Apples and oranges--both are fruit, and both are yummy. They both offer effective ways to enhance one’s health. Yet they aren’t the same. Similarly, Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) and conventional medicine offer effective methods of treating patients. Should apples exist to the exclusion of oranges or conventional medicine exist to the exclusion of CAM?

As CAM providers struggle to be recognized for their ability to treat health issues, powerful special-interest groups threaten CAM practices through continued lobbying of the Georgia legislature. The broadly defined state medical licensure laws do not differentiate between brain surgery and recommending an herb; both are considered the practice of medicine. Due to current laws, some of the most brilliant CAM providers in Georgia were raided, harassed, or forced to leave the state in 2003.

CAMA (Complementary Alternative Medicine Association) is assisting Georgia Legislators to ensure the public’s right to make their own health care choices. House Bill 1040, the “State Planning for Increased Community Access Act,” is a consumer’s rights bill in the Georgia House of Representatives. It is legislation that essentially puts the freedom of choice in the public’s hands, where it ought to be. The keystone to this bill is the right of all citizens to honor their own cultural beliefs and traditions. All people have an understanding of their own bodies, with the right to make an informed choice in regard to their own health. To guarantee this right is crucial.

Meaningful social change is generally accomplished through citizen involvement. Join the CAMA, help us raise funds, write letters, make phone calls, and circulate this information. Contact the legislators sponsoring the legislation, especially the lead sponsor, to let them know how important this issue is and how much their support is appreciated. To read the bill in its entirety and stay current with other legislative issues affecting CAM, visit CAMA’s website www.camaweb.org and www.camaction.org, its advocacy group. For those unfamiliar with their representatives, CAMA has provided easy-to-follow links that provide contact information for both Senators and Representatives. CAMA recommends people make personal phone calls and send handwritten letters to each representative (samples available on the website). Each time a representative is contacted by a constituent, it helps ensure that CAM receives the attention it deserves.

Specifically, this bill requires complete disclosure to the public about complementary alternative medical providers. It requires CAM practitioners to declare in writing their education, training, all other qualifications, and the nature and philosophy of all treatment programs recommended to their clients. The bill compels them to fully disclose themselves as unlicensed health care practitioners. It requires the client to sign an informed consent form, acknowledging the client understands the aforementioned items.

Although it might be hard to believe that improving someone’s health could be a felony, Senate Bill 162, innocuously named the “Health Care Protection Act of 2003,” would make that a reality. This legislation expands felony charges to cover sixteen additional licensed professions, making many CAM practitioners felons without regard to their practices or the choices of those who receive benefit from their care.

Georgia is not alone. The drug companies and medical monopoly are chipping away at the federal Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). In 1994, Congress unanimously voted to properly place the burden of proof of harm on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On March 26, 2003, Senator Richard Durbin introduced S-722, “The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2003,” into the United States Senate to amend DSHEA. If passed, this bill shifts the burden of proof from the FDA to the millions of distributors of herbs and dietary supplements, allowing the FDA to remove dietary supplements from the market with just one adverse report.

Due to increasing persecution, CAM practitioners have risen to the monumental task of changing laws and creating new legislation. Minnesota was the first state to successfully pass the groundbreaking “Freedom of Access” legislation. The “Minnesota Freedom of Access Act 2000” was the first law that gave consumers access to unlicensed practitioners. Encouraged by this incredible achievement, CAM practitioners and citizens in California and Rhode Island have assisted their states in passing similar legislation. Currently Florida, Georgia, Iowa, New York, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have legislation pending, and other states are working on their own bills. In 2002, the Georgia House of Representatives House Resolution 1362 resolved “that the citizens of the State of Georgia have a protected freedom to choose and receive those healing treatments that they desire and deem to correspond with their own view of health and disease, which they deem to be effective in securing their own wellness and delivered by their own choice of practitioner.” It is the beginning. Some people like apples. Some people like oranges. Many people like both. Everyone has the right to make a choice. If, however, complementary alternative medicine loses the battle to conventional medicine, your right to choose natural health care may vanish.

Kathy Mackay, Certified Massage Therapist and owner of Escape Relaxation Clinic, has been a CAM activist since 1996.


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