turf

HERBAL MEDICINE - is it turning into a witch hunt at some point?

Yesterday I bumped into a friend of mine who is an acupuncturist and also prescribes Chinese Herbs to his patients [see Jonathan Bruce, Iffley Acupuncture Clinic]. He told me that he was not allowed to give out herbs anymore, and that in fact he could not buy the Chinese herbal products anymore at all. EEC regulations (and I have also heard this from German sources) now require that a company producing and selling herbal remedies spends millions on research and testing to prove that their products are safe and actually do something for the consumer. It seems a ridiculous idea, obviously fuelled by the multi-billion pound pharmaceutical industry, given that the benefits and effects of herbal remedies have not been proven by a few months of tests on rats and people, but by thousands of years of experience. Many producers of herbal remedies cannot afford what the pharma industry can (also testing herbal remedies would take longer because their effect is less immediate and more subtle), so they are driven into ruin - and in consequence people who want to rely on non-chemical medicine cannot be made better. Especially in a country like the UK where we have a free National Health Service and only few are privately insured, those going to alternative therapists and herbalists or those who are finding out about and buying remedies on the internet, save the NHS a hell of a lot of money by not seeing their GP (but not the pharma industry!). In a country like the UK with the NHS where you have to be half dead in order to be taken seriously by your GP and get a prescription, these interim, slow and privately expensive solutions for those who are unwell are often the only way forward. Good alternatve therapists are able to tell whether and where your body is going wrong very early on, where GPs are not. It is a bit like the schooling system where those who can afford it send their children to private school because most state schools are hopeless and often unsafe. The state couldn't cope with all children in state schools and relies financially on those who are better off. Could the NHS cope with all patients who have so far relied on herbs, turning to their GP?
Jonathan is now doing an MSc in Chinese Herbal Medicine and is plannig to become a herbalist who buys individual herbs to mix up for his patients. Individual herbs are still allowed to be sold and prescribed. But I wonder for how long? Are we all going to go off into the woods, scarves over our heads so that we are not recognized, picking herbs? And are we going to be burned at the stake for doing so at some point in the future? I better keep away from that then, having red hair...

People I have talked to about this who are pro-chemical drugs and wouldn't trust herbs countered that perhaps there is more reason behind this than just money: perhaps herbal remedies would interfer with conventional drugs when taken simultaneously. OK, point taken, but would this actually happen? Those who have a good alternative therapist do not need to take conventional drugs, becaue their health problems are nipped in the bud and sorted at the root. Those who live in less populated areas, whose first point of call is a willing and not overworked GP, have no need for alternative medicine because their GP will give them a prescription, unlike in overcrowded city areas where surgeries are under enormous strain and have had restrictions put on them how many prescriptions they give out per day (nb: so, GPs have been told to give out less prescriptions - how does that help patients or the parma industry?). In overcrowded areas GPs see a lot worse stuff than a backache, exhaustion, sciatica or the beginning of severe kidney proplems, so they send people away telling them to take aspirin, go to bed or pull themselves together. That means you give up any trust and hope for help from your GP until you are so ill that you end up in hospital and may need drugs for the rest of your life. And if herbs don't help, if you get worse and do get something out of your GP, then you would stop taking the herbs because you are on something a lot stronger, wouldn't you? So, I think the argument that the two kinds of medicines interfer with each other does not really hold.

It sounds to me a bit like BA who give as the first reason why a cello needs to be tied into the seat with a blue rope: 'FAA regulation'. After more questioning the second reason is 'it could fall on someone's head'. In a seat with an extension belt around it? If the argument is that herbal remedies have not been tried and tested enough and could cause damage then I would like to have an example of when it did actually cause damage. Just like I would like to know when a cello last fell on someone's head in a plane crash. (I think a cello falling on your head is the least of your problems in a crash... but that's part of another rant some other time..)