Do you know?

During my daily email reading and deleting I came across a post on the herbal tribes community about Abraham Cherrix , a young boy being forced to abandon an alternative treatment for his cancer and take the chemotherapy he doesn't want to take. The article is about their fight and about what is happening in our country to people determined to eschew "approved" medical treatment in favor of alternative methods. It's not the first time the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), American Medical Association (AMA) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) have separately or together set out to demonize and/or hound alternative methods of treatment to extinction or emigration. Reading the article reminded me of Dr. Death, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has gone to jail many times because he supports a person's right to die with dignity, and Sister Kenny, the Australian nurse who found a way to minimize the effects of and even cure polio and was censured time and time again by the medical establishment.

Like the Kenny method of treating polio and Dr. Kevorkian's dignified deaths for the terminally ill, I'm certain the Hoxsey method of treating and curing cancer will not die out as long as there are thinking people who aren't afraid to find the back door.

What surprises me is that this mentality exists and is being sold to the American people by the establishment. What really surprises me is even now in my fifties I am as anti-establishment as I was when I was a teenager, choosing to think for myself and not take the party line as gospel because it is not the "good news" it is purported to be. Many Americans are lazy, choosing to let others do their thinking and choosing for themselves instead of exercising their brains and their right to choose, and that, constant reader, is how freedom is lost without a shot being fired or anyone being aware it was even in danger. The more constraints and controls we accept in our lives and on our freedoms, especially in the name of security, the fewer freedoms we will have and enjoy.

Are you free to think and express yourself as you see fit if you are hounded and jailed and punished because you spoke out? Are you free just because you can get in your car or on a public bus and go where you choose when you choose? Are you free just because you can cross state lines without having to prove your identity and your purpose to a border guard? Are you free because you can choose the car, life or health insurance you wish to avoid being fined and/or being imprisoned? The government is slowing eating away out our freedoms and few seem to notice or to care. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't happening.

For instance, the organic food industry is taking more and more hits from the FDA and the AMA when they demand that items previously considered food or health related but not medicinal come under governmental control. What you may once have been able to purchase without a prescription will soon become a controlled substance because it circumvents traditional methods of medical treatment. You will no longer be able to handle your own medical and health issues by going to the health food market or co-op grocers and these businesses are vanishing slowly but inexorably because of the high cost of doing business and more and closer government scrutiny. Those shelves of tinctures and herbs and supplements might not be there for long if things continue as they do and people patronize Wal-Mart and grocery stores because their prices are cheaper.

The same people who refuse to buy their produce and food from health food markets and co-op grocers who support local organic farmers and ranchers think nothing of spending hundreds of dollars on eating out at places like McDonald's and Arby's and KFC and the rest of the fast food chains who have jumped wholeheartedly on the health food bandwagon by offering salads and low fat food. The chains still buy their produce from corporate farms that use pesticides and toxic chemicals that leach into the healthy food that is processed and sold and inject their livestock with hormones and antibiotics and pen them in filthy stalls and cages, feeding them with processed food tainted with feces and animal viscera not used at the processing plants. Still think the food is healthy? It is cheap food and it's easy to get while taking the time to buy organic produce and free range, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, naturally grazed or wild caught meat, eggs and fish means going to the store, buying the raw produce and meats and slaving for a whole 30-45 minutes over a hot stove or microwave to produce a meal that you can order, buy and eat in less than 15 minutes. Is it any wonder America has become the land of the obese and the home of the lazy?

Don't think I'm immune. I'm not. I give in every once in a while to a craving for a subway sandwich and a bag of Sun Chips and when I'm short of cash I go to King Sooper's and buy my produce from the organic food aisle there. I'm not rich and I don't have a lot of disposable income, and I do have a tendency to rate books and digital cameras and laptop computers so I can write above food. I don't get enough exercise and I do skip meals, but on the whole I eat healthier than 80% of the population and I drive my car maybe once a week. But this isn't about me. It's about our eroding freedoms and control of our bodies.

As I have written many times, here and in nationally syndicated articles, the current pandemic of immune diseases stems from profligate use of anti-bacterial and anti-viral cleaners that keep bacteria, germs and viruses out of our way and allow our immune systems to get weak and flabby. Our immune systems are like muscles that need something to work against, an attack of germs, bacteria and viruses to learn to recognize and fight, so, too, our freedoms. If we no longer exercise our freedoms, we will no longer have them and our ability to recognize when they have been taken away will have atrophied to the point we will no longer notice or care. Like our health, we must guard our freedoms, especially and most importantly our right to choose our destiny, the protection and maintenance of our health and our right to die with dignity. Doctors no longer understand that just because they can do something doesn't mean they should. Every surgery, every new treatment for cancer or warts or even an ingrown toenail puts us at greater and greater risk from super viruses like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), the super bug, retained instruments and sponges, the spread of cancer throughout the body via the blood stream, and a host of other seemingly minor complications and "reasonable risks". Nature holds the answers we need, but a nature not controlled by corporate farming and ranching methods and governmental agencies bent on retaining power and control of our lives and our choices. Every time we give in and take what the medical establishment offers without looking further and searching a little more, we hand over control of our lives and our bodies to the government and their agencies, and alternative choices diminish or are driven out of the country.

Who's going to control your life and your rights, big brother or you?

Remember one thing, you have as much right to choose established medical and corporate farming and ranching methods as you do to choose organic and free range, and you choose every time you hand over your hard earned money.