Talk:Health freedom movement/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Health freedom movement. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

AARP

I've removed the parenthetical statement about the AARP being accused of conflicts of interest. The source seems to be the Wikipedia article on the AARP. Leaving aside the issue of using Wikipedia as a source in a Wikipedia article, the AARP is already wikilinked here. Clicking on it will take the reader to a page where criticisms of the AARP are summarized. Including a parenthetical statement that "some" have accused the AARP of conflicts of interest poisons the well and is out of place. I mean, I could go through and, every time a supplement maker, manufacturer, Orrin Hatch, Dan Burton, etc are mentioned, I could insert "(who have been accused of financial conflicts of interest)". It seems that issues related to the AARP are best dealt with on the AARP page. MastCell 21:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone else see this as one sided? This article just doesn't seem to be encyclopedic to me, does anyone else feel this way? The links mostly seem to have an agenda to sell. Some of the links don't work, and others are just so extreme. Health Freedom is for everyone and I would think it would include all sorts of health matters. The article reads like conventional medical care is for idiots and that alternates are the only method to use. I like to think that they both should work together for optimum health. Sorry, just some of my thoughts after reading this article. --Crohnie 22:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes... I do. "Health freedom" is a code phrase which covers a supplement-industry agenda (complete deregulation) and scare tactics (remember the commerical where Mel Gibson was arrested for buying vitamins?) with a veneer of consumer choice and empowerment. I think the fact that a majority of people are unaware of the current lack of supplement industry regulation is telling. OK, that's a bit extreme, but the main problem is that the article is shot through with NPOV violations and unreliable sources. One could write an encyclopedic article on, say, "History of supplement regulation in the United States" or "... in Europe", and a balanced article would mention criticism of the "health freedom" movement, its use of the FDA as a strawman/boogeyman for PR purposes, the ephedra debacle, recent calls in Congress for greater government oversight of the supplement industry, etc. I'd agree the current article title and structure are unencyclopedic and represent agenda-pushing. MastCell 23:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I have to agree with you, I do like the title you suggest too. I am a very new editor and I have a lot to learn. I would like to help with this article when others come to start to rework things here but I will need a lot of help. I am ok with the talk pages right now, so if you and others start, I will probably use this talk page for my ideas, at least until I learn more from the tutorial if that ok. Let me know if this would be alright. You have a great day. --Crohnie 12:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The title should be "Health Freedom Movement". The health freedom movement is a movement, in exactly the same way as the Anti-Globalization Movement and the Global Justice Movement are movements. Both of these have specific Wikipedia pages, and so should the health freedom movement. The "History of supplement regulation in the United States" or "... in Europe" are separate issues, dealing with only one aspect of health freedom. Bear in mind too that in some countries, such as France, use of the term "health freedom" (or 'liberte therapeutique', as it is known there) has less to do with supplements and far more to do with alternative medicine in the wider sense. As such, restructuring the article to only deal with the history of supplement regulation in the United States, or in Europe, is entirely missing the point and would narrow the scope of what the article ought to be. Other than pharmaceuticals, which no health freedom organization that I am aware of advocates, the article should be developed to describe, discuss and, yes, criticize the health freedom movement, and not just its advocacy of supplements, but also its opposition to water fluoridation, mandatory vaccination, and the use of pesticides, herbicides, food additives and genetically modified food. Vitaminman 14:00, 12 February 2007

I read some recent history on this article and noticed you have a lot of hard work and time spent on it. I don't see a problem with the title at all, it's the balance of the article that needs some work. Some of the links, and I haven't gotten through all of them, are real extreme, some just go to the main page and don't say what I think you are trying to point out, and there was one that went to a copy written article. I don't remember which one off the top of my head but it should be easy to locate, it is footnoted from the main article. I don't know if this is copy write infringement or not but someone should take a peek. I am still very green with editing here and so I hope you understand that I am not editing any articles and have been keeping my comments to the talk page. I hope others will join in and help you put together the kind of article that is something everyone would be interested in reading. Have a good day! --Crohnie 16:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Who Says Whatever Happens at Codex Does Not Affect US Law and Why Do They Say It? By Suzanne Harris. http://thelawloft.com/Freedom/050125_us_law.htm This is the link that is copy written. I don't know if this is wrong or right to be in so I just thought I would bring it to the attentions of others who know the rules here better. --Crohnie 16:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The general rule is that it's OK to link to copyrighted material (magazine or newspaper articles, etc), or cite it as a source. We just can't reproduce chunks of copyrighted material in the article and pass it off as "Wikipedia" text, nor can we put copyrighted images in the article without explicit permission. There are a few fine points but that's the general rule. There's more information available on Wikipedia's copyright policy at WP:COPYRIGHT, specifically here. MastCell 17:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks MastCell, so much to learn, I have it bookmarked to read. --Crohnie 19:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Name change?

It seems we may have a consensus for changing the name to Health freedom movement. To make sure of it, I'd like to have all current editors express their opinions here:

Support name change. -- Fyslee's (First law) 19:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Support name change. --Crohnie 19:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Support name change. Not that I am a past or recent editor on this page, but when I did stumble on this page, I wondered about the title as well. -- Dēmatt (chat) 19:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Support. MastCell 20:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Support. Vitaminman 20:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It looks like we have a clear consensus, so I'll go ahead and move things. -- Fyslee's (First law) 22:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Done! Everything has been moved, including the talk page, all histories, and your watchlist status for this article. I hope everyone is satisfied. -- Fyslee's (First law) 22:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

All pages that linked to the old link are now updated with the new article title. -- Fyslee's (First law) 22:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Good Job! Yu da man:) Thanks, that makes much more sense. -- Dēmatt (chat) 04:27, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Revised lead and additions to background

I have added more aspects to the beginning and separated the WP:LEAD (now that we have a new title) from the enlarged background section. The three actors in the movement weren't elucidated clearly enough: producers, consumers, and hindering legislation. These sections could be expanded to name the producers of products, which professions, which organizations, which practitioners, etc.. The original content is preserved as much as possible, with only slight changes of wording to take account of the added content. -- Fyslee's (First law) 08:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Good start. My main comment at this stage would be regarding the sentence on consumers that reads: "Those consumers who advocate the concept seek unhindered freedom to use whatever products or therapies they wish, and also seek increased insurance coverage of their choices." Whilst this is indeed generally the case in the USA, the situation in many other regions of the world, such as in Europe, can be somewhat different. In European countries where medical systems are not insurance-based, for example, health freedom campaigners are pressing for increased State provision of alt-med treatments. I would therefore suggest that this section could be edited/developed to reflect this. Also, this section also needs to reflect the fact that in countries where medical systems are insurance-based, campaigners are generally pressing for increased insurance coverage of their treatment choices, as opposed to their preventative/prophylactic choices. I would therefore suggest that the word "treatment" could be inserted in-between the words "their" and "choices" at the end of the aforesaid sentence. Vitaminman 10:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Good points. International aspects should indeed be covered. In Denmmark, where the NHS covers many things completely, and others partially, private insurance fills the gap and covers the difference. Campaigners work at getting both the NHS and the private insurers (there's only one!) to include their services. Chiropractic got included in the NHS after intensive mobilization of patients (some of whom found their names were used without their permission), and literally buying, for an undisclosed amount, their way into the university system. The money was raised from patient memberships (again sometimes "joined" without their knowledge or permission) in a chiropractic organization (Kiropraktikkens Fremme [1]), whose stated purpose is to get full NHS coverage. Right now it is covered partially, just like dentistry, physical therapy, podiatry, etc.. -- Fyslee's (First law) 10:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The article is looking good everyone. It's also real nice for this newbie to see everyone working so well together. --Crohnie 14:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I've reversed the positioning of the words "consumers" and "alternative medicine providers" in the first sentence, as I feel that the previous wording could give the impression that the health freedom movement is mostly led by the alt-med industry, as opposed to by consumer activists. In fact, and to quote supplements as an example, there is increasingly a divergence of opinion between industry and consumers, in that the former generally see international harmonization - such as through Codex Alimentarius - as beneficial to their ability to trade across borders, whilst the latter fear that maximum dosage levels are being sacrificed for profits. Vitaminman 18:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I've tried to clarify the issue of insurance coverage to include consumer demands for increased provision of such therapies by the State (i.e. free to all citizens), as per my comment of 10:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC). This is an issue that has been raised in the UK, for example, and Prince Charles notably raised it in his speech at last year's World Health Assembly. Further development of this section could be perhaps be helpful as a means of presenting a more global picture. Vitaminman 22:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

External link cleanup

The external links section of this article seems to violate several Wikipedia rules, particularly WP:NOT#REPOSITORY - there are dozens of external links. Many of the links are inappropriate per WP:EL as well, especially the links to "health freedom artists" - these should all be removed, in my opinion. If they are notable, they should have articles for themselves and links to their sites would be appropriate there. I openly admit that I don't know much about this topic myself, which is why I added the {{Cleanup-spam}} template. This is intended to alert others who may be more knowledgeable than me (about both this topic and about Wikipedia policies) who can help with the cleanup. PCock 21:42, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree - the external links section is way too long - in fact, it's the longest part of the article. Per WP:EL and WP:NOT (Wikipedia is not a linkfarm), it needs to be trimmed drastically. The most relevant stuff can be added to the article and sourced, and the rest should go. MastCell 04:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The section about Health Freedom artists could be moved somewhere else. Maybe it could fit in an article about “activist political artists”. I leave that to others. For the other links I think they should stay. The article is about a movement where internet activsts play an important role. It is only natural that they are covered in this article. Note that the links only cover the most important activists. Also note that most of the links in the film section actually are internal. Hence, the number of “external links” is smaller than what you would believe from a quick inspection. MaxPont 14:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with MaxPont: The artists aside, the only organization that should perhaps be removed from the list of activists is the Life Extension Foundation (LEF) - on the grounds that it is primarily a company that exists to sell supplements. The others should all stay. Vitaminman 16:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, a number of the links have strong commerical content (mercola.com? Matthias Rath?) and almost all solicit donations. The Bolen report is totally inappropriate as well. There are multiple issues of policy here. First, per WP:NOT#REPOSITORY, Wikipedia is not a directory to collect every "health freedom" link on the Internet. Secondly, per WP:EL, "On articles with multiple points of view, the number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to other equal points of view, nor give undue weight to minority views." Right now, there are dozens of pro-"health freedom" links with nothing remotely critical. Many sites also fail, under "Links to be avoided", by virtue of containing significant advertising, unverifiable research, or being only indirectly related to "health freedom". Also, all three points under WP:EL#Important points to remember are worth reviewing - there are too many links, they would more appropriate for the Open Project Directory, and we have multiple links to the same site. MastCell 17:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The dr Rath foundation web site has no direct commercial content. For the Life Extension Foundation, I changed the link to point towards their collection of articles about policy issues and lobby campaigns. The Mercola link could possibly be changed to an internal wiki-link pointing towards the Mercola article instead. Considering that the "outside world" largely has ignored the Health Freedom movement, it is no coincidence that there are no links to sites critical at the movement. Note the Wikipedia policy that links that would be inappropriate in other parts of Wikipedia are OK in an article that directly deals with the subject itself. Considering this most of the links in the article are acceptable and should stay. MaxPont 20:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The outside world hasn't ignored the health freedom movement - there's a growing call both in the U.S. and Europe to increase the safety and regulation of supplements, for instance - in the U.S., taking the form of amendments to DSHEA and in Europe, with Codex Alimentarius. The health freedom movement is a semi-organized pushback against calls for greater regulation, so it's intertwined with the "outside world" and critics. The policy on links to the subject of an article is intended for articles about a person or organization with a single, official website, which should be linked. Health freedom doesn't fit into that category. MastCell 21:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

My point was that the opponents almost never mention or refer to "the health freedom movement" or the main activists or campaign organizations. Therefore few - if any - critical sources exist. MaxPont 21:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

~~I removed most of the links.~~ Granted, I'm using a very strict interpretation of WP:EL and WP:NOT, but it's a start. I'm sure we'll have to compromise given the history of this article. --Ronz 01:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Another thought: since this does cover a controversial topic, and many of the issues are current events, I'd expect many more external links here than otherwise. That said, most of what was there was very promotional and added little or nothing to the article. --Ronz 01:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I've restored the links. I think there should be more time for discussion before such a bold edit is made. --Ronz 02:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Looking over it further, I think that the "For further reading" section is the real External links section, though the formatting needs to be fixed and the links checked. --Ronz 02:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

While cleaning up the links in "For further reading", I noticed that many of these are fairly questionable external links too. I decided to work on what are hopefully non-contentious links instead. --Ronz 02:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

About half of the "For further reading" links should be removed because they're far off topic or too promotional in nature. --Ronz 16:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I can understand the general Wiki policy that the number of external links should be kept short, considering the prevalent “internet culture”, where bloggers and others flood their pages with links, overlink texts, and add long lists with every possible relevant URL. However, rules should not prevent editors from producing good articles. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy WP:BURO. If the nature of the article calls for a larger number of links than the average article, it should be allowed. It seems that articles about open and controversial topics come with a substantial number of external links. A few examples are John Kerry, Libertarian Party (United States), Global warming controversy, Creation-evolution controversy, and Cold fusion. I can’t see how a drastic reduction of external links would improve these articles. Neither would the Health Freedom Movement article be improved by cutting down most of the links. Links to be removed should be discussed individually. Otherwise, the links should stay. MaxPont 19:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

There's quite a difference in how much useful, reliable information is available on John Kerry or global warming, as compared to the health freedom movement. If you're saying we should ignore the rules here, there needs to be a compelling rationale as to how that makes the encyclopedia better, and I haven't seen that. Again, important, verifiable information from the linked sources should be incorporated into the text. A brief list of some of the players in the movement makes sense, but people can Google "health freedom" on their own - it's not Wikipedia's role to be a directory of health freedom links, and spending a lot of time grooming and collecting a large library of external links detracts from the goal of improving the article content. MastCell 20:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. MastCell just repeats himself. In addition: The restriction on external linking to commercial web sites can not be applied to all web sites that ask for donations somewhere on the site. If so, almost all links to charities, churches, political, idea based, faith based, and activist organizations would have to be removed. Raising funds is not the main goal for these entities but to further some cause. They are not commercial web sites. Such a policy would wreak havoc on Wikipedia. MaxPont 20:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It's the responsibility of those that added the content to support it. That said, I think we should be careful removing them in a hurry, especially given the extent that I am proposing. I'll probably make and revert edits to "For further reading" to show what I think should be removed and why. --Ronz 21:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying all the sites should be excluded on the basis of commericalism (although a few should). I'm saying that having several dozen links to ~~partisan~~activist sites that promote a controversial agenda is both unbalanced and overkill. But the main point is that we should be incorporating the relevant content into the Wikipedia article, rather than just listing a repository of links. MastCell 23:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The Health Freedom Artists section is worthy of a text-based section in itself. To me, the fact that there are artists who are dedicating a significant proportion of their artistic output to health freedom issues is highly relevant to the subject matter of this article and, as such, it should not be ignored. Whilst it may be true that the current placing and content of this material is inappropriate, this does not in itself invalidate the work of these artists or its strong relevance to the health freedom movement. I would therefore strongly urge anybody who is considering deleting this material to not do so unless and until they are prepared to reorganise and reposition it within the existing article.

As regards the other links, I have just spent several hours going through the Dr Rath Health Foundation website and have not as yet been able to find so much as one single commercial page contained in it. So far as I can tell, Rath’s Foundation is entirely non-profit. Yes, I know that he also owns a separate company that sells vitamins, but his Foundation site specifically states that it is non-profit. If he is being disingenuous in this respect then that is a matter for the European regulatory authorities, not Wikipedia. As such, until and unless the European regulatory authorities state that Rath’s Foundation is not what he says that it is it is not for Wikipedia articles to interpret or second-guess European law. That issue aside, my feeling about the Life Extension Foundation remains the same as previously stated, in that it is arguably more related to the life extension movement than it is the health freedom movement. As such, reference 21 should remain but I would personally have no objection to its being removed from the list of health freedom organizations, websites and campaigners.

As regards the other links, I am now of the belief that the 'For further reading' section belongs in the external links section. To my way of thinking, to relocate this section would be consistent with general Wikipedia policy. As such, I would not raise any objection if this section was thus relocated.

However, the claim that "The outside world hasn't ignored the health freedom movement - there's a growing call both in the U.S. and Europe to increase the safety and regulation of supplements" is absolute nonsense, in my opinion. Yes, there are calls for greater regulation, but to deduce from this that the health freedom movement is therefore not being ignored is highly disingenuous, at best. If there weren't calls for greater regulation, or, more to the point, if there were no regulation at all, I strongly believe that the health freedom movement would probably not exist at all. In saying this I have to stress that I am not advocating no regulation; far from it, in fact. I am merely stating what I believe to be the beliefs of the health freedom movement based upon my close analysis of the websites currently listed in the external links section.

Which brings me to the final point that I would like to make, which concerns the external links section. I am not personally adverse to the argument that there might perhaps be a few too many organizations and campaigners websites linked to in that section. However, I would strongly argue that we ought all to agree specific criteria for the selection of those links to be retained, before we start to delete any of the existing links. In my opinion, one criteria might be that we should perhaps specify a minimum number of years that a website should have existed in order to qualify for inclusion. As a 'straw man' I would suggest four calendar years (1st January 2003) as a minimum basic requirement. Vitaminman 21:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Done

The article is now rewritten. Most of The External Link section is removed and replaced with a new section “Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds” where the most notable links are included in article text format. The Health Freedom Artists section is moved into a new article stub. MaxPont 21:34, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice work. It's a good start, but I don't think the use of such a large number external links can withstand much scrutiny.

I'm going to go through the "For further reading" links to indicate which I feel are too far off topic. I'll restore them when done so they can be more easily discussed. --Ronz 19:54, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

From my perspective, five or so should remain. Most of the links are too far off topic and would make poor sources. --Ronz 20:10, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

If so I am sure that there will be a wealth of other material out that that would make better sources. But I'll wait until we have agreement on the current links before proceeding to add any more. --Vitaminman 17:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Rath's Opinions

I've reverted the deletion of the sentence and reference re. Matthias Rath, on the grounds that the edit by Ronz left the remaining sentence on Rath without a reference. The reference is clearly applicable to the first sentence. As for the argument that it "doesnt make logical sense" see [2] where Rath states that: "Eighty percent of pharmaceutical drugs currently prescribed to patients have no proven efficacy; at the very best, they only alleviate symptoms without addressing the root cause of the disease. Future healthcare systems will focus on prevention and treatment based on the root causes of disease. This system of healthcare will lead to the eventual eradication of the most common diseases". He then goes on to clarify this statement by saying that: "In the human body, health and disease are determined at the level of cells. The main cause of cellular dysfunction is the insufficient intake of micronutrients essential for optimum cellular metabolism. For this reason, the optimum daily intake of essential micronutrients is a precondition for human health." I disagree completely that this is a "bit too off topic". The 2nd sentence of this "Health Freedom Movement" article correctly states the following: "The health freedom movement is very critical of the pharmaceutical industry and medical regulators." We also have a section that deals specifically, and most relevantly, with 'The influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health freedom'. As such, the aforesaid sentence is highly relevant to this article. --Vitaminman 18:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

So basically, Rath is proposing a conspiracy? How does this same logic not apply to everyone selling health cures, which includes Rath? --Ronz 18:56, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Rath believes that even the Iraq war was started to divert attention from pharmaceutical industry corruption, so conspiracy is probably an accurate description. I think it's clearly true and relevant that the health freedom movement views the pharmaceutical industry with suspicion and criticism. However, I think Rath is used way too heavily as a source. He's a reliable source as to what he, Matthias Rath, believes to be true, but doesn't meet WP:RS in terms of factual medical statements, and we're blurring the line. The 80% number appears to be made up, and Rath's views on "cellular health" and the effectiveness of medications are at best, highly controversial, and at worst, totally discredited. If he's going to figure heavily in this article, it might be worth pointing out the false-advertising verdicts against him, the independent peer-reviewed studies suggesting his health claims are baseless, the fact that he tells people with HIV in South Africa to stop their meds and take his proprietary herbal concoction instead (with predictable results), etc. MastCell 19:21, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

OK Mastcell, let's take these points one at a time. To start with, please supply us all a link to a page where "HE tells people with HIV in South Africa to stop their meds and take HIS proprietary HERBAL concoction instead." Also, let's not forget that we are supposed to be writing about the health freedom movement here. Either Matthias Rath is a prominant figure in this movement - in which case he should figure prominantly in the article (regardless of his views: in respect of which we are supposed to be taking a NPOV) - or he is not, in which case he should not figure prominantly. Vitaminman 19:56, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem - here he describes people who threw out their antiretrovirals, started taking his micronutrient blend, and were supposedly restored to health. He goes on at length about how ARV's are harmful and even cites an "indictment" accusing those who provide ARV's of "genocide". Do you deny that he takes the position that people with HIV/AIDS should stop taking ARV's and instead use his micronutrients? He's definitely a prominent figure in the movement - I just don't want to blur the line where we're citing his claims as fact, or with the same weight as the consensus scientific and medical opinion, per WP:NPOV#Undue weight. MastCell 20:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Hang on though, where does he say that people with HIV in South Africa should stop their meds and take HIS micronutrient blend? He certainly doesn't say that on the page you linked to, nor in the video on that page. And to take another one of your claims - that his "views on "cellular health" and the effectiveness of medications are at best, highly controversial, and at worst, totally discredited" - discredited by who? The health freedom movement? I think not, in which case I repeat my belief that his views are highly relevant to this article. If you think that the health freedom movement has discredited Matthias Rath, then perhaps you can supply us with a link to demonstrate this? Vitaminman 20:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

No, that's true - perhaps I should have said "A micronutrient blend", rather than "HIS" blend. I think we actually don't disagree - I agree with you that Rath is a big player in the health freedom movement, and that his views on Codex and pharma are illustrative. Perhaps we should leave things there, since I think we agree on Rath's relevance to the article and perhaps disagree on topics which are less immediately relevant. MastCell 22:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Confusing lead?

Is it just me, or is this sentence from the lead a bit confusing because it's not clear who "they" refers to:

The movement perceives that they are teaming up to protect big pharma monopoly profits and defending conventional medicine's turf at the expense of patients and public health.

Also, the article only briefly covers this topic, so does it really belong in the lead? --Ronz 01:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I've reorganized the material in the introduction and made the odd grammatical correction to clarfiy things. I think that it makes sense now. I agree that the article only briefly covers the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health freedom, however, the fact remains that this issue is one of the key concerns of the movement. Rather than delete it from the lead, we should instead be further developing this topic. The views of the organizations cited under the campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds section are what we should be looking to summarize, I would say. I'll give it some thought and add some additional material over the next few days. --Vitaminman 05:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Much better. As for the pharmaceutical industry, I think it's fine as long as we can point to this discussion here that we plan on expanding this sub-topic. --Ronz 05:22, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I've made a start on expanding the pharmaxceutical industry sub-topic. However, I've encountered some technical problems along the way, which appear to involve the "Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds" section. Can anybody resolve these? --Vitaminman 21:09, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Copied from my talk page

Hello Fyslee

I've made a start on expanding the pharmaxceutical industry sub-topic in the health freedom movement article. See the relevant talk page for the background to why this was deemed to be necessary. However, I've encountered some technical problems along the way, which appear to involve the "Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds" section. Can you assist in resolving these? Essentially, the problem seems to be related to the fact that whoever created the "Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds" section did not actually create a new section and list it in the Contents section. As a result, the content of the "Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds" section now begins at the foot of the article - after the references - and continues in "The influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health freedom" section, beginning with the words "It has an extensive campaign editorial in each issue of its monthly member magazine." Any help that you can bring to resolving this problem would therefore be much appreciated. --Vitaminman 20:18, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it and see if I can fix it without dealing with the content. It looks like the codes or refs have been disturbed in some manner. I can also see that the external links section is gone, and that is probably a good idea, since it was a link farm for links of very different quality (or lack of same). -- Fyslee (collaborate) 20:26, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I tried something, but it looks more complicated. When all else fails, revert and try again. I'd suggest opening two (or maybe three) windows, with the edit history in one of them. That way you can recontruct the situation, see where it went wrong, see what good edits need to be included, etc.. -- Fyslee (collaborate) 21:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Vitaminman. Did you solve the problem? -- Fyslee (collaborate) 18:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello Fyslee. Yes, thanks. Everything seems to be ok again now. I've also added some additional text to the 'The influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health freedom' section, as per the discussions that we've been having above, under the 'Confusing lead?' heading. Vitaminman 20:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Feature films

I removed the reference to The Constant Gardener again. It has little bearing upon this issue. You don't present fiction as a justification for anything - let alone a serious issue such as this. I'm sure there are plenty of real examples of unethical behaviour by pharmacorps, but this isn't one. Or if you think TCG was inspired by actual events, then let us know. However, if you think it deserves to be in the article, please present your case. Famousdog 14:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm with you. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia. MastCell ^Talk 16:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. This article is a bit too much of a catch-all for pro-alt-med info of all kinds. We need to be careful with what we add/allow per WP:NOT. --Ronz 16:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm still of the opinion that it violates ... not a soapbox (as the article seems to exist to uncritically expound on the "health freedom movement"'s views), and the laundry list of internal and external links violates ... not an indiscriminate collection of information or links. MastCell ^Talk 17:08, 2 April 20 07 (UTC)

Please feel free to add a new section "Criticism of the Health Freedom Movement" if you feel the article as a whole is not NPOV MaxPont 08:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

- I don't think the article needs a criticism section, unless there are good sources supporting it. What I think we need to do here is make this into an encyclopedia article. I think this will be especially hard to do given that the health freedom movement appears to be more than anything a big-tent campaign to promote alt-med interests. --Ronz 14:55, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Linkfarm

I've reverted back to my edits where I removed a large number of external links per WP:NOT#LINK, WP:EL, and WP:SPAM. --Ronz 14:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

You are using the term Link farm incorrectly, read the Link farm article for clarification. Can you explain how the article is improved (for the readers) by removing relevant links that at the same time verify the claims made in the text and replacing them with dead “red” links to non-existing WP- articles. MaxPont 16:54, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I think what Ronz means is that Wikipedia is not a collection of links, regardless of what you call it. The current list of external links is entirely unbalanced (i.e. they all represent a pro-"health freedom" POV), in contravention of WP:EL. Relevant content from the links should be included in the article, and the number should be minimized and balanced. A large number of external links overwhelms the actual article and makes it look like an excuse to host a collection of POV external links, rather than a neutral encyclopedia article. Note, in addition to WP:NOT#LINK, the portion of WP:EL which states "it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a comprehensive list of external links related to each topic." Yet that seems to be a major purpose of this article. MastCell ^Talk 18:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm seeking moderation in this, as I don't want it to become something bigger than it should be. (Posted at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Assistance_with_external_links_in_Health_freedom_movement)

In the meantime, this is standard editing practice for handling long lists of external links: changing them to internal ones, fixing the internal ones to go to relevant article when such articles already exist, giving editors time to create new articles for any notable topics that the red links might suggest (which then can be properly linked), and optionally removing the remaining red links if there is a consensus to do so. --Ronz 02:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

In response to ~~MastCell's~~ MaxPoint's question about how an article is improved by replacing external links with redlinked (i.e. empty) internal wikilinks - It promotes encyclopedic coverage of those organizations, rather than simply promoting their POV by linking to them directly. Initially the articles don't exist, but providing the redlink encourages the creation of those articles. Of course this is only true in the long term if those organizations are notable enough to have an article. Redlinking to notable terms within an article is an accepted and encouraged way of improving Wikipedia. External linking does nothing to build a GFDL encyclopedia (which is our mission). -- Siobhan Hansa 19:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

If the removal of these links results in an article that gives a more accurate summary of the beliefs and modus operandi of the health freedom movement, then it has my full support. This, to my mind, should be the only issue at stake here. --Vitaminman 21:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Siobhan, I agree with you 100%. I think you're responding to User:MaxPont's question about redlinks, not mine. I'm with you on this one. MastCell ^Talk 22:33, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. Not reading carefully enough. -- Siobhan Hansa 23:56, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Reposted from EL:TALK I understand the background to the restrictive wordings in WP:EL. Many editors are used to the Net Culture of generous linking and I have seen many examples of newbie editors who have a big problem accepting link removal. Hence, the strong wordings in WP:EL. However, the WP:EL has to be interpreted, such as in the various consensus debates on this Talk page and the EL Workshops [3], [4]. When reading these texts, it is clear that the actual interpretation of WP:EL is more flexible.

There is a clear and obvious consensus that an article about a subject should have at least one EL – to its own official web site. I think it is reasonable that this principle can be expanded if the article covers a broader topic that includes several entities. Look for example how external links are used in articles in the category Political Movements [5]. For this type of articles WP:EL is obviously adapted to the fit the topic.

The Health Freedom Movement article is a rather long overview article. The article claims that the HFM consists of a loose global coalition of a number of activists, campaigners, and opinion makers. I find it strange that the ELs to some of the most vocal and important of these are controversial.

There is now a controversy over 19 links. How will the article be improved by reducing them? By removing EL to organizations outside the United States? By removing a direct link to an open source documentary film about the subject? Will verifiability of the claim that there are a number of HFM organizations be improved if links to these organizations are removed and replaced with “red” dead links to non-existing WP articles?

I am all for that if there is a WP-article about one of these organizations, the link should be internal (and the EL should be from that other article). But if no such article exists? I don’t want to start 19 stubs with a few lines of text and an EL just to circumvent an overly strict interpretation of WP:EL. In the future the missing 19 articles might be available, but I want to produce an informative encyclopedic coverage of the topic that works now. In the future the HFM article might also split into sub-topics (e.g. for the Geographical regions) and then the number of ELs in each article will be lower. But in the meantime? MaxPont 08:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

MaxPont makes some good points here. If the removal of these links would not result in a more accurate article and summary of the beliefs and modus operandi of the health freedom movement, then they clearly need to be retained. --Vitaminman 19:11, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

It would be best to keep this discussion in one place, either here or at WP:EL. Briefly, though, relevant and verifiable content from these links should be filtered through WP:V and WP:RS and incorporated into the Wikipedia article. This is supposed to be an encylopedia, not a link warehouse - we should be describing the movement, not relying on a huge indiscriminate collection of links to do it. This is the reason for policies like WP:NOT#LINK and WP:NOT#INFO - to prevent this from becoming an uncritical warehouse of links. MastCell ^Talk 18:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The question is more correctly - Does the inclusion of the links leads to a better NPOV, GFDL encyclopedia? If so they should be retained, if not they should go. We don't keep things in an article by default, they need to earn their place. None of which is a comment on the merits of the particular links. I would only say that providing 19 external links sounds on the surface like a disservice to readers. Prioritizing the most relevant information, including external resources, is an essential part of developing a decent article. -- Siobhan Hansa 18:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

True, and to follow up, the most relevant parts of WP:EL here would be:

"It is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a comprehensive list of external links related to each topic." - although this has been given as a rationale for inclusion repeatedly here.
"If the site or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source first."
"Links should be kept to a minimum."
"Rather than creating a long list of external links, editors should consider linking to a related category in the Open Directory Project." MastCell ^Talk 18:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Even if there is no formal ban on dead “red links” I would say that the tolerance for red links is much lower today compared to in the early days of Wikipedia when many obvious articles didn’t exist and the general quality of the articles were low. Today, if a link is red, it is probably pointing towards a narrow topic and it is not obvious that we are waiting for a new article. Maybe it should have an article – and maybe not. To decide that is up to editors with knowledge about the particulars. General readers should not be disturbed by the highly disruptive red links.

All editors are responsible for making edits that improve the articles. I don’t know how to make an Open Directory Project list. If other editors feel strongly about this issue, they can make an entry in ODP with the contested ELs and then move them from here after that. Just removing the links is not conducive to collaborative editing.

I think MastCell is mixing up WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NOTABLE. The contested Links are not here as references of factual claims. The links exist to prove that the organizations exist. Removing them would leave the text about the organizations without source.

The ELs go to HFM entities and of course the links are partisan and POV. Covering the POV of the HFM is the purpose of this article. The ELs might be unacceptable as references in other articles but this article is specifically about this topic. (And feel free to add a section “Criticism of the HFM” if you feel the article needs a more NPOV.)

I can see your implicit arguments. Only accept one EL per article. Hence, if an entity doesn’t have its own article – no EL. My point is that articles about aggregated phenomena can have ELs to entities that are part of the mentioned aggregated phenomena. As an aggregate, the entities form notability even though they might not fulfill the WP:NOTABLE by themselves.

There are five ELs to US organizations.

There are three ELs to European organizations.

There are two ELs to organizations in the Rest of the World.

There are five ELs to US newsfeeds/opinion makers.

There is one EL to a European newsfeed.

There is one EL to a Canadian newsfeed.

What is your recommendation for reducing ELs? To make the article US-only? MaxPont 09:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

If the organizations aren't good candidates for articles themselves, their relevance to and notability within this movement needs to be made clear (in fact that should happen even if they are good candidates). And if the only proof that these organizations exist are their websites they shouldn't be mentioned in the article at all. Talking about the importance of the organizations to the movement, their influence and impact (with appropriate citations), is appropriate for the article. But simply listing them because they happen to consider themselves a part of the movement lacks substance and is effectively a directory, in fact the section "Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds" is pretty much a directory at the moment even without the external links.

The talk about an "official" link is irrelevant in this article because the article isn't about an entity. Part 1. of what should be linked should simply be ignored. So the EL section should look at what's available in the subject area and include -if appropriate- a few of the best links that illuminate the subject beyond the capacity of an encyclopedia. I'm not in a position to say which links provide the best information about the movement as a whole. But the current argument for keeping the organization links does not appear to be based on illuminating the subject further, but rather on connecting readers with organizations working in this area - that's not the point of an encyclopedia and it's not a reason supported by our guidelines. -- Siobhan Hansa 11:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality of this article

The article as it stands is entirely partial. There is no acknowledgement that the claims made have not been supported by double-blind testing using large sample populations. The citations given are largely to the works of quack doctors who lack accredited qualifications. Much is made of the motives of the large drug companies (with justification, particularly regarding HIV/AIDS drug sales to third world countries), but there is no balancing reference to the motives of alternative "medicine" sellers, who make a great deal of money out wild, unsubstantiated claims. For the conspiracy theorists, I have no connection whatever with any "conventional" drug company or medical practice. But I do enjoy reading Bad Science in The Guardian. --Red King 21:52, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Similar concerns (that the article is unbalanced and POV, that it is a POV fork, and a soapbox) have been raised by myself and others, going back up to the top of the talk page. MastCell ^Talk 22:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NPOV dispute clearly states that "Simply being of the opinion that a page is not neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort." Given therefore that Red King has not previously been involved in the editing of this article, his tagging of it has been his first, rather than his last, resort. The proper first step would have been for him to get involved by helping the current editors in their efforts to improve the neutrality and content of the article. The tag should therefore be removed on these grounds. --Vitaminman 23:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Here is the problem: reading the article, I found it so deeply and fundamentally flawed that nothing short of a massive rewrite would fix it. I don't have time to do that. Statements such as The basis for this objective is the large and growing amount of scientific evidence that chronic diseases can be largely prevented, and even cured, using micronutrients, and that regular ingestion of above-RDA levels of some vitamins and minerals confers optimum health and increased longevity. are completely without objective foundation and indeed are potentially dangerous. [See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6399773.stm] In particular citing "Doctor" Rath as a reliable and objective source for such a claim is stuff of la-la land. Mathias Rath is responsible for the criminally lunatic claim that Vitamin C cures HIV/AIDS. For a fat portfolio of insane Rathisms, see http://badscience.net/index.php?s=matthias+rath .

It is reasonable to have an article that describes a movement. It is not reasonable to have the current religious tract. This article does not meet the standards that Wikipedia sets itself. --Red King 23:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the tag is fine. Red King tagged the article, and described why he did so here. The tag shouldn't be removed until we at the very least discuss the issues. --Ronz 23:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Red King - thanks for pointing out that sentence. The claims of Rath and the Life Extension Foundation do not constitute a "large and growing body of scientific evidence." And for an movement as paranoid of "sleeper cells" and financial influence as this one, odd that the fact that Rath and the LEF happen to sell vitamins isn't mentioned. MastCell ^Talk 23:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, Red King, I agree with Ronz. Let's discuss the issues here, beginning with your claim that "Mathias Rath is responsible for the criminally lunatic claim that Vitamin C cures HIV/AIDS." Please provide us all with a reference to a webpage where Rath makes this claim. Also, are you saying that the 700 or so scientific references provided by Rath on his website http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/NHC/researcharchive.html documenting "the paramount importance of micronutrients and nutrition in maintaining optimum health" are all now invalidated by one single BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6399773.stm or the JAMA analysis that the BBC was reporting on? For a different take on the JAMA analysis, see http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/index.cfm?action=news&ID=273 Bear in mind too that the BBC has also increasingly been reporting on positive vitamin studies in recent years. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3855837.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6191131.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5334534.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4584518.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4521060.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3122033.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4433059.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3681472.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3409221.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3252566.stm for a few examples of this "growing body of scientific evidence". --Vitaminman 09:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Not this again. How about Nature Medicine as a source? [6] Or you could read the New Yorker article on him. Both make it clear exactly what he's about. And they're actually secondary sources. MastCell ^Talk 15:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this[7] the sort of thing you wanted?

"Matthias Rath, the German vitamin impresario who claims that his vitamin pills are better for Aids than medication, and his colleague Anthony Brink, a barrister and the leader of an allied organisation, the Treatment Information Group, which campaigns vociferously against the currently available antiretroviral medication, claiming - loudly - that they are not just ineffective but actively harmful.

That is what I mean by "criminally lunatic". See also HIV/AIDS in South Africa and Patrick Holford (a man whose scientific knowledge is so limited that he can extrapolate wildly and dangerously from the behaviour of a few cells in a petri dish [an "experiment" by one of Rath's associates] - and then blame the big drug companies for not following up since there is no money in it. If the "experiment" were even remotely interesting, there are Universities and foundations that would certainly do so, pro bono.) --Red King 20:47, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I would respectfully point out that on each occasion this issue has come up, firstly under the Rath's Opinions section, above, and now here, nobody has yet managed to come up with a primary source for these supposed statements of Rath's. To put this another way, unless somebody can find an instance of Rath himself saying that HIS vitamins cure HIV/AIDS - as opposed to others saying that he says this - then these supposed quotes qualify as heresay, not fact. --Vitaminman 22:02, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

No, actually, they qualify as reliable, verifiable secondary sources, which are supposed to form the backbone of Wikipedia. But this is really off-topic. MastCell ^Talk 00:37, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Red King totally misses the point. This is an article about an opinion forming movement, and the claims about growing scientific evidence for dietary supplements are one of the main messages from the HFM. Similar articles about other political and opinion forming movements and organisations present their arguments and give the reader an opportunity to understand their world-view. NPOV is achieved with a “criticism” section.

The claim that the HFM article should be filtered through the lens of the world-view of the conventional medical establishment is tantamount to demanding that the article about market liberalism must be written from the perspective of “Scientific Marxism-Leninism”. MaxPont 09:33, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Late response to MaxPont, missed earlier. No, I certainly haven't missed the point. Yes, this is an article about an opinion forming movement, and that is entirely legitimate within the principles of Wikipedia. My opinion of the people concerned is entirely irrelevant. But when the article then goes on to prosletyse for those views, citing only favourable references to work that is not based on minimal standards of scientific evidence, then it ceases so to comply with those principles. That is why I say that most of the article beyond the introduction is a religious tract rather than an encylcopedic article: readers are being asked to accept statements on the basis of blind belief rather than on repeatable, verifiable, statistically sound, data. Thus the claim that there is "growing scientific evidence" is entirely specious. There is zero credible evidence: 10% more than zero is still zero. There is, however, very definite evidence that serious overdoses of some vitamins actually damages health. The placebo effect certainly does work in some cases, if the patient really believes in the treatment. But stick to homeopathy - at least H₂O doesn't kill anyone provided they don't stop their real medication. --Red King 22:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's see some secondary sources supporting these points of view and providing us some context so we can weigh them properly. --Ronz 15:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

The HFM article should be filtered through the lens of WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:WEIGHT, as all Wikipedia articles should be. But Ronz is right - where are the secondary sources? That might go a long way toward establishing notability and getting in line with WP:NPOV. MastCell ^Talk 15:38, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

My point is that the HFM article is not the place to disentangle tricky issuses in biochemistry. The HFM article should be compared to other articles about politics and social phenomena. This is not a science article. MaxPont 20:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality: scientific claims

That's fine, but then it shouldn't make blanket scientific claims, particularly poorly sourced ones. MastCell ^Talk 20:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

How many of the 700 or so scientific references do you consider to be poorly sourced? http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/NHC/researcharchive.html --Vitaminman 22:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

This isn't about Matthias Rath. But since you ask, quite a few folks have called him on misrepresenting or misuing the published literature to further claims which it doesn't actually support. For instance, there's this BMJ article (PMID 9774300), or a statement from the Harvard School of Public Health about Rath's misuse of one of their vitamin studies... MastCell ^Talk 22:02, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I fact tagged it. We need a source that summarizes the research. It's not sufficient for us as editors just to point to a lot of research then say that from all the research we can conclude something. That's WP:SYN and giving WP:Undue weight. --Ronz 23:38, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

This controvery can be solved easily by adding the qualification that "the HFM believes that there is scientifc support for X and Y" MaxPont 09:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this is the best approach, but I don't think it's quite that easy. It needs to be sourced, but I'm not sure how it can be done properly given there is no organization that speaks officially for HFM. --Ronz 16:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I've added some references re. the claim that scientific evidence is being ignored or actively suppressed. Comments gentlemen? --Vitaminman 22:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

From a read through of the edit, it seems to me that certain editors are as biased in their stance against HFM as they say the page is biased in its pro-HFM stance. It is hard to find evidence from the FDA or other "official" agencies in the form of clinical trials of nutrients because the process pharmaceuticals go through does not exist if not backed by the multi-billion dollar pharm. industry, not implying a lack of evidence but rather a lack of the desire to find evidence, and those conducted, for example the NIH's on vitamin c, were shown to be biased and flawed. Wikipedia is a place to find ideas and facilitate your own research, it is not the place to "credit" or "discredit" anything. With that said, I am uneasy about Red King's statement about this article's bias and fear that articles may soon become censored and only represent certain "mainstream" views, destroying any semblance of neutrality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.211.229.18 (talk) 08:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Author notable expert?

From what I can find about her, I don't think Emma Holister's blog meets WP:SOURCE. It's used as this reference in the article: 'Let’s Not Be the Next Big Pharma', by Emma Holister. --Ronz 23:28, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree; it falls under the unacceptable self-published source/blog category. MastCell ^Talk 23:35, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the source and associated text, which was all added at the same time.

I think these type of situations make editing articles on current events very frustrating. We know that there is new information available, but it can take an agonizingly long time before the information is presented in sources suitable for our use here. --Ronz 15:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

More sources

More references for review that were just added:

http://www.welltv.com/ "We Become Silent" A film by Kevin P. Miller
http://www.moneytalksthemovie.com/ Money Talks: Profits before Patient Safety

--Ronz 15:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

From my perspective, neither meets WP:SOURCE because they're self-published. Neither meets WP:EL. The first is definitely linkspam as well, since it promotes and sells the video even before giving any information about it. The second site is promotional as well. --Ronz 23:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

In that case I suggest that we link to the first film, "We Become Silent", from http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/index.cfm?action=wbs2 instead. --Vitaminman 14:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I havent been keeping up on the guidelines for video, but it is certainly a much better alternative. --Ronz 16:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

External links in references

I've been looking through the references, and many appear to be just external links:

21:http://www.lef.org/
30:http://www.crnusa.org/ Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN)
57:Whitaker Health Freedom Foundation (WHFF) homepage. Accessed 12 March 2007.
58:Freedom of Health Foundation homepage. Accessed 12 March 2007.
86:Life Extension Magazine

--Ronz 00:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Oops. I forgot to propose that these be moved to an External links section, at least the ones that don't violate WP:EL and WP:SPAM. --Ronz 16:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I did a first round of work on these refs. Some are removed, some better motivated. MaxPont 21:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! --Ronz 22:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I've also been busy, especially re. the NPOV issue. See also my comments, below, under 'Similar Articles'. --Vitaminman 23:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Parity of sources

Since the standards for sourcing in this article appear to include self-published partisan websites, I think for criticism of the movement it would appropriate to cite Quackwatch. I don't do this lightly, and I'm not a Quackwatch spammer by any means, but most of the sources used in this article are far worse than QW in terms of reliability, partisanship, etc, so if this is where the bar is set then parity of sources would suggest that Quackwatch would be an appropriate source of criticism.

Also, some statements in the article really need a reality check. For instance:

...some campaigners argue that if nutritional supplements are to be evaluated, controlled and taken off the market at the first hint of trouble, they would like to see the same treatment be applied to pharmaceutical drugs.

First of all, there's no comparison between the level of regulation of pharmaceuticals and supplements. Even food coloring is far more strictly regulated than supplements, so it's misleading to argue that supplements are somehow being unfairly discriminated against. Secondly, supplements are not "pulled from the market at the first sign of trouble." It took 10 years and hundreds if not thousands of severe adverse events to get ephedra pulled, thanks to the same lobbying effort that now goes into the health freedom movement. I realize it's labeled as "...some believe", but can we make an effort to balance some of these statements? MastCell ^Talk 15:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm proposing an External links section above, which is probably a better place for the Quackwatch link, as well as other sources currently listed that don't meet WP:SOURCE. I don't think we should compromise WP:SOURCE, but WP:EL is a different matter especially given that this is a political movement without any individual or organization speaking officially for it. --Ronz 16:34, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy to live with the Quackwatch reference in the external links. However, following the Arbitration Committee decision in the Barrett v. Rosenthal dispute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Barrett_v._Rosenthal#Use_of_unreliable_sources_by_Fyslee it seems fairly clear that using Quackwatch references in the main text is perhaps best avoided. --Vitaminman 22:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly, along with any other source that is similar or worse in quality. --Ronz 22:23, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I was amused to read that Fyslee was also cited for "and similar partisan sites as references ". This article is guilty on many counts for that offence! --Red King 22:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

To a certain extent I actually agree with you. The problem that we have to solve, therefore, is, how do we produce an accurate encyclopaedic article on the health freedom movement without referring to the sites that best illustrate its beliefs and activities? I would say the solution is to take each individual reference on its own merits, which is what we're already beginning to do now anyway. Personally, I don't think that its possible to not include any health freedom movement sites in the references without making the article insufficiently illustrative. However, I do believe that by a careful choice of words in the article's text we can illustrate that the belief concerned may not conform to everybody's worldview. --Vitaminman 07:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Without secondary sources that meet WP:SOURCE, we can't do much here. I've been looking for other Wikipedia articles to see what other editors have done, but haven't found another movement that, like HFM, doesn't have an official voice. --Ronz 16:02, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Technical problem

I added the reference to McCartney, as above, but it seems to have radically altered the appearance of the page. When I try to revert I get a message saying that the spam filter blocked my page save because it detected a blacklisted hyperlink and that I need to remove all instances of the blacklisted URL before you can save. I get this message even when I try to delete the link. Can anybody help? --Vitaminman 11:34, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The odd thing is that everything looks fine from the edit page itself. --Vitaminman 11:36, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

You left the slash out of your closing <ref> tag. But it wasn't that link that was causing the problems. The Myopia.org site has recently been blacklisted, a link to that site was buried further down the page. I've removed the myopia link - but left the reference in. You should be able to make changes now.

If you come across the same thing again in the future - on the message you get, low down on the page and not in anyway highlighted for ease of reading, is the domain of the url that is being blocked. Search for that and remove it from the page and you should be able to save. -- Siobhan Hansa 13:36, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Siobhan. Much appreciated. --Vitaminman 21:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Single Market Directives

I've just read Red King's edit to the effect that "Single Market Directives apply only to interstate trade within the European Union and not to intrastate trade." This is absolutely incorrect, in that, for exampe, the EU legislation mentioned in the HFM article applies to both intrastate and interstate trade. Nevertheless, and for the sake of civility, I thought that I would raise the issue here first before I dive in and correct it. For a good example, read the text of the Food Supplements Directive at http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2002/l_183/l_18320020712en00510057.pdf and see particularly Article 4. --Vitaminman 08:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

In addition, the edit by Red King is completely unsourced. IMO it could be removed pronto. MaxPont 08:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I concede. I misread Article 3 Member States shall ensure that food supplements may be marketed within the Community only if they comply with the rules laid down in this Directive.. --Red King 23:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Next Steps?

I've been adding text and references that provide evidence of notability and have also added additional material that conforms to the requirements for reliability of sources. I would therefore like us to take stock at this point, and to evaluate where we are - both with these issues and with the NPOV question - and to discuss what we need to look at next. --Vitaminman 22:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Without an official voice of health freedom to refer to, we need to rely almost entirely on secondary sources to avoid the problem of this article becoming just a repository for anything anyone has said about health freedom. --Ronz 01:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed... I think Vitaminman has provided a number of good secondary sources to establish notability. The next step is to reorganize the article so that it relies more on reliable secondary sources and less on partisan sources. Right now there are 30+ references to the NHF website, newstarget.com, and the like. MastCell ^Talk 03:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Any suggestions on where to start? --Crohnie 13:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I'd advocate significantly condensing the lengthy exposition of the movement's views. Currently, the article still reads like a platform to expound the movement's message, rather than a neutral encyclopedic article about the movement. But that's just my 2 cents. MastCell ^Talk 16:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I hate to say this but I agree. I just see it as an alternate dumping ground with no balance of any kind. A lot of work was put into this and I would love to help give it a better balance but I don't see how with how long most of it is already. If we can agree to delete some of the redundency, maybe there is more room for other ideas. --Crohnie 20:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest identifying all the secondary sources, listing them here in Talk for easy reference, and see what makes sense if we had to write an article just around those sources. Use the other sources to support what can be done with the secondary sources that have been identified.

Further, distinguish the primary sources that appear to speak for the health freedom movement from those that just speak for health freedom issues. The latter should be deemphasized to avoid WP:SOAP issues. --Ronz 20:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I broadly agree with Ronz here, and support Mastcell's suggestion that the next step is to reorganize the article so that it relies more on reliable secondary sources and less on partisan sources. In this sense, I also agree with Crohnie that the article needs a better balance and that it is too long. As such, if we can identify and agree upon all the secondary sources; use key primary sources mostly as a means of supporting the secondary sources; and agree on those sections that we feel are redundant; then count me in. --Vitaminman 22:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

A rewrite could be fine. However, do notice that this is an article ABOUT the HFM. It is hard to draw a clear line between secondary sources (reporting about something) and primary sources (constituting the phenomena itself). Sources that on other parts of Wikipedia might be rejected as partisan or even unreliable are acceptable in this article as the article is about the positions put forward by this collective of sources.

It is unavoidable that an article about a political (or similar) movement presents the program or platform of this movement. In order to understand the world-view and rationale behind the “ideology” the readers must be allowed to follow the arguments and reasoning. NPOV is achieved by putting the “ideology” in a wider context and adding critical perspectives. Most of the content should stay in the article. Multiple sources could be found for almost every argument in the section where the HFM message is presented.

The article no longer claims that XYZ are facts but that the HFM claims XYZ. Hence, tt is time to remove the POV tag after the work by Vitaminman. MaxPont 21:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. This is an encyclopedia, not a soapbox. I'm extremely pleased with all the work to date at making this an encyclopedic article. I'm placing the POV tag back on. --Ronz 01:47, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Please be specific with your assessment. What needs improvement or remove the silly tag. I would like a better explanation about where the Health freedom movement is leading to or that it is not going anywhere. I want to read something with a bit more of insight. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 01:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Please read my comments in this discussion section. --Ronz 02:03, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that the health freedom movement wants people to have the freedom to make their own health choices. I am also under the impression that, in most cases, it believes that if people are given full and unrestricted access to what it believes are safe and effective alternatives to orthodox medicine, people will mostly choose the former. But that's just my personal opinion, which - unless supported by reliable sources in the article itself - is effectively irrelevant; as indeed are all of our personal opinions. I therefore maintain that our next steps should be to identify and agree upon all the secondary sources; use key primary sources mostly (i.e. not exclusively) as a means of supporting these secondary sources; and agree on those sections that we feel are redundant. --Vitaminman 14:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

(semi-arbitrary unindent)

I feel this article needs a better explanation that some people believe the health freedom movement is complementory and not the alternative. This should be detailed in the body of the article. There is a big the difference from saying it is the alternative versus the complementory. Any thoughts. :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 23:46, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't follow. Are you talking about a specific sentence, section, the tone of the entire article, or something else? --Ronz 00:33, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

This article is a collection of information. I mean. What is the point of the movement and is it really a movement. Is the movement about being an alternative or complementory to standard medicine? I would like clarification here. Is it an alternative movement or a complementory movement? :) - Mr.Gurü (^talk/_contribs) 00:40, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. That's what we're trying to determine. We need secondary, nonpartisan, reliable sources for this. --Ronz 00:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Following the suggestion by Ronz that we identify all the secondary sources and list them here in Talk for easy reference, my suggested list of these now follows below for everyone's comments. For clarifcation, I am not advocating that we ditch every other link, but rather that we additionally agree on some key primary sources and use them mostly as a means of supporting the secondary sources. Would anybody here like to make a similar list to the one below, but of the key primary sources? --Vitaminman 05:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

   1 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/09/13/dp1301.xml
   2 http://www2.newsquest.co.uk/wiltshire/leisure/billie/170603.html
   30 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=33525
   31 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2005/cr111005.htm
   32 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/23/ucharles.xml
   33 http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article295756.ece
   34 http://www.conservatives.com/vitamins/
   37 Gallegly Is Key Foe of FDA's Vitamin Rules - Simi Valley: The GOP congressman has emerged as leader of effort to minimize new labeling requirements Los Angeles Times, 2 Jan 1994
   38 Doctor's supporters go to bat for him - Followers of alternative medicine organize to defend physicians they see as under attack The Orange County Register, 7 Feb 1999
   39 And then pop go the pills - Today a new law on supplements comes into force which has split the world of natural healthcare The Herald, 1 Aug 2005
   41 http://www.fda.gov/opacom/laws/dshea.html
   43 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n22_v46/ai_15999889
   46 http://www.consumerreports.org/mg/free-highlights/manage-your-health/supplements_questions.htm?AFFID=HNARSIC5
   47 http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,589533,00.html
   48 http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/consume/dd66_diet.pdf
   49 http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/health-fitness/drugs-supplements/dangerous-supplements-504/overview/index.htm
   50 http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/DOCKETS/99n0554/c000006.pdf
   53 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=49370
   54 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032101938.html
   55 http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/act.2006.12.136
   56 http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2002/l_183/l_18320020712en00510057.pdf
   57 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2004/l_136/l_13620040430en00850090.pdf
   58 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2004/l_136/l_13620040430en00340057.pdf
   59 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1157031,00.html
   60 Financial Times
   61 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3445503.stm
   62 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4411929.stm
   63 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4670971.stm
   64 http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article181686.ec
   65 http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Joint-therapeutic-agency-plans-shelved/2007/07/16/1184559674093.html
   66 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=49&objectid=10451961
   72 http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/index.cfm?action=news&ID=140
   86 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/334/7596/721?flh
   87 http://www.codexalimentarius.net/
   90 http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/y7867e/y7867e08.htm#bm08
   91 http://www.codexalimentarius.net/download/standards/10206/cxg_055e.pdf
   92 ftp://ftp.fao.org/codex/alinorm05/al28_41e.pdf
   101 http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/sections/commentary/commentary_columns/article_633262.php

Articles redirecting here?

A number of articles that used to redirect to Quackwatch have been redirected here instead. Current discussion is on the editor's talk page: User_talk:MaxPont#Redirecting_to_Health_freedom_movement -- Ronz 23:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Primary versus third-party sources

Perhaps I should clarify the {{primarysources}} tag I placed on the article. Yes, the article has "plenty of sources"... but they are nearly all primary sources, and generally fail our guidelines which encourage or mandate the use of independent, reliable secondary sources as the basis of an article. You can't build a neutral, encyclopedic article with 50 references to the websites of the NHF or Matthias Rath. You need independent, third-party sources. The tag is not intended to deface the article; it's intended to encourage editors who watch this article to help me find independent, reliable secondary sources, because right now this article is a pretty stale, non-encyclopedic, non-neutral rehash of stuff from primary, self-published, or generally poor-quality sources. MastCell ^Talk 18:46, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Nice to see you back here at last. Just above you will find 38 independent sources, that I complied some time ago. Perhaps we can begin by agreeing which of these meet the reliable secondary sources guidelines? To my mind, they all do. --Vitaminman 00:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Many of those sources are excellent. Can we make a concerted effort to reduce this article's reliance on dubious primary sources and instead base it on secondary sources like those you've compiled above? MastCell ^Talk 23:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but adding a tag stating that "This article needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications" is clearly inappropriate. Given that the article already contains around 38 independent sources, and that the tag states that "Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article", I think that there are good grounds for taking this issue to arbitration before we proceed any further. For my part, I agree with you that the article contains many excellent sources. I also agree that there is a need to reduce the article's reliance on primary sources. But to add a tag to the effect that it doesn't contain any primary sources (vis a vis use of the word "Alone") is quite clearly inappropriate, at best. In the interests of avoiding yet another edit war, therefore, and the high likelihood of large numbers of health freedom movement supporters becoming involved and unilaterally removing this tag, I suggest that we attempt to come to a mutually acceptable agreement. My proposal, therefore, would be that if you agree remove this tag, I, for my part, will personally make a concerted effort to further reduce the article's reliance on primary sources. --Vitaminman 21:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the next logical step is to identify what, if any, sections are well sourced as is. --Ronz 20:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

That's fine; it's not my intention to edit-war over the tag. I'd rather see the article improved to utilize the secondary sources you've found, and to move away from its current reliance on primary and unreliable sources. So if we can do that, then the tag is unecessary. MastCell ^Talk 17:18, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

All the famous peoples - Why are they in any way relevent enough for the lead?

Moved for discussion. This is trivia, not dealt with at any length in the rest of the article, so improper for the lead section per WP:NPOV:

Famous supporters of the movement include the musician Sir Paul McCartney^[1], the pop star/actress Billie Piper ^[2] and the U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul. ^[3]

--Ronz 20:34, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Ronz, but I strongly disagree, on the grounds that - with the possible exception of the Billie Piper reference - one of the most famous musicians on the planet and a presidential candidate being known supporters of the movement are highly relevant in the interests of establishing its notability. WP:N Bear in mind too that McCartney's involvement was reported in a major British newspaper. A possible compromise, to my mind, might be to create a new section for this material. Like yourself, I want to avoid edit wars if at all possible. --Vitaminman 21:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but we're going to address NPOV issues here, not compromise them. --Ronz 20:51, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Please explain. And who is "we"? --Vitaminman 21:52, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes, and lest we forget, when I originally added the McCartney reference, Mastcell, above, stated: "Vitaminman, thanks for digging those up - those are exactly the kind of sources we should be using. The Washington post one is pretty brief and tangential, but the two British ones (Guardian Observer and Daily Telegraph) are excellent sources that discuss the movement by name and provide evidence of notability. Ideally, the meat of the article would be based on those kind of sources." Naturally, I completely agree with him and would argue that you are way of base here. I don't want to take this to arbitration, but will do so if necessary. --Vitaminman 22:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's explained pretty well in WP:NPOV. By we, I mean anyone interested in editing this article. --Ronz 21:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, call me stupid, but which specific parts of WP:NPOV does the McCartney reference http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/09/13/dp1301.xml - from the Daily Telegraph, a heavyweight British newspaper - contravene? --Vitaminman 22:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Please don't change the subject. I stated that the information does not belong in the lead due to NPOV. --Ronz 21:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to name prominent adherents or supporters of this movement - in fact, WP:WEIGHT suggests that we do so for "minority" views - but whether it should be mentioned in the lead is another question. MastCell ^Talk 17:22, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. In the interests of a compromise, therefore, I have now moved this material to the 'Political Roots' section and expanded on it slightly. --Vitaminman 20:34, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. MastCell ^Talk 22:04, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

newmediaexplorer a RS?

I've been looking through sources while doing minor cleanup and noticed that there are a few sources from this domain that appear to be self-published by non-notable authors. Are Sepp Hasslberger and Chris Gupta notable enough to be considered reliable sources? --Ronz 21:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I think Newmediaexplorer is very questionable as a reliable source, as it is essentially self-published and has unclear editorial oversight, neutrality, and fact-checking. It's one of the sources I'd like to see us move away from. MastCell ^Talk 17:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you Mastcell. For me, although Newmediaexplorer does contain some very interesting and well-written articles, it doesn't meet the reliable source guidelines. --Vitaminman 10:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Dubious

The article states that "citing evidence that vitamins are safe and effective in the treatment and prevention of disease...", citing the NHF website to back up the "effective" claim. I don't think this rises to the level of WP:RS for a blanket claim of evidence of the effectiveness of vitamins. In fact, the general medical consensus is that there's insufficient evidence that vitamin supplementation, in general, prevents or treats any disease (with very narrowly defined exceptions such as RetinA for acne, high-dose niacin for low HDL, etc). The reference for "safety" is pretty solid, but while the NHF's viewpoint is clear on efficacy, this should be rephrased, at least to "a belief that vitamin supplementation is effective in the treatment of disease" or somesuch. MastCell ^Talk 22:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I've made some changes to this section, as a means of trying to improve our evidence base. --Vitaminman 23:22, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a lost cause, and inappropriate for this article. If you want to discuss medical efficacy, then the majority viewpoint presented must be scientific consensus. I think the solution is to make it clear that this is an opinion promoted by and/or shared within the health freedom movement (if we can find proper sourcing that is). --Ronz 22:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a reasonable solution. I won't go into my opinion on the idea that drug companies are trying to block access to vitamins, given that vitamin supplements are huge moneymakers for big Pharma (e.g. the Linus Pauling Institute was largely supported by Hoffman-La Roche)... oops, I just did. MastCell ^Talk 23:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I wonder what the health freedom movement thinks of the worldwide vitamin price-fixing and volume-controlling that La Roche plead guilty to. --Ronz 00:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Tis a tangled web, but better not to get into a discussion about it in this venue, as it will sidetrack work on the article. I shouldn't have brought it up. MastCell ^Talk 07:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, tis a very tangled web indeed. As you say, Mastcell, getting into a discussion about it here will inevitably sidetrack work on the article. --Vitaminman 11:47, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Balance, NPOV and weight to name a few

I'm sorriest to Vitaman, but I do not see this article even getting close to the policies needed to make a good article. You have worked so hard on this artcle (as have others), so what is needed to stay in policy and make a good balanced article? Anyone with suggustions? --CrohnieGal^Talk 00:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

We're working on it. If you just want to skim the discussions here, note that we've identified good sources and agreed the article should depend primarily on those sources and any new ones of similar quality. --Ronz 00:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll do that as soon as I am able. I really want to help with this article but see my talk page for explanation of why I won't be able to. Happy editing everyone! --CrohnieGal^Talk 10:29, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

India and biopiracy / Traditional Chinese medicine

This section of the text, under 'Political roots of the health freedom movement', has not had any references - decent or otherwise - for many months now. As such, I would have no objection to the sentences on India and biopiracy / Traditional Chinese medicine being deleted, if anybody would like to do so. --Vitaminman 21:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Primary Sources

I have just spent some time removing a large number of the primary sources (as per the latest tag added by Mastcell - which I have now also removed). Whilst this now leaves some statements unreferenced, I consider this to be a better short-term solution than to persist with content that is contrary to Wikipedia guidelines. I would therefore welcome opinions and additional contributions before I proceed with the further development of the article. The next step, in my opinion, should be to include additional secondary sources, where necessary, and to further refine the text, where appropriate, according to the content of these sources. Incidentally, I haven't yet done anything with the 'Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds' section, or the 'Health freedom films' section, both of which I think need some discussion. Personally, I would say that if all of these organizations are "notable", the question arises as to why they don't yet have Wikipedia articles or secondary references. --Vitaminman 16:42, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Unbalanced tag

I have added the "unbalanced" tag because the article strays too often from a simple description of the movement into a detailed exposition of its views. There is not enough countervailing discussion that summarises the position of citable sources that explains why reglation is appropriate. --Red King (talk) 16:40, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I do hope that you are actually going to add some "countervailing discussion that summarises the position of citable sources that explains why reglation is appropriate", as opposed to simply floating by, adding a tag, and then floating off again. Sorry to be so blunt, but there are far too many habitual "tag posters" on Wikipedia who do little or nothing to improve the articles that they criticise. Criticism is fine, but without actual input to add some "countervailing discussion", your tag only provides a POV. Vitaminman 11:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Unless Red King comes back with constructive ideas about how to improve the article I will remove the tag in a week. MaxPont (talk) 20:15, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

That would certainly have my support. Vitaminman 13:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll try to spend some time helping. While I think we've made fantastic progress here, the article still needs lots of work. Basically, there is still a great deal in the article that is poorly sourced or unsourced that appears to be promotional, original research, undue weight, or a combination of the three. --Ronz (talk) 16:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Unnecessary with two tags, I will remove one of them. And repeat: the person inserting a tag has a moral obligation to contribute and/or propose changes. MaxPont (talk) 16:36, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I've made a bit of a start on removing material that is "poorly sourced or unsourced that appears to be promotional, original research, undue weight, or a combination of the three" and agree that the article still needs lots of work. Having done a fair amount of work on it in the past I've actually been trying to stay away from it recently in an attempt to gain a better perspective. Anyway, I feel ready to press forward again on it now and will definitely be proceeding with WP:BB in mind, so please feel free to pull me back if I go too far! Vitaminman (talk) 21:46, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I've removed some more unreferenced material and have (hopefully) improved some of the section titles to give them a more NPOV. Again, please feel free to pull me back if I've gone too far.Vitaminman (talk) 20:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

<Outdent>Also, I just looked over this article for the first time in quite awhile. There are also a lot of red links in the article. Why not just un-wiki link them if there isn't an article? --CrohnieGal^Talk 17:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Whilst I think that I may be responsible for one of them (the MedSafe one) I actually agree with you Crohnie. Even more, in the interests of a better article with no tags, I am increasingly thinking that the "Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds" section could perhaps even be almost entirely deleted - on the grounds that if an organization isn't notable enough to have its own Wikipedia article then its inclusion in this article is arguably unwarranted. But I'm certainly open to comments before I dive in and make such a dramatic edit.Vitaminman (talk) 20:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that both of these suggestions have merit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Vitaminman, you have my support to make the change, I think it's a good idea too. I don't know much about this area and unfortunately don't have time to do the proper research to help you out do to real life. I say go for it though if no one disagrees. Thanks, --CrohnieGal^Talk 13:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! I just replied to you on my talk page too, by the way. Vitaminman (talk) 18:02, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I think we should slow down a bit before making any drastic changes. These organization might get their own article in the future, we don't know that yet. I will start to remove the red links, to increase readability. What I do believe that this article needs is a new section called "Criticism of the HFM". Adding such a section is much more important to achieve NPOV than to remove the campaigners. And by the way, I don't think it is realistic to aim for a removal of the POV tag. There will always be editors that will insist on that tag. MaxPont (talk) 07:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Another way of looking at this is that at present these organizations are not notable enough to have their own articles in that, in the majority of cases, there are few if any articles or media mentions of them that meet the WP:SOURCE requirements. I agree completely of course that they are all notable in the HFM. That is absolutely beyond dispute. As things stand however I rather suspect that sooner or later someone is going to come along and delete this material anyway on the grounds that it contravenes WP:NOR. That aside, I agree with you that this article needs a section entitled "Criticism of the HFM". Vitaminman (talk) 13:51, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

As a compromise, I've added a tag re. the Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds section needing additional citations for verification. As opposed to going ahead and removing it straight away, this will thus allow editors the opportunity to support this section with the appropriate references WP:V that it clearly badly needs. If, after a period of time, no such references are forthcoming, then perhaps its removal might then be appropriate.Vitaminman (talk) 09:31, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

The belief that supplements and vitamins can demonstrably improve health or longevity

I see that DivaNtrainin has reworded a key sentence in the 'Ideology and objectives' section to read as follows:

"The belief that supplements and vitamins can demonstrably improve health or longevitiy is not backed by evidence-based medicine, nor is it widely accepted in the orthodox medical community or the alternative medical community, because there is felt to be insufficient evidence to support such claims."

Spelling errors aside, my concern here is that not only is the belief that supplements and vitamins can demonstrably improve health or longevity actually widespread in the alternative medical community, but also that the reference cited does not even support DivaNtrainin's rewording. I've already reverted this once, to correct this clear error, but DivaNtrainin immediately reverted back.

I would therefore welcome comments and additional intervetions as a means of reaching a consensus on this. Thanks.Vitaminman (talk) 17:11, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I tagged it, but don't have time to look into your concerns at the moment. --Ronz (talk) 17:18, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Vitaminman. The reference provided does not contain any information that I am able to find that verifies the wording proposed by DivaNtrainin. --Ronz (talk) 01:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Good catch. That was indeed an egregious and misleading edit. It happens to be individuals and corporations in the alternative medicine (especially orthomolecular, naturopathic, and criminally commercial scams) movements where such unfounded claims are made! The FDA and FTC is busting these idiots all the time for making their wild claims. -- Fyslee / talk 21:43, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Fyslee, please refrain from abusive language and provocations!!! MaxPont (talk) 09:07, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Notable individuals

Martin J. Walker is mentioned here as a notable individual HFM campaigner. His original WP biography was deleted, then rewritten and edited according to WP notability guidelines. However, it is now threatened with deletion again. My talk page contains some background. Please take time to review the present article on Walker and decide whether he is notable enough for WP. Sam Weller (talk) 12:00, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Kevin Trudeau paragraph in "Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds" section

I've been trying to improve the "Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds" section. However, it still suffers badly from a lack of references. The Kevin Trudeau paragraph seems especially poor in this respect, as, in addition to its statements being completely unreferenced, it appears to break numerous WP rules - most especially including WP:NPOV. Comments?Vitaminman (talk) 15:07, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally I think it should be deleted. The editor who put it in said he was a fan of Trudeau. The last I heard is he was charged again with breaking the rules the court imposed upon him and is not allowed again to become active like he has been. I don't remember all of the details but it wasn't a judgement that went well for him. I just don't think what is put into the article is appropriate. Of course this is just my opinion, --CrohnieGal^Talk 18:14, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks Crohnie. As a compromise, I've added a link to the Kevin Trudeau WP article to the 'Individual campaigners' section but have deleted all of the unreferenced text. Amongst others, that text clearly broke WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY. Overall, the 'Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds' section still needs an awful lot of work. I'm gonna try and improve it as much as I can, but, at some point soon, if some entries remain that cannot be supported by references that are consistent with WP:SOURCES, they'll have to be deleted. Currently, a great deal of that section contravenes WP:NOR.Vitaminman (talk) 09:25, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Campaigners, organizations, and newsfeeds section

I've removed material re. the following entries/names from the above section: American Association for Health Freedom; American Holistic Health Association; National Health Freedom Coalition; Campaign for Truth in Medicine; Alliance for Health Freedom Australia; Martin J. Walker; Eve Hillary; naturalnews.com; Zeus Information Service; HealthRadioNetwork.com; The Deborah Ray Show. After an exhaustive search I have been unable to find any reliable sources to support their inclusion. Without reliable sources WP:RS, to include this material any longer would clearly contravene WP:ORG and WP:PEOPLE. Vitaminman (talk) 10:16, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I've added the American Asociation for Health Freedom (AAHF) back into the list. It has an established presence on capitol hill and with the FDA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.239.115.90 (talk) 16:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

In order to keep within Wikipedia's rules, you need to provide some reliable sources to establish your organization's notability. Otherwise, your text is simply original research WP:NOR, the publishing of which is contrary to Wikipedia's rules. Also, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth — that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether you say it is true. Wikipedia editors are supposed to provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or the material may be removed. To understand what are and aren't reliable sources on Wikipedia, please read the rules on reliable sources. WP:SOURCES In short, what all this means is that if the American Association for Health Freedom truly has "an established presence on capitol hill and with the FDA", then you need to find some mentions in the Washington Post and other similar newspapers and cite them as references - both in this article and your American Association for Health Freedom article (which, incidentally, I see has already been proposed for deletion). You might not like Wikipedia's rules, but that isn't the point. To qualify for inclusion here, your editing has to follow them. Vitaminman (talk) 19:33, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I have reverted per the comments of the other three editors in their edit summaries and the above comments. Please follow policy guidelines, thanks --CrohnieGal^Talk 09:16, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

POV Tag Added

Upon careful inspection of this article and the accompanying discussions, I feel that an NPOV tag is strongly warranted. I noticed many major problems with the article: unbalanced viewpoints, improper synthesis, poorly sourced statements, lack of focus and operational definitions, and fundamental gaps in logical construction. The introduction and initial paragraphs do not even define the concept of “health freedom”, let alone adequately define what constitutes the health freedom “movement”. The idea the HFM is “campaigning for unhindered freedom of choice in healthcare” is overly vague. Is the definition implying this “movement” is predominantly political in nature and that its primary goal is to seek legislative changes? If so, then it should be defined as such and the definition should be based on consensus developed from reliable sources; as I see it, no such consensus exists.

Is there an assumption that “freedom of choice in healthcare” is currently impeded somehow? How so? The article implies that the movement is centered mainly on nutritional supplements. Store shelves are spilling over with nutritional supplements, so I fail to see how there is any basis to argue that freedom of choice in that realm is restricted.

The other areas included under the banner of “health freedom” are extremely broad, almost absurdly so IMO (homeopathy, vitamins, “life extension”, personal privacy, marijuana legalization, water fluoridation, etc.). The range of grievances included under the banner of health freedom is so broad that it waters down the meaning of the term HFM to the point of incomprehensibility. In what possible way could the anti-vaccine movement align with homeopathy, supplements, and anti-aging, other than perhaps by sharing the common thread of pseudoscience and conspiracy/fear mongering? Is the goal of this "movement" to strip all forms of regulation away from all aspects of healthcare? If so, it would qualify as an extreme minority fringe viewpoint; and I have no doubt that numerous sources have presented reams of cogent arguments as to why completely unregulated healthcare would be an inconceivably epic fiasco. It would almost be akin to an "anti gravity movement".

The portion dealing with the JAMA meta-analysis, which I deleted today, cited pharmaceutical related mortality statistics, which has nothing at all to do with health freedom; and although numerous editorial replies critiquing this study were published by JAMA, none of them were cited in the article (ie, the study was cherry picked and presented without counterbalancing opinions) [As a side note, the principal author of the study, Pomeranz, was one of the primary contributors in Benveniste's debunked, and now infamous, industry-funded homeopathy experiments -- see [8]]. Along the same lines, there are many other sources still referred to in the article that focus on prescription drug side effects. Again, I fail to see how adverse drug reactions have anything to do with the issue of “health freedom”.

On a general note, I didn’t notice a single article that focuses on the HFM per se, which leads me to question whether it actually exists as a definable entity. It seems to me to be more of an astroturfed fabrication of unrelated grievances put forth by disparate elements on the fringes (and beyond) of healthcare (using the term with a grain of salt in this case) who argue in favor of nonspecific legislative changes to remove regulation and oversight of pseudoscientific “healing” modalities and the nutritional supplement industry. This is mixed in with a healthy dollop of conspiracy theorizing and red herring indictments of medicine and the pharma industry.

Some of the names that I’ve often seen at the forefront of this so-called movement include individuals of questionable repute and/or authority, such as Kevin Trudeau, Mike Adams, Null, Mercola, etc., and groups lobbying on behalf of supplement manufacturers. I also fail to see the relevancy of so-called “anti-aging” organizations to health freedom or the HFM. Is the assumption here as absurd as it seems -- that aging occurs as a result of legislative restrictions? Is the HFM opposed by some contingent that argues in favor of aging over some unspecified alternative?

I would argue that the very concept of the HFM is a misnomer, and I will reiterate that the notion seems to be astroturf-like in nature – an illusion of a grassroots movement that is in fact being spearheaded by self-interested pseudoscientists and supplement manufacturers. If this article exists at all, it should have far greater focus, clearly defined consensual definitions, and far more balanced viewpoints.

Many elements of this article are only loosely related to subject matter and would be better placed in the respective articles that deal with those subjects. For example, the Codex Alimentarius has its own page. Same goes for DSHEA. The HFM article does not need to reiterate and duplicate criticism of and legislative challenges to the CA and DHSEA. Same goes for criticism of the pharmaceutical industry. Put the criticism of the pharmaceutical industry on the pharmaceutical industry page. If the criticism is valid, that’s where it belongs. If it’s not valid, then we have something akin to the flat earth society. The various elements cobbled together to create the illusion of a “HFM” in this article do not even share common goals. The following questions arise: if someone opposes DSHEA or the CA, are they by definition part of the HFM? If they believe drugs cause side effects, does that constitute advocacy of “health freedom”?

As for quoting people like McCartney, I don’t see that as anything more than fodder for the trivia section. In what way is Sir Paul qualified to comment on whether or not people’s right to buy supplements is being infringed upon? The quote with Prince Charles is a stretch to say the least – bending over backwards to create an association (improper synthesis) with the HFM (i.e., “Other examples of people with polar opposite political views whose healthcare ideology at times appears to bear some comparison to that of the health freedom movement include Prince Charles, who has defended alternative therapies in an address to the World Health Assembly”).

I recommend going back to the drawing board with this. Reconsider what the term “health freedom” really means and whether a movement based on health freedom exists at all as a tangible entity. Gut the parts that don’t belong here (CA, DSHEA, side effects, etc.), focus the content, remove the irrelevancies, and balance the viewpoints. The issues are so extensive that I can’t see this being resolved any time soon without discussion and extensive revision, hence the need for the POV tag in the interim. Better still, this entire article could be rolled into a section under alternative medicine that deals with lobbying efforts. Rhode Island Red (talk) 22:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry but this is tldr. Can you summarize what you say above in a much shorter way? Thanks, --CrohnieGal^Talk 22:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, please. However, I do agree with Rhode Island Red that the JAMA article on prescription drug fatalities should not be used in the article as it has been, per our guidelines on original research. The proper way to include it would be: "Health Freedom proponents counter that use of prescription drugs can also be fatal (insert reliable source), pointing to an article in JAMA that shows..." The key is the reliable source. Unless there's something explicitly connecting the JAMA study and Health Freedom, it's original research. Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 23:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with CrohnieGal, this is indeed a somewhat severe case of tldr. If we are really supposed to read all this, I suggest that Rhode Island Red should begin by reading the contents of this talk page. Moreover, the references already show that the HFM exists as a tangible entity. Do we really have to have these arguments all over again? Groan... Vitaminman (talk) 21:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Is there a youtube link where I can get a summary of what this page is about?

This article is not well unless you already have a baseline understanding of what the heck the article is talking about. Surely somebody has went on cnn as a pundit at some point or another explaining this topic to an amateur audience.

Specifically, if there were a single anecdote to "confirm" why anybody should care about this movement (such as if pharmaceutical companies tried to ban folic acid and replace it with a prescription-only drug) then it would get more support and draw more editors. `71.52.198.33 (talk)! —Preceding undated comment added 09:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Here you go, Medicure Pharma, a pharmaceutical company, wants sole use of the active form of vitamin B6, Pyridoxal-5′-Phosphate - the only form of the vitamin that can be used directly by the body without conversion - and has petitioned the US FDA to ban its use as a supplement entirely.[9] Vitaminman (talk) 08:01, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Interesting example - why did you not point to the much more serious problem of supplement manufacturers pushing legislation that removes scrutiny for their products and allows them to make therapeutic claims that lack any credible evidence? That's the real problem with the health fooldom movement: it seeks to give parity of esteem to "alternative" practices without any of the oversight. Guy (Help!) 08:32, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Because I was simply responding to IP user 71.52.198.33's point by providing the example that he/she asked for. He/she didn't ask for anything else. But I guess you're probably bright enough to realize that anyway. So here's a little challenge for you, Guy: Can you provide some WP:RS citations to support your contention that supplement manufacturers are "pushing legislation that removes scrutiny for their products and allows them to make therapeutic claims that lack any credible evidence"? If you can, rather than simply posting your opinions here, why not help out by trying to improve the article? Vitaminman (talk) 09:03, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh I should think so, because that is what has happened, for example Orrin Hatch has been heavily supported by the supplement industry - but I don't need to cite Britannica to support my opinion stated as such on a Talk page. Are you really in denial about this? They are sufficiently blatant that it would require Mary Poppins levels of good faith to seriously suppose that the passage of health fooldom legislation is not promoted by the supplement industry; the only puzzle is why those who decry the political machinations of "big pharma" are so quiet about the political machinations of "big woo". Guy (Help!) 19:02, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

EU Food Supplements Directive

JzG has incorrectly been asserting in the article, without providing any evidence, that the EU Food Supplements Directive applies to homeopathic products. However, it only affects food supplements containing vitamins and minerals. See the text of the Directive here: [10] I have therefore reverted JzG's edit again, accordingly. Let's keep our facts right, folks. Vitaminman (talk) 09:56, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Homeopathic medicines in the EU are regulated by Directive 2001/82/EC (veterinary use)[11] and 2001/83/EC (human use).[12] These Directives were subsequently amended by Directive 2004/28/EC[13] and Directive 2004/27/EC[14] respectively. Single homeopathic medicines that have been diluted above 1:10,000 may be registered according to a simplified registration procedure while more concentrated homeopathic medicines and those with specific therapeutic indications must follow the market authorisation regulation in a similar way to conventional drugs. For the uninitiated, EU legislation is a bit of a minefield. Nevertheless, I hope this helps to clarify the issue at hand. Vitaminman (talk) 11:28, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Two issues are being conflated. Homeopaths are indeed affected by the proposed enforcement of existing legislation, what they have been doing for years is, as a matter of simple fact, illegal, and the MHRA have clarified this. I have tweaked the wording and cites to make this less ambiguous. Your username implies that you are engaged in the sale of vitamins and supplements. Is this the case? Guy (Help!) 14:29, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Balance

This article is ridiculously sympathetic to the whole "health freedom" concept. The entire premise of "health freedom" is to get freedom from regulation and scrutiny for those fields which fail to meet basic standards of scientific rigour. They speak of a "level playing field" but whine like babies when they get one (e.g. in the Obamacare provisions, where providers are required to submit to minimum standards of oversight that quacks such as chiropractors can't tolerate). Guy (Help!) 07:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Given the editing history, I think it will be a huge undertaking to identify and determine proper weight for the various pov's that should be presented in this article. --Ronz (talk) 17:34, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, maybe. The simple fact is that "health freedom" is concerned solely with the promotion of things that are scientifically indefensible - things which are properly evidenced have no need of "health freedom" advocacy, they are accepted on their own merits without special pleading. I am looking for good sources to make this point. Guy (Help!) 18:56, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

In order to achieve balance, this article needs to be neither pro-health freedom movement nor anti-health freedom movement. Criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry are sometimes legitimate. Some people who promote health freedom either personally or as a movement are also against genetically modified organisms (preferring strict labelling procedures, even though it's in all our food), government-regulated vaccination, tests for cancer which some people suggest might "cause" cancer, etc., likely linked to the bioconservatism movement, and may promote things like raw milk, hemp products, open access to little-known newly-researched potential remedies for common diseases, and generally increased access to unpackaged foods—little of which is adequately mentioned here. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 19:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

This article is not neutral

As someone who works in the alternative health movement and who actually believes in health freedom, I do not find this article to be neutral. In fact, it is very critical, rather than factual, concerning the movement. The idea of the health freedom movement is that people have a constitutional right to chose how they wish to take care of their health and should have a right to chose whatever therapies or modalities they want, as long as said modalities or therapies are not intrinsically harmful. People get prosecuted under the current laws when there are no consumer complains and no evidence that any harm has been done. We also want freer access to information about potentially beneficial products and services.

Here is a position statement from the National Health Freedom Coalition which explains this perspective (Source: http://www.nationalhealthfreedom.org/InfoCenter/reports/findings_recommendations.html)

<-- Redacted. DO NOT copy-paste copyrighted material onto Wikipedia - we are quite capable of clicking on links for ourselves, and we take breach of copyright very seriously -->

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.88.9.196 (talk) 19:01, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

As you are someone who works in the 'health freedom' movement, I am unsurprised that you don't find this article neutral. However, as a matter of policy, Wikipedia presents the opinions of fringe minority groups as exactly that. 'Neutrality' does not involve handing over control of articles to lobbyists, and nor does it pretend that such groups have more support or influence than they do. And finally, please read WP:FORUM - this talk page is solely for discussion of article content, and 'position statements' don't belong here (and wouldn't do, even if they weren't posted in breach of copyright). AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:18, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Worth mentioning that this article cites Quackwatch when government approved sources (NIH, CDC, etc.), or even the Mayo Clinic would do just as well. I quit looking to Quackwatch when I saw its consideration of the entire field of chiropractic medicine as quackery. I'd be suspicious of their other well-intentioned, but possibly biased stances as well. For that matter, the wiki page about Quackwatch reads like an ad, with zero criticism at all. There's a lot of hokey alt medicine out there, but then again, many of our major drugs were based on traditional medicines to begin with.2606:A000:AB83:4900:D4A1:F866:232B:FD76 (talk) 08:51, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

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^ "Health food fans plan to copy alliance march", Daily Telegraph Published 13 Sept 2002. Accessed 13 April 2007.
^ "Billie makes a stand", This is Wiltshire Published June 2003. Accessed 30 April 2007.
^ "Ron Paul 2008 Hope for America" Accessed 23 September 2007.

[1] "Health food fans plan to copy alliance march", Daily Telegraph Published 13 Sept 2002. Accessed 13 April 2007.

[2] "Billie makes a stand", This is Wiltshire Published June 2003. Accessed 30 April 2007.

[3] "Ron Paul 2008 Hope for America" Accessed 23 September 2007.

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