Wilton Declaration, Right to Heal and be Healed

The Wilton Health Freedom Declaration

The Right to Heal and Be Healed

During the millennium development of Anglo-American Common Law, healers repeatedly sought protection from the overzealous guardians of official medicine. From the time of Henry VIII's Herbalists' Charter¹ protecting practitioners of the healing arts from interference by the medical authorities of the day through, for example, the Helsinki Declaration protecting individuals from experimentation without informed consent and the recent adopting of laws protecting the practices of healing beyond the limits of standard licensure, the political system has periodically both aided and hindered the healing arts.

The persecution of innovative healers by constituted authority, however, continues to this day. From the persecution of Wilhelm Reich through the often decades long struggle of healers such as doctors Burzynski, Corsello, Levin, Carley and Clark for the right to practice at and beyond the leading edge, authority has far too often stifled creative advancement of the healing arts. For example, from the time of the first public reports of the benefits of Vitamin E for the normal functioning of the heart in the mid 1940's² until the acknowledgement of this fact by the constituted authorities, fifty million Americans died of heart disease -- a disease which simple supplementation could have prevented in half of these individuals.

We say enough! The time has come for healers and those they seek to help to band together and assert our Right to Heal and Be Healed.

The health freedom advocates and healers meeting in Wilton, Connecticut on July 9, 2000 declare and assert our fundamental human right (arising together with the basic human rights to liberty, free expression and privacy) to Health Freedom of Choice. We demand an end to political, bureaucratic and judicial interference with these basic rights:

1. Our right to control our own bodies and to make our own informed decisions about wellness and healing, even if those choices are not viewed by some appointed or self-appointed representatives of the "establishment" as the preferred treatment of the moment.

2. Our right to freely and individually choose any modality for which the patient or guardian expresses informed consent.

3. Our right of freely and individually choose any healing practitioner, regardless of school or methodology of practice, without restriction of license or certification, in private association or in the public.

4. Our right to access to the nutrients and remedies we individually make the free, informed choice to use, without regard to local, national or international bureaucratic restrictions on ingredient, potency or use, and

5. Our right freely to learn, to teach and to experiment, but not be experimented upon, without informed consent.

In brief, we declare our independence from bureaucratic restrictions on our fundamental human rights and call for the establishment of an international alliance of health freedom activists, to defend these basic human rights and the healers, physicians and other practitioners alike, who we freely choose to help us achieve and maintain health.

Adopted July 9, 2000

Physicians, wellness professionals and other concerned citizens are invited reproduce or republish and distribute the Wilton Declaration. The Institute for Health Research, www.inhere.org is acting a Keeper of the Declaration and can be contacted through its web site.

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Notes

1 Herbalists' Charter, http://home.earthlink.net/~lifespirit23/herbcharter.htm

² Time, June 10, 1946, The Shutes and Vitamin E

Back to the Health Freedom Organizing Committee
temporary home page, www.lifespirit.org/wilton.html

Wiltion meetings media release, metccpr1001.html