The biggest danger facing Natural Medicine is called Europe

By Marlene Houghton

Today millions of people in the UK help to safeguard their health with natural remedies and alternative therapies, vitamins, specialised supplements and herbs. For a number of years now a large number of people in the West have become disillusioned with orthodox medicine and have ceased to rely completely on allopathic doctors and pharmaceutical drugs. There has been a growing trend towards self reliance, prevention of disease and a desire to become empowered in relation to health.

As our society became more advanced our self-sufficiency became traded for a multitude of so-called ‘experts’ each trained to deal with a specific area of the body which has led to a fragmented approach. The public has become disenchanted with this and has turned in significant numbers towards more holistic healing therapies that view the body, mind and spirit as a whole. We no longer wish to be at the mercy of modern technology and its dehumanising approach which has fostered a sense of helplessness and dependency. The movement towards alternative self-help therapies is an attempt to return to a less complex and more self-reliant world.

Organised medicine has failed to work in many areas of disease but it still wishes to keep control and is not about to relinquish this without a power struggle that it intends to win. The pharmaceutical industry and the doctors who support it have noticed this turning away from the orthodox to more holistic therapies.

Very soon most of our cherished supplements that we have had access to for decades will be removed from health store shelves and alternative therapists will no longer be able to advise people to take them to improve their health. Many people are still unaware of the damaging effect the EU Food Supplement Directive and the Herbal Directive, both passed into UK law last year, will have on our natural health industry. This is beginning to affect the type of courses people can take and the schools who offer these courses. These pieces of unscientific legislation were brought in by a very underhand process and it was little publicised so that the public have largely remained oblivious to what is going on. The media have a lot to say about the ‘detrimental’ effect of supplements [they receive massive advertising revenue from the industry] but have kept a scandalous silence about what is really going on. Health and safety as usual has been touted as the reason, but this is untrue. The real reason is harmonisation with Europe.

In the EU none of the member states have had the freedom that our liberal vitamin market has provided us with. Our alternative therapists practice under common law. In some countries in the EU this constitutes ‘practising medicine without a licence’. In order to wipe alternative remedies and the therapists out they have pathologised food supplements, making them into drugs, to serve a corporate medical agenda. The EU and the medical doctors who sit on the committees who draw up the regulations have taken upon themselves the role of dictator. I find this aspect of organised medicine and the European Union particularly frightening. It is well known that many bureaucrats who shape our destiny from their ivory towers in the EU are ignorant of these therapies and some are downright hostile. The Commissioner [Markos Kyprianou] who is dealing with further reductions of nutrient levels in food supplements has been quoted as saying that ‘food does not affect health’ !!!! How scandalous that this unelected official should have so much power to destroy our natural health industry. I blame the system itself which spawned this authoritarian political assembly where we are losing our democratic freedoms in health choice with terrifying speed. We are again facing restrictions on remedies that are vital for our continuing good health.

There is worse to come. Within the sanctifying air of do-goodery again, ‘protecting the public’s health’ the final assault will be aimed at the alternative therapists. The bureaucrats simply cannot understand that there are different philosophical systems, all of them equally valid but that do not fall within the narrow medical paradigm that is allopathic medicine. They now want to legalise and harmonise the status of practitioners. As I have already mentioned in the EU non-conventional medical disciplines lack legal status which means it is difficult for them to be covered by the existing social security system. Within the EU certain disciplines have become integrated into orthodox medicine which means only a state-registered doctor can give them out on prescription. This stifling bureaucracy and regulation will mean that the status of non-conventional practitioners will be one of being illegal and at the same time they will not have at their disposal the full range of therapeutic products which they deem indispensable. Even if they have received a high level training if the school is not on the approved list then their diplomas will be invalid. This legislation will have the effect of wiping them out completely. Legal proceedings against practitioners of alternative therapies who carry on practising will be able to take place and practitioners today who are now perfectly legal, under UK common law, having studied for many years at great cost to themselves as these therapies are not provided via state funding will find that they will be ‘criminalised’ and their diplomas not recognised. Unless they have qualified through a university that is recognised by the State they will be unable to use the title Herbalist or to use the letters after their name that they are qualified for by having passed rigorous exams.

Outrageous though this is, a knock on effect will be that there will be no freedom of choice for patients with regard to medical treatment. I hope that all who read this take a very long and serious look at membership of the European Union and decide for themselves if continuing within it is worth the ruin of our health.

Marlene Houghton, CH Ed NuTh

SNHS H.I.Dip.[Herbalism]

SNHS Ad.Dip.[Herbalism]

SNHS [Herbalism]

Assoc.Memb.School of Natural Health Sciences