Coalition for the Right to Natural Health



Coalition for the Right to Natural Health

Natural Health Association

Institute of Studies of Natural Health

Chilean Herbalists Association

Homa Herb Farm of Limache

“Pharmaceutical drugs only attend symptoms, not cure sicknesses themselves”

“Medicinal herbs and natural nutritional products have traditionally proved their superiority in the face of pharmaceutical preparations which have shown their inefficiency”

The Limache Declaration

25th of November 2001

Reunited in the country township of Limache, Chile, on the 25 of November, 2001, we that sign below (80 persons), related with the activities of Herbs, Herbalists, Doctors practicing natural therapies, Natural Health Professionals, Botanists, Natural Chemists, Distributors of Health foods, Agricultural Engineers and Technicians, Naturopaths, Floral Therapists, Naturist’s and consumers of Health foods, after analyzing the following issue:

Herbs for Health. Culinary, health giving and aromatic.

and in conformance with our experience and knowledge regarding the use of Herbs and Health foods, agree that it is necessary that it be made known throughout Chile the following:

DECLARATION

THE RIGHT TO NATURAL HEALTH

1. That health is a non-renounceable asset that must be taken care of and continually improved by each person.

2. We proclaim the non-renounceable right of the consumer to have the freedom to choose a natural model to maintain their health. The government should provide technical assistance that is necessary to allow persons to efficiently exercise their rights.

3. The herbalists, health food shops, organic food stores, agro ecological production plots, vegetarian restaurants, centers of production and distribution of health foods and natural products which are not pharmaceutical, institutes of human development and diffusion of natural therapies, natural health and ecology, and all the citizens that promote principles of a healthy life have the non-renounceable right to maintain their activities and invoke the protection of their constitutional rights.

NATURAL HEALTH versus PHARMACUETICAL DRUGS

4. Synthetic pharmaceutical drugs only alleviate the symptoms, they do not repair health. The great majority of pharmaceuticals drugs have shown their inefficiency to treat chronic affections and present serious side affects that are generally greater than those benefits sustained by their medical promotion. A large number of the chronic problems that people suffer have originated from previous prolonged consumption of drugs that tried to cure other affections. Justifiably, pharmaceutical drugs have started to become accused of deceptive medical promotion in various countries.

5. Based in the experience and scientific information actually available, we acknowledge the superiority of health giving, culinary, aromatic and cosmetic herbs, and those of nutritional health foods and natural products to treat chronic problems and maintain health.

6. Natural medicine are foods and their products based in evidence, in the nutrients and the therapies of nature. Natural Medicine does not alleviate symptoms, does not invade, attack nor replace the curative capacity that the human body possesses. The synthetic pharmaceutical is in the business of sicknesses, only alleviates and deceives the body, substitutes its capacities, subsides and does not permit the maturity of the defense systems of the human body, does not cure chronic sicknesses, and actually creates new illnesses.

PHARMACEUTICAL INFLUENCE

7. The pharmaceutical consortiums need to release at least one new molecule (product) each year in the market, in order to net profit millions of dollars yearly. According to their own pharmaceutical industry, they destine approximately 18% of their sales in investigation so that a new product can be incorporated in the market. These statistics reveal what’s at stake, and why they ferociously oppose the sale of a bag of herbs at $500 Chilean pesos (US$.70 cents) or a jar of food or herb supplement of $4.000 or $5.000 pesos (US$5.70 or $7) in the national market, against those institutionalized medicines of $20.000 o $115.000 (US$28 or $164). The pharmaceutical knows their vulnerability and threatens those who represent the natural medicine.

8. We warn that the pharmaceutical companies, in Chile as throughout the world, and in all the levels at which they have influence, have declared an underground war on health foods, which are highly competitive and prepared in the base of herbs, and foods that are naturally healthy. The pharmaceuticals accused them of all classes of bad attributes, forgetting their own origins. After 60 years of failure, and getting away form what’s natural, they now see an imminent and growing threat, which puts at risk their secure and trillion-dollar business.

They seek to survive in the long term in a market that is turning around, where thousands of harmed consumers make up successful millionaire lawsuits, especially in the more industrialized countries. In their desperation, they are found to be using international mechanisms to globalize their influence. One of these bodies is the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS, an international organism, dependent upon the WHO/FAO, influenced by the German Bank and International Pharmaceutical Industry. Other instances are in all the Ministries of Health in countries through channels of development.

9. We hereby manifest that the pharmaceutical regulations or overprotection of the people who practice natural health is unnecessary, expensive, beurocratic, and reflects a lack of confidence in the informed consumer. The protection of public health practiced by the Ministry of Health (MINSAL) appears to be more directed to protect the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical companies. It is not public knowledge of rigorous control programs destined to protect the people from harms and the secondary effects of the Pharmaceutical drugs.

10. We warn that there is a profound pharmological influence in all the actions and contents of the laws proceeding from the Ministry of Health. It is enough to read their instructions, their programs of their seminars and their promises and declarations of their directives, to come to realize how far their advisors are from natural methods and how close to the inefficient pharmaceutical treatments.

PROPOSALS OF THE FUNCTIONARYS OF THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH

11. The Chilean health authority permits that the consumers are not effectively warned of the high dangers of the pharmaceuticals drugs. Only the nicotine business is obliged to warn consumers of the health danger that the addiction to tobacco represents. This represents an isolated case, as there are many other recreational drugs publicized by other medias. Equal to the case of tobacco, all the synthetic drugs destined for health therapies, and also all recreational drugs, should publicize their potential danger to different organs, glands, tissues and processes of the human body. For their part, the natural health foods should be permitted to declare their nutritional properties and the segments of the population to which they are destined, and the intrinsic benefits that they poses for human health.

12. We reject all attempt to pharmaco –monopolize the tradition of herb use and Chilean nourishment. A “healthy” Public Health system is closer to the Natural Health than the “Pharmaceutical Treatments”. For this reason, we reject the laws the Ministry of Health has tried to impose on Chile to satisfy pharmaceutical criteria, all destined to inhibit, restrict or prohibit health foods and their contents, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, and botanical elements or phyto-nutrients contained in the culinary, health giving and aromatic herbs. – the actual dispositions which we reject are, among others, the Resolution 1844/98 and the Decree 855/98. – Other dispositions that are in project in the Ministry of Health, according to the October the 1st version, are the projects DS 286 (Creation of Phyto-pharmaceutical and the restriction of medical herbs) and DS 287 (Limits and medical projections of the food supplements).

13. The functionaries of the Ministry of Health do not understand natural health, even less, the role that herbs and foods play in the recuperations and maintenance of the healthy physiological states of people. We advise that a large part of the inconsideration of the Ministry of Health, is due to this professional deformation. Generally, the functionaries that work in this partition of the state come form universities that have not incorporated into their curriculum of their students assignments related to natural medicine, neither the same interest to comprehend postgraduate courses or inform themselves through other means. It is necessary to incorporate into the ministry, competent personal, and to train those that exist in these matters before dictating laws over health foods

14. We reject the application of every type of registration fee on the natural herbs that the functionaries of the Public Health Institute (ISP) whish to impose, in the pharmaceutical branch of the Ministry of Health. All culinary, health giving, aromatic or cosmetic herbs are, and should be considered at the free disposition of the citizen who wishes to cultivate, recollect, store, or distribute in whatever form that provides the best access for its consumption. Nobody has the right in Chile, or in any other place on this planet, to subject vegetable species to whatever type of administrative restriction, through high fees, patents or other. All vegetable species belong to some type of national germplasm that is the patrimony of humanity.

SOCIAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH EFFECTS

15. We consolidate the country and urban communities, small business, the majority of a family character, for the damage caused, or that could be caused if the projects that the functionaries of MINSAL have contemplated to pharmaco-monopolize health foods and natural products are implemented, weather they be culinary, health giving and aromatic herbs, foods or food supplements.

16. The President of the Republic should be informed of the sinister plans underway. The pro-pharmaceutical functionaries of the Ministry of Health have not duly considered that their attempts have been made in the worst economic scene in the last few decades, where unemployment has reached all corners. If they obtain their proposals, it could come to the Ministry and the State to indemnify figures which could easily reach billions, for the damages caused, causing and would cause, on the application of the laws contemplated in their pro-pharmaceutical plans, which could be equivalent to several times the national health budget. This is without considering, measurements in monetary terms, the biological damage that would be caused to the population without natural alternatives.

17. When the maintenance of health is restricted, sickness is promoted. The biological damage that would be caused to the population without natural alternatives, would bring about an immediate effect of increasing the national health budget, activated by the increase of illnesses caused by the secondary adverse effects of pharmaceutical drugs.

DIFUSSION OF THE USE OF HEALTH GIVING, CULINARY AND AROMATIC HERBS.

18. The use of herbs should be fomented and not restricted. This diffusion should consist in all the forms that herbs and flowers are used, weather they be infusions, decoctions, in all types of artesian and modern packaging, such as elixirs, tinctures and macerated preparations, cataplasms, compresses, balms and other diverse phyto-therapeutic cultural expressions, aromatherapuetic or floral therapy. All the cultivators, which are deposited in a rich, old and beneficent tradition, often of family character, should feel helped by the State. In particular, the Chilean state should value and promote the herb use of our forefathers and our traditional cultures, especially the people of the Aonikenk o Tewelches, Atacameño o Likanantai, Aymara, Diaguita, Kawèsqar o Alakalufes, Kolla, Mapuche, Molle, Pikunche, Rapa Nui, Sel`nam, Kawèsqar, Yagàn o Yàmana, etc. This attitude should also be validated for all botanical elements pertaining to the patrimony of humanity, weather they be autochthonous, Latin-American or from other countries of a rich botanical tradition.

19. At the height of the 21st century, diffusion and distribution of not one herb or vegetable plant should be restricted or prohibited, unless is possesses micro concentrations of proved toxic properties, or has been synthesized in laboratories.

20. The investigations of the attributes and uses of the vegetable species on behalf of the official Chilean medicine should also be fomented, without pursuing ulterior motives of pharmaceutical monopolization. The possible interactions with other substances, food or pharmaceutical, can in no way justify any restrictions, prohibitions or sale to the businesses of clinics or pharmacies. What can only be justified is adequate labeling, that explicates the characteristics, possibly in visible places of the packaging.

21. The country should not be left behind in the advance of knowledge of other herbs and health giving plants that are used around the world. For this reason, it is urgent and necessary to prepare a Traditional Medicine World Herbolarium (TMWH). Studies of this nature are essentially previous to all attempts to establish laws in respect to herbal medicines. To do the contrary is a simple administrative exercise, a theoretical error.

22. The mix and the combined use of herbs, in all its uses: health giving, culinary, aromatic or cosmetic – is part of the traditional and strategically naturist culture, and therefore should be preserved. The preparation of herb mixes is perhaps the ethnic-botanical part most noble, creative and useful in the maintenance of health for human beings. For this reason, the Traditional Medicinal Herbolarium of Chile, managed by the Ministry of Health, should become more profound in its compilation of the aspects of herb combinations. These studies should be realized without ulterior pharmaceutical motives. This attitude is true science, and the rest is political or renders itself to powerful interests and the traffic of influences.

FOMENTATION OF THE HERBOLARIUM

23. Our country is left behind in the material of fomenting and promoting the culture of herbs and natural health in relation to other countries. The State should be prepared to help in the development of natural health in our country. In order to achieve this, we must be able to count on competent personnel and the funding needed for this proposal. The investigation, herbal diffusion, programs of healthy living and technical assistance for the national herbal activity should be concentrated in a Institute of Natural Health (INH) possibly dependent upon the Ministry of Health, or as an autonomous entity of the State.

24. The cultivators, producers, collectors and packagers of herbs should be helped by the State. The State should provide technical assistance that is necessary for this activity to be developed without restriction in all its productive manifestations: recollection, cultivation, drying, storage, mixing and packaging of fresh plants, dehydrated, entered, triturated, fractioned, powdered, macerated in liquids, aromatic oils, floral elixirs, vegetable drinks, encapsulated or in tablets, weather they be synthetic or pharmaceutical. To restrict the Herbalists to functions of simple artesian packing is to deny the possibility of their development. To deny the rights of free exercise of their activities in the herb culture, is to deny the option of natural health.

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