Day 61-2012-03-01 Bring down blood sugar (Photo credit: jaysalikin)
Why is the Board of Dietetics censoring a blogger? To answer this, I need to tell you about two characters in this story. Who will you side with? On one side is a blogger and on the other is a large organisation. At the heart of the matter is how the Healthcare sector is dealing with social media.
Drew Bowling wrote an article about Steve Cooksey (the blogger). His article deals with censorship and free speech on the internet. So, let us begin.
Steven Cooksey has type II diabetes. He took daily insulin shots to control his blood sugar level. Steve then decided to change to a no-grain/low-carbohydrate diet (Paleo Diet) which he maintains. His health improved and he setup a website (Diabetes-Warrior) to share his story. His site states that he took 4 shots a day before switching to the Paleo diet and now requires no injections. The site offers tips and his disdain for American Diabetes Association (ADA) policies and guidelines.
The Seat of Government (Photo credit: Ewan-M)
The ADA didn’t approve of Steve’s blog. Then in January 2012, the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition stopped him because he breached the licensing law. This means you can’t give personal diet advice, freely or for compensation, because you breach the unlicensed practice of dietetics and will be criminally charged. Applying this law seems strange considering people often blog about diabetes and diets.
Steve amended his comments and joined forces with the Institute of Justice to file a lawsuit against the State Board in the federal court. The question here is, does the government’s power to license occupations supersede one’s right to speak freely. Only time will tell.
Marietje Schaake @ State of Social Media Summit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Who you choose is your decision. The government, healthcare sector and businesses in that industry haven’t embraced social media properly. People use it to find information and treatment for health related issues by researching it or joining online communities and forums. They hate the system of guidelines because it’s not listening to them. They want their problem solved. Greater transparency and online community involvement is needed. How can governments be involved? What can the healthcare sector do to improve social media relations? The solutions are there, you only have to look.
Related and Contributing articles
- Censored Blogger: “People Need to Know the Truth” (webpronews.com)
- Institute for Justice takes case of paleo blogger charged over giving people advice on what to eat (thebovine.wordpress.com)
- It is Deathcare … not healthcare by Steve Cooksey
A Brand Enhancer in Communications. I fit naturally with technology, curious about science and avid consumer of news to gain insights. You can follow me on Google+ , LinkedIn , Twitter .
Aqua Black Cat 
Hello, I just stopped in to visit your site and thought I’d say thank you.
Visited your site as well and enjoyed it.
It’s actually a great and helpful piece of information. I’m satisfied that you just shared this helpful info with us. Please keep us up to date like this. Thank you for sharing.
Enjoyed visiting your community site. It’s pretty cool. Glad you like the information and thank you for your comments.
Nice website over here! I just wanna say thnx for that.
Glad you enjoyed the site and thanks for coming.
The Internet is new to me, being that I just retired. There is quite a rich diversity of information in blogs so I am getting involved and commenting. I think that you have to put some attention on a blog to bring it above the dry and boring verbage that exists. Useful info. Lucky me I discovered your web site accidentally, and I’m surprised why this coincidence did not happened in advance! I bookmarked it.
I enjoyed reading your comment. I’m glad your getting involved on the internet and enjoyed reading my blog. Happy to provide useful info to you and I hope you share the information around. Cheers and come again.
This is a comment to the webmaster. I came to your “The Dietetics Board Censors Diabetic Blogger Aqua Black Cat” page via Google but it was difficult to find as you. You could have more traffic and I found a website Traffic for SEO can help your site. I managed to get close to 1000 visitors/day using their services, hope this helps 🙂 Take care.
Thanks for the suggestion but I would like to build my site organically. 🙂