Nurturing Democracy and Freedom of Medical Choice - part quatre (4)

Article 4 and the fight against les "derives sectaires"

The French are proceeding down that slippery slope I wrote about in the last post of Nurturing Democracy and Freedom of Medical Choice. Note that the law’s title presumes that no matter how medically qualified, a person who takes an unorthodox view of medical matters has fallen under the influence of “sectarian” ideas—that is, heretical ideas that pose a danger to society. At first glance, the second paragraph of Article 4 seems to be a fairly straightforward assertion that obvious malicious acts of medical malpractice are punishable with the same penalty. But it goes much further than this. In my last post it’s important to remember that the French Board of Medicine’s (L’Ordre des Medecins) definition of “derives sectaires” is anything relating to alternative medicine: including naturopathy, kinesiology, chiropractors, mesotherapy, percutaneous hydrotomy, fasting, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, etc.

Kind of like a handoff in American football, the topic of “derives sectaires” has arrived in the lawmakers hands called the French National Assembly, who recently enacted a law that proposes to fight against these sectarian abuses of medical care and improve support for victims called:

Projet de loi visant à renforcer la lutte contre les dérives sectaires

I listened to the dossier legislative for this article called the “lutte contre les derives sectaires.” Which translates to the “fight against the actes sectaires.” They define sectaires or sect as a “cult or religious” group. And the acte is a medical act such as advice, treatment, and the like. The crime is about promoting medical therapies that result in damage or death. The politicians cite numerous suicides resulting from certain “gestes medicales,” althought they never specified exactly from what. The most contentious discussion was around Article 4 (around the timestamp 2:55).

Article 4

Après l’article 223‑1-1 du code pénal, il est inséré un article 223‑1‑2 ainsi rédigé :

« Art. 223‑1-2. – Est punie d’un an d’emprisonnement et de 15 000 euros d’amende la provocation à abandonner ou à s’abstenir de suivre un traitement médical thérapeutique ou prophylactique, lorsque cet abandon ou cette abstention est présenté comme bénéfique pour la santé des personnes visées alors qu’il est, en l’état des connaissances médicales, manifestement susceptible d’entraîner pour elles, compte tenu de la pathologie dont elles sont atteintes, des conséquences graves pour leur santé physique ou psychique.

« Est punie des mêmes peines la provocation à adopter des pratiques présentées comme ayant une finalité thérapeutique ou prophylactique pour les personnes visées alors qu’il est manifeste, en l’état des connaissances médicales, que ces pratiques les exposent à un risque immédiat de mort ou de blessures de nature à entraîner une mutilation ou une infirmité permanente.

« Lorsque la provocation prévue aux deux premiers alinéas a été suivie d’effet, les peines sont portées à trois ans d’emprisonnement et à 45 000 euros d’amende.

« Lorsque ces délits sont commis par la voie de la presse écrite ou audiovisuelle, les dispositions particulières des lois qui régissent ces matières sont applicables en ce qui concerne la détermination des personnes responsables. »

Article 4 reads like a miserable run-on sentence and is equally bad in French or English. A partial direct translation is as follows:

Art. 223-1-2. – It is punishable by some years of imprisonment and fines of thousands of Euros for the incitement, by means of repeated pressure, of any person suffering from a pathology to cease or abstain from following prescribed medical treatment, therapeutic or prophylactic when this cessation or abstention is presented as beneficial for the health of the person concerned, whereas it is, in the state of medical knowledge, clearly likely to cause for them—taking into account the pathology of which they are affected—dire consequences for their physical or psychological health.

Article 4 is so unclear that its interpretation will depend on the individual reading it. Article 4 would suppress any treatment outside of what’s considered mainstream medicine. Apparently they are still arguing over whether it will be the judge or the prosecution to decide whether the “acte sectaire” is constitutional or not.

During the discussion, Mme Liso (Rapporteur) gave vague examples of what they mean by “actes sectaires.” The politicians spoke about the dangers of online coaching and dangerous education of the victims by medical personnel, the prevention of “actes sectaires” and people who are negatively influenced on the internet, and how to compensate the victims.

Some examples given of medical therapies that harm or kill people are the consummation of juices to treat cancer, people who partake in fasting to heal their maladies, health coaches that give advice leading to harm and death, and the suicides that have resulted from some of these “actes sectaires.” They spoke about people with Parkinson’s who were encouraged to treat their disease with diet. They emphasized that this bill was not about people with a cold or flu.

I honestly didn’t hear many other examples of what was apparently harming or killing so many people. For example, not once did they bring up people who were coerced to not take treatment or the vaccine for COVID-19, or other infections. I did hear some nuances to the practice of genital mutilation of girls and who were psychologically damaged or committed suicide.

One major problem about Article 4 is the whole argument rests on the fact that medications are the only way to heal a disease. In a sense, they have driven a stake into the heart of the concept that treating the terrain (i.e., the cells) is important as espoused by Dr. Bechamp and ultimately Dr. Pasteur. In my book, Stopping Pain, I talk in depth about the treatment of the terrain versus treating the pathogen (i.e. the microbe).

I also noticed that no doctors or other health practitioners were included in the discussion three plus hour discussion. Not once did they bring up the subject of vaccines, benefits or harms, which was shocking. The sense of the discussion was directed at the worst maladies and extreme measures resulting in harm and death. Yet no one brought up the pandemic of suicides and mental health problems resulting from the pandemic or cell phones. I write about this extensively in The Revolutionary Ketamine.

Many of the politicians spoke against Article 4 because it infringed against a person’s constitutional rights and freedom of expression, which is baked into the French Constitution. Despite this, the bill barely passed and is sure to come up against opposition in the future. The moderator, the president of assemble national assembly, was very aggressive with those who opposed the bill and even silenced some of those who spoke against it.

French politician Nicolas Dupont-Aignanlly exclaimed that the idea was declared liberticidal (liberty destroying). The bill, specifically Article 4, passed into law after a second deliberation despite initial rejection and controversy. The revised version of Article 4, which aimed to penalize the “provocation to abstention or abandonment of care,” was adopted by the French National Assembly with a vote of 182 in favor and 137 against. This indicates that, despite the heated debates and strong opposition from various political groups and concerns about the impact on freedom of expression and scientific debate, the legislative body ultimately approved the measure as part of efforts to combat harmful sectarian health practices.

I’ve practiced in France during my medical training, and I understand how the French medical system works. Article 4 will setback the entire medical profession. For example, most French general practitioners and even cardiologists receive a meager 25 Euros for a consultation. The majority of doctors will either quit medicine or the patient will not be able to receive care. The system is already so broken that a law like Article 4 will further break the establishment, not allowing the medical practitioner to do his or her job without fear of reprimand. This law will increase the cost of malpractice insurance, which is historically low in France. This means that doctors will not suggest or advise patients to try alternative medicines. The only thing that will be allowed is to prescribe what the government deems standard of care. Since the government will define what is mainstream medicine, and what’s not. In my past articles about this topic, it’s clear that the L’Ordre des Medecins, along with the French Ministry of Health, wants to ban all alternative medical therapies, even when there are no patient complaints, injuries, or harms, even if the patient desires these treatments and is willing to pay in cash.

Free speech and freedom of choice is the bedrock of democracy. That’s why Americans have the First Amendment. Without free speech, all is lost. The defining fact of the United States is freedom of speech. This country is exceptional because we have the 1st amendment to the Bill of Rights, freedom of conscience, and can say what we think. There’s no exception to hate speech. You cannot force someone to be quiet because you hate somebody else’s thoughts. Otherwise, we’re not citizens but slaves. That foundational right that makes this American and France is flowing away at high speed in the face of censorship, now modern censorship.

There’s no resemblance to previous censorship regimes in previous countries in previous eras, mainly because of the flow of information that is on the Internet. Nowadays our censorship is affected based on fights against disinformation, maliformation, and misinformation. It’s nothing new, but the key is that they’re everywhere.

L’état des Connaissances Médicales

The state of medical knowledge is not set in stone; it is constantly evolving, and new technologies are always being discovered. Medicine is always being debated, and things we once thought were infallible are almost always proved to be wrong in some manner. There is a saying in medical school: Half of what you'll learn in medical school will be either dead wrong or out of date within five years of your graduation; the trouble is that nobody can tell you which half.

An excellent example is arthroscopic knee surgeries. Twenty years ago, every orthopedic surgeon thought that if you had knee pain, removing the entire meniscus from the knee joint was curative. It was thought that the meniscus was a vestigial tissue, meaning that it serves little purpose. Today however, we realize that arthroscopic knee meniscectomies accelerate arthritis and the need for a total knee replacement.

Much of Article 4 is based around when a patient is injured or dies. The discussion will be about who is strictly authorized to decide what is mainstream medicine and what is not. Who is an expert on the subject, and who is not? When money and prison time are involved, one can be sure that both sides will hire an expert who will tell the narrative they want to hear — at least those practitioners that can afford legal assistance. Those doctors who practice alternative or “sectarian” ideas will be persecuted first. In the view of the French Ministry of Health (a very Orwellian conjugation) and the L’Ordre des Medecins, those doctors and practitioners have fallen under the heretical ideas that pose a danger to society.

At first glance, the second paragraph of Article 4 is a straightforward assertion that acts of medical malpractice are punishable with the same penalty:

“Est punie des mêmes peines la provocation à adopter des pratiques présentées comme ayant une finalité thérapeutique ou prophylactique alors qu’il est manifeste, en l’état des connaissances médicales, que ces pratiques exposent à un risque immédiat de mort ou de blessures de nature à entraîner une mutilation ou une infirmité permanente.”

Translation — It is punishable by the same penalties when there is an incitement to receive treatment presented as having a therapeutic or prophylactic purpose when, in fact, it is obvious, given the state of medical knowledge, that these practices expose them to an immediate risk of death or injury likely to result in a mutilation or permanent infirmity.

Note that the word manifeste—i.e., “manifest” or “obvious or evident”— is used to describe a dangerous medical practice. Again, who defines a dangerous practice of medicine, or what is malpractice?

Of course, they have no reference to whether what you’re saying is true; you can say something factually accurate and consistent with your own conscience. But because someone doesn’t like them or because they’re inconvenient to whatever plan the people in power have, they could be denounced as disinformation, and you could be stripped of your right to express them either in person or online, which is basically what the new French law saying.

Knowing that both the private sector and governments fuel these efforts is essential. And let’s not forget that you pay for and at least theoretically own governance. It’s your government. But they’re stripping our rights at a very high speed. Most people understand this intuitively but don’t know how it happens. Please watch Mike Benz’s video with Tucker Carlson for a mind blowing discussion on this topic.

To understand better how a law like Article 4 can be proposed, it’s important to know some background about how information is obtained or transmitted today:

The story of Internet freedom and how it switched to Internet censorship is essential because free speech on the Internet was an instrument of the state almost from the outset of the privatization of the Internet in 1990. Quickly, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and other intelligence services were using the Internet to congregate on blogs and forums. Free speech was championed more than anybody by the Pentagon and CIA as a way to support dissident groups around the world to help them overthrow authoritarian governments. A quick example of this is the Arab Spring and how it was promoted on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. Internet free speech allowed instant regime change operation to facilitate the foreign policy establishments’ state department agenda. The CIA has long been in the business of overthrowing governments. A prominent example is the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat to overthrow Mosaddegh.

Google is an excellent example of this because Google began as a DARPA grant by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were doctoral students at Stanford. They obtained their funding from a joint CIA NSA program to chart how “birds of a feather flock together” online through search engine aggregation. Then, one year later, they launched Google and then became a military contractor. After that, they formed Google Maps by purchasing CIA satellite software, which made it easier to track the use of free speech on the Internet and to circumvent state control over media in places like Central Asia. For many, the Arab Spring might come to mind.

The French people are losing their liberty and sovereignty. I’ve written on Substack about it on my other posts on Nurturing Democracy. The French and other countries who adopted these measures are being subjected to the tyranny they voted for. The new French law is a devastating blow to individual sovereignty and freedom of choice, yet “somehow” perfectly aligns French law with the proposed WHO Pandemic Accord requirements for member states. I won’t get into that; many others have already covered this topic.

In previous versions of America and France, you would have had an absolute right to say those things. Even in the medieval ages, Voltaire was known for saying, “I may not agree with what you say or do, but I will fight to my death to ensure you have the right to do it.”

Whereas now, the philosophes of the government are saying “It will not tolerate any criticism of the treatments which will be recommended or made obligatory by the state. Anyone who dares to criticize these therapies openly will be liable to fines and imprisonment.”

Article 4 is aimed at banning alternative medical therapies and opening Pandora’s box of medical-legal claims. The law says that if you get cancer and someone dissuades you from what the government considers medicine, and if something happens, the person who took part in the dissuasion is liable for that death or injury.

I can think of a several scenarios where this can be applied. The harms and benefits of vaccines come immediately in question, and again, many others have written about this. But vaccines aside, let’s go with back pain. At the current time the only mainstream treatments for back pain is pain medications and surgery. Anything in between those two are considered alternative medical therapies. For example, a person is being treated for back pain and a naturopathic doctor tells a patient to take certain minerals, such as boron or copper, to help them with their arthritis (of which there are many studies). And the patient silently refuses other treatments, such as pain medicines and surgery for the back pain. The law says if harm or death arrives to that patient, that doctor can be held liable.

Perhaps some good may come from Article 4 such as addressing the Islamic practice of genital mutilation to young girls. Also, this may be a path for those injured or killed by vaccines or chemotherapy to pursue legal avenues. Time will tell.