April 2nd 2010
Announcement from the Health Secretary
Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, issued a statement on the Department of Health’s website on April 1st, in a long awaited response to the Ministry’s consultation on the regulation of herbal medicine. This press release can be accessed at www.dh.gov.uk/en/MediaCentre/Pressreleasesarchive/DH_115091.
At the heart of it is this: – ‘I am… minded to legislate to ensure that all practitioners supplying unlicensed herbal medicines to members of the public in England must be registered with the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC)… I believe that the introduction of such a register will increase public protection, but without the full trappings of professional recognition which are applied to practitioners of orthodox healthcare.’
This is not an executive statement, and is followed by the proviso that discussion will be required with the Health Ministers of Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland, and they will make a full joint response in due course. It’s not difficult to see that that this would almost certainly hold over any further activity until after the UK general election in May, so cannot be taken as read.
The CNHC is a relatively new umbrella register that was set up by the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health – for a total to date of 15 so-called ‘third tier’ complementary therapies such as Aromatherapy, Reflexology and Reiki. Its website can be found at www.cnhc.org.uk. Registration is currently voluntary and, significantly, does not automatically require membership of a PA.
Far from moving Herbal Medicine a significant step towards parity with ‘practitioners of orthodox healthcare’, this has to be seen as a move in the opposite direction. It seems little more than a form of voluntary self-regulation, but whatever it is, it is not Statutory Regulation! We believe this is a punishment for the bombastic, self-serving and often mendacious manner in which herbal medicine’s pro-SR campaign has been conducted. It’s not as if they weren’t warned: in the DH ‘Extending Professional & Occupational Regulation’ report last July, it said, ‘In the past there has been a danger that the extension of professional regulation to new groups has been overly driven by the aspirations of emerging professional groups themselves, as a means to establish themselves as safe and effective players in the health care arena. This has at times led to the use of the terminology of “aspirant” groups. This term was introduced by the HPC for the purpose of indicating when applications for regulation were made to it by groups who were seeking recognition as “professions”. The term has since become associated with those groups seeking regulation through emphasising the risks inherent in their professions in order to secure their positions within health care, for reasons of status and market position as well as for reasons of public protection and patient safety.’
A few hours after the DH pronouncement, NIMH broadcast to its members that ‘Andy Burnham has announced that statutory regulation of medical herbalism is to go ahead. This is a great day for the NIMH and a vindication of all the hard work put in by members over the last ten years or so.’ We have always been at pains not to interfere with the internal workings of the professional associations – all we can suggest is that those herbalists who still remain loyal to their PAs should look at what is said on the DH website, look at the CNHC website, and draw their own conclusions.
What do we make of all this ourselves? It looks like another government minister getting his desk cleared before the May election – if it’s a baton that will be picked up at all by the new government, if the CNHC idea will be actioned, and with what level of priority, remains to be seen. It’s still all going to take a very, very long time. We are certainly not going to suffer the same paralysis evidenced by the PAs, waiting for a political outcome whilst all around them is seemingly falling apart. Will we submit to the cheap and unchallenging demands of CNHC membership? We think not! It still ignores the principle that as ever, there is neither need nor justification to regulate Herbal Medicine.
The Herbarium 
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April 6, 2010 at 10:32 am
herbalistic
The CNHC response to Andy Burnham’s announcement is on the following link: http://www.cnhc.org.uk/assets/7-027.pdf
The following comment is from the Quackometer blog (http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2010/04/police-investigate-the-princes-foundation-for-integrated-health.html): ‘[the government] gave them [Prince Charles’ Foundation for Integrated Health] £900,000 to set up Ofquack, the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council [CNHC] – the quango charged with the voluntary regulation of nonsense therapies. Even this week, in a bizarre and unexpected twist, the Department decided that it was minded to ask the failing Ofquack if could regulate herbalists. A more unsuitable body is hard to imagine. It is doubtful this will happen. A new government is now likely and it would be well advised to ignore the Foundation and not allow the Prince to meddle in medical matters, either directly, or through his Toad Eaters at the Foundation for Integrated Health.’
It’s also interesting to note that the media’s favourite quackbuster, David Colquoun, sits on the Conduct and Competence Committee of the CNHC!
April 9, 2010 at 8:26 am
philip evans
I think your comments under ‘Hot Fudge’ are spot on !
Philip Evans
April 9, 2010 at 1:10 pm
herbalistic
The following link is to an article in the ICNM Journal about the CNHC (p.4-6):
Click to access ICNM_Journal_Spring_2009.pdf
April 9, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Robert Scott
Although not a herbalist myself, I have taken a passing interest in the incredible shenanigans that have gone on concerning the proposed regulation of herbal medicine, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine and other traditional systems practised in the UK. Although the steering group report under Professor Pittilo allegedly addressed all formats and traditions under this heading, one thing that became immediately apparent was that the genuine traditional aspects of (Western) Herbal Medicine were filtered out thus creating a semi-pharmaceuticalized practice that has absolutely no basis in tradition. The difference in the approach advocated by NIHM/EHTPA accredited University courses and genuine traditional herbal medicine as taught by traditional herbalists in the traditional manner has become so diverse that these two schools of thought constitute two entirely different paradigms. The move to statutory regulate is therefore involved a move to deny both the validity and existence of the genuine traditional.
It further became apparent that only the non-traditional version of Western Herbal Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture (the modalities of therapy practised by the chairman of the EHTPA) were recommended for regulation. This situation automatically created the potential for a two tier policy of regulated and unregulated traditions of Herbal Medicine. Ayurvedic medicine, Tibetan medicine, Unani Tib, authentic Traditional Western Herbal Medicine and indeed all other modalities that were not recommended for statutory regulation suddenly became second-class citizens in the family of herbal medicine. This was naturally something of a paradoxical anomaly since the chairman of the EHTPA has strongly maintained that were statutory regulation not to go ahead that a two tier system would be the unacceptable result.
In the light of the latest statement by Mr Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Health, problems arising from the original two tier system of regulation have become increasingly apparent. It has again been proposed that (non-traditional) Herbal Medicine, Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine should become Voluntarily Self Regulated by the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) in order to continue to retain access to unlicensed herbal medicines. This proposal made no reference to all the other modalities and traditions of herbal medicine which appear to have been excluded from Mr Burnham’s plans, which presumably by default would prevent Ayurvedic and all other practitioners not included in the plan from having access to the requisites of their profession.
Yet a further paradoxical anomaly has emerged from Mr Burnham’s “minded” proposal.
It had previously been put forward by Mr Richwood Woodfield of the MHRA that herbal medicines that come under section 12.1 of the medicine act would continue to be available practitioners, whether they were statutory regulated or not. Licensed manufactured products under section 12.2 of the medicine act would also continue to be available to all practitioners whether they were statutory regulated or not. As has already been stated on this blog site, statutory regulation, contrary to the assertions of the chairman of the EHTPA would not be available to statutory regulated practitioners unless they became classified as “authorised health practitioners” and in addition to this a derogation in law would have to be enacted to allow them to have access to unlicensed manufactured herbal products. In spite of this, Mr Burnham as stated that voluntary self-regulation under the CNHC would not give the regulated practitioner “the full trappings of professional recognition which are applied to practitioners of orthodox healthcare.” In this situation it is difficult to see how it could possibly be legal for these individuals to have access to unlicensed medicines after the full implementation of THMPD in April 2011. The small matter requirement to enact a derogation for anyone to have access to these unlicensed products also appears to have been avoided.
A further question arises about the precise meaning of “unlicensed medicines”. Those herbal medicines currently available under section 12.1 would not require a product licence as they are not products any way. Is Mr Burnham therefore suggests that forms of herbal medicine that are too safe to require licensing should be effectively become banned because of their benign nature? This proposal would therefore seem to extend to banning the practise of herbal medicine by anyone not on the CNHC register with a University degree approved by NIMH/EHTPA (in effect Mr Michael McIntyre). In the event of your child falling into act of stinging nettles, could to be prosecuted for rubbing his/her leg with a dock leaf?
Exactly what happened to the cultural inheritance of the British people and those of diverse cultures currently living within the United Kingdom? What happened to European policy of protecting cultural diversity? Is Mr Burnham’s proposal in fact illegal under European law?
One of the principal arguments that has been put forward for the statutory to in of herbal medicine has been the disastrous consequences of unlicensed Chinese herbal products which have contained illegal biochemical components derived from plants that were not supposed to be in the product in the first place. Practitioners using manufactured products have absolutely no knowledge or control fraudulent ingredient substitutions of this sort. No amount of regulation and no amount of training part of the practitioner can possibly offset this danger. So exactly why is it being argued is a matter of “public safety” that regulated practitioners should continue to have access to these materials so that they can unwittingly poison their patients? The only answer that I had been able to come up with is that China it is seen as a major trading partner and that putting up a trade barrier against their products might be seen as inviting reciprocal action against British exports to China.
It has repeatedly been put forward that the cost of licensing manufactured herbal products would be to exorbitant for the manufacturers to be able to bear the cost and they are therefore seeking a commercial outlet unlicensed products. This is the actual driving force behind the proposals to regulate herbal practitioners. We therefore have a situation where the financial health of the herbal product manufacturing companies is being put before the safety of the patients and the future of all genuine traditional medicine which is not dependent on their use in the first place.
In the House of Commons Select Committee Report on the Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry it was stated that the interests of the pharmaceutical industry were being put before that of the public and on this basis it was suggested that the MHRA, because of its incestuous relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, should be removed from the Department of Health and placed under the Department of Trade and Industry. The process “minded” by Mr Burnham would appear to put herbal medicine in the same institutionally corrupt position.
Robert Scott (author of Decoding Myth-information)
April 25, 2010 at 1:03 pm
natlyc
Goodness, that was a long ‘comment’!