Urgent alert: North Carolina to turn all homeopaths, naturopaths, midwives into FELONS

[Shannon Nelson]

Read on to find out *what* bill, and why it is madness.
Begin forwarded message:
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[Shannon Nelson]

Hm. The bill states, "No person shall perform any act constituting the practice of medicine or surgery, as defined in this Article, ...", but that definition is not included. It has *long* been illegal to "practice medicine without a license", and homeopaths have worked around that by simply not "practicing medicine"--we are taught to be careful not to "diagnose disease", and not to claim that we are treating disease. Stupid stupid stupid stupid--but not new. Is there anything new in this bill, other than I gather a harsher penalty?

Shannon
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[John Harvey]

Shannon, the definition that appears in Article 1 is unfortunately broad and includes

"Offering or undertaking to prescribe, order, give, or administer any drug or medicine for the use of any other individual" (emphasis mine)

and

"Offering or undertaking to prevent or diagnose, correct, prescribe for, administer to, or treat in any manner or by any means, methods, or devices any disease, illness, pain, wound, fracture, infirmity, defect, or abnormal physical or mental condition of any individual, including the management of pregnancy or parturition".

Article 1 defines neither "drug" nor "medicine". It does mention some things that shall not constitute practising medicine, such as midwifery and acupuncture.

Article 5 defines "drug" as including

"substances recognized in the official United States Pharmacopoeia, official Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States, or official National Formulary" (emphasis mine).
This contradiction between the claim that homoeopathy is fraudulent by virtue of its medicines' low to zero material doses and the claim that such "fake" medicines must be defined as drugs is amusing, isn't it.
See Debby Bruck's brief notes and tips on the bill and how to counter it, here: .

Cheers --

John
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"Where it is doing the right thing, a great power should be robust against embarrassment."
—Simon Jenkins, "U.S. embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment", The Guardian 28 Nov 2010, .