Protect Your Right to Use Alternative Medicine
American patriotism is running high these days. Flags wave
from houses and cars, and patriotic songs like "America the
Beautiful" are being sung with renewed fervor. Yet while
Americans enjoy many freedoms, there is one sense in which
the United States is not the "sweet land of liberty" -
access to medical treatment.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a stranglehold on
medical treatment in this country. Promising therapies that
have not gone through the cumbersome and expensive FDA
approval process are effectively barred from the
marketplace, and physicians who offer these therapies are
routinely persecuted. Worse still, patients are kept in the
dark about potentially lifesaving treatments that, in many
cases, have been used successfully in other countries for
decades.
What this means is that right now we have a two-tiered
society in which wealthy individuals have access to
promising medical treatments offered in Canada, Mexico,
Germany, and other countries, while the rest of us must make
do with a far more limited range of FDA-approved treatments
that are available in the U.S. Is this just? No. Is it
legal? According to our skewed system of government, it is.
Support the Access to Medical Treatment Act But there is a
bill before Congress that would prevent things like this
from happening. Called the Access to Medical Treatment Act
(AMTA), it would give you the right to use safe and
effective therapies of your choice, whether they have the
blessing of the FDA or not, provided that you are informed
of their side effects and the fact that they are not FDA
approved. It would free doctors to practice medicine as they
see fit, without worry of office raids and medical license
threats, while including safeguards that would protect
patients from dangerous medical therapies. This is the way
medicine should be practiced.
The impetus for this bill was spearhead by former
congressman Berkley Bedell, whose personal experience
illustrates the importance of freedom of access to medical
treatment. When Bedell contracted Lyme disease, his health
deteriorated and he was forced to resign from Congress. He
first tried conventional therapies for Lyme disease with no
success, then turned to alternative treatment.
As he testified before the Government Reform and Oversight
Committee in 1998 in support of the Access to Medical
Treatment Act, his Lyme disease was cured by a whey extract
from cow's milk that was developed in Canada. Yet, in his
words, "while anyone can obtain rat poison off the shelf
that might kill them, persons suffering from Lyme disease in
this country are prohibited from obtaining the whey from
cow's milk that might cure them." The Access to Medical
Treatment Act would change all that.
This bill is now being considered in both the Senate (S
1378) and House of Representatives (HR 1964). There will
surely be a fight between politicians who believe that
patients have the right to make an informed decision about
their own medical treatment and those who believe that our
government should make the choice for them. You can make a
difference in this battle by writing to your representative
and senator and urging them to sign on as cosponsors of this
bill.
For a sample letter that you can mail, fax or e-mail to your
senator and representative, (SEE BELOW). You can find your
representative's name, address, and e-mail address by
visiting:
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.htm
Contact information for senators is available at:
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index_by_state.cfm.
To read the text of the bill, visit:
http://thomas.loc.gov
and enter the bill number (HR 1964 or S 1378).
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*** Sample Letter:
Dear Elected Officials,
I am writing to ask you to cosponsor the Access to Medical Treatment Act
(HR 1964/S 1378). It would give me the right to use non-FDA approved
products, so long as I followed the consumer safeguards outlined in the
bill and was under the care of an authorized health care practitioner. This
is truly a patients' Bill of Rights. It returns the decision-making
authority to the patient and reasserts the sanctity of the doctor-patient
relationship. Most importantly, it gives American consumers access to the
many drugs and therapies that are available to people all over the world
but cannot be sold in the United States.
Today, we have a two-tiered medical system: one track for the people who
can afford to fly to other countries for life-enhancing and life-saving
treatments, and one track for the rest of us. As a result, we are literally
encouraging a black market in such things as cancer and arthritis
treatments. We are also condemning millions of Americans to a life of pain
and even premature death because they cannot use safe and effective
products that are available elsewhere in the world.
It takes an average of 10 years and $320 million to get one drug through
the FDA approval process. Not every company is willing or able to make that
kind of investment, especially if they are already selling their products
in other countries. In the case of nonpatentable products, there is simply
no incentive for companies to make that kind of investment.
Give Americans credit for being able to decide if they want to use a
particular therapy. Give their physicians credit for knowing if a therapy
will help their patient. And get the FDA bureaucrats out of the
decision-making process. Cosponsor the Access to Medical Treatment Act.
Sincerely,
* YOUR NAME
* YOUR ADDRESS
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