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Protect your university from teaching mumbo jumbo!The Department of Health has opened a consultation on the proposals for 'regulation' of herbal medicine and acupuncture, at their web site. Go there to have your say.
These proposals will, in my view, have exactly the opposite of the intended effect. The reasons were given briefly in my letter above, and at greater (and more amusing) length, by Alice Miles in her comment in The Times (or get pdf version). The proposed 'regulation' will give the appearence of state-endorsed respectability to people who are selling untested products, without doing anything at all about their unjustified claims of efficacy.
Another effect of the proposed regulation will be to protect the herbal industry from the much stricter European regulation which might require the industry to provide evidence that its products actually work (not, on the face of it, an unreasonable thing to ask). This is no accident. The proposals arise from the recommendations of the Herbal Medicine Regulatory Working Group (click here). This group consisted almost entirely of representatives of the industry, including Michael McIntyre of the European Herbal Practitioners Association.
Their web site makes it quite clear that the aim of the recommendations is to protect the industry from European legislation, rather than to protect patients.
The admirable European rules are, of course, being opposed the health fraud industry, and also by the Conservative Party (see below).
From the point of view of universities, the ominous part of the recommendations is the requirement for "training".
If you do not want your university to end up running courses in herbalism etc. (what next? Astrology?), then express your opinion to the Department of Health now, by clicking here.[*/QUOTE*]
Da geht es weiter:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/quack.html.