The Spirit of the ’70s

This chapter explores how in the 1970s, freedom of therapeutic choice advocacy, previously the domain of right-wing extremists, became bipartisan and mainstream. It examines how various cultural trends contributed to this trend, including a loss of trust in orthodox medicine, government, and other establishment institutions; a “rights revolution” (including the rise of patients’ rights); and the emergence of the women’s health movement. The chapter shows how Americans’ use of alternative remedies surged during this period and discusses in detail two 1970s social movements in favor of alternative treatments: a successful rebellion against the FDA’s attempt to regulate vitamin and mineral supplements more stringently and a campaign to resist the FDA’s ban on Laetrile, an alternative cancer treatment derived from apricot pits. The chapter also describes how American courts briefly seemed prepared to elaborate the holding of Roe v. Wade into a generalized right to freedom of therapeutic choice.