JAHC 2023 Address by William Shevin MD, DHt.

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The HPCUS and the Homeopathic Community – challenges, opportunities, and a path to a sustainable future

Acknowledgements — This address is the result of many hours of discussion and collaboration with leaders in the homeopathic community, and I greatly appreciate their significant input. I would also like to thank the HPCUS Board of Directors, its Executive Committee, and especially Eric Foxman for their support and wise counsel. Special thanks also goes to Karen Allen, CCH for her encouragement and assistance. Special thanks also to Nancy Shevin for her excellent proofreading and incisive editing skills.

Case Report — To begin with, I would like to ground us in Hahnemann’s vision: the restoration of health to the sick and to the suffering.

Justin – Born with severe Cerebral Palsy. I had treated him as a young child – Sulphur completely resolved his chronic ear infections, but then I did not see him again until he was 31 years old. He had not developed language, had significant behavioral problems, was wheelchair-bound, could not coordinate his lips, tongue, or swallowing, and could not feed himself or participate in any self-care. He had many other problems.

Beginning in November 2020, I gave Agaricus 12C and then 30C with daily repetition. He improved slowly but dramatically.

After 16 months of treatment, Justin’s mother summarized his progress in an email:

He can eat cereal now. He’ll now bring his tongue out to accept the spoon, and he is able to chew and manipulate the food in his mouth. This is all better than in the past.
What is also amazing is that he watches movies, Westerns, and movies about cars, and he watches Midwives with me. He loves the show’s babies and the music. This is also new.
His sinus problems are progressively improving.
(Mother continues) It always used to be difficult to get him to go to bed, but now he is agreeable to it. His restlessness during the night has greatly improved.
He can go from the floor, push himself up and get on the couch or a chair. He could never learn this before.
He is willingly practicing feeding himself and is learning to rotate his wrist, which he could never do before.
He can throw balls, play with his cars, vocalize, move, and have a blast. It is almost like his body can do more physical things. Motor planning and coordination are both improving.
(Mother continues) When we increased the frequency of the remedy to twice a day, he started to improve faster, with attention and better motor control.
He is very happy now, which was formerly rare.

There were more details, but you get the idea. I reached out for a report a month ago: His mother told me that he continues to improve. Quoting Justin’s mother:

He is now playing independently for up to two hours.
Many times, he comes to me letting me know he would like to use the bathroom. WOW!
He will use the bathroom and it is possible he will go back and continue to play, and watch TV until lunch or dinner.

I bring this case up as an example of the power and beauty of homeopathy. For both the practitioner and more importantly the patient, or the parent in this case, these results did not occur by either placebo reaction or by chance.

Disclaimer: The treatment of serious cases like this should only be undertaken by a state-authorized practitioner and within their scope of practice.

Homeopathy has also been dramatically helpful in epidemic illness since the time of Hahnemann. That success continues today. Within 3 weeks of the onset of the current pandemic in 2020, medically licensed homeopaths around the world were reporting dramatic success, even with severe cases. Tutorials were presented on the use of homeopathic treatment in epidemic diseases, already laid out by Hahnemann. Recommendations for curative and preventative remedies were proposed. Reports of large numbers of successful cases from around the world appeared.

What might have happened if the American public had known about readily available, over-the-counter remedies like Bryonia, Phosphorus, Gelsemium, Arsenicum, and others, all with easily understood indications for the treatment of “flu-like” symptoms?

Given all this potential:

Why, after 198 years of American homeopathy do we have so little penetration and impact in the medical care system?
Why are there so few homeopathic practitioners, so that only a very small number of people have access to the benefits of their care?
Why is the regulatory environment unsatisfactory and, more importantly, can it be improved?
Why is homeopathy so casually dismissed by medical scientists?

To explore these and other questions, let’s first ask: What is the Homeopathic Community, and who are we?

I like to think of us as an ecosystem that is organized around the restoration of health by means of homeopathy. In the Earth’s natural ecosystems, there is a vast but largely unseen and unappreciated network of communication and distribution of shared resources, known as the fungal mycelium. Modern science has recently recognized the intelligence and cooperative functioning of that mycelial network. To work together, our community needs that kind of network.

The community is first and foremost the people (also called “consumers”) who use homeopathy for the restoration of health and relief from suffering. Although we often look to leadership in times of crisis, history repeatedly demonstrates that significant change begins at ground level, where the people are. Ultimately, they will have the greatest impact.
Our community also includes practitioners who treat the sick and the suffering.
We are also the educators who train the practitioners.
We are also the researchers who strive to properly document and develop our healing art.
We are the manufacturers who are charged with making safe, high-quality medicines.

We are also the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia Convention of the United States, or HPCUS. The Convention plays a vital role in the community by publishing the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States, (HPUS). We are a non-profit tax-exempt corporation, composed of volunteers. We work in various committees which report to the Board of Directors. We all operate by consensus.

The HPCUS works cooperatively and in good faith with the FDA, which Congress has charged with the duty to regulate drugs of all kinds.
The HPUS was originally a book but is now provided as an online subscription service. It was written into the 1938 Food Drug and Cosmetic Act as the “official compendium” for homeopathic drugs. By law, the term “drug” refers to “articles that are intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in humans or animals”.
As an “official compendium,” the HPUS contains drug monographs for medicines that it has reviewed and approved according to rigorous criteria.
The only legal authority granted to the HPCUS is to monograph drugs. A monograph contains data that specifies the identification of the drug substance, its chemical properties, validation of relevant analytic chemistry, stability, toxicology, its method of manufacture, etc.
Once a monograph is approved for inclusion in the HPUS, that monograph becomes a “standard.” Thereafter, as an ingredient in a drug product, a remedy must conform to the monograph. There are two committees that review newly proposed monographs and make recommendations to the Board of Directors for final determination.

The HPCUS has several other functions: We work directly with the FDA to increase understanding of the uniqueness of homeopathic medicines and their manufacture.

The FDA has three main concerns. The first is that all drugs are safe when properly used. The second is that they are manufactured properly, and the third is that they are effective. The first two concerns completely depend upon the ongoing efforts of the HPCUS, with compliance from the manufacturing sector. Satisfying the concern about effectiveness will require the entire community’s efforts. I will discuss those efforts later in this talk.

- The Toxicology and Safety committee makes critical recommendations regarding potential toxicity and sets appropriate limits on attenuation levels, also known as “potencies,” so that the medicines sold on the over-the-counter market are safe for use.
- The Council on Pharmacy sets production methods and “good manufacturing practices” that both satisfy well-established international protocols and preserve the uniqueness of homeopathic manufacturing.
  This is an ongoing task as pharmaceutical sciences advance, along with corresponding changes in drug regulation.
  This committee works to harmonize unique homeopathic manufacturing practices with FDA regulations. Consider, for example, that it is currently impossible to validate the amount of active ingredients in any but the lower attenuations, in order to meet the FDA’s requirements.
- The Standards and Controls committee deals with highly technical analytic chemistry and other matters involved in the identification of the starting materials and validating the steps in the subsequent manufacturing process.
- The Clinical Documentation Committee performs a very important function. For a medicine to be listed in the Pharmacopoeia, we require that a monograph contains data from Provings or clinical cases showing that the medicine may, when properly used, be effective in clinical practice. The HPUS is the only Pharmacopoeia in the world to require this. The Clinical Documentation Committee writes the guidelines that govern this and related criteria.

The HPUS was first published by the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1897. The HPCUS was formed in 1980 to continue the work. The HPUS is vital to the availability of safe and high-quality homeopathic medicines. Recent changes in the regulatory climate highlight that importance.

I hope that you understand the importance of the HPUS and the HPCUS to the future of homeopathy. Within the HPCUS there are important issues that need to be addressed to continue this valuable work:

Firstly, leadership at the Convention is aging. It is important to inform and engage the next generation of homeopathic leaders to continue the work and carry the torch.
Secondly, we are the only Pharmacopoeia in the world that receives no government funding. The costs of meeting regulatory challenges, combined with the loss of two unrestricted corporate grants, one of them a result of the threat of litigation, have resulted in challenging finances. If continued, this will hinder our efforts to meet external challenges.
As an essentially all-volunteer organization with a lot of work to do, we have historically focused on our core functions. We work efficiently, but with limited human and financial resources.
But now, considering our leadership issues, finances, and the overall challenges facing homeopathy, it is imperative that we reach out and work together with the larger homeopathic community.

Two and one half years ago, I began to contact leaders in other groups who were actively working for the benefit of homeopathy. I described the HPCUS and the issues of leadership, regulatory challenges, and finances. I also learned about their own activities, viewpoints, and concerns.
Everyone I spoke to was receptive and quickly grasped the importance of the Pharmacopoeia. It became clear that we were all working towards a common goal: to protect and promote homeopathy.
I found those conversations very inspiring. Possibilities for collaboration quickly emerged. Some important projects and discussions were initiated and are continuing. Wanting to enhance and enlarge this collaboration to as many people as possible, the Friends of the Pharmacopoeia Program was developed.

Friends will have exclusive access to broad and in-depth information regarding the Convention and, importantly, about the challenges that homeopathy faces.
Friends will be able to comment and ask questions, and we intend to respond. If the program enrolls enough members, this activity will be expanded to include discussion groups. As the program continues to grow, webinars, online Q&A, inputs from other groups, and other as yet unimagined activities can be added to our community’s shared network of resources.

Friends will have the opportunity to offer their specific skills that may be useful to the Convention in fulfilling its vital roles.
Active participation may also lead to involving Friends at the policymaking and governance levels of the Convention. We need new, younger members, and these should come primarily from within the homeopathic community.
Ultimately, the Friends program is a community-building effort. You can join the Friends of the Pharmacopeia program for an intentionally small fee of $35 annually.
Our new website has an entirely new section devoted to the Friends program.

If you are a member of a homeopathic organization, you will receive information about the launch of the website and the Friends program as soon as they are available. Any group or individual looking for more information can contact me directly at [email protected]

What are some of the challenges that homeopathy faces?

The most basic reason that homeopathy is not understood is the problem of the Paradigms.
- Homeopathy is quite different from the conventional medical paradigm.
  - Hahnemann developed the homeopathic paradigm by applying the scientific method but was met with stiff resistance from most physicians of the time, as is still true today. It was largely through ground-level success in the treatment of epidemics of cholera, scarlet fever, influenza, and other diseases that homeopathy became popular and spread across Europe in the early 19^th century.
  - Homeopathy makes extensive use of subjective experience. Hahnemann described different kinds of “knowing.” One type, purely intellectual, comes from being taught or through study. Another, deeper form of “knowing” comes only from direct experience and cannot be taught. Like my patient and his mother, I’m sure that many of you have this kind of experience, either as the “patient”, a prover, or as a “practitioner.” Provings give us subjective data that we match with the subjective, individualizing characteristics of a patient in order to promote healing.
  - The conventional medical paradigm largely ignores subjective data. The search for “objective truth” and the research designs and statistics that support that search eliminate individualizing characteristics.
  - Other differences include determining the use of medicines by testing them on healthy people rather than on the sick (which we call “provings”) and the infinitesimal dosages that we use.
  - As the world changes around us, current paradigms are also changing. That includes the conventional paradigm, even if only to a small degree. In the 21^st century, the homeopathic paradigm seems likely to be a better fit than it has been until now.
The next challenge regards Quality in manufacturing, which is critical. While Hahnemann developed the basic manufacturing methods still in use today, he produced the medicines in his home and recommended that his students do the same. This is not an option in the modern era. Large-scale industrial manufacturing and the completely justifiable regulatory demand for safety means that the medicines must be produced in a rigorous and documented manner. The quality systems that make this possible are expensive. The great majority of FDA’s adverse enforcement actions are related to either the absence of adequate quality procedures, failure to properly follow or document compliance with quality systems that are already in place, or less commonly, failures of those systems that result in contaminated or otherwise compromised products.
Litigation is another challenge – Lawsuits are ongoing, directed at manufacturers, retailers, and even at the FDA in some cases. One large international and highly reputable manufacturer left the United States market several years ago because of these suits. Ironically, some of these suits are based on the presumption that homeopathy is not sufficiently regulated. I am told that this argument is difficult to overcome.

Lawsuits, even when they are not successful, divert a large amount of money from research, education, and other forms of support for homeopathy.

What do we need to do to meet the challenges and questions that I posed earlier? — I was a conventional family doctor for 7 years before being introduced to homeopathy 41 years ago. Although I had good relationships with my patients and I was able to help them, I thought that there must be a better way than using the tools I’d learned in medical school. After one of my patients with unusual and complicated problems was helped by a homeopath, I saw that better way.

The universe was kind to me in my early years of homeopathic practice, and I was able to feel the joy of participating in healing, rather than just managing disease. That motivated me to become involved in organizational homeopathy, first at the NCH and then at the HPCUS. My personal beliefs and experiences as a clinician have informed my participation in the HPCUS over the past 35 years and continue to motivate my ongoing commitment and work.

I believe that to realize the potential of homeopathy, we will all need to work together. Each of the community’s members has a crucial role to play.

I’d like to touch on a few of the ideas and projects already underway in the homeopathic community. There are other important and valuable ideas and projects which I may not mention here. All these ideas and projects should be part of an integrated plan that emerges from the collaborative efforts of the larger homeopathic community.

Documented demonstrations of the value of homeopathy are, in my opinion, the most important. In our current “risk-based” regulatory environment, we must showcase the benefits of homeopathy.
There are current and ongoing Real-World projects that can move us in that direction. Among them are:

- The Integrative Healers Action Network (IHAN) runs clinics that offer homeopathy and other trauma-informed integrative health care for first responders and underserved communities impacted by disasters like wildfires.
- The Bay Area Homeopathic Association with its low-cost clinics, educational efforts, and cooperation with the Integrative Healers Action Networks clinics.
- Homeopaths Without Borders, a group with efforts around the world, including those of the American branch in Haiti and with First Nation peoples in Northern Maine.
- Homeopathy for Health in Africa, a group with 19 clinics has treated over 20,000 people, trained local practitioners, and works with local communities in other important ways.
- The Homeopathic Institute of the Pacific operates trauma clinics for medically underserved populations.
- All these projects help people in severe need. Properly documented and publicized, they will show real people “experiencing” important benefits from homeopathy. These demonstrations will resonate with the public at an emotional level. I want to emphasize here that when I say documented and publicized, I am not speaking primarily about publication in peer-reviewed conventional medical journals. I am speaking about informing the American public.
  I am enthusiastic and hopeful about projects like these because they are persuasive in and of themselves. Their import, next to both the excesses AND the deficiencies of the conventional system, may create a more open-minded consideration of homeopathy.
  
  All these projects deserve our support.

Practitioners have important roles to play:

- They need to practice at a high-quality level, based on high-quality education. Clinical success creates successful practices which in turn generate demand through word of mouth. Increased demand can lead to more practitioners entering the field.
- Practitioners can contribute to outcomes-based research written in formats that are known to generate usable data, and without sacrificing the core principles of homeopathy.
- Practitioners are needed to support important “real-world” projects.

Homeopathic Researchers can:

- Create usable data collection tools to support those real-world projects so that they can be documented and publicized properly.

- Researchers can design and utilize protocols that are compatible with the homeopathic paradigm and be technically acceptable for publication in professional journals. The HOHM Partners foundation is actively engaged in this area, as is the Sonoran University of Health Sciences, formerly the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine.

Consumers (the people) have extremely important and impactful roles to play. Their health is at stake, and that is their basic motivation to seek homeopathic treatment. In this area, there are two organizations that I’d like to mention:

- Firstly, we are very fortunate to have the National Center for Homeopathy, which is fast approaching its 50th year of providing valuable information and education to its members at both the consumer and practitioner levels. The NCH deserves our support.
- Secondly, in America, citizens have the right to petition their government. Our community is also very fortunate to have Americans for Homeopathic Choice, a well-organized, educated, and focused consumer movement.

- Many of the members of these two groups have personally experienced the benefits of homeopathy.
  - Those personal experiences, combined with other real-world demonstrations of value can, when properly documented, present a compelling positive image of homeopathy to legislators at the federal and state levels. That positive image will then support and promote access to homeopathic medicines.
    Educating elected representatives at the state level can also expand access to homeopathic practitioners through licensing laws and “health freedom” legislation.
  - Consumers “real world” successes can produce cost savings and reduce strain in a healthcare system that is currently predicted to have extremely significant shortfalls of doctors, nurses, and other essential staff. Again, good documentation and publicity will be needed.

Educators need to train practitioners so that they can be successful. Gaining Department of Education certification for the training programs may be a key component of more widespread acceptance. Students in these programs need to have adequate support. This could take the form of scholarships, supervision, and mentoring by experienced practitioners.

I want to mention two more opportunities for Homeopathy:

Firstly, Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has become a major public health concern. The medical community and the FDA regard this as an urgent matter. Using accurately prescribed homeopathic medicines successfully treats common infectious conditions that otherwise result in antibiotic prescriptions.

If we can focus our collaborative attention on properly documenting and publicizing that success, we could have a great impact on increasing acceptance and support for homeopathy.

Secondly, homeopathy has a place in agriculture. Camilla Sherr’s presentation on Sunday will showcase that use. The benefits of homeopathic treatment of depleted soils and diseased food crops might be the most rapid and effective path to widespread acceptance of our healing art.

How can we work better together towards realizing the potential of homeopathy?

We need to grow, both individually and collectively, and learn how to work effectively with each other.

Please see the “Resources” handout for more information on what I’m about to describe. Several of the listed resources concern changes that we, individually and collectively, will need to make in these complex, and uncertain times.

In a 1996 United Nations report by Jacques Delors entitled Learning: The Treasure Within, the author described 4 pillars of learning:

The first pillar is Learning to be – the quality of “being” rather than “doing.” Within this first pillar we must:

- Learn to be Humble – we don’t know everything, and we as individuals aren’t more important than anyone else.
- We must Learn to be Balanced – avoiding burnout and maintaining equilibrium under threat and in difficult circumstances.

- We must Learn to have faith in the future – we can shape a “better” future by our actions today and go beyond the attempt to just maintain the present.

The second pillar is Learning to be together – To develop the essential capacities needed to operate in groups, facilitate dynamic group interactions, and work with a high degree of cultural awareness.
How we are together, and the quality of our relationships, will determine the outcome of our activities as much or more than the ideas and plans themselves.
The third pillar is Learning to know – how to expand our capacity to make sense of a complex and dynamic world while simultaneously acknowledging its enduring wonder and mystery.
The fourth pillar is Learning to do – how to create new, effective organizational forms and wise initiatives. And, importantly, how to create a nurturing environment for their expression.

One of the most important fruits of that learning and working together will be the promotion of Trust.

Trust has been described as “a shared resource that enables networks of people to do collectively what individual actors cannot.”

Unfortunately, we live in an era of widespread lack of trust, even within the homeopathic community. Although we all believe in the “restoration of health,” we tend to do a very human thing – to be attached to various ideas and details and argue or even fight over them. These can be called “small wars” which detract us from attaining the larger vision by separating us into smaller factions.

We all need to be able to self-reflect and examine our beliefs and positions, both individually and in groups. We need to listen to each other and make sure that the others know that we have listened. We need the social skills necessary for collaboration and consensus building. We do not need uniformity or “groupthink.”

As was said 100 years ago by Mary Parker Follett, “Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.”

Crucially, we need to have hope. Denial and despair are common reactions to highly stressful circumstances, especially when, as individuals, we don’t seem to have much power to effect change. Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams, in The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide For An Endangered Planet, state: “In order to keep hope alive one must have the basic components in place: realistic goals, ways to achieve them, confidence in one’s capacity to reach one’s goals, and support in overcoming obstacles along the way. These together create a positive feedback loop.”

With mutually supportive relationships, the community can come further together to nurture its network of shared resources. The Friends of the Pharmacopoeia program is designed to foster the health of that network.

Given the precarious and uncertain times that we live in, that network is critical. We all share important goals, and we need to work together. As the old saying goes, “United we stand – divided we fall.”

In conclusion, I want to return to where we started in this talk.

As a homeopath, be that as a trained and licensed practitioner or the parent of a sick child being treated from a home remedy kit, you get to participate in an incredible act – the restoration of health and the relief of suffering.

And what is a homeopathic remedy but the pure tone of one of nature’s instruments in the orchestra of life?

It is strikingly ironic that in a time when so many of us have become detached from nature, such healing can be attained by applying those pure notes to the sick and the suffering.

Holding this vision of healing can guide us to a future of better health for us all, individually and collectively.

I believe that the Friends of the Pharmacopoeia program can be an important part of this vision of healing. The HPCUS welcomes your support. We need Friends like you.

All of You.

Resources for JAHC 2023 address:

Organon of the Medical Art by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann edited and annotated by Wenda Brewster O’Reilly Ph.D (based on the translation of Steven Decker), published by Birdcage Books. This was my primary source for my discussion regarding a homeopathic paradigm which today, in our country at least, sits inside a much larger and more pervasive medical and cultural paradigm. But that dominant paradigm is shifting towards values and attitudes that are much more favorable for homeopathy. I made extensive use of the glossary for better understanding of terms like knowledge, participation, art, and emotion.

Humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: breakdown or breakthrough: Written by Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations in September 2021. This is an impassioned plea for transcending the obstacles that prevent us from facing the urgency of our time. It describes a “common agenda” to transition to a “greener, better, safer future for all.” It can be found at https://unsdg.un.org/latest/blog/humanity-faces-stark-and-urgent-choice-breakdown-or-breakthrough

The Mushroom at the End of the World (On the Possibility of Life in the Capitalist Ruins) by Anna Tsing, Princeton University Press, 2021). This was the first book that came to me on my post-election journey. On the surface, this is an anthropological and ethnographic discussion of the growth, harvesting, and marketing of the Matsutake mushroom. Beneath that surface is a demonstration of how things, as exemplified by this ultra-choice mushroom, assume different meanings as they navigate their journey in the marketplace. I was inspired by the collaborative nature of the group that produced this book, and especially by the concept of mushrooms as the fruiting bodies of an underground mycelial structure – a network of shared resources. The HPCUS, the professional societies, the schools, the practitioners, and more can all be seen as such fruiting bodies, but their existence ultimately depends upon the networks through which they communicate and support each other.

Three Horizons – The Patterning of Hope (2nd ed) by Bill Sharpe, published by Triarchy Press 2020. This was the second book I read on my journey. The first horizon is the present way a complex system works. But when that system reaches its limitations, or isn’t working well, or is seen as causing problems, it needs to change but tends to resist, either passively through inertia or other self-perpetuating behaviors. The third horizon is a vision for a better future, and the second horizon is the innovations that arise that may (or may not) bring that vision to fruition. In time, that 3rd horizon becomes institutionalized and becomes a new first horizon. The process is cyclic and always ongoing. Through this framework uncertainty about the future, a present lack of knowledge, and precarity lose their power to retard needed changes. www.internationalfuturesforum.com

Dancing At The Edge – Competence, Culture, and Organization in the 21st Century (2nd ed) by Maureen O’Hara and Graham Leicester. Triarchy Press 2019. This book describes the competencies needed for transformation in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Three “emergencies”, three potential responses, and three “literacies” are described as needed for 21st-century competence.

Emergent Strategy –Shaping Change, Shaping Worlds, and Holding Change – The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, both by adrienne marie brown AK Press 2017 and 2021 respectively. These two books are very personal descriptions of how to work together to achieve a better future amidst constant change and uncertainty. The author, who only uses lowercase letters in her name, is very frank about the human dimensions of such work. I recommend starting with the 2021 book, which presents an overview of the first book and goes beyond it with updated assessment tools for evaluating organizations and specifics regarding facilitation and mediation, both of which are vital tools for creating and implementing change. If this book speaks to you after reading the “refresher” of the principles of the first book, the author recommends going back to the first book before taking a deeper dive into the second.

The Future Has Other Plans – Planning Holistically to Conserve Natural and Cultural Heritage by Jonathan M. Kohl and Stephen F. McCool. Fulcrum Publishers 2016. The authors analyze why so many large-scale plans wind up failing or never even getting started. It goes on to discuss emerging paradigms for holistic planning, settling on Integral Theory, as initially elaborated by Ken Wilbur. I think that this book will be important for the homeopathic community.

Leadership and the Creative Transformation of Culture by T Aftab Omer – Shift: At the Frontiers of Consciousness No. 6, March-May 2005 This short essay describes Mahatma Gandhi’s “Salt March” in 1930 as a “creative ritual” and discusses the implications of such events for cultural change. https://ninglundecember.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/shift_article_the_spacious_center.pdf

The Scout Mindset – Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef. Portfolio / Penguin 2012. The author identifies the “Scout Mindset” as “the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.” While it is important to have a vision of a better future, getting there in a time of radical change requires being willing to be open and adaptable. This is a very practical book.

An Alternative Perspective: Homeopathic Drugs, Royal Copeland, and the Federal Drug Regulation: Food and Drug Law Journal, 2000, Vol. 55 No.1 (2000) pp. 161-183 Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26659773 This paper, written by an FDA historian, explores the inclusion of the HPUS into the 1938 drug law. From the introduction: “Many wonder why a new law… recognize(d) such as the seemingly regressive system of drug therapy (of) homeopathy.” This document, to the extent that it represents past and/or present thinking in the FDA, contains an abundance of interesting and sometimes surprising and uncomfortable information.

Tears In The Net: Fungi remedies for dementia and brain damage –Hans Eberle and Friedrich Ritzer in Spectrum of Homeopathy 2020, No. 3 pp 66-75. This article is based on provings and highlights 5 severe cases of neurologic disease which responded very well to fungal remedies. I found it to be very inspirational and perhaps serendipitous.

For commentary on the Randomized Controlled trial as the “gold” standard in the conventional medical paradigm, see: https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/interventions/medical-research-and-myth-scientific-truth as well as The history and fate of the gold standard – The Lancet

The link to the Lancet above appears broken, but it works.

Learning: The Treasure Within – Education in the 21st Century https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000109590

Building Resilient Organizations Maurice Mitchell https://forgeorganizing.org/article/building-resilient-organizations