Over the years, I’ve heard mention of a homeopath, a Dr. Allan Sutherland, who practiced in Brattleboro in the not so distant past. Usually it was from one of my patients who recalled being attended by him in childhood. Once a Brattleboro native now living in Connecticut noticed my sign and decided to stop in just to tell me about her childhood homeopathic physician whom she had greatly admired. Another time, it was a naturopath from Colorado who told me he had spent two years in Brattleboro apprenticing with. Sutherland in the last years of the doctor’s life.
Proposed Changes to Vermont's Vaccination Law
Recently legislation was introduced in the Vermont legislature that would amend the law regulating vaccinations. Currently, the state permits children entering school to be exempted from vaccinations for medical, religious or philosophical reasons. The bill, Senate 199 and House 527, would revoke the philosophical exemption, forcing parents to either vaccinate or find another means to educate their child. This bill was proposed at the behest of the public health and conventional medical establishments, which invoked the concept of ‘herd immunity’ as a rationale for its implementation. Simply put, it postulates that if enough people in a certain group or community are immunized against a specific disease, then the germ that carries the disease cannot find enough carriers to spread amongst the non-immunized, and presumably outbreaks of the disease disappear.