Expo in your area.

If you are in the Dallas area, there is one this weekend starting Friday, November 4th. Others are scheduled for Richmond, Long Beach and Chicago with more cities in the future. I�ve been invited to speak at the Richmond, Virginia Expo December 2-4 and I plan to do more expos. The purpose of these Expos is to make it convenient for the general public to meet and greet some of our major health freedom experts, learn more about what you can do about your health, and maybe even encourage you to join our citizen army for health freedom. These Expos are a volunteer effort and after expenses are paid all the money is plowed back into the health freedom movement.

� 2005 Carolyn Dean - All Rights Reserved