NIMH critical of MHRA Announcement on Echinacea for Children Under 12

The National Institute of Medical Herbalists (NIMH) has criticised the announcement on 20th August by the UK medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) that Echinacea should not be taken by children under 12 years of age because of an association with a “low risk of allergic reactions”.

Commenting on the announcement, NIMH pointed towards the old nature of the data; the announcement was based upon a monograph from 2008 and a research paper from 2002, and asks why the MHRA is making this decision now when no reports of any allergic reactions have been received in the intervening years.  NIMH also stresses the limited scope of the data and its inconclusive character (“specific risk in children over 1 year of age is not documented” – which means there is no data on any specific risk when Echinacea is used by children over the age of one).

The one research paper MHRA has referred to was published in 2002, was not a controlled study, and detailed only five adverse reactions in adults over a range of conditions the adults were already prone to - including eczema, asthma and hayfever.  In the context of a proper consultation with a trained herbalist, a patient will be screened for atopy, asthma, and allergic tendencies. 

Therefore NIMH believes it is irresponsible of the MHRA to make an announcement that has caused sensationalist reporting in the media, especially when the MHRA has indicated that “this is not a serious safety issue” and that “parents should not worry if they have given Echinacea to children under 12 in the past”. 

NIMH does not agree with the MHRA interpretation of the situation on the occasional minor adverse reactions possibly caused by Echinacea.

NIMH also points out that this announcement is related to OTC (over the counter) sale of herbal products.  NIMH members are trained medical herbalists and have been working with the Dept of Health towards Statutory Regulation of practitioners which is due to be implemented next year. It is important that the MHRA emphasises to the public the distinction between buying OTC remedies and consulting a qualified practitioner.

Read the MHRA Announcement:

www.mhra.gov.uk/NewsCentre/Pressreleases/CON180627

Further Information

NIMH can be contacted at:

Clover House, James Court, South Street, EX1 1EE

Tel: +44 (0)1392 426022

Fax: +44 (0)1392 498963

info@nimh.org.uk    www.nimh.org.uk

Further information from

Andrew Hoyle

prconsultant@nimh.org.uk

Chemotherapy Backfires - Causes Healthy Cells to Feed Growth of Cancer Tumours

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, Editor of NaturalNews.com

Ever since chemotherapy was introduced into the practice of western medicine, doctors and oncologists have been trying to answer this nagging question: Why does chemotherapy seem to work at first, but then cancer tumours cells grow back even more aggressively while the body becomes resistant to chemotherapy?

It turns out that chemotherapy damages healthy cells, causing them to secrete a protein that accelerates the growth of cancer tumours. (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/chemotherapy-backfire-boost-cancer-growth-study-164516832.html)

This protein, dubbed “WNT16B”, is taken up by nearby cancer cells, causing them to "grow, invade, and importantly, resist subsequent therapy”, said Peter Nelson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He's the co-author of the study that documented this phenomenon, published in Nature Medicine.

This protein, it turns out, explains why cancer tumours grow more aggressively following chemotherapy treatments. In essence, chemotherapy turns healthy cells into WNT16B factories which churn out this ‘activator’ chemical that accelerates cancer tumour growth.

The findings of the study were confirmed with prostate cancer, breast cancer and ovarian cancer tumours. This discovery that chemotherapy backfires by accelerating cancer tumour growth is being characterized as "completely unexpected" by scientists.

The Chemotherapy Fraud Exposed

As NaturalNews has explained over the last decade, chemotherapy is medical fraud in our view. Rather than boosting the immune response of patients, it harms the immune system, causing tumours to grow back. This latest researching further confirms what we've known for years in the holistic health community: That chemotherapy is, flatly stated, poison. It's not “treatment," it's not medicine, and it's not prevention or a cure. It's poison with virtually no medicinal value except in perhaps one to two percent of cancer cases.

The No.1 side effect of chemotherapy is, by the way, cancer. Cancer centres should in our view technically be renamed "poison centres" because they are in the business of poisoning patients with a toxic cocktail of chemicals that modern science reveals to be a cancer tumour growth accelerant!

Further Information

www.naturalnews.com/036725_chemotherapy_cancer_tumors_backfires.html

About the author

Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org

Source: Klaus Ferlow Klausferlow1@gmail.com

The Stranglehold that the UK 1939 Cancer Act Exerts in Great Britain

by Madeline C Hickey-Smith

Most citizens of Great Britain are totally unaware of the 1939 Cancer Act which effectively prevents them from finding out about different treatments for cancer.

Excerpts from the UK 1939 Cancer Act:

1. 4 - (1) No person shall take any part in the publication of any advertisement:
2. (a) containing an offer to treat any person for cancer, or to prescribe any remedy therefor, or to give any advice in connection with the treatment thereof; or
3. (b) referring to any article, or articles of any description, in terms which are calculated to lead to the use of that article, or articles of that description, in the treatment of cancer.

In this section the expression "advertisement" includes any "notice, circular, label, wrapper or other document, and any announcement made orally or by any means of producing or transmitting sounds".[1]

Publication of such advertisements is permitted to a very restrictive group comprising members of either House of Parliament, local authority, governing bodies of voluntary hospitals, registered or training to become registered medical practitioners, nurses or pharmacists, and persons involved in the sale or supply of surgical appliances. A very tight grip, therefore, is exercised on information that is fed to citizens of Great Britain; interestingly, the Act does not apply to Northern Ireland.

That pretty much wraps it up, and wraps us (in Britain) up in the legal stranglehold that this outdated Act still exerts. Was this enacted to protect the citizens from charlatans and "quacks" or to safeguard the interests of the National Radium Trust, to whom the British Government lent money? If no one is allowed to tell us, how can we, the general public, ever find out what alternatives there are to those offered by mainstream medicine, mainly surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy?

No Freedom of Therapy, Information, or Assembly

My colleague Sarah Ling and I unwittingly found ourselves in a maelstrom when we decided to hold a convention in Birmingham, later this year, to do just that - inform the general public about some of the other ways to tackle this hideous disease than those generally doled out to their mostly trusting, but fear-filled patients. A well-justified fear of the actual treatments as well as the disease prevails.

Last year, Sarah's sister was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Chemotherapy was the only treatment offered, which she accepted out of fear. She nearly died within hours of having it, and very sadly died days afterwards. Sarah was determined to help prevent others from enduring such trauma and so, under the umbrella of our Institute (The Cambridge Institute of Complementary Health), we organized a convention to educate people - conventional/complementary health professionals and the general public - about different ways to treat people who have cancer.

We quickly drew up a short list of speakers that we felt would have much to contribute, including Dr Stanislaw Burzynski who agreed to come and talk about his pioneering work on antineoplastins.

After posting our speakers on our web-site, one, an oncologist, pulled out due to a malevolent e-mail she had received, questioning her wisdom at sharing a platform with Dr Burzynski. She didn't want to cause her team any controversy. We then discovered that we had attracted a lot of adverse attention that was derogatory, critical of our speakers, casting aspersions on them and on us as an organisation. Unfortunately Dr Burzynski decided not to come - so as not to expose us to the sort of attacks that he has suffered. Regrettably, the public lost an opportunity to hear first-hand of his pioneering treatments in tackling cancers, including inoperable brain tumours.

Two speakers down, we then found ourselves possibly contravening the archaic Cancer Act. We've had to be extremely careful in how we word any publications relating to the convention so that the Advertising Standards Agency doesn't come down on us like a ton of bricks and prevent us from holding it at all. Britain cherishes its long-held tradition of freedom of speech, but in recent years that seems questionable. However, we can still hold debates, and that is what we are doing.

We are aware that efforts will be made to stop us, from those who are not seekers of truth. If they were truly interested in the welfare of people, they would be advocating most of the alternative/complementary approaches instead of deriding them and trying to close down clinics and individuals who practise them, via the Advertising Standards Agency. This ridiculous Act affords them the guise of protecting the public and gives them ammunition that they can use against persons advocating alternatives.

We can't hold an open day of education on treating cancer in this country: how bizarre is that? How much longer can this information be contained?

The Cost of Ignorance

The UK National Health Service is overstretched and, as more and more people contract cancer (one in three presently), the rising costs of expensive and often ineffective treatments will surely mean they have to look at alternatives.

Conventional healthcare professionals are too often ignorant of the enormous value of unconventional treatments. How can they be otherwise, as those outside of their profession are prohibited from alluding to the fact that they can help treat cancer? Shockingly, even nutrition is most often totally overlooked during orthodox cancer treatment, and the very foods that promote cancers are given to patients in our hospitals sometimes in order to maintain calorie intake. There is frequently no advice on diet, that most crucial aspect of our health.[2]

Thankfully, some oncologists do recognize the benefits that alternative/complementary treatments offer.[3] Hopefully more and more will come to accept that integrating the best of conventional and complementary/alternative methods is the way forward.

It is our opinion that a reform of the 1939 Cancer Act is long overdue. The tenacious grip that it holds on treating cancer must be relinquished, so that patients and their healthcare providers can make an informed choice as to what approach may be best for their individual needs.

About the Author

Madeline C. Hickey-Smith has an honours degree in biology and is cofounder of the Cambridge Institute of Complementary Health http://cichealth.org.uk  . The direct link to the convention page is http://cichealth.org.uk/#/cancer-convention/4566602766

References:

1. The 1939 UK Cancer Act: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/2-3/13/contents/enacted

2. What UK cancer patients are officially told:

www.royalmarsden.nhs.uk/cancer-information/patient-information/booklets/eating-well.pdf

3. Intravenous Vitamin C as cancer therapy: Free access to twenty-one expert video lectures online. Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, April 14, 2011. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v07n03.shtml  or http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL953B95B3BB977F54  and http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CA531C7A3B0D954

Those who have had quite enough of government censorship of alternative cancer treatments may also wish to look at the following:

Straus H. Censorship, sports and the power of one word. Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, May 21, 2012. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v08n18.shtml

Saul AW. Half-truth is no truth at all: Overcoming bias against nutritional medicine. Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Oct 7, 2011. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v07n09.shtml

Smith RG. Vitamins decrease lung cancer risk by 50%. Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Nov 18, 2011. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v07n13.shtml

Further Information

Andrew W Saul PhD - Editor and contact person. omns@orthomolecular.org

Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine

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