Guest guest Posted October 11, 2008 Report Share Posted October 11, 2008 Forwarded with permission: If you have any questions, please direct them to Suzanne Lippuner at _suzannelippuner@ _ (suzannelippuner) . - steve ross Friday, October 10, 2008 9:58 AM Dr. Rea Legal Defense Fund Hi Everyone: I haven't contacted you all for a long time, since Kathy and Susan took over the bulletin. But now it is urgent that we do what we can to help Dr. Rea finance his legal fight against the Texas Medical Board. The legal expenses are going to bankrupt him and this will have an effect on the clinic. Remember the last time we all worked together by writing support letters to prevent the property management company from carpeting the clinic? We were successful! And all the support letters patients have written on Dr. Rea's behalf will also help his case once he is allowed to present evidence in his favor. But the legal expenses are coming out of his own pocket and he cannot sustain it. Concerned patients have set up a Legal Defense Fund. Any contribution you can make will be greatly appreciated. Here are two letters asking for our help. The first is from Dr. Stephanie Haag. Julie and I met Stephanie at the clinic years ago and have stayed in touch with her over the years. Her health is much improved now and she has moved to Dallas to be closer to the clinic. The second is from author, political writer, cultural critic, and public policy consultant Varda Burstyn who has written extensively about chemical sensitivity on her blog, www.thechemicaledge ..wordpress. com . Thanks to you all, and please spread the word. Steve _www.relaxandbreathe.net_ (http://www.relaxandbreathe.net) " Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past. " -- Lily Tomlin LETTER FROM DR. STEPHANIE HAAG As many of you already know, for the past thirty-six months Dr. William Rea has been wrongfully targeted by the Texas Medical Board. Dr. Rea has been fighting not only to retain his license, but also for the right to help people with chemical sensitivities. His battle is not just his own as he is also fighting for his colleagues in defending the right to practice environmental medicine. Insurance companies evidently feel threatened by environmental medicine and are pressuring the Texas Medical Board to file alleged violations against environmental physicians. The state has unlimited legal funds and continues to drag on the process with the hope of pressuring Dr Rea financially. If you want to help in keeping environmental medicine treatments available, now is the time to unite! Please give whatever amount you can to the " William J. Rea Legal Defense Fund " . All proceeds are used strictly for legal fees. Victory in this case is critical for the future of environmental medicine and the optimum treatment of chemically sensitive patients. Please pass on this information to anyone who may be interested in helping defend environmental medicine! Send your donations to: Environmental Health Center " William J. Rea Legal Defense Fund " 8345 Walnut Hill Lane Suite 220, Attn: " Ellie " Dallas, TX 75231 Sincerely, Stephanie Haag LETTER FROM VARDA BURSTYN WITH FORWARD BY SUZANNE LIPUNNER ( _suzannelippuner@ _ (suzannelippuner) )., ANOTHER PATIENT OF DR. REA FORWARD BY SUZANNE: Dear friends: Not all of you know Dr. Rea, but all of you know me and the struggles I have had, and how they turned around in Dallas under Dr. Rea's care and supervision. Please consider helping him with this matter. Everything written here is true. He is not able to help everyone, but he stands for so much that is important for all of us, regardless of whether or not we are chemically sensitive. Even a small donation will make a difference. Please help. Thank you. Susi LETTER FROM VARDA Dear Friend, I am writing as a friend and supporter of the Environmental Health Center, Dallas, a rare and precious clinic which is under attack by corporate interests with deep pockets, and, as a result, is in dire financial straights. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this precious clinic. In terms of medicine, to draw an analogy, its closing would be equivalent to the loss of Greenpeace from the world environmental movement. That's how serious its closure would be. This clinic needs your help. I am sending this email far and wide to my colleagues, friends, family and acquaintances in the hope that you will respond to the gravity of the situation. I apologize to those with whom I've been out of touch for so long due to health reasons. (In truth, only this clinic put me back in front of my keyboard and made me capable again of writing to you.) If you suffer from toxic injury and chemical sensitivity, or if a friend or member of your family does, you probably know about the EHCD. If not, you should know about it because toxic injury can happen to anyone, and can hit very, very hard. It is very difficult, often impossible to find treatment for it it even in large centres. Very few medical shools have a curriculum that trains doctors in diagnosis and treatment. So literally everyone has a stake in the continued existence of this clinic. This pioneering centre was founded by Dr. William Rea in the late 1970s. It has served as the single most precious place for people with chemical sensitivities, and for all who have benefited from the pioneering of environmental medicine, since then. ** It has helped to test and codify so many crucial diagnostic procedures and treatments for environmentally related illness, both MCS as such, and so many others. ** It has treated almost 30,000 patients, most of whom were not able to find help anywhere else, including military veterans, 9/11 first responders and thousands of children with a host of illnesses ranging from extreme sensitivities to autism. ** It has trained hundreds of doctors on-site and internationally. ** Its existence has provided the real-ilfe model of state-of-the- art diagnostics and effective treatment from which physicians, health officials and patients can fight for similar approaches, so desperately needed in every community. ** In Japan, four clinics so far have been built on the same model and Dr. Rae consults internationally. The attachment here tells you a lot more about him and the clinic, if you are interested. ** Dr. Rea's clinic is the ONLY facility on this continent where safer residences are available. When people get really sick with chemical sensitivity, they cannot get better unless they have a safe home. I was a patient at the Clinic between February and June 2008, also seeking help while in critical health after years of illness and suffering. I made progress that seemed incredible (and joyous) to me at the time, after so many years of incompetent treatment and decline. I met many physicians who were learning about what many other (retrograde) physicians continue to deny. So here is the scary part: For a some time now, a group of Texas physicians, acting as point men for other interests (notably insurance companies and reactionary doctors, with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries behind them) have been attempting to shut the center down. If you want to understand the politics of this kind of struggle, you can check out my blog -- www.thechemicaledge .wordpress. com, go to MCS 101 and then to 6. System Failure for a full account. Or see this in the second attached document. The point at this moment is that it's been a long and complicated battle, and the legal fees are huge and increasingly unbearable. Indeed, they now threaten to shut down the clinic completely -- a strategy that corporate interests with deep pockets use to great effect on many similar fronts. Dr. Rea may not even get a chance to fight the substantive issues if the costs are too much for him and his dedicated staff to continue on with. Today, we are at a turning point, in our struggle to rescue our planet and transform medicine so it can help us heal from the chemical damage. Finally a period is opening up in which the evidence linking environmental degradation to a vast host of health impacts has grown into an avalanche with the power to compel change. But as this evidence mounts, chemical, pharmaceutical, financial and backward looking medical interests, threatened by it, are launching new offensives in several important countries to discredit medicine geared to healing toxic injury. Most immediately they are getting closer and closer to shutting down our oldest and most important clinical site, thereby discrediting Dr. Rea, his amazing staff, his methods and his patients. Please consider how crucial this clinic is: as a place for help when all else fails; as a living example of the practice of environmental medicine in every country in the world; as a place whose emulation we can demand from our own health systems. It's loss would be, without exaggeration, a global disaster. And then PLEASE find a way to send the Center some financial help so it can survive to help all of us. Any and all contributions are needed and welcome. And PLEASE forward this email on to anyone you know who cares about the environment and the devastating health impacts of chemical pollution. Please make your cheque payable to the William J. Rea Legal Defense Fund, and send to Environmental Health Centre, 8345 Walnut Hill Lane, Suite 220, Dallas, TX, USA 75231. Attn: Ellie Please help. Thank you. Varda Burstyn -- Varda Burstyn website: _www.vardaburstyn.com_ (http://www.vardaburstyn.com) blog: _www.thechemicaledge.wordpress.com_ (http://www.thechemicaledge.wordpress.com) ************** Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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