UK Herbalists Disassociating From Proposed Legislation

Hi all:

A friend in the UK passed this on to me, asking for it to be distributed.

" Tim Lane " tim.lane

" Tim Lane " <tim.lane

independent herbalist practitioners

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:23:05 -0000

Hello to all of you, and apologies to those of you with whom I should

have

been in touch with before now.

Please find below and attached details of something that a number of

us have been working on for some time. Whilst certain aspects of the

attached documents are not directly relevant to those of you overseas,

I hope that they may be of at least some interest and value.

We are not claiming ownership of any of the information in this e-mail

or attachments. We offer it to you our colleagues with an open heart,

for you to do with as you will. If you are of a like-mind, we would

encourage you to circulate the information freely, and use whatever of

it in you responses to the MHRA should you so wish. we sincerely hope

that our efforts will help in some small way to both protect and save

for the futureour tradition of herbal medicine, which we percieve to

be under great threat in the UK and elsewhere.

With best regards to you all,

Tim Lane.

Dear all

We are a group of twelve experienced independent herbal practitioners.

We are disassociating ourselves from the proposed legislation of both

herbalistsand herbal medicines, and from the hierarchical organisation

of herbalists from whence we came, as we feel that neither our

interests or our needs have been served. We choose instead to gain in

strength by mutual self-support and by celebrating, organising and

learning together.

We have no leaders and no formal title or structure, nor have we any

interest in providing these things for others. However, if there are

those amongst you who would will for the same, we would be pleased to

offer our inspiration and support. A federal structure of small

autonomous groups might well result as there is by now considerable

interest in such an arrangement.

Meanwhile, below is our Declaration of Intent, to be circulated as

generally as possible. If it reflects your own opinions you may want

to send a copy of this or use it as a basis for your own response,

signed by yourself or a group of you, to the MHRA, DoH and anybody

else you feel

should know. You can also access our responses to the current MHRA

Informal

Discussion Papers by emailing either Nathalie Chidley

natly , Tim Lane tim.lane or Chris Caton

herbalist.c.caton

Please feel free to use all or part of our answers in your own

responses to the MHRA, Caroline Brennan

Caroline.brennan , the deadline is 30th March 2007.

DECLARATION OF INTENT

We the undersigned to the following declaration of intent,

to be offered openly to our patients, our peers, the UK Medicines and

Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the Department of Health and

all other interested parties, here and abroad:-

It is the inalienable right of all people to use plants for their

sustenance and healing. In the spirit of the European Charter of Human

Rights, so too is it an essential freedom to seek advice from those

who have devoted themselves to the knowledge and application of the

health-giving properties of plants.

Herbal Medicine is the indigenous natural healing tradition of the

British Peoples. It is a living tradition that has adapted and

remained relevant through all times. We count ourselves amongst the

custodians of this living tradition, for the benefit of all who would

choose it and for generations to come.

We conjoin with indigenous traditional healers throughout the world in

seeking to protect our plant heritage and maintain the practice of all

such natural therapies.

It is a maxim that all who care for the sick shall do no harm: our

inheritance is that British practitioners of Traditional Western

Herbal Medicine have upheld this absolutely and without exception for

a century or more, as we determine to continue.

Given that we are safe in the sourcing, preparation and prescription

of herbal medicines, we challenge the need for legislation over and

above the existing laws of the land that we are subject to and

willingly uphold.

Herbal Medicine is a humble vocation with a majority of part time

practitioners. We reject the current call for state regulation of its

practitioners in that it may exclude the many from legal practice and

equally place our work beyond the financial resources of many of our

patients.

Likewise we reject the current intention to regulate our medicines in

that it will compromise without justification the essential freedoms

of the public, herbal practitioners and their traditional suppliers in

favour of the few who may profit by it.

Herbal Medicine's enduring strength is that it remains an effective

therapy employing the most basic of technologies with little call on

external resources or agencies. In anticipation of the effects of

climate change we are determined to keep this aspect of our knowledge

alive for ourselves and future generations as an integral element of a

healing planet.

Signed

Chris Caton, Nathalie Chidley, Carol Church, Stephen Church,

Christopher Hedley, Tim Lane, Kym Murden, Non Shaw, Sally Viney,

Emmett Walsh, Jennifer Wharam and Ania Zwozdiak

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