Issue 5, Spring 2020

Dear friends,

Welcome to our Spring Newsletter!

Spring invites us to open back out into the world and face the challenges coming toward us in a new, enlivened way. How do we awaken and move toward a healthier world? We can just look to the plants and animals around us to be reminded of life’s renewed enthusiasm for living. In what ways can we grow and renew ourselves? We all share this earth together and live suspended in the air around us, air that transmits light and sound and breath. Since sheltering in place began, many of us have been delighting in this wonderful clean air! Yet, this same air that sustains, delights and inspires is also laden with pollution, electromagnetic frequencies, disease and fear. How do we clean, nourish and maintain this delicate air organism? How do we cleanse our own “pneuma” or soul? If the current pandemic has taught us anything, it has taught us to stop, slow down and listen. And sometimes when we stop and listen, we can suddenly see what needs to be done.

In the spirit of Spring and exploring these questions, we offer some relevant themes on improving and protecting our health. Dr. McMullen shares her Spring Detox program from Rudolf Steiner Health Center, Dr. Gambrell explores the challenges of technology and 5G and how to mitigate them, and Dr. Kamsler offers a thoughtful approach to child development and vaccination. But first, a note from our founder, Dr. Steven Johnson, on the importance of awakening to the power of choice through ‘Informed Consent’:

What is Informed Consent?
Why Does it Matter?

Informed consent is when a healthcare provider — like a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare professional — explains a medical treatment to a patient before the patient agrees to it. This type of communication lets the patient ask questions and accept or deny treatment.

In a healthcare setting, the process of informed consent includes:
your ability to decide
an explanation of information needed to make the decision
your understanding of the medical information
your voluntary decision to get treatment
These components are essential elements of the shared decision-making process between you and your healthcare provider. Most importantly, it empowers you to make educated and informed decisions about your health and medical care.

Informed consent is a process that’s required for most medical procedures. However, there’s increasing confusion about what informed consent really means, when it’s needed and in which situations are we losing our freedom and right to make our own health care decisions. What does it mean for the future of health care and technologies that potentially affect our health?

Also, informed consent allows you to make decisions with your healthcare provider. This collaborative decision-making process has always been an ethical and legal obligation of healthcare providers and part of their Hippocratic oath.

The loss of informed consent around the issue of vaccination has raised a large ethical dilemma no matter your position on vaccines. As medicine and technology advance “we” as a population are being forced to accept the decisions of “others” as to the safety of these advancements many of which have biased and mixed research findings or the research is not available to the general public.

All of this is usually justified to serve a “larger” social or economic purpose. No matter our view on vaccination or new technologies such as 5G, it is important that we consider the fact that we might lose our right and freedom for informed consent around these issues.

The articles in the current newsletter raise serious questions about informed consent. Regardless of your personal views about the issues discussed in our newsletter, we encourage you to be aware of how these issues impact your right to informed consent. We hope many of you will become pro-active about your health and your right to choose the healthcare that is right for you. Anthroposophic and Integrative Medicine depend on these freedoms.

We hope you find this information useful and consider researching organizations that are standing up for informed consent, such as PhysiciansforInformedConsent.org

The issue of informed consent is about our personal freedoms. We encourage everyone to take a closer look at this issue and not get lost in fears about vaccinations and the economic stability of scientific advancement. Through these difficult times there is a danger that we may exchange our inalienable rights for the promise of safety and progress. In the end, it is an individual choice each of us will have to make.

This is an Independent Editorial Statement

Dr. Steven M. Johnson, DO

Additional Resources and Calls to Action:

• Save Homeopathy – Send Comments to the FDA by May 23rd
• The Significance of Primary Tumors in the NTP Study of Chronic Rat Exposure to Cell Phone Radiation [Health Matters]
• For the right to screen-free day care institutions, kindergartens and primary schools
• Viewpoints on the Corona Virus
• The Brain Architects Podcast: Covid-19 Special Edition: A Different World