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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Therapeutic Goods Authority looms large - stop it now!


The Therapeutic Goods Authority (TGA) which the Government has committed to setting up without proper consultation with the public is well on the way to being established. Staff have already been hired making a farce of any consultation.

How will this regulatory organisation benefit the NZ public? We deserve to know.

The TGA will regulate natural therapies, natural medicines and nutritional supplements as if they were hazardous prescription pharmaceuticals. It is doing so on the basis of safety - premise that nobody has been able to substantiate (There is not a single recorded death in recent NZ history from taking a natural medicine or supplement).

If the TGA goes ahead, as would appear inevitable, your ability to decide what is best for your health will be severely diminished and the cost will rise.

Maori traditional healing will be seriously compromised and the development of herbs and medicines based on native NZ plants will probably not be possible without the financial muscle of Big Pharma.

Submissions are being called for; but you have only a few weeks to get one in. A Maori Hui is being organised to opposed the TGA. Details below and please get involved, if only by writing to your MP.

Here are the PDF files for these:
Please act now and retain our freedom to manage our own health. Throw out the TGA!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

...I can't agree more strongly, that we have to stop the introduction of the TGA, which is going to impede our freedom to use dietary supplements and alternative medicines & remedies to pharmaceuticals.
There is an excellent range of high quality dietary supplements from a company called Life Force(Australasia)NZ Ltd, of which I have been using a number of over the past seven years. It is an American company with warehouses in Sydney and Auckland. The head office for so called Australasia is in Sydney. However, the irony is, here in NZ we have available certain of these products which contain herbs in a tincture, but these can't be distributed in Australia because they are outlawed by the Australian TGA.These are great products, for example taheebo, which has been proven to be arguably the best remedy for brain tumours amongst many other conditions, aside from simply strengthening the immune system; and whether one enters into a debate about it efficacy or not, I cherish the freedom to be able to use it if I choose, as I have from time to time over a number of years, as a general tonic; and far from being in need of protection from any adverse effect from its use, am indeed in robust good health for a man in his fifties, certainly not using any pharmaceutical medications, and hoping to continue to enjoy my personal power of taking responsibility for my own health, which includes dietary supplementation at my pleasure and choice. It's a user pays world, and there are a growing number of people(like the ones who frequent this web site) who would rather invest money in their health, than spend it on sickness because they have failed to take care of their health.
It is my understanding that if the TGA comes into law here, it will be a joint directive between Australia and NZ, of which Australia will take the lead, having already years of experience imposing draconian and restrictive regulations on Australians choosing their own poison as it were, if we follow that metaphor through to what this is all about, which is the promotion and control of Big Pharma and pharmaceutical drugs. The other irony of course is iatrogenesis, which according to Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary:
"Iatrogenesis is any adverse or physical condition induced in a patient through the effects of treatment by a physician or surgeon." which includes medical misdiagnosis and misprecription, and is acknowledged to kill hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions worldwide every year. In a recent New England Medical Journal report, it said a study revealed that cancer suffers who did not avail themselves to medical treatments(i.e.chemotheraphy)had a three hundred per cent better chance of survival. It begs the question of what these people did, but no doubt many availed themselves to alternatives towards a more gentle and natural approach to restoring the imbalances in the body,(often self-inflicted)many of which the TGA will outlaw.
So there is indeed a a huge double standard going on here and it's all about big business and a multi-trillion dollar industry lead by drug companies with their enormously powerful lobbies. The so called nanny state has become so cliche, bur if the TGA comes into law we will indeed be a Nanny State, however without nanny's good old remedies, even from the garden, that were so often just what we needed. What's at stake here is our freedom, so write letters and visit your local MP and generally hassle them nicely.
Our present society has given us to believe that it's normal to be born in hospital and die hospital, and the TGA will strenthen and perpetuate this mindset. Personally, by the time I see the doctor it will be too late, but I plan to die at home, peacefully, in bed, like they used to in nanny's day.
Ernest Gibbs, Wellington, NZ