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Alternative Medicine & Its Struggle for Survival in the EU 14/8/07

By Marlene Houghton, BSc in Holistic Nutrition [High Hons]

Nutritional Therapy/Herbalism

The full frontal assault on natural medicine by the EU continues unabated. Faceless bureaucrats are determined to remove public access to alternative medicine, based on philosophies that fundamentally conflict with medical orthodoxy. Brussels’ adversarial position against non-medical practitioners of unorthodox knowledge and alternative practices and the establishment of a monopolistic position of orthodox medicine is the aim of the EU. The ‘controllers’ have noticed how popular alternative medicine has become due to the fact that the public is disenchanted with scientific medicine. People have discovered that the so-called ‘experts’ have clay feet. The popularity of natural medicine can be seen as the collapse of orthodox medicine’s professional authority.

Alternative therapists with their emphasis on individual responsibility for health are seen as the new heretics. In an authoritarian system like the EU this cannot be permitted. The powerful elites who run the EU want compliant and docile populations who believe only in science and its claims to universal supremacy.

Very soon herbs, vitamins and all types of natural medicine will no longer be freely available. The EU has drawn up a ‘permitted’ list and is now looking at ‘upper safe levels’ for nutrients. These will be set at ridiculously low levels, too low to be of any therapeutic benefit. High level supplements will become prescription only. Alternative practitioners who have spent years training will be forbidden to practice unless they become State-regisered. To do this they will have to re-train and get formal degrees at State-run institutions. This type of education is not appropriate for many alternative therapies.

Our right to choose natural healthcare if we want to in preference to allopathic medicine is under great threat. A series of EU Directives have been passed into UK law in the last few years. They have forced us into the constricting, conformist policies of the EU and wish to push natural medicine into an allopathic straightjacket. These Directives have begun to decimate natural medicine in the UK and are destroying it completely. This was the plan all along. These Directives supercede any laws by individual nations. The arrival of the single market brought about great changes for the future of natural medicine in Britain. Policy for Britain in this area now comes from Brussels and what happens in the Commission’s Berlaymont building is more important than what happens in Westminster. We have been reduced to a vassal of Brussels.

Natural health supplements will undergo another onslaught this Autumn. It is highly probably that high level nutrients will be outlawed when the new ‘permitted levels’ are agreed.

Given the increasingly evident side effects and limited effectiveness of contemporary medical orthodoxy as well as the therapeutic benefits of many forms of alternative medicine, removing the latter and placing it in the hands of conventional doctors only raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the legally enshrined monopolistic advantages of the medical profession over alternative practitioners. Why should a society only allow one form of medicine? This is a medical dictatorship. In a democracy is this legal?

It is my belief that this is not inspired by altruism but by unconstrained self-interest. Natural therapies have come to the notice of interested groups because of their popularity. Doctors have realised that people want alternative medicine and are willing to pay for it. Therefore the removal of lay-practitioners will leave the patch free ready to be exploited by greedy doctors who use their conventional training to assume superiority. Their continued campaign against ‘outsiders’ will continue and anyone lying outside ‘official, medicine will eventually be stamped out.

The highly political French Medical Association was totally opposed to any proposals to recognise, regulate or harmonise non-conventional forms of health care in member states. It was the French, aided and abetted by the Germans and their powerful pharmaceutical lobbies who fought tooth and nail to get the EU FSD passed into UK law. They knew that in the UK this was bitterly opposed. The French MA does not want to accept ‘unproven therapies’ without questioning their efficacy and possible ‘untoward effects’. The real reason for all this moral indignation is that allopathic medicine now wants to give ‘alternative’ medical advice and wants to claw patients back. Medical elites in the EU wielded enormous political power. They absolutely would not countenance allowing all European citizens the same access to non-conventional medicines and health practitioners that we had here in the UK.

In Germany natural medicine is restricted to licensed doctors only. In the EU the Franco-German axis rules. So as usual we were the victim of the EU’s brutal anti-natural health laws and had to conform to something we did not want.

When the EU FSD and Herbal Directive issued forth from this emerging superstate there was no legal basis for it. Article 95 of the EC Treaty requires the EU to improve the internal market. This has been hatched behind closed doors simply to destroy the alternative health industry here in the UK. What will happen to the professional herbalists, nutritionists, homeopaths? Will they be able to practice? If the tools of their trade are banned and only state-licensed doctors can give them out with a prescription like a drug, which they are not, will the diplomas and degrees of the alternative therapists be declared invalid? Already there are restrictions afoot as to what an alternative therapist can and cannot do now in case they ‘misdirect’ a client. For example if they have a PhD in a non-traditional discipline i.e. non-nutrition dogma like state registered dieticians they cannot call themselves ‘doctor’. This title according to the BMA is not protected in UK law. The word is Greek and means an ‘educator’. Natural health practitioners educate their clients on how to live healthier lives. From now on using this title will constitute ‘misdirecting’ a client unless they are a ‘licensed doctor’. Also the practitioner’s diploma or degree may be considered to be of the type or ‘quality’ that the EU ‘does not believe is of a good enough standard or its accreditation standards are ‘questionable’. The kind of institutions which confer the relevant kind of accreditation into the ‘expert’ systems approved by the EU will of course be of the orthodox variety. These institutions claim ownership of knowledge.

Now the Government, working hand-in-glove- with the EU, has made plans to introduce laws to regulate ALL therapy-based practitioners to ensure that they adhere to a Code of Conduct. Reputable practitioners already have such a Code! This is just another overt attack under the guise of ‘protecting the public’ in order to reduce natural medicines hard won position of popularity amongst the public. The position orthodox medicine now takes is to ‘regulate’ these therapies rather than attacking them openly. This is a means of ensuring that alternative therapies remain under the dominance of orthodox medicine and stay in a subservient role.

This is taking place because mainstream doctors wish to be the only ‘experts’ and ‘expert knowledge’ is associated with power. Orthodox medicine has been accorded a legislative role and has spent decades discrediting other approaches as ‘quackery’ in order to protect its hegemony. The derogatory description ‘quack’ is used by conventional doctors to villify those outside their ranks. Mainstream medicine will continue to fight in order to keep alternative therapists relegated to the fringes, continually discredited as charlatans so that they can protect and retain their moral legitimacy.

Under Common Law here in the UK we kept the wolf at bay but now the EU has opened the floodgates. In the European Union orthodox medicine has established a powerful position, has high status and authority and will not relinquish this. Strategies are actively employed to retain this position and social closure is one of them. They wish to have a monopoly of provision and they keep anyone who is not a licensed doctor [an agent of the state] out.

Medical science is placed at the top of the hierarchy of knowledge and scientists operate from a vested theoretical position. It cannot have escaped the notice of alternative practitioners how much ridicule and opprobrium has been heaped onto them over the last few years. This has been done in order to wrest the public away from natural health and to steer them towards orthodox medicine. They know people will always want natural medicine and this is a way to extent their monopoly. As long as we are in the European Union alternative therapists will never have an equal footing with orthodox medicine and will eventually be wiped out. Brussels will never be the protector of natural medicine only its persecutor. The EU wrecker thunders on like a juggernaught out of control. The EU closes off knowledge by imposing high entry requirements and longer training programmes. Alternative medicine and its ideals are essentially non-hierarchical and are open to all who can study them. Freedom to keep the unstructured teaching necessary in order to spread these different philosophies can only take place outside the EU. Freedom to choose healthful supplements to aid us in the fight to stay well in a polluted world can only take place outside the EU. We must arrange our exit now. Our health depends upon it.