Page 14 - Summer 13

Dear friends
In April we held our Annual Board meeting, but as has been our policy for the last few years we expanded our time there to include other important functions.
Firstly we provided speakers for teaching ses- sions in homeopathy for the annual conference of the GGTM, the German Association for Holistic Veterinary Medicine, with whom we already have a close relationship. We provided a whole day of lectures for experienced home- opathic veterinarians, an introductory morning for beginners, and I was privileged to contribute to a session on business models in holistic vet- erinary medicine. Many thanks to those mem- bers who participated and to Bernard Hornig, who organised the programme. Also to Markus Mayer and his team who organised the confer- ence generally.
In the afternoon of the second day we held our Materia Medica (MMVH) workshop. This brought together those members who are directly involved with the project, and we were particularly pleased to welcome Marcela Muñoz from Colombia and Miako Kuroda from Japan who are undertaking translations into Spanish and Japanese respectively. This is an enormously important project – not only for our members but for veterinary homeopathy globally – further details will accompany this message.
At our Board meeting we had the sad task of saying Goodbye to Andreas Schmidt as our treasurer. Andreas has been a member of IAVH Board as long as I can remember and his par- ticipation as treasurer, and his valuable advice has been a great comfort and support to me in my role of President. I will miss him, and I take this opportunity of thanking him, personally and
on behalf of the Association for the sterling work he has done for us. However, as a result of his efforts, we have a structure which will ensure a smooth transition and for that I am also grateful to him.
On the positive side I welcome Don Hamilton as our new treasurer. I have known Don for sev- eral years, as fellow homeopathic veterinarian, walking companion and drinking buddy so I have no doubt whatsoever that he is a suitable candidate for the post. As you know I have a passion for extending IAVH influence globally, and to have a US citizen on the board is a pos- itive development. I look forward to Don’s par- ticipation in our Association; I can promise you he is ‘one of us’.
On the subject of globalisation, the world asso- ciation of Medical homeopaths (LMHI) held its Annual conference in Quito, Ecuador in June. I had hoped to attend myself but economics do not allow it, so I am very pleased to report that Marcela Muñoz represented us there, along with Futoshi Hamada from Japan. This is a very important task and I am grateful to those two members for their time and effort. Marcela was also presenting the MMVH project to the conference.
[At the time of writing] in the UK we have had a late Spring – at last we have sunshine, and the Spring flowers are in abundance, but there is still a cold wind blowing. In veterinary homeop- athy we still face many obstacles, and we still have many detractors but I believe we have a role in the welfare of animals, which makes our world a better and more compassionate place. We have a duty to animals to promote homeop- athy and I believe the Universe shows its grati- tude to us for that. So despite the cold wind of opposition, the sun is shining on us and we can
Helene Widmann, Peter Gregory and Andreas Schmidt
be joyful. Thank you for your support, your time and your passion.
Peter Gregory
Welcome to the new treasurer
First of all, I would like to thank Peter Gregory, Andreas Schmidt, Helene Widmann, and the entire IAVH board, for accepting my application for treasurer. I hope to fulfil their and my expec- tations in helping the continued growth of IAVH in guiding veterinary homeopathy to more guardians and animals.
Today, especially in the UK, and to a lesser degree in the USA (and perhaps elsewhere, although I do not know), there are those who wish to undermine homeopathic practice by veterinarians as well as by human medical doc- tors. While this is serious, I think the best count- er to these efforts is through education. First, through educating our colleagues so we prac- tice the best homeopathy we can, within the context of understanding medicine. Secondly, by educating the general public about the many benefits homeopathy can offer: generally safe treatment, potentially superb results, and rela- tively little toxicity to our already-suffering world. For myself, I am not one who believes that attempting to prove that homeopathy works via double-blind studies or other methodologies of the “old-school” will be effec- tive. I do not think that we can prove anything to those who simply do not wish to believe. So my focus is upon good practice, conscientious care, and a positive attitude, not only towards our patients and our homeopathic colleagues, but also and especially towards our conven- tional colleagues. We must not alienate them through any negative criticism of their meth- ods, even if we believe some of them are detri- mental to health.
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IAVH Newsletter