The Federation of State Medical Boards is actually an entirely private trade group that seems to exist to thwart competition. State-based Action Alerts!
For many months, we’ve been following the FDA’s war on natural medicine. The agency has been eliminating natural ingredients from the list of substances from which pharmacies can make customized medicines, such as curcumin, boswellia, and aloe vera.
We’ve also noted that the new regulations are making it difficult for doctors to get medicines like compounded vitamin B12, which is driving up the price for once-affordable IV vitamin B12 shots. Ironically, Hillary Clinton reports that she gets these shots, but then again, she does not have to worry about the cost. Bioidentical hormones, such as Estriol, are also threatened.
Unfortunately, the FDA is not the only danger to customized natural medicines.
The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) recently considered adopting a position statement encouraging physicians to avoid engaging in “office use” (compounding medications in bulk in anticipation of patient need) and to avoid making sterile medications in their offices. Instead, physicians would be encouraged to get sterile medications from 503B “outsourcing” facilities.
These positions strike us as patently absurd, driven by Big Pharma, and part of the effort to eliminate customized, natural medicines from the market.
The compounding of sterile drugs must of course be carefully done to avoid contamination, but as long as a doctor has the proper training and equipment—which any skilled and responsible doctor would—any risk would be substantially mitigated. This position against in-office sterile compounding could also interfere with in-office IV nutritional therapy, where a doctor makes an intravenous nutrient bag based on the needs of an individual patient. Many physicians and patients may not be able to afford the alternatives, such as using a hospital pharmacy. This is likely the FSMB’s intent—to make the practice of personalized and integrative medicine more and more difficult.
It is also telling that the position statement explicitly encourages doctors to get their sterile medications from outsourcing pharmacies. We recently reported that the FDA has been trying to wipe traditional compounding pharmacies off the map by forcing them to register instead as outsourcing facilities, since what can be compounded at outsourcing facilities is completely at the FDA’s whim and can be very narrowly defined. This will likely eliminate many traditional compounding pharmacies, and leave only the largest ones open for business—by then owned by Big Pharma.
The FSMB is also following the FDA’s lead in its hostility toward office use. In violation of clear Congressional intent, the FDA has already severely restricted a doctor’s ability to keep medications on hand for the immediate treatment of a problem a patient may have. Congress, in response, specifically directed the FDA to set forth how office use can continue. Both the FSMB and the FDA are defying the will of Congress, as well as the will of the American public.
It is unclear whether this position statement was formally adopted by the FSMB, given the FSMB’s penchant for operating behind completely closed doors. But at the very least it signals the organization’s intentions. This is, after all, nothing out of the ordinary for the FSMB, which as historically been no friend of natural medicine.
The organization has demonstrated its antipathy toward natural health since the mid-1990s, when it discussed altering the definition of health fraud to include alternative medical care! It would appear that FSMB considers innovative approaches to healthcare to be nothing more than exercises in “quackery” (read: threats to conventional doctors’ or drug companies’ income), so it makes sense that it wants to see the practice of compounding severely restricted.
Operating in the dark as it does, it is hard to say who is running this private organization (yes, despite its misleading name, it is just a private organization) or setting its agenda. But we suspect, based on the available evidence, that it is funded and controlled by some combination of the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry. If so, it is one of the chief forces behind the kind of corrupt crony medicine we see today.
We’ve reported to you before about the FSMB’s push to enact its Interstate Medical Licensing Compact in as many states as possible (for more background, read our previous coverage here). The Compact creates an Interstate Commission to oversee an expedited licensure process for physicians applying for licenses in states other than their own. This sounds reasonable on its face, but we believe it is actually an underhanded attempt to increase the organization’s already extensive control over the practice of medicine—power that we would expect to be wielded to shut down integrative doctors.
The FSMB’s legislation has passed in seventeen states so far, and there are live bills in two more states. Check below to see if your state is considering FSMB legislation, and click the link to urge your state legislators to oppose it.
Michigan
Pennsylvania
Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:
Worried About Prostate Cancer?
Industry GMO Labeling Bill Passes
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One more thing I question these scum bags as to how many holistic people have you put a contract on? For more than 50 have been put to assassinated by your group over the last couple of year.
How about some specifics?
Dr. James Goldberg
I have been so greatly saddened by the reports of those good and learned people losing their lives, to what the scummy chemical pill popping creeps who only care about profit and not human health and welfare? Dark dark dark is our country now! 🙁
Robert Morrow,- Wish these SBs could be tracked down.
We live in such a crooked, corrupt and greedy country!!! Arrogance why would they be here? They have nothing on Scandinavian, European and even less so called progressive countries who at least many of them respect their citizens and care about their health and well being. In this country nothing could be further from the truth!!! Monsatan has so much control and strength that has been enabled by government here that has our environment and food industry in the garbage!! I’ll bet roundup isn’t in breast milk, the rain, or the air in those other countries; but it is here!!! One corrupt and greedy corp. is going around all over the place draining water from various states to sell for their own profit……this government enables that to happen!! ONLY IN AMERICA!!! ETC, etc……..I have NO confidence or support for the people in government in the state of MI as they have sold us out. Other government people in various states don’t support the citizens in their respective state who voted them into office. They’ve totally voted against those who put them into the positions they hold. Is anyone honest in our government anymore, does anyone care about what the citizens have to say, think or feel about any issues that affect them??? Is everyone in our government corrupt and greedy taking kickbacks from those corporations and companies that they support on issues that affect the corps. instead of the citizens?? This is country has plummeted down so low in the way it is controlling so much that goes on with regard to the citizens and not in a good way. More and more vaccinations are given to children at an earlier age and far too many. It’s all a huge mess in this country and I shudder to think of what is going to come in 2017!! We are adults and should be able to choose alternative safe, non side effects healing if we choose to!! I have for most of my adult life b/c that’s what works for me. Vitamins, herbs, holistic, homeopathic, naturopathic, can help so much without worrying about side effects!! Just b/c allopathic medicine only dictates big pharma garbage all the time and doesn’t delve into alternative healing, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be able to do research and find it for ourselves without government INTERFERENCE!!! It’s okay that the government will allow all kinds of toxins and pesticides to be slathered on our food and grown by GMO seeds, but go on a different path; that’s not acceptable to them!!
Proof that the love of money is the root of all evil!
You’re so right Amber!
I think you can love money, for its tremendous capacity to do good.
It has a tremendous capacity to fight evil & overpowering control.
–I think that the desire for more & more money can & certainly has been behind much evil – though, – that coupled with power.
— It’s what the person(s) is comprised of, that makes the difference.
Amen, Robert. I’m copying your comment to put in my file. I’m compiling information to send out to the pundits who are sold out…. It’s well spoken WISE people of your age that everyone should be listening to. I know it’s hard for me to believe what has happened with corruption and control in this country in my lifetime. I can imagine what it must be like for you… the old world spinning out of control.
It is now IMPOSSIBLE to trust any site that ends in .gov….. and it’s their fault that we feel that way. They have lied and said things were safe… air, water, poisons… The word safe is going to have to be redefined.
They wouldn’t say any good thing about any God given medicine.
True evidence of FALSIFIED “studies” and skewing of data to suit the desired outcome is all too prevalent now in Industrial and Manufacturing of toxic substances. If you do not know that, then you have some big studying to do.
So you will have to come up with other research data engines to have accurate information.
PubMed is a free search engine developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the at the National Library of Medicine. It comprises of tens of million of citations from the biomedical literature. The first study I cited was conducted at a hospital in Berlin, German and then published in a peer-reviewed journal. The funding for that came from grants via the taxpayer over there.
As Tim Minchin once said: ”You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? – Medicine.” Most of the claims about the cannabinoids are lacking any good data from well conducted trials in humans. The only study was done in patients with rGBM in Spain. This was conducted by Prof. Manuel Guzmán PhD and published in the British Journal of Cancer (I will add links to this). With that said I would personally legalized all recreational drugs.
None of the citations I’ve added have been falsified and if that happened they would be retracted.
Truth4All, – Well put, & right –
You can no longer trust any site that ends in .gov….. and it’s their fault
You can easily find these studies on other sites such as ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, Europe PubMed Central and many others.
mooncat,- Good job.
Robert,- All so well put.
Wish I could attend – one of your classes. Not on line, that I can see.
My doctor thinks I’m crazy for using essential oils instead of pills, but she had to eat crow when my thyroid tests came back normal after 25+ years on Synthroid. Also, my sinuses are totally clear after sinus surgery, years of antihistamine and decongestant prescriptions, and several rounds of antibiotics every year for sinus infections. Also, using lavender, I now can pet a cat without going into anaphylactic shock!