Fw: The Times: Doctors reinforce their state monopoly

[Guest guest]

The Times: Doctors reinforce their state monopolyThis is what may happen to you

in America. I hope it doesn't. No one would listen to millions of objections

sent to the EU parliament in Brussels, so will you be listened to.?

This is evil. ANNE

The Times: Doctors reinforce their state monopoly

Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 09:49:20 +0100

In case you haven't seen this - FYI

Kind regards,

Tamara ThZrsa

MayDay, Denmark

______________________________

The Times

London

November 22, 2002

Doctors reinforce their state monopoly

By Graham Searjeant, Financial Editor

SHOULD you have the money and the inclination, you can pop out today and

buy a chainsaw, a highly geared racing bicycle or a gas stove. In careless,

unlucky or malicious hands, these are frighteningly dangerous. Unlike a handgun,

however, they have harmless purposes and can be extremely useful. In a free

market, buyers are trusted to take sensible precautions and use them safely.

For a modest outlay, you can buy a jungle knife or a bottle of chemical

brushwood killer for your garden, or if you are of voting age, a fearsome set of

professional kitchen knives or enough vodka to kill yourself several times over.

For small change you may purchase quantities of caustic bleach in containers

designed only to protect toddlers, or some packs of rodent poison. To progress,

we must cope with potential danger. Learning to avoid danger and to exercise

restraint is part of growing up. Responsibility rests on consumers to make

judgments and to behave sensibly.

When it comes to looking after our health, however, everything becomes

different. Try buying four dozen headache tablets from your local supermarket

and you will find that the law forbids it. You will need to go to a chemist's

shop or, at bigger supermarkets, the pharmacy desk, where officialdom assumes

that the assistant will be able to tell if we are suicidal. Even then, your

purchase of aspirin or ibuprofen will be severely limited. The result is higher

prices. Competition has been artificially hobbled. A small bubble pack will cost

the same as a large bottle of tablets used to.

A similar fate is about to befall all those vitamins, minerals and herbal

remedies that we buy in the high street, the back street or by mail order. This

week the Save our Supplements campaign handed a petition with more than a

million signatures to Parliament, urging MPs not to enact legislation that will

restrict dosages, ban many products and introduce a prior approval system for

new formulations similar to that for high-powered new pharmaceutical drugs.

Public opinion will not affect legislation.

The new restrictive regime will enact two EU directives, the Food

Supplements Directive and the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive.

The Consumers Association, one-time champion of choice and value for money, has

backed them. The first directive includes a list of permitted products and

strengths. Those not on the list would have to prove they were useful,

notoriously difficult for products that are conditioners rather than remedies.

Ingenious consumers can easily get round dosage limits, for instance by

swallowing a larger number of weaker vitamin C tablets. So we can expect limits

on quantities that can be sold, driving prices up further. Innovation is likely

to become uneconomic for anyone except drug multinationals, for whom competition

and low prices are anathema.

The herbal directive will hit fewer consumers pockets but may inflict even

more damage. Remedies that can be proved to have been sold here for ages will be

exempt from the prior approval regime, but innovation will come to a halt.

Immigrant families from cultures used to herbal remedies face the worst

discrimination, along with the small businesses that serve them. They must alter

their ways, shut up shop or turn to the black market. The market for such

products will not disappear. After all, relatively few people seem to have died

from them.

Nearly a quarter of Britons smoke cigarettes, decades after deadly

side-effects became apparent. So unapproved preparations will be smuggled via

the internet, sold under the counter or supplied by semi-criminal gangs, like

cannabis. Three factors are at work here: the EU's compulsion to harmonise to

the tiniest detail, bureaucrats' instinctive contempt for small business and the

medical profession's obsession with protecting its own monopoly privileges. In

Britain, this is reinforced by paranoia in the state medical system about

private competition. Even if medicines and supplements not prescribed by doctors

were placebos, studies suggest that these can harmlessly aid consumers'

psychological well-being. It is for buyers to decide if they get value for

money.

Many might admit that they adopt the alternative approach only because

mainstream healthcare is limited to a National Health Service riddled by

restrictive practices. Doctors and the NHS monopoly insist, however, that we

should not worry our little heads about health matters. That is their

prerogative. Except in times of cold or flu epidemics, we are discouraged from

treating ourselves. Internet diagnostic services are denounced as dangerously

unreliable, although doctors know that a sizeable proportion of their own

diagnoses are consistently wrong. By the same self-interested reasoning, proven

drugs are banned from general sale, even by thousands of highly qualified but

under-used pharmacists. In Japan, a wide range of drugs and antibiotics is

available over the counter. On average, people live longer there.

Any approved drug in use for five years should automatically come into

general commerce unless the side-effects are so bad that it should be used only

in extreme cases. This year's Mintel survey of lifestyles found that more of us

now turn first to pharmacists for health advice.

Yet what should be a fast-growing high street health trade is stifled by a

predatory NHS. Even a fledgeling chain offering the walk-in medical care that

most GPs no longer provide was quickly undercut by the state monopoly. Under the

new EU-inspired laws, more products will require a prescription, giving doctors

more power and more work they cannot do. Never mind. Stopping competition is the

top priority.

=======================================================================

Sunday Telegraph

Booker's Notebook

(Filed: 24/11/2002)

Bitter Pills

Foot and mouth inquiry

To the very last penny

Academic qualification

Bitter Pills

A small but fast-growing Daventry company, which recently won a

Government-sponsored award for making " a positive impact on society " , is among

thousands of firms likely to be put out of business by two European Union

directives which mark a remarkable victory for the power of lobbying by big

business.

Viridian, run by Cheryl Thallon and Steenson, employs 13 people making 60

specialist vitamin and herbal products sold in 400 health stores nationwide. The

company is dedicated to the highest health and environmental standards, and

donates half its profits to children's environmental charities. It is, however,

precisely the kind of business that will find it impossible to survive after the

coming into force of the two directives on nutritional supplements and herbal

remedies, now being rushed through the Brussels law-making process in time for

EU enlargement.

The effect of the new laws, for which the pharmaceutical industry has been

lobbying for years, places all herbal medicines and vitamin and mineral

supplements on the same regulatory basis as mass-market drugs produced by the

giant manufacturers. More than 300 widely-used minerals will be banned

altogether and the costs of licensing each individual product - up to £2,000 a

time - and further regulatory requirements such as laboratory testing of each

batch, will be prohibitive for thousands of smaller manufacturers. More than

8,000 products used by millions of UK customers will vanish from the shelves,

driving all but the largest health-food chains out of business.

The advantage for the drug manufacturers is obvious, as they hope to mop up a

market worth £2.4 billion a year with the mass-produced vitamin and mineral

products they alone can afford to license, and the synthetic drugs that will be

the only substitute for the subtler herbal remedies, such as echinacea, ginseng

and St 's wort, that millions prefer.

In recent years the commercial lobby has been in overdrive, with wild claims

that vitamins such as B-6 and herbal remedies can be blamed for thousands of

" adverse reactions " , even deaths. Meanwhile, the regulators, the Medicines

Control Agency and the EU's new Medicines Evaluation Agency - which are almost

entirely funded by licensing fees from the pharmaceutical companies - remain

strangely quiet about the thousands of deaths caused each year by synthetic

drugs they themselves have licensed as safe to use.

Now the commercial giants are on the brink of victory. There was something

peculiarly poignant last week about the petition carrying a million signatures,

including those of Sir McCartney and Sir Elton , that was presented to

Parliament, begging MPs to do something to stop these new laws. The power has

now passed elsewhere, as those lobbyists know only too well.

Among those who will pay the price are thousands of small manufacturers such

as Viridian; the hundreds of health stores that will have to close; and the

millions of customers whose freedom of choice will be dramatically reduced, both

in terms of products that they are no longer able to buy, and the often

diminished quality and higher price of those that the regulators permit to

remain.

=======================================================================

--

f Hasslberger

+39 06 635884

My personal home page on physics,energy technology

and economic issues: http://www.hasslberger.com

Antprohibitionism and products made from the fibres of cannabis

http://www.unsaccodicanapa.com

see also La Leva di Archimede

Consumers favoring freedom of choice: http://www.laleva.cc

and check out news on the health front: http://consumers.laleva.cc

Trash Your Television!

Not satisfied with news from the tube and other controlled media?

Search the net. There are thousands of alternative sources out

there. Start with the following two links, but there are many more

sites with good, timely information.

http://www.whatareweswallowing.com

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com

http://www.masternewmedia.org

[Guest guest]

The Times: Doctors reinforce their state monopolyIf you people of america want

to keep your current health freedoms, then beware of this occuring in Europe.

They want it to become world wide!!

ANNE

----- Original Message -----

From: f Hasslberger

Subject: The Times: Doctors reinforce their state monopoly

Article in " The Times " of London, and another one in the " Sunday Telegraph " on

natural products and European Union efforts to regulate these products in a way

that may well force them off the market. Why?

Thank you Tamara for sending them.

Kind regards

f

================================

From: " mayday " <ttm@...>

" Rath Health Foundation " <info@...>

Subject: The Times: Doctors reinforce their state monopoly

Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 09:49:20 +0100

In case you haven't seen this - FYI

Kind regards,

Tamara ThZrsa

MayDay, Denmark

______________________________

The Times

London

November 22, 2002

Doctors reinforce their state monopoly

By Graham Searjeant, Financial Editor

SHOULD you have the money and the inclination, you can pop out today and

buy a chainsaw, a highly geared racing bicycle or a gas stove. In careless,

unlucky or malicious hands, these are frighteningly dangerous. Unlike a handgun,

however, they have harmless purposes and can be extremely useful. In a free

market, buyers are trusted to take sensible precautions and use them safely.

For a modest outlay, you can buy a jungle knife or a bottle of chemical

brushwood killer for your garden, or if you are of voting age, a fearsome set of

professional kitchen knives or enough vodka to kill yourself several times over.

For small change you may purchase quantities of caustic bleach in containers

designed only to protect toddlers, or some packs of rodent poison. To progress,

we must cope with potential danger. Learning to avoid danger and to exercise

restraint is part of growing up. Responsibility rests on consumers to make

judgments and to behave sensibly.

When it comes to looking after our health, however, everything becomes

different. Try buying four dozen headache tablets from your local supermarket

and you will find that the law forbids it. You will need to go to a chemist's

shop or, at bigger supermarkets, the pharmacy desk, where officialdom assumes

that the assistant will be able to tell if we are suicidal. Even then, your

purchase of aspirin or ibuprofen will be severely limited. The result is higher

prices. Competition has been artificially hobbled. A small bubble pack will cost

the same as a large bottle of tablets used to.

A similar fate is about to befall all those vitamins, minerals and herbal

remedies that we buy in the high street, the back street or by mail order. This

week the Save our Supplements campaign handed a petition with more than a

million signatures to Parliament, urging MPs not to enact legislation that will

restrict dosages, ban many products and introduce a prior approval system for

new formulations similar to that for high-powered new pharmaceutical drugs.

Public opinion will not affect legislation.

The new restrictive regime will enact two EU directives, the Food

Supplements Directive and the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive.

The Consumers Association, one-time champion of choice and value for money, has

backed them. The first directive includes a list of permitted products and

strengths. Those not on the list would have to prove they were useful,

notoriously difficult for products that are conditioners rather than remedies.

Ingenious consumers can easily get round dosage limits, for instance by

swallowing a larger number of weaker vitamin C tablets. So we can expect limits

on quantities that can be sold, driving prices up further. Innovation is likely

to become uneconomic for anyone except drug multinationals, for whom competition

and low prices are anathema.

The herbal directive will hit fewer consumers pockets but may inflict even

more damage. Remedies that can be proved to have been sold here for ages will be

exempt from the prior approval regime, but innovation will come to a halt.

Immigrant families from cultures used to herbal remedies face the worst

discrimination, along with the small businesses that serve them. They must alter

their ways, shut up shop or turn to the black market. The market for such

products will not disappear. After all, relatively few people seem to have died

from them.

Nearly a quarter of Britons smoke cigarettes, decades after deadly

side-effects became apparent. So unapproved preparations will be smuggled via

the internet, sold under the counter or supplied by semi-criminal gangs, like

cannabis. Three factors are at work here: the EU's compulsion to harmonise to

the tiniest detail, bureaucrats' instinctive contempt for small business and the

medical profession's obsession with protecting its own monopoly privileges. In

Britain, this is reinforced by paranoia in the state medical system about

private competition. Even if medicines and supplements not prescribed by doctors

were placebos, studies suggest that these can harmlessly aid consumers'

psychological well-being. It is for buyers to decide if they get value for

money.

Many might admit that they adopt the alternative approach only because

mainstream healthcare is limited to a National Health Service riddled by

restrictive practices. Doctors and the NHS monopoly insist, however, that we

should not worry our little heads about health matters. That is their

prerogative. Except in times of cold or flu epidemics, we are discouraged from

treating ourselves. Internet diagnostic services are denounced as dangerously

unreliable, although doctors know that a sizeable proportion of their own

diagnoses are consistently wrong. By the same self-interested reasoning, proven

drugs are banned from general sale, even by thousands of highly qualified but

under-used pharmacists. In Japan, a wide range of drugs and antibiotics is

available over the counter. On average, people live longer there.

Any approved drug in use for five years should automatically come into

general commerce unless the side-effects are so bad that it should be used only

in extreme cases. This year's Mintel survey of lifestyles found that more of us

now turn first to pharmacists for health advice.

Yet what should be a fast-growing high street health trade is stifled by a

predatory NHS. Even a fledgeling chain offering the walk-in medical care that

most GPs no longer provide was quickly undercut by the state monopoly. Under the

new EU-inspired laws, more products will require a prescription, giving doctors

more power and more work they cannot do. Never mind. Stopping competition is the

top priority.

=======================================================================

Sunday Telegraph

Booker's Notebook

(Filed: 24/11/2002)

Bitter Pills

Foot and mouth inquiry

To the very last penny

Academic qualification

Bitter Pills

A small but fast-growing Daventry company, which recently won a

Government-sponsored award for making " a positive impact on society " , is among

thousands of firms likely to be put out of business by two European Union

directives which mark a remarkable victory for the power of lobbying by big

business.

Viridian, run by Cheryl Thallon and Steenson, employs 13 people making 60

specialist vitamin and herbal products sold in 400 health stores nationwide. The

company is dedicated to the highest health and environmental standards, and

donates half its profits to children's environmental charities. It is, however,

precisely the kind of business that will find it impossible to survive after the

coming into force of the two directives on nutritional supplements and herbal

remedies, now being rushed through the Brussels law-making process in time for

EU enlargement.

The effect of the new laws, for which the pharmaceutical industry has been

lobbying for years, places all herbal medicines and vitamin and mineral

supplements on the same regulatory basis as mass-market drugs produced by the

giant manufacturers. More than 300 widely-used minerals will be banned

altogether and the costs of licensing each individual product - up to £2,000 a

time - and further regulatory requirements such as laboratory testing of each

batch, will be prohibitive for thousands of smaller manufacturers. More than

8,000 products used by millions of UK customers will vanish from the shelves,

driving all but the largest health-food chains out of business.

The advantage for the drug manufacturers is obvious, as they hope to mop up a

market worth £2.4 billion a year with the mass-produced vitamin and mineral

products they alone can afford to license, and the synthetic drugs that will be

the only substitute for the subtler herbal remedies, such as echinacea, ginseng

and St 's wort, that millions prefer.

In recent years the commercial lobby has been in overdrive, with wild claims

that vitamins such as B-6 and herbal remedies can be blamed for thousands of

" adverse reactions " , even deaths. Meanwhile, the regulators, the Medicines

Control Agency and the EU's new Medicines Evaluation Agency - which are almost

entirely funded by licensing fees from the pharmaceutical companies - remain

strangely quiet about the thousands of deaths caused each year by synthetic

drugs they themselves have licensed as safe to use.

Now the commercial giants are on the brink of victory. There was something

peculiarly poignant last week about the petition carrying a million signatures,

including those of Sir McCartney and Sir Elton , that was presented to

Parliament, begging MPs to do something to stop these new laws. The power has

now passed elsewhere, as those lobbyists know only too well.

Among those who will pay the price are thousands of small manufacturers such

as Viridian; the hundreds of health stores that will have to close; and the

millions of customers whose freedom of choice will be dramatically reduced, both

in terms of products that they are no longer able to buy, and the often

diminished quality and higher price of those that the regulators permit to

remain.

=======================================================================

--

f Hasslberger

+39 06 635884

My personal home page on physics,energy technology

and economic issues: http://www.hasslberger.com

Antprohibitionism and products made from the fibres of cannabis

http://www.unsaccodicanapa.com

see also La Leva di Archimede

Consumers favoring freedom of choice: http://www.laleva.cc

and check out news on the health front: http://consumers.laleva.cc

Trash Your Television!

Not satisfied with news from the tube and other controlled media?

Search the net. There are thousands of alternative sources out

there. Start with the following two links, but there are many more

sites with good, timely information.

http://www.whatareweswallowing.com

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com

http://www.masternewmedia.org