Does It Pay To Be Different?
Many years ago, there was a plethora of health care choices available to American consumers. Various schools of medical training were equally respected and utilized, including homeopathy, osteopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic as well as allopathic (conventional) medicine. Following the Flexner Report, there was a great deal of effort to discredit schools teaching other than allopathic medicine. Many of these schools became defunct or were marginalized as a result. Coordinated efforts by organized medicine (pharmaceutical interests, associations such as the American Medical Association, insurance companies, and governmental agencies) launched campaigns against any alternative therapies to drugs, surgery, or radiation. (See "The Assault on Medical Freedom" by P.J. Lisa) As a result, many choices were lost; including non-toxic, safe cancer cures (see "The Politics of Healing" by Dan Haley.)
Many consumers are not even aware that they have other options regarding treatment of their illnesses nor are they aware of preventive strategies that would prevent those illnesses all together. These alternative therapies are natural, less toxic, less invasive, and less expensive than drug or surgery alternatives.
One of the organizations that has fostered the discrimination against integrative, alternative, complementary, or holistic therapies is the Federation of State Medical Boards. This private corporation holds conferences for state public health employees and medical boards. The FSMB has educated and encouraged these state officials to target licensed medical doctors, trained physicians in other fields such as naturopathy and chiropractic, as well as non-licensed practitioners who have continued to study and utilize alternative treatments. State officials then feel it is their duty to eradicate alternative therapies as they have been convinced that they are non-scientific, non-effective, and even dangerous public health threats.
This policy of discrimination has led to widespread investigations of alternative practitioners in many states, followed by filing charges against these practitioners. Almost without exception, there has been no patient harmed nor patient complaint that has lead to this attack on the practitioner. The practitioner has usually been targeted because of their use of a non-conventional therapy or by a competing practitioner. Licensed physicians have been charged with violating the "standard of care" (determined, of course, by the prevailing allopathic institution) and have had their licenses revoked or restricted. Non-licensed practitioners (utilizing those therapies for which there is no licensure) have been told to "cease and desist" for recommending homeopathic remedies or giving nutritional advice and have been charged with and arrested for practicing medicine without a license (a felony offense). Frequently, these professionals' reputations are then smeared on websites such as QuackWatch.com. At the very least, the financial and emotional cost to these caring health care professionals has been staggering, all for their "crime" of helping people to live better, healthier lives!
Yet during the past 20 years, consumer interest in complementary and alternative medicine has continued to grow, as demonstrated by a few studies listed on the graph below.
Studies Documenting Interest Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Study, Journal Year Percent of Americans using CAM
Eisenberg, NEJM January 1993 34% (spent over $ 15 billion)
JAMA July 1997 50%
Astin, JAMA Nov. 1998 42% (4.4% using only CAM)
Complementary physicians and non-licensed practitioners strive every day to stay on the leading edge of natural therapies to assist their patients. They have devoted years to the study of a non-traditional healing arts to assist their clients in achieving health. This includes information covering such areas as environmental medicine, longevity and anti-aging medicine, endocrinology, homeopathy, chelation therapy, detoxification therapies, holistic therapies, energy therapies, acupuncture, herbal medicine, naturopathy, and nutritional alternatives to medication.
Consumers are increasingly exploring and implementing these natural health therapies in to their health care, especially as the population is living longer and as conventional medicine is becoming more expensive and the public is more aware of the toxicity of drugs and the dangers of surgical interventions. Yet the freedom of access to a wide range of therapies has been and continues to be eroded.
For these reasons, the health freedom movement has been born. The mission of the American Association for Health Freedom is to protect the right of the practitioner to practice and the right of the consumer to choose. AAHF monitors and coordinates information about health freedom issues at the national, international, and state levels. AAHF promotes legislation, both state and federal, that will increase the freedom of access to health choices.
Connecticut physicians, licensed practitioners, and non-licensed healthcare practitioners alike are vulnerable to legal action due to overly broad, loose and outdated statutes that control healthcare methods and limit consumer choices. Because of the number of physicians and practitioners in Connecticut who have been affected by this discrimination against alternative therapies, the Connecticut Health Freedom Coalition (CTHFC) was formed and has affiliated as an AAHF state chapter to best coordinate our efforts.
CTHFC strives to educate consumers about the fundamental right to access all healthcare options as well as the laws, public policy and legislation impacting this right. One of our most important goals is to pass health freedom legislation that protects both licensed and non-licensed practitioners right to practice so that these health care options remain open to those consumers who want those options. We believe that consumers make very personal decisions regarding their own healthcare and that the consumer's access to the broadest diversity of healing modalities is our right.
Turning the Tide: the Prosecution of Innovative Medicine
