History is a Great Teacher
I love history. When I was a little girl my dad used to call me into the living room to see what was happening on the news. I remember the day that President Nixon resigned. My dad told me that I was watching “history in the making.” I was only about seven years old, but I remember being fascinated with the realization that we are all a part of history. The events of the past have shaped the present and the events of the present will shape the future. If we want to better understand the world around us we need to understand history.
Freedoms at Risk
I have spent much of my life studying and teaching history. One theme of history that I have seen repeated over and over is that freedom is hard-won and easily lost. Every generation has a responsibility to protect freedom where it exists, and to strive to attain it where it does not. We can never take freedom for granted. Today we are at risk of losing a fundamental freedom—the freedom to make choices about our family’s health. There is a battle going on over whether individuals should have the right to access natural remedies or whether we should be forced to rely solely on pharmaceutical drugs. Pharmaceutical drugs have their place in medicine and I am thankful for them. But for many of my family’s health issues, pharmaceutical drugs have failed us. I have spent time, energy, and resources acquiring the knowledge I need to treat my family’s health issues. Homeopathic remedies are one of the most helpful tools I use in this effort.
Americans for Homeopathy Choice is a grassroots organization of moms like me who organized in response to the recent FDA actions against homeopathic remedies. We affectionately refer to ourselves as “Mama Bears,” because we are fiercely devoted to protecting the well-being of our children. Of course, our group includes fathers, grandparents, pet parents, and others, who use homeopathic remedies to keep our loved ones healthy. What we all have in common is a deep concern that the FDA’s Draft Guidance issued this past December (2017) threatens to, at best, limit our access to homeopathic remedies, and, at worst, make them illegal.
FDA: Friend or Foe?
As a new-comer to homeopathy, I was busy taking courses and participating in a homeopathy study group when I learned about what was happening with the FDA. I could not believe that the FDA was threatening this amazing system of medicine that I had just discovered. In my mind, the FDA became a great big “Bad Guy” that had to be stopped.
Imagine my surprise to find out that the FDA has actually been responsible for protecting the use of homeopathic remedies in the United States since 1938. In fact, the author of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 was a medical doctor and a professional homeopath! His name was Royal S. Copeland.
Copeland’s Cure
Copeland’s Cure: Homeopathy and the War Between Conventional and Alternative Medicine, by Natalie Robins, chronicles the history of homeopathy in the United States. When the book was mentioned to me by Paola Brown, the president of Americans of Homeopathy Choice, I knew I had to read it. History is a great teacher. I hoped that by learning the history of homeopathy in the United States, I could make some sense of how we got to this point. How could it be that homeopathy had been available in the United States for so many years, yet so few people today have even heard of it? And why would the FDA, which had protected homeopathic remedies since the inception of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, suddenly threaten to make these remedies illegal?
In this three-part series, I will share with you some lessons from history that I learned by reading Copeland’s Cure. Most importantly, I would like to encourage you to join with us at Americans for Homeopathy Choice in this battle to preserve our freedom. Individuals such as Royal Copeland left us a legacy of freedom. It is our responsibility to protect that freedom and pass it on to our children and grandchildren.
You can learn about the FDA’ s actions against homeopathic remedies by exploring the Americans for Homeopathy Choice website. You can read about what we are doing to protect health freedom and how you can help by clicking through some simple action steps.
This blog series on Copeland’s Cure is written by Honest Fundraising Chair, Cathi Diaz, who makes Florida her home. As a wife, mother, and grandmother she searched for answers to her family’s numerous allergy issues. Frustrated that conventional medicines caused harmful side effects and herbs and essential oils only offered some relief, she found answers when she discovered homeopathy. She credits homeopathy with doing more to uproot her family’s allergies than anything else she has tried.
“The views expressed in “Bear Thoughts” posts are a service provided by guest writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Americans for Homeopathy Choice.”