The modern-day Battle of Britain

[Guest guest]

" WC Douglass " <realhealth

Daily Dose - The modern-day Battle of Britain

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 07:15:00 -0400

Daily Dose

 

 

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Transatlantic Tempest, part two

 

In the last issue of the Daily Dose, I remarked about the likely

future of the state of medical care in the U.S. - a litigious,

pill-and-scalpel dictatorship-of-the-dollar that's not a very pretty

picture, from where I'm standing.

 

And it's a positively DEADLY one from where you're sitting.

 

Foreshadowing another setback in the world's search for affordable,

drug-free medicine that really heals, I touched briefly in my last

article on the fact that one of the western nations traditionally most

progressive in its view of outside-the-mainstream therapies, the U.K.,

is facing a " civil war " of its own over alternative medicine. Here's

what I mean...

 

First, in early 2004, the Queen Mum herself selected an alternative

medicine practitioner (Brits call it " complementary " medicine) as her

Royal Physician. This appears to have been at least in part a response

to Prince Charles' wholehearted endorsement of non-conventional

healing and his formation of a new adjunct to the UK Department of

Health called the Foundation for Integrated Health. (More on all this

in Daily Dose, 5/11/2004)

 

Second, a BBCNews report from last year cited poll research showing

that a whopping 71% of Britons wanted more information from their

doctors about hypnotherapy, herbal medicine and other complementary

therapies. The poll also showed that 38% of them felt they couldn't

use these alternatives because their doctors would not approve. Other

data revealed that Britons spent 130 million pounds a year on

complementary therapies, a figure predicted to rise by more than 55%

over by 2008.

 

Third, a UK health education charity called Developing Patient

Partnerships launched an effort to help answer the demand for more

information about alternative medicine for both patients and GPs - 85%

of which responded in polls as not having enough information about

complementary therapies to be able to advise their patients.

 

Sounds rosy for the complementary medicine bunch, doesn't it?

 

Uh, maybe not. In July of last year, one of Britain's leading cancer

specialists chastised (nearly ridiculed, in fact) Prince Charles for

his embrace of complementary medicine in an open letter to the entire

medical community in the British Medical Journal. But that's a

mosquito bite compared to what happened earlier this year. Keep reading...

 

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According to an Associated New Media report from earlier in the year,

the UK's membership in the European Union could cost it a large chunk

of its freedom with regard to medical choices.

 

Despite a recent challenge by the British food industry, the EU-formed

European Court of Justice upheld a pending law called the Food

Supplements Directive, a measure which requires makers of nutritional

supplements and herbal extracts to submit their products to a

newly-formed review and approval process before they can be sold as

part of an official list of legally recognized health foods...

 

Despite the fact that many of these remedies have been in use for

hundreds of years!

 

The decision came as a shock to many in the industry, since it flies

in the face of an opinion rendered in April by this same court's

Advocate General. The judges held in this latest decision that the

need for tightened control over the health food market outweighed any

previous free trade considerations, and upheld the law's inception

date of August 1st.

 

Sounds like somebody from one of the drug companies " got to them "

doesn't it? In any event, the bottom line is that regardless of how

Prince Charles or the Queen Mum may feel about it, the governance of

the European Union, not the UK free market, now decides what choices

Britons can and can't make with regard to nutrition-based medicine -

even ages-old cures. Here in the U.S., we haven't gotten to that point

yet, but it looks like it's not too far off...

 

Hanging my head,

 

William Campbell Douglass II, MD

 

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