Physicians and Patients Reclaiming Medicine Mission Statement

We are physicians and patients with a shared mission to reclaim medicine.  As physicians, we are committed to the principle of first doing no harm in the sacred tradition of the Hippocratic Oath.  We physicians are dedicated to protecting the health of our patients and to practicing ethical, scientific, and individualized care of the whole person.  Patients and physicians together declare that patients have the inalienable right to seek and receive independent, uncensored advice and treatment from the patient’s chosen physician, unimpaired by those who do not share this commitment. 

The Problem.  The doctor-patient relationship is sacred.  The physician’s advice and treatment must be central to patient care.  However, physicians and patients are currently being threatened, censored, and controlled by pharmaceutical corporations, government agencies, politicians, and others who are not in the direct physician relationship with patients and who have conflicts of interest. These adverse influences disrupt the doctor-patient relationship and harm patient care.  We need, but do not currently have, a medical board that effectively protects physicians and patients from these adverse influences.

How we are reclaiming medicine: 

1. We seek a properly constituted medical board.  The board must include complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) physicians as well as conventional doctors.  All members must serve without even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Each member must promptly and fully disclose all potential conflicts of interest.  

2. We seek a properly functioning medical board. The medical board must support and defend the highest standards of both conventional and CAM integrative health care as well as the doctor-patient relationship.  It must avoid governmental and pharmaceutical industry influence and coercion.  The board must welcome new advances in medical practice based on good science, individual physicians’ clinical experiences, and humanistic values.  Its disciplinary procedures must honor principles of due process, fairness, and innocence until proven guilty.  The board must not discriminate against tenets of any practice area or specialty, including CAM physicians.  Board members have personal responsibility for their actions and actions of board staff. 

3. We speak freely.  We defend the Constitutional right of all patients to speak freely.  We defend the Constitutional right of all physicians to speak freely to their patients and to speak publicly on any topic and from a viewpoint that honors the doctor-patient relationship. 

4. Practicing medicine requires patient-specific enhancements and adjustments to general standards.  General mandates, guidelines, “standards of care,” and “best practices” cannot provide the right answer in every detail to every issue for every patient and their specific medical history and needs.  Physicians often need to fill the gaps.  And, such general rules and standards should never be followed blindly, ignoring the patient’s specific medical history and needs.  What is good for one person or for many people is not good for a specific patient.  Therefore, physicians have a right and duty to provide, and patients have an inalienable right to receive, individualized medical care and treatment of the whole person that supplements or differs from general standards if the care or treatment is consistent with these principles:     

The care and treatment:

• Is reasonably calculated to minimize the risk and harm faced by the patient, OR

• Is reasonably calculated to maximize the odds of improving the patient’s condition;

• Is consistent with uncorrupted established and emerging science; and

• Is given after the patient provided informed consent.

We reject any mandate or general standard of care to the extent that it purports to apply uniformly to all patients without consideration of the patient’s specific medical history and needs, and religious and personal beliefs.

Application #1: We support prescribing according to the patient’s needs.  We defend the long tradition of doctors prescribing medications, administering therapeutics and non-pharmaceutical treatments, and ordering tests and diagnostics if done consistent with the principles set forth above. 

Application #2: We support granting individualized exemptions.  We support and defend physicians who grant exemptions from public health mandates if done consistent with the principles set forth above.