Animal Rights: Ownership or Guardianship? Part 2 of 2

Dear Caat,

The basis they are using is that all alter­na­tive care is ille­gal, because

• it is only legal for a DVM vet to treat an ani­mal, and

• they are so allo­path­i­cally con­ser­v­a­tive that they believe DVM vets should have their licenses pulled for par­tic­i­pat­ing in alter­na­tive care.

The AVMA is far more con­ser­v­a­tive than the AMA because the AMA has at least had to accept the human patient’s right to choose their own care, while the AVMA is using a legal stance sim­i­lar to ‘in loco par­en­tis’, where they avow that only the vet can make a choice about an animal’s care, and the client only has a right to choose alter­na­tive care if they can find a vet to agree with them. ‘In loco par­en­tis’ is what a col­lege is bound by to be legally respon­si­ble for minor stu­dents. The AVMA is say­ing that since ani­mals are not human, only a vet is qual­i­fied to make deci­sions for their care, and to admin­is­ter that care. All alter­na­tive prac­tice would be ille­gal, even for vets. It’s pretty fascist.

[Please read more of this arti­cle by click­ing the link below the dona­tion button.]

© Denise Schultz 2009

Dona­tions and con­nec­tions from the many to each other,
in even a tiny way, can cre­ate big shifts.
So please share Con­sider This . . .
with any­one else whom you want to con­sider these con­nec­tions and insights.

Stay­ing the course of alter­na­tive treat­ment
I know of a case where a client used alter­na­tive can­cer tx (herbs, mas­sage, energy heal­ing, every­thing she could get, because surgery had already failed twice) and the third sur­geon tried to get her jailed for ani­mal cru­elty because the exter­nal tumor got so big. But he couldn’t get any­where with it, because an inde­pen­dent vet had done a full-​​body ultra­sound and found no can­cer any­where else in the body, and biop­sies of over 25 lymph nodes found that horse was clean. In fact the horse was so clean that there was a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing mem­brane between the tumor and the nor­mal tis­sue, and when the sur­geon made his first inci­sion, the tumor fell on the ground and cracked open like a melon. If the client had stayed with tra­di­tional treat­ment it was highly likely that the can­cer would have metas­ta­sized. Instead she sup­ported his immune sys­tem to fight the tumor on his home ground, in his own body. It was an extra­or­di­nary devotion.

It is highly polit­i­cal with vets, because even those who want a holis­tic prac­tice would stand to lose their license, to say noth­ing of their prac­tice, and their call­ing. With humans, the state of Cal­i­for­nia passed a law that allows us to choose alter­na­tive care as long as the prac­ti­tioner states upfront that they are not MDs, do not pre­scribe drugs, and can­not per­form surgery. We need a law like that for ani­mal care. What is even more polit­i­cal, is that our main tool in this is to claim own­er­ship of our ani­mals. Many well-​​meaning ani­mal rights groups try to strike that down. How­ever, claim­ing our ani­mals as our prop­erty (which is how the law sees ani­mals) is our main pro­tec­tion to be able to defend our right to make choices in their care even when it is against the will, the insight, the expe­ri­ence or the advice of the DVM vet. It could be seen as a right to pri­vate prop­erty, not to be annexed by the state with­out due process.

So enough of that -
I don’t want to give energy to what is not work­ing, instead to ask that we let our vets and leg­is­la­tors know that we want holis­tic care as much for our ani­mals as we do for our­selves, and we want the exclu­sive rights to make choices about our ani­mals’ care. Some of the care may need to be admin­is­tered by a vet (and I count on them for that!) but alter­na­tive care should be rec­og­nized as a legal right. An exam­ple is Cansema, the blood­root black paste for can­cer treat­ment: it can be very effec­tive, and is very caus­tic, so the ani­mal needs to be mon­i­tored for pain man­age­ment by a vet. If you are going to use this herb, you need a vet who can pre­scribe pain meds. My holis­tic vet even suc­cess­fully used it for his own skin can­cers, because he knew the appro­pri­ate protocol.

© 2009 Denise Schultz www​.denis​eschultz​.com

To see part one of this arti­cle, please click here.

An ear­lier ver­sion of this mate­r­ial appeared on Caat’s Spir­it­Caat forum. She has put together a ter­rific resource here for peo­ple inter­ested in ani­mals and ani­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Give her a click! Scroll down to the Paws Talk Ani­mal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Forum.

© Denise Schultz 2009

Dona­tions and con­nec­tions from the many to each other,
in even a tiny way, can cre­ate big shifts.