Behind the Attack on
Alternative Medicine and the Natural Health Movement

 

By CT SUPPORT FUND

In medicine, we see the dominating power of big pharmaceutical corporations; spending millions to court doctors, influence research, (all once deemed unethical) all the while expanding the mechanistic model of the human body. Corporate support of medical schools seems to be turning physicians into sales representatives, winning trips for pushing one drug over another. — James Redfield¹

In a free society we should have choice regarding health care. Modern medicine with all its innovations and advances does not have all the answers, which is why alternative and complementary medicine continues to flourish due to popular choice.

      Unfortunately, powerful lobbies and special interests want to deny you these choices. Their tactics include putting pressure on individuals, businesses and organisations that offer treatment different from normal “accepted” practice. This includes medical doctors and holistic practitioners who use alternative therapies in their work.

      The fight to defend your freedom of choice is heating up and taking action now – especially if you’re a consumer of alternative therapies – has become vitally important. This article will provide some background on what this fight is about and why it affects you.

Medical Industrial Complex

      “The medical establishment has become a major threat to health,” states an article entitled ‘Too much medicine? Almost certainly’, recently published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). This particular issue of the BMJ is well worth reading, devoted to exploring the question of whether “increasing medical inputs will at some point become counterproductive and produce more harm than good.”

      The editorial even points a way forward away from the current medical regime in which, “people may increasingly take charge, more consciously weighing the costs and benefits of the ‘medicalisation’ of their lives. Armed with better information about the natural course of common conditions, they more judiciously assess the real value of medicine’s never ending regimen of tests and treatments.”²

      The same issue of the BMJ makes the somewhat controversial points, which are significant admissions for a mainstream medical journal: “A lot of money can be made from healthy people who believe they are sick,” and further on, “the social construction of illness is being replaced by the corporate construction of disease.” Also this: “A key strategy of the alliances [corporate interests] is to target the news media with stories designed to create fears about the condition or disease and draw attention to the latest treatment.”³

      It would appear there is a lot of money to be made from disease – not from health.

      The New England Journal of Medicine reports in 2003 there was, “a US$6.5 billion dollar bill on covered drugs and biologic products; 75% of which went to doctors, primarily for specialities such as haematology, oncology, urology; including injections, infusions, drugs and medical devices.” The cost, of course, is paid by the taxpayer. The article goes on to state: “Expenditures for drugs have grown almost twice as rapidly as those for other health care services in recent years.”⁴

      As consumers, we should be able to choose between mainstream medicine’s drugs pathway and one of a multitude of alternative healing and complimentary treatments on offer in our so-called democratic society.

      People disillusioned with orthodox treatments are turning more toward complementary therapies, diverting more funds away from the pharmaceutical industries that monopolise orthodox treatments worldwide. They are losing billions dollars per year in Australia alone to complementary medicines over which they do not have absolute control (yet).

      Dr. Andrew Weil says that in the United States, “30-40% of people [a comparable number to Australia] report seeing alternative practitioners, a number that represents billions of dollars. That’s enough money to make medical institutions take notice. Many are adding more holistic care options. They’re desperate. They can’t afford to lose their clientele.”⁵

      But it’s enough money to make the medical industrial complex want more than just a piece of the action – they want to wrest control of complimentary medicine and integrate what they can of it into the ‘system’. And they have long term plans to achieve their goals.

Codex Alimentarius

      A daunting international agreement of which many remain unaware is the Codex Alimentarius, a set of trade standards originally established to protect consumer health and fair practices in the food trade, but also incorporating guidelines for vitamin and mineral food supplements.

      The Codex Alimentarius Commission was formed as a joint effort between the United Nations and the World Health Organisation (WHO) back in 1963. Today, it consists of delegates who overwhelmingly represent large multinational pharmaceutical companies and government regulating authorities including the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in the US, and the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia.

      The guidelines are now intended to control the sale of supplements and herbs and to regulate them as drugs to be manufactured solely by drug companies. In accordance with these guidelines, and at each successive Codex meeting, supplements are being slowly withdrawn from the public domain.^6,7

      One of the Codex’s main goals is total harmonisation of the food and drug laws of the world’s nations to their standards. This is part of the free trade and privatisation agenda. According to Dr. Zoltan Rona, MD, a well known defender of health freedom in Canada, “the name of the game for Codex is to shift all remedies into the prescription category so they can be controlled exclusively by the medical monopoly and its bosses, the major pharmaceutical firms.”

      Codex is dominated by the largest pharmaceutical companies, and it is their profit interests that will determine – without any meaningful review – the health and safety of all of us. Ultimately, the radical measures being pursued by Codex will see the outlawing worldwide of all non-prescription vitamins and health products.

      The Codex guidelines, which set the recommended daily intake levels of supplements, are gradually decreasing to a point so low as to make therapeutic or prophylactic doses of supplements impossible, and technically illegal.

      One vitamin supplier in Scandinavia was pursued by police for supplying vitamin C tablets that exceeded 200mg. In other words, the amount of vitamin C contained in three oranges made this supplier a criminal. Further to that, possession of one popular supplement, DHEA, in Canada now attracts the same penalties as crack cocaine. The Canadian regulator is now empowered to classify any substance as a drug, even if it is a food that has been safely consumed for millions of years. They have the power to recall or remove it from the market.⁸

      Germany and Norway have already complied fully by regulating all supplements and herbs as drugs. In a country with an age-old tradition of natural medicine, no one can freely access these products now. Vitamin C (above 200mg) is illegal, except by prescription and then only from a pharmaceutical company. But first you have to convince your doctor you need it.

      The patenting of herbs and other plants is granting authority to multinationals to “safely” lock up herbs for sale and profit. This is being done in the name of “standardisation”, another requirement of Codex. Patenting effectively grants not only sole rights to make or sell a product – in this case a natural “product” – but to actually own it. The ownership of a life form by an individual or corporation.

      Australia signed the Codex agreement in 1992. There has already been a Federal police raid on a couple in northern NSW, who planting a Chinese herb in their garden to use as tea.⁹

      The TGA is attempting to persuade New Zealand to “harmonise” to the same level as Australia, including the prohibition of any therapeutic claim made with respect to nutritional supplements, even where medical studies exist to support these claims. So far New Zealand has resisted, placing value on health freedom for its citizens. However, failure to “harmonise” with Codex standards will result in sanctions against governments by the World Trade Organisation… cont’d over>>