The future of Chinese Herbal Medicine in the West? - Support a Winner, the ANH

[Guest guest]

Hi Phil and Z'ev

 

Why not follow *both* of your suggestions (quoted

below)? Both seem vital to me; ie show CM's

safety and efficacy using modern scientific

research *and* build up a massive presence on the

high streets and hearts and minds of the people.

 

I would like to suggest 2 more things.

 

1. In Europe, the Alliance for Natural Health

(ANH) are doing an excellent job at challenging

the Food Supplements Directive, which will impact

on herbs in its later phases. The ANH is so far

succeeding! LET'S START BY BACKING A WINNER!

Check out their website now at:-

 

http://www.alliance-natural-health.org

 

2. In the UK I've noticed that television

documentaries can be a very powerful way of

making policiticians sit up and do things. This

could work with either Phil's or Z'ev's

appraches.

 

All the best, David Gordon

 

 

 

News from ANH website:-

-----------

" Nutrition and Health Claims Regulations delayed!

 

ANH wins first stage of EU Food Supplement

Directive legal challenge!

 

Thank you to all those consumers, practitioners,

retailers and manufacturers who have donated to

ANH and helped us to be successful at the first

stage of this critical legal challenge against

the EU Food Supplements Directive. Your ongoing

help is now urgently required to enable us to

fight this case in the all important second

stage, in the European Court of Justice in

Luxembourg. The decision will affect millions of

people's health and livelihoods, as well as their

freedom of choice. We must win - the outcome will

have a major influence on future EU Directives -

please contribute whatever you able now. Thank

you.

 

The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) is a

pan-European and international organisation that

is working cooperatively to positively shape

legislation to allow the practice and development

of natural healthcare approaches.

 

The ANH has come together with big and small

innovative practitioner suppliers and other

innovative supplement manufacturers and retailers

across Europe to challenge the Food Supplements

Directive.

 

This Directive threatens to remove from the

market more than 5000 food supplements currently

on the UK, Swedish, Irish and Dutch markets that

contain vitamin and mineral forms that would

otherwise be disallowed under the new

legislation. This Directive is also very likely

to be the template used by Codex Alimentarius in

the development of global standards for food

supplements.

 

Nutri-Link (Mike Ash, Director), distributors of

Allergy Research and Biotics Research products to

practitioners in the UK are co-claimants with ANH

in the legal challenge.

 

Other UK companies that have worked closely with

the ANH on the case include Nutri (Ken Eddie,) and Olivers’ Wholefood Store (Sara

Novakovic, Director).

 

Dr Damian Downing (Biolab Medical Unit, London

and York) has presented a witness statement on

behalf of practitioners and includes a strong

scientific argument against the directive.

 

Major companies like Hela Pharma and Alpha Plus

in Sweden, wholesalers and retailers in Ireland

and Italy are also involved and have, along with

all the companies associated with the case,

provided detailed data which demonstrates the

economic impact of the directive if it is allowed

to come in to force.

 

The Food Supplements Directive has a further two

phases to it – all of which might also need to be

challenged. ‘Phase 1’ is our immediate concern

and is the restriction on vitamins and minerals

that is proposed to come in to force on 1 August

2005. This is the key target of ANH’s legal

challenge – and it is the only aspect that can

currently be challenged as it is the only part of

the directive that has already been passed in to

EU and UK law. But this is the thin end of the

wedge.

 

‘Phase 2’ are proposed restrictions on dosages

which are likely to be brought in 2005/6.

Proposed ‘Phase 3’ is hugely worrying:

restrictions on other groups of nutrients such as

amino acids, essential fatty acids,

phytonutrients, fibre, etc.

 

The European Commissionproposes to limit these

also by positive lists – can you imagine how many

phytonutrients, enzymes or probiotics might be

left off such positive lists?

 

 

Coming through the pipeline are no less than five

or six other directives that will impact the

natural healthcare sector: most imminent is the

Pharmaceuticals Directive (Directive 2001/83/EC)

that is at a critical stage – ANH is deeply

involved with some very important work on this

that urgently needs your support.

 

Please refer to the ANH News item on 18 December

2003: Will supplements be classified as medicines

in Europe?

 

However, the Pharmaceuticals Directive is closely

followed by the Traditional Herbal Medicinal

Products Directive, Health Claims Regulations,

Sports Nutrition Directive and Fortified Foods

Directive – all of which will impact the natural

healthcare sector in one way or another.

 

Only with your support and donations will we be

able to be successful in what even top US

attorneys are now saying is probably the world's

most important action to protect health freedom.

 

Please explore our site to discover more about

the issue - and join the ANH now to protect your

freedom of choice!

 

The ANH was established in February 2002 in order

to represent a sector of the industry and its

beneficiaries that had not at that time been

sufficiently represented by the major industry

associations. The stimulus for its establishment

was the likely passage of the Food Supplements

Directive which was considered to have a

particularly severe impact on the innovative

sector of the industry.

 

The principle aim of ANH is to work cooperatively

across the EU and internationally to positively

shape legislation affecting particularly EU

member countries in order to ensure continued

access to popular, safe and effective food

supplements and herbal products.

 

ANH represents especially innovative food

supplement manufacturers, formulators, suppliers

and distributors, complementary practitioners,

consumers and specialist retailers and its

strongest support in the EU comes from the UK,

Sweden, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany and France.

 

The ANH also has strong support in other parts of

the world, including the USA, Australia and New

Zealand.

 

Given the prevalence of micronutrient

deficiencies in our populations, the decreasing

quality of the average diet and increased

exposure to toxins, nutritional approaches to

health care are considered of paramount

importance. The availability of leading-edge,

practitioner-type food supplements (often based

on food-state nutrients), is considered an

essential component to such nutritionally-based

health care given the difficulty of obtaining

adequate quantities of all required nutrients in

the diet.

 

There is a growing and substantial body of

evidence, which demonstrates that good nutrition,

including supplementation, can help maintain

optimum health and reduce the incidence of a

range of common diseases including cardiovascular

disease, cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis. "

 

 

 

Z’ev Rosenberg wrote:-

-----------------

" " <zrosenbe@s...>

Sun Jan 9, 2005 2:29 am

Re: The future of Chinese Herbal

Medicine in the West?

 

Phil,

" You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the

only one " (John Lennon).

 

As long as the public continues to demand Chinese

and alternative/complimentary resources, there

will be Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine works,

and the forces that you describe are largely

dictated by the huge largess of money and

political power that are the tools of these

forces.

 

The direction I think we must take as a

profession is not to try to placate and get

approval from the established forces of medicine,

but to build our own structures, our own

insurance, our own hospitals, our own research

facilities based on pattern differentiation and

the complete, full structure of Chinese medicine.

Who cares if it is small, local, and not accepted

by the medical establishment?

 

If only a few of us do this, it will be

worthwhile. I've devoted most of my life to the

study, practice, and promotion of Chinese

medicine, and I'm not going to stop just because

the forces of pharmaceutical companies, legal and

economic forces are so overpowering.

 

Civilizations rise and fall, structures rise and

fall, and there is no way to predict the future.

I personally think that the insights of

Chinese medicine are the wave of the future, not

the remains of the past.

 

Yours,

 

Professor Moonbeam

(aka )

 

 

 

wrote:-

---

Message: 5

Sat, 08 Jan 2005 18:11:47 -0000

" " <

The future of Chinese Herbal Medicine in

the West?

 

Hi All, &

 

IMO, Todd is more or less correct in his

assessment of the future of herbal medicine, at

least in the western world.

 

The FDA, EU and other western drug regulation

authorities increasingly insist on well

documented evidence of safety, efficacy and

quality control for medicinal agents.

 

Legislation will allow, and practitioners'

insurance companies cover, only registered

(authorised) drugs and medicinals. It will become

more and more difficult to source single

ingredients that meet the approval of the

regulators. Many of the potent singles of the

Chinese Pharmacopoeia (including bungarus,

centipede, cicada, lumbricus, moschus, scorpio,

toad venom, etc) will be banned in the West,

 

Western TCM herbalists will be left with a very

depleted and sanitised stock of authorised

formulas or extracts. The " right " to construct

personalised formulas, or even to modify

registered formulas by addition or subtraction of

single herbs probably will be banned soon.

 

This will cause traditional Chinese herbalism, as

practised in the West, to run aground in a

stagnant backwater, from which there will be no

easy channel back to mainstream medicine.

 

In contrast, oriental herbalism is developing

towards a biomedical model, involving research to

identify, isolate and synthesise the more

potent active ingredients from traditional herbs

and formulas.

 

See for example the research at the Natural

Products Research Institute in Seoul, S. Korea:

http://plaza.snu.ac.kr/~napri/eng/faculties.htm

 

Patents on specific molecules, or combinations of

molecules (and their sale and distribution via

the pharmaceutical companies) are the likely

outcomes from this research. These new compounds

will be used, alone or with WM drugs, in

biomedical models, using WM diagnostic methods.

TCM Dx, IMO, will decline.

 

We have often debated the need (or otherwise) for

expert TCM Dx by Pattern Differentiation etc. But

we have little solid research to confirm

that TCM Dx is essential to effective therapy, be

it by herbs or by acupuncture.

 

These are sombre thoughts for 2005, but Todd's

mails in recent weeks have been pointing

inexorably in this direction.

 

So, Quo Vadis CHA? What can we salvage, what

SHOULD we salvage, before the Titanic of TCM runs

aground in the West?

 

Can we identify a few dozen essential TCM /

herbal concepts that should NOT be lost? Can we

prove to skeptics, by well controlled

research data, that these concepts are valid? How

do we popularise them, and maybe even slip them

into the thinking pattern of western medicine?

 

Happy New Year to all.

 

Best regards,