American Medical Revolutions: How the AMA Took Over America

About 170 years ago our ancestors forced the repeal of licensing laws which had created a monopoly over the practice of medicine for orthodox physicians. Ordinary people, farmers, artisans, tradesmen and others got together and forced politicians to act on their behalf. They were tired of bloodletting, and harsh medications like mercury compounds that ruined their teeth and weakened their bodies. They opted for kinder and gentler alternatives with lower casualty rates, particularly the newly introduced homeopathy. They were impressed that tiny doses of medicine were able to cure cholera much better than the massive doses used by orthodox physicians. Today physicians who practice alternative medicine, in competition with regular physicians, are subject to harassment. In the state of Washington about 30% of them are being harassed at this time. Those who make substantial advancements in medical science often find the Federal Government moving against them. The FDA and FTC have used taxpayer money to suppress new technology in a number of cases. The purpose of the new licensing laws was to protect the public but, in fact, monopolized medical care, according to reports, has been killing over 200,000 of us every year and promises to bankrupt the country. These laws are used to prevent free public access to less lethal, more effective and less expensive therapies. As Daniel Haley so eloquently wrote, in Politics in Healing, “we don’t need government protection from things that can’t hurt us”. Medical science should be a search for the truth and many medical scientists have spent their lives in this search. Unfortunately scientific medicine, as practiced by the medical monopoly during the last century, has rejected the discoveries of a number of medical scientists. Too many promising technologies have been consigned to the dust bin of history. As a result, medical services are much more expensive than they should be and lower in quality than they could be. Less suppression and more competition can make people healthier at lower cost. One hundred years of suppression of advancements in medical science is enough! It is time for another "American Medical Revolution."