Great report by Dr Joseph Mercola:
“Many people interested in staying healthy have switched to agave as a safer “natural” sweetener. They want to avoid well documented dangerous sweeteners like HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) but are unaware that most agave is actually WORSE than HFCS.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/agave-this-sweetener-is-f_b_537936.html

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Having completed a study on the supplements used by breast cancer patients courtesy of funding from the US Department of Defence, nursing professor Gwen Wyatt can get back to her day job and her other research interest – that’ll be her study on the effects of reflexology on symptom management and quality of life for women with breast cancer.

That study is funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). They are funding it to the tune of.. wait for it… $3.1 million.

This is not an isolated case. In fact CAM researchers in the US are now benefiting from the president’s economic stimulus package.

Although cancer survival rates reportedly have improved, several types of cancers are forecasted to increase worldwide. Recognizing the opportunity to curtail the impacts of this disease on vast numbers of patients, Congress granted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) $10.4 billion – that’s around seven billion pounds - over two years for research and infrastructure through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The NIH actually has something called the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM). That Office has grabbed a portion of these stimulus funds to study three natural supplements for their chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic effects on pancreatic and other cancers. These are B-DIM – the “broccoli supplement”, the green tea polyphenol epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) and a Chinese herbal mixture.

On top of that, the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has even bowed to public pressure and is now, for the first time, making grants for researchers interested in starting small pilot and feasibility studies of CAM therapies and practices. “These studies can generate data needed for conducting larger scientific studies of CAM in the future”, says the NCI. Anyone feel a wind of change sweeping through?

Well no, you wouldn’t, as we’re in practice in good old Blighty.

I think it’s fair – hey, even evidence-based – to say that here, when it comes to CAM, the powers that be are more interested in regulation than research.

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Strange but true.. the UK’s medicines regulators have bent over backwards to help CAM remedies become licensed - so much so, however, that even CAM supporters are wondering if they’ve gone too far.

This month the MHRA has given Nelson’s the UK’s first ever licence for a homeopathic medicine.

It is the first licence to be awarded under a controversial new MHRA scheme which allows homeopathic remedies to side-step proof of efficacy required for other medicines.

Critics say the approval by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency gives consumers the impression that the MHRA is saying that homeopathy is scientifically proven. And Ironically, arnica is one of the most contentious homeopathic remedies, as several clinical trials and a systemic review by Prof Edzard Ernst’s team at the University of Exeter have found no evidence that homeopathic arnica works any better than placebo.

The MHRA has granted Nelson’s Arnicare 30c pillules a licence for the relief of sprains or bruising, allowing the product label to state: “A homeopathic medicinal product used within the homeopathic tradition for symptomatic relief of sprains, muscular aches and bruising or swelling after contusions.” Robert Wilson, chair of Nelsons, said: “The fact that therapeutic indications may now be included on the packaging of licensed homeopathic medicines not only opens the practice of homeopathy up to new users but also gives it added credibility as a safe and natural complement to conventional medicine.”

And it is that added credibility that has roused the ire of scientists. Prof Ernst said that homeopathic arnica has been tested more often than any other homeopathic remedy and does not work: “There is no biological plausibility, so this is a cynical mockery of evidence-based medicine”, he said.

The licence has been awarded under the MHRA’s new Homeopathic National Rules Scheme, introduced in September 2006 to facilitate licencing of remedies. However, critics say the Scheme has made licencing too easy, as it explicity states that homeopathic remedies can be awarded licences without having to demonstrate that they work.

The MHRA says: “The purpose of the Scheme is to enable homoeopathic medicinal products to be registered with indications for the relief or treatment of minor symptoms and conditions (those that can ordinarily be relieved or treated without the supervision or intervention of a doctor)”. As long as the conditions or symptoms being treated are minor, says the MHRA, “the rules do not require rigorous clinical data”.
Amazingly, the MHRA accepts homeopathic provings in considering efficacy.

The rules for submission of a product for licencing say manufacturers must come up with evidence of quality and safety and “one or more” of the following:
• Study reports in relation to the product which is the subject of the application,
• Published scientific literature;
• Homoeopathic provings.

In an podcast interview with the British Medical Journal, Prof Ernst commented: “I’m sure the product by Nelson’s is of good quality and is entirely safe; it actually doesn’t contain any arnica because it is too highly dilute to contain any arnica, so it’s got to be safe. And proof of efficacy in the traditional way is not required, therefore it can obtain a licence. All this simply shows that the regulation for homeopathic products is barmy.”

* The Homeopathic National Rules Scheme, Brief Guidance for Manufacturers and Suppliers, September 2006 MHRA: www.mhra.gov.uk
* Evidence for, evidence against, BMJ Podcast, 15 May 2009, by Birte Twisselmann: www.bmj.com

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Well worth a read is Prof Michael Baum’s new essay “Why I am still a screening sceptic”, now up on the Spiked website.

Highlights:

‘The largest threat posed by American medicine is that more and more of us are being drawn into the system not because of an epidemic of disease, but because of an epidemic of diagnoses. The real problem with the epidemic of diagnoses is that it leads to an epidemic of treatments. Not all treatments have important benefits, but almost all can have harms.’ (Actually a quote from other writers: “What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses”, H GIlbert Welch, Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin, New York Times, January 2, 2007).

“More recently, last weekend The Sunday Times reported that more and more women are angry about having had needless breast cancer operations, after research showed that ‘10 patients will be treated unnecessarily for every life saved’. The paper reported my view that, instead of breast-screening the whole female population over the age of 50 every three years, women should be tested ‘according to their level of risk’ - an argument I will expand on in this essay (3).”

“Although it seems counterintuitive, a growing body of informed opinion is moving in the direction of exposing early detection of cancer as just that: possibly a ‘bad thing’.”

“As a result, the overall mastectomy rate rises after any country implements screening in contrast to the message in the NHSBSP leaflet - ‘Breast Cancer: The Facts’ (10) - which implies that screening saves breasts. It doesn’t.”

“I want to argue that some of these earliest stages of ‘cancer’, if left unperturbed, would not progress to a disease with lethal potential.”

“…you would need to screen 1,400 men for 10 years to save one prostate cancer death at the expense of over-diagnosing 48 cases of cancer that would be treated with radical surgery that frequently leads to impotence and incontinence and on rare occasions death from the complications of surgery.”

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An anonymous herbal medicine practitioner has launched a petition in support of herbal medicine which is up for signing at the online website GoPetition.

The petition highlights UK Government moves to statutorily regulate medical herbalists and changes to the regulation of herbal medicines, both of which, says the petition, will “reduce access, increase costs, decrease patient choice, encourage a black market and send experienced herbalists underground, crucify our indigenous tradition and diversity of available healthcare”.

Phew! I can’t help but agree. Beneficiaries of the changes are unlikely to be the general public, but the pharmaceutical industry.

* Read the full premble and then electronically sign the petition here.

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Press release from the British Complementary Medicine Association:

“The British Government has long wanted complementary practitioners to organise themselves in a way that could enable complementary medicine to be more readily accepted as a further aid to health care within the structure of the Health Service as well as the private medicine sector.

“To date two Voluntary Self Regulation councils have evolved, but the British Complementary Medicine Association has always had reservations about their choice of philosophy. As a result, the BCMA initiated the development of a new Council, the British Complementary Therapies Council (BCTC) that will open its register on 1st May to practitioners who wish to be recognised as meeting the requirements of the House of Lords Report but to date, have not found a council that meets their requirements.

“So, how is the BCTC different? The answer is that first and foremost, all the standards and requirements a practitioner must meet are in straightforward, plain English that everybody will easily understand. This is essential when you want practitioners to make a voluntary decision to apply for registration. The second important thing is that all therapies regulated by the BCTC will have a representative for that therapy as part of the council. This, we believe, is the most appropriate way to protect the public in a way that does not risk undermining the quality of the therapy itself.”

Further information is available on the BCTC website) or the BCMA website. Alternatively you can speak to an admin representative on 0845 345 5977

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“…scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza…isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics…’Let’s not lose track of the fact that the normal seasonal influenza is a huge public health problem that kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. alone and hundreds of thousands around the world,’ said Dr. Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine in Madison.”
Reported in the Los Angelese Times here http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-swine-reality30-2009apr30,0,3606923.story

Meanwhile, we’re being treated to more “Shock horror!” headlines with the announcement that the World Health Organization has warned the virus is spreading worldwide - making it - gasp! - a pandemic.
“Global health authorities warned Wednesday that swine flu was threatening to bloom into a pandemic”, said Associated Press. Given the ease we all move around the planet these days it would be incredible if it didn’t become a pandemic. All the title “pandemic” means is that the virus is going everywhere - pan is from the Greek meaning “all” or everywhere.

Now EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou has said the possible pandemic “would not necessarily cause widespread deaths”.
The BBC reports: “She said Europe was well prepared and there was ‘no need to panic’.”

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“The current complementary medicine division between state-registered and voluntary-registered practitioners will be destroyed in three years, when a major public advertising campaign will begin to discredit those on voluntary registers.”

There is no evidence that statutory regulation of ANY kind of health professional improves public safety.

That’s why we’re deeply suspicious about current attempts to “regulate” and “register” CAM practitioners. Regulation has little to do with the safety of the public. Indeed, as we’re seeing with the EU’s continuing attempts to ban nutritional supplements, regulation has nothing to do with evidence, let alone safety. It has more to do safeguarding the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.

Now comes an amazing report on a meeting between psychoanalysts - who are also facing increasing regualtion “to protect trhe public” and the HPC - that’s the Health Professions Council, yet another new Regulator currently “regulatring” dietitians, physiotherapists, chiropodists and the like.

In this meeting the HPC reps tell the amazed (I presume) College of Psychoanalysts that the current complementary medicine division between state-registered and voluntary-registered practitioners - which was mentioned in the discussion as being a possible structure for therapists - would be destroyed in three years, when a major public advertising campaign would begin to discredit those on the voluntary register.

Unbelievable, but true. Read the full account at this link - College of Psychoanalysts

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Four different approaches to the immune system are showcased this month in the second CAM conference, sponsored by Amazon herb specialists Rio Trading, and being staged at St Paul’s Cathedral on May 15.

Heading the bill is Dr Lee Cowden, MD, a board certified cardiologist and specialist in internal medicine, who has become a world expert on alternative (ie non-antibiotic) treatments for Lyme disease. The protocols he has developed to support the immune response have a wide application.
Other speakers are bio-energetic expert Dr Fred Kuipers, PhD; naturopath and herbalist Jacqueline Young, ND, who has outstanding case histories documenting her use of green barley juice extract; and German nature cure specialist Dr Albin Beck.

* Book for “The Immune System - The Road to Better Health” online at
www.cam-mag.com or phone the conference hotline on 01279 810080.

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