Healthwealthhappinessfreedom: More Bills to Criminalize Naturopathy

More Bills to Criminalize Naturopathy

Submitted by Lois Rain on April 15, 2011 – 4:58 pmOne Comment

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Medical Monopoly is becoming a more finely tuned machine every day. It is no coincidence that other states are suddenly creating bills to criminalize naturopathic practices and other holistic modalities like ayurvedic, midwifery, aromatherapy, and more. Gaia-Health highlights news from the National Health Federation that provides full information on Nevada’s new bill SB 412 where practicing alternative health services without proper licensing and official approval is a felony. Below is information about the most recent state bill to show up on the radar.

Additionally, Marti Oakley of PPJ Gazette online writes about taking a closer look at North Carolina’s broadly written SB31 and other such acts NC has in production. It is very telling of their persistence in circumventing the people, and keeping the agenda rolling. When SB31 wasn’t meeting their end due to the backlash and necessity to rewrite, they simply introduced three more like bills: SB 467 Naturopathic Licensing Act (Hartsell, R-Cabarrus), HB 522 Midwifery Licensing Act ( Human Services Committee), and HB 847 Naturopathic Doctors Licensing Act

When Oakley started researching the NC bills, she found that nearly every state was introducing like bills simultaneously. A pattern emerges: broadly written, no clear statements of legislative intent – leaving things wide open to interpretation, lack of definition, i.e. “what is medicine,” and making that which is unregistered, unlicensed, and unapproved by “officials” criminal.

Both sources highlight the role of Codex Alimentarius which can’t fully be in place here if all states aren’t behind its regulatory wings. Oakley writes, “What is apparent is that it is the first step in implementing various aspects of Codex Alimentarius which excludes any health practice not listed in the Codex. Codex specifically targets and intends to end the use of alternative therapies and also vitamins and supplements.”

Think puffed up profits from synthetic “natural” medicine and more revenue collected from licensing fees and required “education” to satisfy bureaucratic boards. In other words, natural practitioners can’t serve clients, and you won’t have any freedom in choice of health care. For how can a natural health practitioner truly practice when it must now enter a contract that strictly abides by Codex guidelines?

If you have any information about such bills developing in your state, please email tips@healthfreedoms.org. Please try to include bill number if possible and a link to the bill or source article. We will compile them and be on the watch so that everyone is aware of their current state legislation regarding natural health care.

~Health Freedoms

Nevada Plans to Make Practicing Natural Medicine Without Official Sanction a Felony

The National Health Federation asks us to oppose the Nevada bill that wants to make practicing natural medicine without a license a felony. It’s yet another attack on our right to choose how we manage our health.

by the National Health Federation

The National Health Federation is the only agency that represents the interests of natural medicine and non-corporate-controlled medicine on Codex Alimentarius. They have put out an urgent call to action on behalf of the people of Nevada to save natural medicine from the clutches of government bureaucracy. Here’s what they have to say:

The Bill—Nevada Senate Bill 412 (SB 412) provides for the regulation of the practice of complementary integrative medicine by creating a government-sanctioned Board of Complementary and Integrative Medicines to control all natural health care, backed by the power of the State to imprison and fine all offenders. Just imagine when, as with other such medical boards, the power seekers and control freaks who naturally gravitate to positions of power in government come to have the say over what type of natural medicine may be practiced and what type may not. Will your favorite form of natural medicine survive? Or will it be branded a heresy and persecuted? It does not take a rocket scientist to see that this Bill is the road to ruin for all of those creative natural health practitioners who refu se to conform. This Board is just a not-so-clever attempt to create and enforce a monopoly that will end up strangling CAM practice.

SB 412 must be defeated or amended to protect natural health and its practitioners.

This legislation would put alternative practitioners of Nevada in serious jeopardy of felony fines and imprisonment for practicing complementary and integrative medicine that does not fit within the proposed Board’s licensing requirements and “accepted” practices. It is intended to define all natural healers and have them tested and/or approved by conventional doctors. There will be no grandfathering, no CEU (continuing education unit) for practicing licensees (under the Drugless Practitioner status), and it will make practicing any form of complementary health care a felony if the practitioner is not licensed.

Alarmingly, to become a “licensed” Complementary Integrative Physician under this proposed law, an applicant would have had to attend medical school or have “received an equivalent education satisfactory to the Board.” He or she must also be “of good moral character”; and we all know how other medical boards have used that requirement to persecute innocent practitioners. In short, the bill gives the Board great powers to set the bar at whatever level it wants to screen out unwanted alternative practitioners.

This is the Medical Monopoly at its finest, acting to stifle their competition and those they disagree with, the natural-health practitioners, all in the interest of course of “protecting” the public. This Bill would criminalize victimless conduct. After all, there should be no penalty at all – even a misdemeanor penalty – unless someone has been actually harmed and such harm has been proven in a court of law. This Bill is typical government overkill and completely unnecessary. Besides, the cost to the State of Nevada, once they create the Board and then try to license all these practitioners, will be far greater and more troublesome than they anticipate. In the end, as attractive as it might seem now to have a “stamp of approval by the State,” the Board will become just another costly, rigid, and loathed government agency, out of touch with reality.

Where This Bill Stands Now

The Bill is in the Senate Committee (Commerce, Labor & Energy) and is to be heard on Friday, April 15th, just two days from now.

National Health Federation: Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals’ rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status at Codex meetings. www.thenhf.com.

Link to original article at the NHF.

Editor’s Note [Gaia-Health]: The NHF is trying to get the word out on this. It’s critical that everyone respond to their call—unless you want to see natural medicine become as rigidly controlled and limited as allopathy has become. At this time, any doctor who tries to act outside the mainstream is at great risk of losing his or her license to practice. The NHF’s description of a Natural Medicine Board becoming “just another costly, rigid, and loathed government agency, out of touch with reality” must be avoided—or we can kiss our most basic freedom, the right to manage our own health, goodbye.

My only quibble with the NHF’s commentary is that I do not believe that amending such a bill is adequate. Once the door has been opened to this sort of regulation, it can only become more and more grinding, until the entity being managed is destroyed. That’s a big part of what has happened to allopathic medicine. Don’t let it happen to natural medicine, too! [Emphasis added]

Sources:

http://gaia-health.com/articles401/000438-nevada-natural-medicine.shtml

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/04/north-carolina-not-only-state-trying-to.html