Public trust in conventional medicine has plummeted to such an all-time low that the industry is now resorting to the threat of violence in order to market its services. Gunpoint medicine is alive and well in Seattle, Washington, where county law enforcement officers, prompted by Child Protective Services (CPS), arrested and jailed 34-year-old Tina Marie Carlsen for her "crime" of rescuing her infant from overzealous hospital staff who demanded they perform kidney surgery on the infant. 

Terrorized by the incident, charged with second-degree kidnapping of her own child, and threatened with bail of $500,000, Tina Carlsen was jailed for several days, during which she was unable to provide lifesaving mother's milk to her baby (which is crucial for a child's brain and immune system). She has still not been allowed physical contact with her infant son. 
 
Carlsen's child was taken from her by CPS after she refused to drug her infant with doctor-prescribed medications in preparation for surgery to implant kidney dialysis devices. She was also reportedly threatened by a nephrologist (a kidney specialist), who, according to relatives, demanded, "You do what I tell you to do, or I will have the police at the door, taking that baby from you." 
 
And that's exactly what happened: The doctor called CPS which won a court battle to take custody of the child based entirely on Carlsen's refusal to submit the child to conventional surgery. When Carlsen rescued her own child from the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, a statewide Amber Alert was issued, which mobilized law enforcement to arrest the mother. Initially, the alert claimed the child was in "imminent danger," but this was later contradicted by hospital staff members who issued a statement admitting the child was not in imminent danger. 
 
"This mother's rights have been annihilated," said Kelly Meinig, the president of Citizens for Safe Birth, a non-profit consumer health organization. "What's so scary is this could happen to any of us. All this family wanted was the ability to make an informed decision." 
 
Gunpoint medicine 
 
This incident is the latest example of state-sponsored medical terrorism where parents who do not submit to narrowly defined "treatments" promoted by conventional medicine are branded as criminals, arrested at gunpoint, jailed and forcibly separated from their children by CPS. A previous case of medical terrorism involved a Texas teenager who was kidnapped by authorities and forced to undergo toxic chemotherapy treatments that her parents desperately insisted on avoiding. 
 
Conventional medicine, characterized by toxic pharmaceuticals, radical surgical procedures, rampant bribery, corruption and relentless disease mongering and "sick care" profiteering, is increasingly being enforced by gunpoint in the United States. Parents who wish to protect their children from the dangers of chemotherapy, surgery or dangerous prescription drugs 
may find themselves accused of kidnapping their own children simply by rescuing them from the hands of surgeons and oncologists who stand to profit from every procedure performed. 
 
The threat of violence is not foreign to the promoters of conventional medicine, as the FDA has been the architect of several armed raids against doctors, nutritional supplement companies and even a church. Such raids include the "B vitamin" raid on the clinic of Dr. Jonathan Wright, the "CoQ10" raid on Highland Laboratories, the El Cajon pet food store raid (the owner committed the "crime" of saying that vitamins were good for pets) and multiple, armed "terror-style" raids against the Life Extension Foundation, among many others. The FDA has confiscated "dangerous" products like flaxseed oil, herbal tea, vitamin C and CoQ10, all in its quest to save the public from the terrible dangers of nutritional medicine. 
 
Disrupts profits, go to jail 
 
Far from being an industry that seeks to help patients, modern-day medicine is a profit-seeking industry that depends on sustained sickness to generate profits for drug companies, hospitals and diagnostic equipment manufacturers. Police officers, Sheriffs and even U.S. Marshals are routinely recruited by conventional medicine "enforcers" to terrorize selected targets in order to send a message to the rest of the population that they must submit to the treatments of conventional medicine, even when such treatments are provably harmful to patients or based on fraudulent science and deceptive marketing claims. 
 
The tactics of such campaigns mirror those of terrorist cells, which rely on violence or the threat of violence to achieve a political goal. 
 
Similarly, the Bush Administration, through its so-called "New Freedom Initiative on Mental Health" hopes to impose mandatory mental health screening on all U.S. children -- a thinly-veiled attempt to boost Big Pharma profits even further by drugging millions of children with expensive psychotropic drugs, including amphetamines like Ritalin and antidepressant drugs known to promote suicidal behavior. 
 
Consumer backlash gains strength 
 
The use of these tactics helps explain why critics of conventional medicine describe these times as, "The Dark Ages of medicine." FDA actions are increasingly seen as oppressive and even tyrannical by an increasing number of patients and doctors, and the public's trust of pharmaceutical companies, who have been caught inventing fictitious diseases and misleading federal regulators about drug safety trials, is at an all-time low. 
 
A consumer backlash against the Police State tactics of conventional medicine is gaining momentum as people and lawmakers alike realize that no American is truly free if they are not free to choose a system of medicine that they believe offers them the most effective solutions for health challenges. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx) has introduced the Health Freedom Protection Act (H.R. 4282), a bill that would help rein in the censorship of the FDA and finally allow nutritional supplement manufacturers to tell the truth about the scientifically-validated health benefits of their products (See FDA tyranny and the censorship of cherry health facts to learn more.) Other health freedom efforts now underway include campaigns to ban direct-to-consumer drug advertising and end the monopoly on drug prices. Organizations such as the Life Extension Foundation and Commercial Alert are supporting grassroots efforts to end the FDA's reign of terror, while many of the FDA's own drug safety scientists like Dr. David Graham are working from inside the agency to affect meaningful reform. 
 
While the arrest and prosecution of Tina Carlsen is a clear example of an out-of-control system of medicine that continues to be enforced at gunpoint, Carlsen may one day be seen as the Rosa Parks of health freedom. She was the mother who dared to rescue her baby from the scalpels of overzealous surgeons, and her incarceration reveals the blatant truth about the motives of hospitals, doctors and the entire system of modern medicine: Comply with our medicine, or we will punish you. 
 
As is being pointed out by many critics of Carlsen's treatment, the idea of whether her baby's condition demanded urgent medical care is not relevant. It is the right and responsibility of every parent to choose what kind of treatment their child should receive, even if certain health experts disagree with such a decision. The State is not the parent, and any State that would use the threat of violence to enforce the profiteering medical treatments of powerful corporations is an unjust State.

Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, is a consumer advocate with a focus on health and wellness. He may be contacted directly via the feedback form at www.NewsTarget.com.