Do you want to choose your healthcare or have it chosen for you?
There is an organisation in Australia which hates every natural therapy. They hate the healthcare practitioners and they hate the healthcare consumers who 'turn their backs' on Western medicine in favour of a range of other modalities which put no money in their pockets and take away their prestige. Worst of all, they hate anyone who chooses not to use vaccines! That is the ultimate heresy, as far as they are concerned.
But it's OK - because they have a plan and they have the money and media backing, they think, to bring this plan to fruition.
This group, the Australian Skeptics, has been instrumental in setting up the organisation, Stop the AVN.
Now, they are working on a new initiative - and this one is more ambitious then just stopping a small, parent-run community support group. Now, their goal is to stop anyone in Australia (today Australia - tomorrow the world as far as this bunch of ratbags is concerned) from learning about or using natural therapies. Their mad campaign is getting plenty of publicity too!
They have just set up a new front group called Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM) which is behind the new effort to outlaw the teaching of any natural medicine course in University. This organisation ultimately wants to shut down homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy, herbalism, ayurvedic therapies and on and on. In their unspeakable arrogance, they claim that there is no evidence for therapies which have been used safely and effectively, in many cases, for thousands of years. Instead, they say, we should all be forced to exclusively rely on mainstream medicine with its dreadful record of poor safety and effectiveness!
If you, like me, use natural therapists - either as your first port of call for treating and maintaining your family's health, or as an adjunct to more mainstream therapies, I hope you will throw your support behind the natural therapy organisations such as the ATMS, ACNEM, CAA, AHA, COCA and others who must be working hard behind the scenes to protect not only their member practitioners, but the health consumers of Australia. It is going to take a concerted effort on all our parts to prevent these organisations from destroying such a necessary sector of Australia's healthcare industry.
As a healthcare consumer, I will be fighting for my rights to choose my own healthcare. I hope you will join me in this fight and also, that you will contact the industry bodies for the modality or modalities you frequent to ask them to join you in preserving the rights of their practitioners as well as your ability to choose the treatments that work for you. We should also be contacting the ACCC to complain against the anti-competitive behaviour of those who are trying to say that drug-based medicine is the only answer for all health problems and should have a monopoly in Australia.
Please read the information below from the Alliance for Health Freedom Australia.
Dear AHFA Subscriber,
There has been a recent push in Australia to peel back the initiatives made with regards to Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). This push is coming from a group called the Australian Skeptics. Some of these Skeptics have links to pharmaceutical and drug company interests. One of the more prominent members of the Skeptics is Dick Smith. Professor John Dwyer is affiliated with them also. The Sceptics have a modus operandi - they manage to have a media release in a major paper like the Sydney Morning Herald pushing their point of view, followed by or in parallel with a letter writing campaign by individual Skeptics aimed at politicians or government organisations such as the Australia Consumer Complaint Tribunal (ACCC), Health Care Complaints Commission or the Therapeutic Goods Administration. The Skeptics are very adapt at manipulating opinion in a way that makes organisations or governments think the general public are more involved than what they in fact are.
The most recent initiative by the Australian Skeptics is to try to close down all university courses in Australia with regards to CAM. This includes Chinese medicine and Naturopathy. They are also trying to close down the Chiropractic courses. This push by the Skeptics is also aimed at undermining the new hospital being built in Chatswood, of which the University of Western Sydney will be a research partner. This hospital will incorporate western orthodox medicine along with Chinese medicine as it is utalised in China. This is a wonderful service for the public but unfortunately the Skeptics and their pharmaceutical industry ties do not want to see this happen.
Please read the article below and become familiar with this issue.
Best regards
The AHFA Team
This morning, Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National, interviewed Prof Dwyer from the Skeptics and Friends of Science in Medicine as well as Dr Kerryn Phelps, former head of the Australian Medical Association, now working in an integrative medical practice. The subject was - should universities in Australia be allowed to continue providing courses in natural therapies - courses in subjects which Prof Dwyer calls quackery but which Dr Phelps considers to be evidence based and helpful in cases where drug-based treatment may not be appropriate.
Please have a listen to this interview (Dwyer-Phelps below) and tell me what you think. It seemed to me that Prof Dwyer was illogical, rabid and overly emotional while Dr Phelps was calm and well-informed. Even Fran Kelly who, from past experience, is no friend to natural medicine, was getting a bit fed up with Prof Dwyer's constant vitriol. Dwyer also appeared to be quite ill-informed on the subject of natural medicine. He tried to insinuate that homeopathy is taught as a degree course in universities when it isn't. He then complained that CAMs get government funding. A bit rich when Western medicine is virtually 100% government subsidised - paid for by you and me - while the 50% of Australians who choose to use CAMs have to pay for it out of their own pockets!
Lastly, here is a letter I received today from a long-time member and recently retired natural healthcare practitioner. This person had received the letter from the AHFA (quoted above) and their experience with these efforts goes way back. As they said, it was a close call last time and the opposition were not nearly as well-organised or funded then as they are now.
Hi Meryl
I'm sure you are aware of this , but just in case it went under your radar I thought I'd forward it to you. I see it's the same mob who have been harrassing you so badly . I see Ian Fraser is amongst the skeptics. How does he keep his creditability with the amount of damage his vaccine has perpetrated on our young population? There are enough complaints on the net to label him quack.
I do hope AVN has a positive outcome [in our court case on the 22nd of February]. Whatever is happening to our 'freedom', those who 'think ' they know better are trying to make sure we are not allowed to be in charge of our own bodies. I'm afraid I'm cynical. I 'm sure it isn't to ensure public safety but more about their investments both monetary and educational, I think Natural Medicine is coming into it's own and becoming a serious threat to the Medical Sickness Industry's profits.
Many years ago in the late eighties - early nineties, the government tried to get it through parliament to put all vitamins and herbs on doctor's prescription. I was a practicing medical herbalist (just retired) at the time. We fought tooth and nail. We were lucky there was a federal election looming. It was close and we managed to get the Australian Democrats on side with promises to support them at the polls. Well the outcome was: the proposals were dropped. I don't know what the political situation is this time. What I do know is that the Austaralian Health Services cannot cope now, and it certainly would fail the Australian people miserably if CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) disappeared overnight.
I have a huge extended family and we all use natural medicine for everything, though concede in case of accident, we would require medical services. For my own part, I am in my 70's and have seen a medical doctor I think twice in the last 25 years, and one of those visits was to get a form signed that know one else could sign. I thought that was a bad enough imposition on my freedom of choice.
If there are any petitions started please let me know.
Again best of luck with your case my prayers are with you.
YT
Please take the time to write to the following bodies. Tell them that you support their right to practice, and be sure to include information about the fact that you use natural therapies yourself and you would like to know what they will do to ensure that these treatments will still be available to you and to their members. Contact your local practitioners as well and ask if they have heard about these activities and whether or not they have contacted their industry bodies if they have. If you can cc me with your letters, that would be great at meryl@avn.org.au
Chiropractor's Association of Australia (CAA) - execassist@caa.asn.au
Chiropractic and Osteopathic College of Australia (COCA) - info@coca.com.au
Australian Homeopathic Association (AHA) - info@naturalhealingsoftware.com
Australian Traditional Medicine Society (ATMS) - info@atms.com.au
Australian Natural Therapists Association (ANTA) - Contact Form
If you know of an association that I have not mentioned which should be contacted (I know there are plenty more), please let me know and I will update this blog post with their details.