This insidious proposal is designed to redefine every complementary and alternative health care modality and product as "medicine."  This has direct implications on the services and products provided by every alternative health care professional. There is no facet of complementary and  alternative health care that is not affected. If the FDA adopts this proposal, all natural health care would be illegal even for medical doctors.

Essential oils, herbs, herbal remedies, homeopathic remedies, minerals, nutritional supplements, plant enzymes and vitamins are redefined in this proposal as "medicine." Very simply, medicine is under the jurisdiction of the FDA and, by law, only licensed medical doctors may prescribe "medicines." Anybody else who advises, advocates, counsels, distributes, markets, recommends or suggests anybody use "medicine" is practicing medicine without a license. This is a felony in the USA  punishable by fines and incarceration.

This subtle change of vocabulary from "alternative health care" to "alternative medicine" makes all of these industries subject to control by the FDA as medicine. Only medical doctors would be allowed to provide, prescribe and supervise the delivery of these services. Anybody else who provided any of these services would be practicing medicine without a license and subject to incarceration and fines.

That's the bad news.

The good news is we have until April 30, 2007 to voice our opinion against this proposal to eliminate complementary and alternative health care in America. Almost 100,000 people have already filed their objection. According to Dr. Rima Laibow, medical director of the Natural Therapies Foundation, we need 50 times that many people to respond by the end of the month.