Good and Bad News for Homeopathy on the Political Front
I have written in the past about the issue of Health Freedom -- the right of every individual to use the medicine of their choice. As I mention in Impossible Cure, American
Founding Father Benjamin Rush, MD felt that this right should be included in the constitutional Bill of Rights. As he wrote:
"The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for Medical Freedom as well as Religious Freedom... To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the bastille
(prison) of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic."
Unfortunately, this right was not guaranteed. But it has become the mission of the American Health Freedom Movement, led by organizations like the
National Health Freedom Coalition to gain and protect this right. Because of the way the medical practice laws are structured in the United States, this must be done
on a costly state-by-state basis. As a former board member of the California Health Freedom Coalition, I was part of the campaign in California that gained that
right through Health Freedom Bill SB577. This bill allows unlicensed alternative practitioners, like homeopaths, to
practice freely as long as they do not hold themselves out as physicians, do not utilize potentially dangerous medical procedures, and fully disclose their training to their patients.
Currently, there are Health Freedom bills in the works in most states, with Health Freedom already enacted in
California, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Arizona, Louisiana, New Mexico, Idaho, and Oklahoma. The good news is that Colorado's bill,
SB13-215, has now passed its Senate and is on its way to committee hearings in the Colorado House!
The attackers of homeopathy, likely fueled by financial support from Big Pharma, are clever though. Health
Freedom bills assure the right of practitioners to practice safely, which is certainly a prerequisite for patients to have access to the medicine of their choice.
But what if patients and practitioners lose access to their medicines? The new strategy of health freedom foes is to deny this access.
This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. For example, there have been perennial battles over our access to supplements.
Now they are trying to use California's laws to threaten access to homeopathic remedies.
In the past, access to homeopathic remedies has been assured at the federal level by the Food Drug and Cosmetics Act. (The Senator who spearheaded this bill in 1938 was Royal Copeland, MD -- a homeopath!). Now, the foes of health
freedom are using California's consumer protection laws to limit homeopathic pharmacies in the marketing of their products. I urge you to read
this article and educate yourself about this threat to your access to homeopathic remedies. A poor legal decision in
California could eventually spread nationwide.
As Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!"
