Conformity to established dogma is the Death of innovation. Forbidden concepts, such as "the earth revolves around the sun," were grounds for a death sentence back when religious "authorities" ruled Europe.
Now, we have new orthodoxies, as stringent as the old ones, if not as immediately fatal. Now, the penalty is usually economic death -- taking away your permission to practice the trade you worked so long to learn.
See one example HERE. There are professional consequences when one gets out of line with conventional "wisdom".
This also relates to our struggle to have recognized as a human right our choice to consume herbs for our medical needs when the official "approved" remedies are all synthetic drugs.
Now, there are committees to decide and define "Fake News" that goes against the conventional wisdom, so it can easily be censored so we don't even get to consider conflicting possibilities. This should be a very disturbing trend for us all.
What got me thinking about this trend was noticing that a couple Tweets I made about the benefits some diabetics have apparently received from the herb kratom yesterday never elicited the usual response of likes and retweets. Maybe it's just a coincidence... or that no-one found the possibility of interest... but it made me wonder.
The "official line" on kratom comes from the FDA and newspaper and mainstream reporters all follow it verbatim, no matter how clearly we debunk the spurious claims that imply that deaths loosely "associated" with kratom were actually caused by the herb.
We knew we had a tough fight ahead of us when we took this on, but it's still hard to believe how determined agencies of our own government can obviously be working in service to something other than the truth. (I know -- I should be used to this trait by now... but it's still shocking how all the happy talk about the scientific method is ignored when it comes to dogma.)
In any case, we must fight on for what our senses tell us is true -- that kratom is a God-send when used intelligently and responsibly. Labeling this herb as a substance of abuse only invites abuse, which causes the problems the FDA claims they wish to prevent.
What's it going to take to help the FDA relax its bias of favoring pharmaceuticals over herbal traditional medicines -- a Constitutional amendment? Let's hope "We, the People" still have sufficient influence on Congress to be heard without going to that expense.