Okay, I’m furious—and I don’t like being furious. It upsets my stomach. So maybe I should take an antacid. Wait…antacids have aluminum in them, which has been linked with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. They also cause side effects, like reducing the acidity needed for the stomach to digest food. They cause increased absorption of toxic metals. So forget that idea. What about something natural and soothing, like ginger root, which has been proven more effective for upset stomach than over the counter drugs, and has also been shown to help with chemotherapy-induced nausea? Or does that fall under the category of “mystical mumbo jumbo” that an Associated Press article published on MSN about alternative medicine published on June 8, 2009? Wait. That article is what made me furious in the first place. Here’s why:

• Get it: we want to think for ourselves about our health. We want to decide our own journey.
• We’re tired of misleading, manipulative scare tactics designed to discredit healthy alternatives that have been proven, time and again, for millennia.
• We’re tired of unproven, just-out-of-the-lab “cures” that are being thrust into our face and down our throats against our wishes, only to hear pharmaceutical companies and the FDA confess down the road that they were approved prematurely.
• This is especially the case when families are forced to poison their own kids with chemotherapy in the name of “child protection.” (By the way, just as there are docs who support chemo, there are many medical doctors who are convinced otherwise—shouldn’t people be allowed a choice with their doctor AND their care?)
• We’re tired of hearing the litany of scary side effects—all proven—read at hyper speed at the end of every TV ad for pharmaceuticals.
• We’re tired of accredited forms of treatment, such as chiropractic and acupuncture, still being maligned “for uses beyond their evidence”—wait a minute, again. What about off label use in medicine, which is done all the time, especially in pediatrics, where studies are considered unethical? If you’re going to call it wrong on the one side, let’s keep a consistent standard.
• We’re tired of hearing that alternative medicine is an “underground movement.” What do you expect when authorities (one with a shotgun) with a subpoena break into a health food co-op, as they did recently with the Manna Storehouse in LaGrange, Ohio (while children were upstairs studying)? Or maybe you should ask Dr. Jonathan Wright about his experience with SWAT teams in flak jackets carrying machine guns, who entered his office during office hours while patients were present, confiscated his computers (which they never returned), keeping his patient records. What was the purpose of this armed invasion? Dr. Wright had ordered a purified vitamin B for IV use from another country, because the IV grade in the United States was not pure enough.
• We’re fed up with hearing that alternatives are “marketed in ways that manipulate emotions, just like ads for hot cars and cool clothes.” Hey, breast implants are marketed the same way. When was the last time you heard of a SWAT team invading a plastic surgeon’s office?
• I want to know what constitutes “evidence-based, nonjudgmental care”—nonjudgmental in whose opinion? And what evidence is considered valid? What about the studies that show the incredible bias in other studies? Which do I believe? ‘Tis a conundrum.

Let’s get the FDA off its penchant for pursuing healthy, harmless alternative medical practices, and get them tackling the real killers: prescription drugs, taken as prescribed, are the cause of 106,000 deaths per year, making it the 4^th leading cause of death in the United States, while herbal-related deaths don’t even reach 100 (to quote this article on MSN: “Tens of millions of Americans take dietary supplements.”). And let’s allow the wisdom of the ages to be OUR choice (if it is) for OUR health, not dictated to us by hyper-politicized, let’s-get-on-the-bandwagon of mindless medical bullies.