‘Bad Medicine’ Attacks Herbal Remedies

‘Bad Medicine’ – the practice of causing harm while claiming to heal, or to protect people’s health

“We’re Doing This For You”

Back in the days of Al Capone, small store keepers and factory owners used to pay the Mob ‘protection money,’ so they wouldn’t come into work one day, only to find their business premises mysteriously burnt to the ground. A ‘protection racket’ was the inducement to pay the Mafia so the Mafia wouldn’t put you out of business. Protection rackets are, of course, illegal – unless it happens to be the government running them, in which case, it’s perfectly above board.

In our local pharmacy, there’s a sign hanging above the counter which explains that the CCTV camera, from which it hangs, is there for our protection. The customers occasionally make jokes about how we’re all being ‘protected’ by the camera which, the pharmacy’s staff agree, is there more for the pharmacy’s protection than ours.

When a small store ‘lies’ in an obvious way, we don’t really mind. After all, the pharmacy is entitled to protect its goods from people who might be inclined to steal them. On the other hand, it’s less amusing when it’s a government that lies, on a vast scale, in a way that’s designed both to obtain money under false pretences and disadvantage the very people it claims to be protecting.

Herbal Remedies Banned From May 1 2011 For Our “Protection”

On May 1 2011, hundreds of herbs and herbal remedies, safely used for thousands of years, will be banned from sale, over the counter, in Europe. This new legislation, European governments say, is to ‘protect’ the public. However, this claim is transparently false, as was the Mob’s in times past. Well over 40,000 people die from medical drugs, in the UK alone each year – a conservative estimate. Yet it’s hard to find a single person who has died, in any given year, from the use of any banned herb.

Of course, if there’s the slightest suspicion of anyone being harmed, in any way, by any form of gentle medicine (the French term for what we call ‘alternative’ or ‘complementary’ medicine) – the media make as much noise as they can. But then, the media receive millions of pounds of drug [industry] money, for advertisements, every year . . .

An oft-cited statistic comes from a 1995 study based on the United States alone that describes an average 106,000 deaths per year from adverse drug reactions at a cost of $12 billion. And, when combined with all other iatrogenic causes (caused by drugs and medical treatment) of injuries and deaths, the total rises to 16.4 million people who are affected – with costs modestly estimated to be well over $300 billion a year.

In comparison with these statistics, the percentage of deaths and injuries from herbs and natural medicines is minuscule. The Natural Health Federation (NHF) reports that “There was not even one death caused by a dietary supplement [including herbs, SK] in 2008, according to the most recent information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System.” This was based on polls of 61 poison centers who provide coast-to-coast data for the U.S. National Poison Data System, which is then reviewed by 29 medical and clinical toxicologists. Michael and Lesley Tierra

The reality is that the EU is banning forms of gentle medicine – herbs are just the first in line – that compete with its major clients’ interests. For example, to name just four: Hawthorn, which protects the heart, will be banned – it competes with statins;¹ St. John’s Wort, for depression, will be banned – it competes with Prozac; and Muira Puama and Maca will be banned – they compete with Viagra. Hundreds more herbs will be seized, confiscated or blocked so we can no longer benefit from them. Unfortunately, unlike our pharmacy’s camera, the government’s actions jeopardize the current and future health of millions of people.

Even though the use of many herbal products is supported by thousands of published scientific papers, not to mention centuries of safe and effective use, this, of course, isn’t the point. The point is that since, at least, the 1990s, gentle medicine has attracted more consumer interest – i.e. money – than commercial medicine (i.e. the dominant medical industry, largely based on patented drugs rather than on the totality of medical science). Which means gentle medicine has become a massive threat to commercial medical interests. So, for many years now, the medical/drug industry has been working with bureaucrats and politicians, to reduce the availability of relatively harmless forms of healthcare or healing. Ideally, to the point of extinction.

The Art Of War . . . against herbal remedies

When an executive becomes CEO of a large company, he’s likely to be acquainted with Sun Tzu’s, ‘The Art of War.’ This became a popular book in the corporate world, because it describes strategies whereby a business can win a greater market share. Now the interesting thing about The Art of War is that it isn’t about, say, producing a better product, or selling whatever you happen to make, for a better price – it’s about destroying the opposition. Or, in the case of business, the competition. This includes, of course, competition that offers a better or less expensive product than your own . . .

Commercial medicine has a problem with competing on a level playing field. Although it’s often excellent when confronted by acute injury, pain or infection, or problems requiring surgical interventions, its track record for helping people suffering from degenerative or chronic diseases is extremely poor. For example, overall cancer treatment results haven’t improved (with a few notable exceptions) since the 1950’s. So, as the world’s population includes an increasing number of older people, the ability of doctors, practising commercial medicine, to help their clients, will become progressively weaker.

Indeed, if you have already reached a certain age, you may be familiar with the popular medical response, “It’s just your age,” that is routinely trotted out when the doctor lacks an effective means of helping an older client. Up until now, of course, that older person could then avail himself of some form of gentle medicine – which might just mean a trip to the local health food store – and often experience some considerable relief, or even a complete recovery. But so many people have voted with their credit cards in this way, that the government, aided and abetted by its commercial medicine sponsors, has been ‘persuaded’ to get involved. Enter Al Capone, with a little help from Sun Tzu . . .

Since the ‘protection’ argument is patently false, the government had to come up with a more subtle way of blocking the public’s access to herbs now, and other forms of gentle medicine later. So it played the, nowadays common, ‘license,’ card. This, in a nutshell, says, “If 10 different companies want to sell exactly the same product, they will each have to pay an enormous amount of money to be licensed to sell that product.” This is a brilliant solution to the ‘problem’ of people being able to heal themselves – most herbs won’t be licensed because small companies can’t afford to license them. So we’ll no longer have access to them.²

A few herbs will be licensed for retail sale, so the government will receive those revenues – there’s the ‘protection racket’ angle. But they will only be licensed for sale by companies who can afford the licences, which usually means companies owned by larger drug companies (many nutritional supplement companies are now owned by the big pharma companies). In other words, control over gentle medicine is invisibly shifting from small companies, who know about their herbal products, to drug companies who know how to manipulate governments (albeit, via Brussels) in order to increase their market share – and who would prefer you to buy their drugs . . .

Big Brother Is Watching You

In 1984, George Orwell coined the phrase, “Big Brother Is Watching You.” Nowadays, it’s fascinating to see his predictions playing out in reality. For example, you might reasonably imagine that an MEP is voted into office to represent your interests. But, unfortunately, once there, he no longer represents your interests so much as those of the highest bidders – pharmaceutical, telecomms, food, petro-chemical and other major industries – who can afford to pay multiple lobbyists per MEP to ensure that each MEP votes according to instructions.³

The net result of this ‘post democratic’ form of rule is that Big Brother isn’t merely watching you – which is, of course the threat implicit to any protection racket – he is slowly strangling you. But, just as for the famous boiling frog, it’s happening so slowly we tend not to notice our fundamental human rights – such as to be able to safeguard our own health – being forcibly removed.

Banning relatively harmless herbs, many of which offer equivalent or superior results to toxic drugs, is only the beginning of the process. Now Big Brother doesn’t have to prove that nutritional supplements, homeopathic remedies, or any other effective form of gentle medicine is harmful. He just has to say, “It isn’t licensed” . . . whilst ensuring that the licence is prohibitively expensive. Then all challenges to commercial medicine will be wiped out. So, in the foreseeable future, if you don’t want to take toxic drugs for your illness, there won’t be any alternatives – not because they don’t exist but because they’ve been banned by individuals, in positions of power, whose interest in money far outweighs any interest they may happen to have in your well-being.

A politician once told me that every ‘touchy’ political intervention is accompanied by a calculation with respect to ‘voter apathy.’ In other words, ‘can we get away with this, or will people unite sufficiently to resist it?’ In this respect, whilst the prognosis for American consumers to protect their vital interests is relatively positive, the future for Europeans looks grim. We have done too little too late to protect ourselves from aggressive government and EU policies targeted at those who choose to take responsibility for their own or their children’s health.

Mahatma Gandhi is credited with saying, “first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you, then you win.” People who choose to eat organic food, take nutritional supplements, or use herbal or homeopathic medicines, may well recall the first two phases over the last few decades. We are now at a critical point in the third phase. But it’s the commercial medicine industry, with the help of governments, that plans to win. And perhaps it will. Unlike Al Capone, the European Commission doesn’t care if it destroys all the businesses (and many livelihoods in the process) from which it’s trying to extract money, because its backers – the pharmaceutical industry in this instance – will pay it even more.⁴ And, as all the ‘interested’ parties know, a Mob hit doesn’t come cheap . . . It’s a malevolent form of ‘win-win’ – the perfect racket. Capone would have been impressed.

If you would like to join the growing protest movement against the claimed ‘right’ of governments, acting as enforcers for the European Commission, to deny people access to health-supporting natural products, click on the following links. Act quickly, the directive against herbal remedies comes into full force on May 1:

AVAAZ

Alliance For Natural Health

1 Although hawthorn and statins work through different mechanisms, the general principle of the planned regulatory changes is to reduce or deny the availability of all natural products that reduce or delay people’s needs for medical drugs

2 . . . unless they pay a herbalist a fee to allow them to take a herb they could previously have acquired over the counter

3 Obviously, there are some honourable exceptions to this. Contact your MEP to find out if they support your right to safeguard your health

4 . . . through tax revenues from escalating drug industry profits, as herbal remedies & other alternatives to drugs are wiped out