Misrepresenting the results of trials and bribing reputable journals to carry favourable reviews are just two of their tricks.

This post by Ben Goldacre of the UK Guardian is essential reading. (Why is there no hyperlink function?)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/09/bad-science-medical-journals-companies

I said right in the beginning – external use only. They still use comfey leaves for poultices on horses legs if sprained.

“conferring Pope-like infallibility” and “cultish idolatory”??? I hope you aren’t referring to me. If so, I take exception. My whole blog was critical of the MCC/MRA.

I would like to know how you as a pharmacist, determine the quality of unregistered complementary medicines before you sell them. (You would know that the quality of registered medicines will have been assessed during the process of registration, and the manufacturers are obliged to maintain that quality for the medicine to remain registered.)

@Perry
I’d refer you to paragraphs 45, 57 and 96 of Judge Zondi’s judgment. Only the issue of “registrability” was related to the Schedule 2 substance. In paragraphs 45 and 57, the Rath product was declared a medicine and not a foodstuff. Para 96 concludes “A substance which falls within the definition of ‘medicine’ cannot be classified as foodstuff in terms of the Foodstuffs Act.”

As for “further costly, burdensome and essentially unnecessary bureaucratic regulation” — this is not the issue. We only have to *implement* the *existing* Medicines Act. I am astounded by the implication of your description of this as “unnecessary” — do you really think it’s OK to sell products where the quality has not been, and is not being independently validated? The Complementary medicines (including so-called food supplements making medicinal claims) industry is having a field day. No-one’s checking up on them at all. They’re free to sell products containing “nothing”, they’re free to sell scam products!

Keep it sensible.

I’m watching you!

The medical and pharmaceutical professions have been trying to badmouth herbs for centuries – no money to be made.

An excess of almost anything can cause cancer. Comfy is one of the best wound healers there is.

“Some” tests on “some” animals does not cut it for me.

I eat butter not marge – butter is natural (and will give me a heart attack ), and marge is artificial ( and will give me cancer, but I can’t bear the taste).

Comfrey should not be used medicinally – either internally or externally. PERIOD.

Liver damage is common, if used internally
Cancer has been recorded in some skin tests of on animals

The legal merits of wrangling surrounding the activities of Mattias Rath were obfuscated by official AIDS denial and obstructive posturing by the health ministry.

Rath’s Vita Cell was registered as a foodstuff, but contained a schedule 2 substance, (N-aceylesteine) which rendered it liable for registration as a medicine in South Africa.

It was therefore a foodstuff which contained a scheduled substance, which is illegal, and simultaneously an unregistered medicine, the dispensing of which is also illegal.

To put possibly too fine a technical point upon it, ‘purported uses’ does not make a substance a medicine under the act, legal registration does.

The judgment correctly shut down Rath’s activities on the grounds of misleading advertising pertaining to his ‘trials’ and ‘therapies’, (illegal when applied to ‘medicinal’ claims in terms of the act) and quackery.

I have no problem with the judgment, but question the logic behind calls for further costly, burdensome and essentially unnecessary bureaucratic regulation to be imposed upon an already overregulated society.

I would not suggest you eat the leaves!

Pharmacists have become the unwitting zombie foot soldiers of allopathic Pharma and are now subject to disciplinary action should they sell unregistered medicines. This means that a pharmacist must refuse to dispense a prescription for Probiotics like Lp229v, most vitamins, homeopathic and herbal formulae, even when prescribed by specialists. This, despite the medical aids being happy to pay for them and the MRA/MCC unwillingness to regulate or engage with the complimentary or traditional medicine industry.

There are many doctors now engaged in the “Wellness” craze sweeping the world, prescribing and dispensing CAM’s to grateful and happy patients.