The medical freedom movement, a grassroots view

We the people are at the heart of the medical freedom movement. Charismatic orators will come and go, but this movement remains steadfastly at the grassroots.

Decades ago, and up through the late 1990’s, early 2000’s, when the internet was very young and did not yet contain much of use, there were courageous people, parents mostly, who fought for the freedom not to be coerced to inject mystery liquids into their children.   Asking a doctor to share a vaccine’s product package insert was an act of defiance, incitement of an abrupt kerfuffle.  Questioning a doctor’s knowledge about the injections startled them, and doctors were seen many times to storm out of exam rooms, furious at the challenge to their medical judgment.

Back in 2000, I was a sophomore in a typical medical program, not yet transferred to naturopathic medical school.  One day in that first med school, I was assigned to go do high school sports physicals.  Fine, no problem.  And the same day, I was told to give vaccines. 

I said no.  But nobody said no; it just wasn’t done.  This was a lonely moment, and my classmates looked around a bit wide-eyed.   I said no, because some years prior I had started reading about unsavory ingredients in vaccine soups and random post-vaccine injuries.  I knew informed consent issues were not being addressed, although I was barely aware of that legal concept at the time, and knew only a fraction of what I would later study on this topic in the coming years.  I mainly said no, because I could not take the risk of giving something toxic to another person.  “First do no harm,” I said when refusing, and the administration could do nothing.  It was the garlic in front of the vampire.  They couldn’t argue with my informed consent concern and toxicity concern.  I did not feel that I was punished or shunned for that; everybody seemed to forget about it, but it was my first act of rebellion against the paradigm as a healthcare practitioner in training, still only a student, not yet licensed.

Then I was assigned to a rotation in a pediatric clinic.  The pediatrician was a pleasant man who chatted with me about this and that.  I did not yet appreciate that he made his living from giving vaccines and the subtle chronic diseases that they insidiously begin in children.  We did newborn baby exams and physical exams of all age children up through teens.  We treated “the special of the week,” when it seemed all the kids had diarrhea for a while.  Then most of them had colds.  Or rashes.  We made empathetic remarks to the kids and parents, and it was always interesting to check in with them.  I wasn’t involved in vaccines; the nurses were assigned to do that.  Then one day the doctor brought up the topic of vaccines.  I said something like, in my utter naivete at the time, “I don’t think you should do that.  I would avoid giving vaccines if I were you.  They can be really dangerous for kids.  I’ve been reading about them.”  He and I just didn’t chat so much anymore for the rest of the quarter.  I guess it was something I said.   I went on to other rotations the next quarter.

Elsewhere, there were cancer patients who felt coerced and bullied to have chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, when they would have preferred to explore and consult different doctors regarding other options first, or even to take a break from oncology’s relentless chemo schedule to simply look around and talk to other cancer survivors and study and reflect on what those other options might be.  The thought of any resistance to that conveyor belt is so intimidating to anyone who has been caught in its maws, so to speak, that I wrote the book Manifesto For A Cancer Patient in 2017 about the chutzpah that cancer patients must summon, at the most difficult, weak and exhausted time of their lives, in order to be able to rebel against, or even to simply assert themselves to, their doctors and very often even with dogmatic family and friends.

Some of those alternative cancer treatment options had been prohibited or outlawed.  I had long been interested in alternative cancer options after learning that in the 1970’s an extract of apricot seeds had been squashed behind closed doors.  William Vodra, a former FDA exec said “Nobody is going to pay $70,000 for a new cancer drug if they can buy Laetrile [extract from apricot seeds] for 75 cents.” 

Well, maybe those of us who make our own choices would prefer to pay less, and / or get less risky treatments, and will choose that for ourselves, thank you very much.  So even though I have not been impressed with what I’ve learned of apricot seeds over the years, this event also helped to fortify my resolution to devote my work to ensuring medical freedom for my patients, my family and myself.

I for example do not wear a mask, because I do not allow respiratory obstruction.  It’s my respiration, and I alone decide if it has imposed obstruction or not, and the answer to that is a definitive and final no.  Mask-wearing is an obvious health hazard, of obeisance to an unscientific superstition, and even if it weren’t, my respiration is mine to govern, not someone else’s.  If anyone tries to obstruct my breathing, then they will not be happy with the result.  Obviously, I don’t fly anywhere these days.  It’s important to recognize and assert this right to govern one’s own breath, as good practice for future moments when even more courage may be needed.

I want to pay homage to those who kept the medical freedom movement going all those years in the 20th century and the first part of this one.  Few of us were involved, as it had not yet risen to the level of most people’s interest.  Then as now, we became aware of each other through community, workplaces, with classmates and the internet.

When the internet was in its infancy and very sparse, at the turn of the millennium, the Australian Vaccine Network probably was the beacon of the medical freedom movement of that time.   These days their name is Australian Vaccination Risks Network, and they must certainly have their hands full at the moment, given the radical political direction in their country now.   Meryl Dorey of AVN tirelessly published over the decades comprehensive information gathered from peer-reviewed literature and courtroom transcripts about vaccines, and reading these, I quickly became versed in adjuvants, excipients and common and often horrifying vaccine ingredients.

Similarly in the US, Barbara Loe Fisher started National Vaccine Information Center, still the best resource on state-level exemptions from vaccines and other useful information.

In 2010, other naturopathic physicians and I became aware of some ascendant power consolidation moves to limit or to potentially tyrannize our profession and our patients.  Elites made plans behind closed doors once again, but this time leaked enough gossip for us to learn of their plans.  To thwart that impulse, we together with our attorney, and with the knowledge of our medical board, founded an organization to protect the medical freedoms that we recognize under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as well as several applicable federal and state laws.  That organization is still trucking along at NaturopathicStandards.org.

Today, my patients care so much about medical freedom that when they start getting better and feeling better, we discuss that topic more often than any other.

The most comprehensive reference book regarding vaccine injuries and safety concerns (pre-COVID era) is Nell Miller’s 400 Critical Vaccine Studies, and every family should keep it handy.  The best, most comprehensive medical freedom history by far is Suzanne Humphries MD and Roman Bystrianyk, Dissolving Illusions, showing centuries of medical freedom uprising against medical tyranny, mostly relating of course to vaccines.

Medical freedom has also been fought for valiantly by those on this very, very incomplete list:

Parents of vaccine-injured children, as well as especially Sherrie Tenpenny, DO, Tedd Koren DC, Russell Blaylock MD, Toby Rogers PhD, Robert F Kennedy Jr. Esq., and more recently in the COVID era, Zev Zelenko MD, Simone Gold MD and her colleagues with America’s Frontline Doctors, Ben Tapper DC, Pierre Kory MD, Robert Malone MD, Peter McCullough MD, as well as journalists Gary Noll, Joe Rogan, Alex Berenson, Del Bigtree, Jeffrey Jaxen and Daniel Horowitz, as well as authors Roger Handley and Forrest Maready.  There are countless more who deserve mention, and I hope some of you will help fill this list in more properly in the comments.

Despite the appearance of microphone-grabbing orators who, racing forward from their recent and steep learning curves, grab the spotlight and the stage at the helm of this movement, it is you and I, we the people, who remain the steadfast core of the medical freedom movement. 

1920 protest against vaccine mandates

When a patient and doctor discuss all available healthcare options, free from outside “mandates,” and are free, or assert freedom, to make our own healthcare choices without coercion or undue influence, then medical freedom is again upheld.  You keep your rights when you are willing to defend them or to exercise them.  It is we at the grassroots level in the home, the workplace, the doctor’s office and driving in a convoy through Canada, or on the streets of Paris and many other capitals and cities throughout the world that make sure this happens by our daily actions.  It is said that only 3.5% of the population carrying out peaceful non-compliance is enough to change a society.  Folks, that’s us, plus an enormous and growing population of newly acquired allies.

“The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom.  Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who want doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush, 1745-1813,

Colonial physician and Signer of the US Declaration of Independence