Bill C-51 - possible public health benefits?

"I had a test performed on me which confirmed my worst fears. I was told that I needed to take 4 different kinds of supplements"

That, however, says nothing about whether the diagnosis was accurate, otherwise useful, or even whether the supplements were indeed called for! I, too, would be careful in our cultural climate to separate diagnostician from prescription. But that should go for established mainstream medical people as well. What Green should be unaware of much "medical nemesis" (see Illich) out there? In a very different medical culture, that of, for example, traditional Chinese medicine, enduring for eons, the diagnostician will of course prescribe. That can become degenerate as well, and surely did as China was in a parlous state post-Euro-depredations. But it has recovered dramatically. Still, Health Canada has on again off again foolishly proscribed certain essential Chinese medicaments, used safely & successfully for those eons.

See also http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/4512
and my comment right after, http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/4512#comment-4684.

Although this bill may not be the ideal method, there is certainly a need for safety regulation of "traditional" medicines and restrictions on claims made of their efficacy.

Risks include high levels of lead, mercury, and arsenic in "traditional" remedies, including ayurvedic and Chinese. See, for example: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22782271/ and http://health.state.ga.us/pdfs/familyhealth/lead/l...

The argument that something has been "used successfully for eons" is rather weak, as there is a rather wide range of interpretation about ancient herbal manuals as to which herbs they are describing or what diseases they are treating. The sample size of illness or treatments available to the traditional practitioner in pre-modern times was also insufficient to generate trustworthy data. Before the time of large-scale studies or widely published medical journals, there simply cannot have been enough cases for the local practioner to build a valid theory upon.

There is nothing culturally specific in the scientific method, study designs like double-blind control, or the use of in vitro or rat studies that renders them inappropriate for testing medicines from non-Western medical traditions.

As a proofreader for a Korean language institute, I have edited countless reports on scientific studies done (in Korea) on traditional Korean or Chinese medicines or therapies. These often show significant effect, but also often show no significant effect. Neither time & tradition, nor unproven alternative medical theories, prove the efficacy or even safety of a traditional remedy. Unbiased testing can. Many harms of medicines (traditional or modern) are subtle or slow and cannot be discovered without systematic testing - something that has not yet been done for many supplements or traditional medicines.

There certainly need to be higher standards for any medicine or supplement sold with the promise that it will improve your health. If not through this bill, then in some other manner.

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
Barrie, ON

p.s. A relative of mine with a handicapped child has fallen prey to too many of these snake-oil practitioners already, including such quackery as hair analysis.

The views I express on this blog are purely my own and should not be construed to represent the official position of the Green Party of Canada - the same goes for all other people's posts & comments.

You will take careful note, I trust, that this bill specifically does NOT include a provision for traditional healing of ANY group. Like Natives, for example. Trusting the gov't not to prosecute native healers for using traditional remedies or techniques is laughable. They get persecuted and even prosecuted NOW for such practices. This Bill is an extermination order for all remaining traditional healers.

Make traditional medicines illegal, and you lose the practitioners, and then the knowledge. If you don't think that can happen, let us remember that all those calling for Echinacea to be illegal are referring E. Purpea, the Latin name for Purple Cornflower; a traditional NATIVE plant. Under this bill, if I trade sage grown in my garden for some rat root at a pow wow, I can go to jail. Cultural genocide can be achieved in many forms. Outlawing traditional practitioners to the point where they cannot practice and pass on knowledge is a tried and true method that has been used all over the world. A less well known, but just as damaging method, is forcing a ppl to undergo procedures or ingest substances that they consider harmful or anathema. Don't think so? Try to force all Orthodox Jews in Canada to eat pork and then insist that isn't cultural genocide. Many natives, as well as other cultural groups, consider pharmaceuticals and conventional medicine to be inherently harmful and would prefer to try other methods to heal mind and body. With this Bill, they will no longer have the substances, techniques, or experienced practitioners to exercise that option. In the face of such utter moral abborance, many will simply choose not to seek treatment at all. You think not? Blood transfusions, anyone?

To put this in perspective, it is from these largely illegal or ostracised storehouses of knowledge that we get 80% of our pharmaceuticals today. Researchers don't just wander into the woods and pick up stuff to sample. It would take them centuries to come up with even the most easily spotted compounds. Nearly all modern drugs are a result of interviews with traditional practitioners on substances and techniques of using them for healing in humans and animals. Centuries of experimentation were and still are being revealed by these healers. Once they are pumped for information, though, the pharmaceutical companies encourage gov'ts to seize, forbid, and control the substances claiming 'danger to the public', permitting only themselves to change and therefore patent the products that result. These new drugs are far more dangerous than the original plant material and method of application, but the traditional practitioners and their substances are branded quacks and charlatans. (Coca and cannabis are just a few examples of herbs that are vital to the cultures they come from and are perfectly harmless in their traditional forms. The natives who use them are still fighting for the right to plant and use them. Instead their villages and crops are being sprayed with herbicides from above by their gov'ts.) Aspirin was isolated from several plant sources. Those sources couldn't kill you if you tried. But the molecular alteration needed to patent that substance has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of ppl over its century of 'safe' use. Valerian was used in WWI to harmlessly treat shell-shock. You can't overdose on it. But the Valium that was derived from it is highly addictive and easily fatal. And yet it's the traditional holders and sharers of such knowledge who are pushed to the margins and often forced not to practice at all?

Recall that the Bill's language now includes 'therapeutic products' that can claim a benefit, not just plants or herbs. It can mean anything, including other substances or techniques. Like sweatlodges. In some traditional healing, for example the Middle East, human breast milk is used for a number of ailments, including eye infections. As a nutritional supplement, it already takes heat. As it were... Several excellent attempts at human breast milk banks, like the one in Vancouver, have been threatened with shut down in the past. ( http://www.breastfeedingmatters.ca/milkbank.html ) Human breast milk, according to this Bill, could be considered a controlled substance.

Think it can't happen here? I am paying for a midwife out of my own pocket to birth my baby at home because it is not covered by Alberta Health yet. But it may soon be. And all because the midwife (an RN, btw) who delivered my firstborn was charged with practicing medicine without a licence. And then found not guilty. It was entirely due to her bravery and fearless risk of prosecution that we now have midwifery in Alberta. Even as late as the mid-90's, it was ILLEGAL in Alberta to deliver babies if you were not a conventional physician. This means that women who practiced traditional techniques like midwifery, esp. to areas of low service, could be fined or jailed. But I know women who choose to risk even this to exercise their spiritual, ethical, and personal freedom to find an underground midwife, esp. in backwoods areas, all through the last century. It is because of them, the courageous practitioners and their clients, that we can again enjoy this option today as it comes back in favour. They were the torch holders of these practices. But how much did we lose, in knowledge, experience, and even human lives? We will never know.

So I speak from cultural experience. Many of you know that I am a traditional witch. I am also training my daughter to follow in that path. One of the many ways in which our culture was decimated was by the outlawing of our traditional healers, remedies, and techniques. In Europe, midwives and other mental and physical health professionals that used traditional plants and techniques instead of Christian prayers or surgery or other institutionalized pracitces were subject to fines, imprisonment, and occasionally death sentences. With their inability to practice and train new practitioners, traditional knowledge was almost completely lost in many areas. It has taken years of dedicated effort of thousands of scholars and lay practitioners to recover even part of our folk wisdom. We will never be able to recapture the full knowledge of our ancestresses and I for one feel that loss of my culture every single day as I practice my tradition and attempt to pass on as much as can to my daughter. As I look at all of the plants in my garden that will be illegal if this Bill passes, I cannot promise her that the Persecutions of our ppl are over, because I know that I will continue to practice in secret if I must. As will so many others from different traditions, as a form of protest against the dominant culture and to keep our lifestyle alive. Who here doesn't think that a witch practicing with illegal herbs isn't at risk for prosecution when we throw ppl in jail for smoking pot? I and my family are at personal risk of being hunted down if this legislation passes.

This is a Human Rights issue on so many levels, not the least of which includes illegal search and seizure, as well as other dubious practices. This is not a piece of consumer legislation. It is cultural genocide. Mudding the waters with talk of someone getting a rash from Cornflower when over 9000 ppl a year DIE from Aspirin in the States alone only perpetuates an 'apple and orange' argument. If you don't think Ginseng works for you, don't use it. But it's never killed or even harmed anyone. If you honestly believe that consumers should be 'protected' from purchasing harmless products so they don't waste their hard-earned cash, and you get to decide what those are based on what you do and don't think are valid, then you'll be awfully busy banning crap from dollar store shelves.

Trey Capnerhurst
Apprenticed Natural Health practitioner and Herbalist
Edmonton Decore Provincal Candidate
Past and Current federal Edmonton East candidate