As individuals, we are all vulnerable to injury, sickness, even death, despite being the best healers, practitioners or health writers across the spectrum of complementary medicine. How many times have you heard over the years of well-known figures within the complementary medicine community, who have suffered terrible back pain, cancer, ulcerative colitis, heart attack, anorexia, and the list can go on and on. I have spoken to many highly respected practitioners over the years with many afflictions; in fact, it is well-known that many practitioners were originally introduced to their complementary vocations through their frustration with ill-health and the repeated failure of conventional treatments to provide relief.

Celebrities and leading figures are hypocritical in their reluctance to admit or talk about being ill; it is strangely perverse that often our first reaction to hearing that a renowned practitioner whom we respect highly is suffering from cancer, or has had surgery for back pain, or has suffered a heart attack, is surprise or disappointment, as though people who are healers, physicians or whatever discipline, should somehow 'know' enough to not get sick. This is somehow connected to the widespread, totally erroneous New Age notion that we are all responsible for our health and illness, and if we get sick and die, it is somehow our own fault; that we created it ourselves. So, just as we don't expect our revered religious or spiritual leaders or gurus to be found guilty of moral, financial or criminal improprieties, we don't expect health professionals to get sick.

Complementary health professionals tend to be embarrassed by being sick; attitudes expressed by their colleagues can at times be viciously critical, even suggesting that their illness is proof that their particular therapeutic approach is not valid. Ridiculous and cruel examples of such attitudes include suggestions that because Linus Pauling died of cancer despite consuming large quantities of vitamin C, this proves that vitamin C is worthless against cancer, that because Aveline Kushi died from cancer Macrobiotics is an invalid dietary approach. I have heard similar sentiments expressed about people who died despite undergoing the Gerson therapy, or about chelation therapy being invalid because individuals undergoing chelation therapy died from heart conditions.

Considering the enormous toxic chemical environmental assaults upon our lives, the depletion from the soil of vast quantities of hugely essential nutrients, the large number of harmful additives added to our food and water, not to mention health- destroying drugs, chemicals and other poisons present throughout the entire food chain, it is a wonder that any one of us is relatively healthy at all.

Catherine Crawford's dramatic tale of very serious illness and then recovery upon removal of her mercury amalgam dental fillings is an unimaginable tale of epic proportions, particularly when read in conjunction with the battle by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to overturn the gagging rule upon the dentists previously enforced by the American Dental Association (ADA) (sidebar within the article). Becoming seriously ill due to ingesting powerful poisons such as mercury, should be recognized as inevitable, not as some imaginary figment of the poor individual's imagination – the 'it's all in the mind' brigade, espoused for decades and imposed upon sufferers of chronic fatigue, and more latterly Gulf War Syndrome. It's the poisons stupid, as anyone with a brain can see.

We shouldn't waste our precious energy in divisive actions such as blaming people for getting ill; rather, redouble our efforts to help them regain their health.

And as it looks as though health-conscious consumers will be coming up against some of the most powerful corporations and lobbies in the world, including the might of the agri-business and the pharmaceutical lobbies, it is important, even vital, that those of us who care deeply about genuine health and natural approaches to prevent and treat illness, do our utmost to try to protect ourselves and nurture our own health, as a prelude to what appears to be a very long battle ahead to re-instate our basic health freedoms.