By Lady Medea, BSc in Holistic Nutrition [High Hons] 4th December, 2007.
Nutritional Therapy/Traditional Herbalism
The constant attacks from the scientific establishment continue unabated. These aggressive macho medicine men of the Establishment continue to fight a rearguard action against natural medicine supported by the media and the political elite of the EU whose hidden agenda is to remove access from the public domain here in the UK all but the most ineffective herbs, vitamins and other forms of natural medicine.
On the day that an orthodox doctor, an ‘Expert’ was struck off, another negative article appeared in a national newspaper denouncing self-medication with over the counter herbs. In this article the usual critic of natural medicine was wheeled out, someone who allegedly is a so-called authority on ‘complementary medicine’. It is a pity he did not concentrate on the misdemeanours of conventional medicine seeing as a prominent member was stripped of his medical licence on the same day. A little more scrutiny of conventional medicine would not go amiss. Instead big pharma’s competitors, herbs, vitamins and homeopathy are the target of their bile.
By the year 2011, all over-the-counter herbal remedies that we have relied on for decades to help see us through the winter, helping to keep us well and to avoid catching colds, will be removed. Other herbs used for many ailments will also be removed. You will no longer be able to purchase them. You will be forced to go to a state-registered doctor whose knowledge will probably be a lot less than yours, for a prescription. You will of course pay for this. I guarantee you it will not be available on the NHS. To take a simple herb, used safely for decades, you will no longer be free to use your own judgement but will need medical sanction.
Here in the UK we have had the Common Law right to choose our own treatment for illness. This is now being constrained by EU law. Is this the sign of a free and democratic society? Is orthodox medicine so knowledgeable that it can now also become ‘expert’ in herbalism, naturopathy, aromatherapy, homeopathy, etc?
Each discipline requires years of study, but the allopaths have done what they have always wanted, taken over alternative medicine and labelled it ‘complementary’ which means in plain language, subordinate to. They have long wanted its incorporation into the formal institutions of government-sanctioned state sponsored medicine and the EU has opened the door. These natural health care systems are ‘alternative’ which means they are independent, equal to and very often in opposition to the drugs and surgery used to treat disease. In some areas they are also superior.
Worse still, another tier of ‘experts’ has been introduced by the EU, the pharmacists. These new so-called ‘experts’ trained in pharmacology [from the Greek meaning the study of poisons – pharma meaning poison] have also hijacked the natural health agenda knowing there is money in it as people continue to want natural remedies. Now they are there to ‘advise’ the public. I have heard many of them talking absolute nonsense. They are not the people who should be giving out this information but the EU superstate in the making has brought the Continental system to our shores. In the EU it is only pharmacists or doctors who can advise on natural medicine, not any alternative health practitioner who would be deemed ‘practising medicine without a licence’.
For decades mainstream doctors have battled to remove lay practitioners from the health care scene and of course the EU was the answer to their prayers. Having worked for many years in NHS hospitals, I have met few doctors who did not like the idea of taking over or wiping out all natural medicine. The vocal critics who get so much media air space and are at the forefront of these vitriolic attacks, prove my case in point.
Suffering these ‘quacks’ who represented a powerful threat to orthodox medicine’s hegemony with their witch-doctoring but not being able to do a thing about it because of UK Common Law, when the EU was given massive powers through the signing of successive treaties, in particular the Maastricht which transferred powers to Brussels over health, they were able to move in and take over. Like a marauding army, they have now invaded and are occupying a foreign territory they know nothing much about. A week-end course and they think they are ‘qualified’. They never keep up with the research and often give out wrong information, information which is quite dangerous because people believe that they know what they are talking about because they are ‘doctors’. Many times they do not.
There is a world of difference between orthodox medicine and different philosophical systems and the way each one views the human body. Stick to drugs and surgery is my advice to these medical zealots who never stop their ferocious diatribes against lay practitioners. This is what you trained in and leave natural medicine to the people who do know what they are talking about. They pompously state ‘their qualifications are below standard’ but give me evidence of deaths? There is however mountains of evidence of many iatrogenic diseases, drug side effects that damaged patients or even killed them and many other medical mistakes and mis-diagnoses. The statistics are there for all to see.
This unhappy situation has resulted from the passing into UK law, by a class of political grovellers cringing at the altar of Brussels, the EU Food and Herbal Directives. These were fought against by thousands of UK citizens but as usual, in a callous disregard for the public’s concerns, the EU bureaucrats piled pressure on the UK who do not need much pushing to pass any asinine EU Directive into UK law. No doubt they felt they were being good little Europeans and would be given some Brownie points by their political masters.
The EU Commissioner, whose qualifications are not in nutritional, homeopathic or herbal medicine, is the one who is in charge of this area of health!! He has no knowledge of these health systems but he has the job and also the power over our health choices. Did we vote him in? No of course not. More importantly, can we kick him out? Talk about a massive democratic deficit. He has actually said that ‘food has nothing to do with health’!! He has also shrugged off, in a cavalier fashion, the concerns of millions of EU citizens, worried about the new low nutrient levels due to be set. Can we continue to be dictated to by such a laughing stock who dismiss the fact that diet is related to health? And can we continue in this cosy corporate club that puts the interests of big business above the health of its citizens?
We will soon have useless levels of vitamins because vitamin supplements have been re-classified as ‘drugs’ by the EU Food Supplement Directive. Higher dosages will be prescription-only by an orthodox doctor whose knowledge will be far less than a qualified nutritional therapist’s. Scientifically this is total nonsense. So does an orange rich in Vitamin C above the allowed level become a medical drug only available through a doctor or a pharmacy? What a travesty of science. The medicalisation of supplements was the trick used to put them into the hands of orthodoxy. This re-classification technique is the Orwellian scam used by all authoritarian governments when they want to remove the public’s access to anything.
The EU had better understand that alternative medicine is a large global movement, that is not a fad or a passing fancy. It has deep historical and cultural roots and is not about to give in to unelected plannificatory bureaucrats who think they can run our lives. The belief that only science and technology, the two demi-gods of the 21st Century, will cure all our ills is a castle built on sand.
The EU is allowing corporate medicine and its frontmen to take over natural health. Their only interest is getting what profit they can from a system that resembles the Titanic. It is sinking under the weight of a massive leviathan, a state run NSH, that needs billions to sustain it, billions that no society will be able to continue to pay for.
And the many howls of protest from these elitist doctors who have long since lost the bed side manner and turned their back on Nature is a sign of a system clutching at straws, mindful of the fact it has lost its authority and frightened that these ‘pretenders’natural health practitioners who are anti-elitist and who want people to be educated and empowered, are becoming more respected than they are. With all their fancy state-registered titles, diplomas, apparatus of status and political power they are losing the respect of the public.
The idea that scientific medicine has all the answers to our present day health crises, and that its utterances are held to be divine mystical truths that brook no argument, is no longer believed by an increasingly sceptical public. Disenchanted with a medical system that has lost its human face, people are looking to more holistic medical systems that emphasise self-responsibility and prevention without toxic allopathic drugs. Unless orthodox medicine recognises this and allows other philosophical systems to exist independently, its reputation will continue to decline. Market forces will see to it.
This system of dehumanised technological medicine which stubbornly refuses to be flexible and embrace other healing systems cannot be changed. It has to be replaced. If allopaths do no adapt to changing norms, they will find their waning power will continue. History has shown that all systems are destroyed either by mass movements or economic failure. In the case of orthodox medicine, the writing is on the prescription pad. There is a mass movement towards alternative health systems and taxpayer funding to the tune of billions is no longer an option, as the money is running out. Their fear rests on the fact that they know history has a habit of repeating itself and their protests are a cry for survival.