Complements of the Season

“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” Bob Dylan.

April, the Dragon, is the month of rapid change and the last eighteen days leading up to the 6th May, are the most powerfully transformative of the year. This however can be negative as well as positive and right now, this very moment, alternative medicine is under immediate threat. A Euro directive, inspired by the vast multinational pharmaceutical companies and coming live this Tuesday, May the 1st, will severely restrict the range of alternative and natural remedies you can buy in the shops. If
you use echinacea, calendula, evening primrose oil or arnica, for instance, you may find yourself having to buy a synthetic alternative.
Now, when multinationals block something whether it’s the electric car or alternatives to fossil fuels, it’s a kind of compliment because you know what they’re after must be a real threat. It’s a fact that gingko and ginseng thin the blood much like warfarin (otherwise a rat poison btw). This is what your doctor intends when prescribing a daily aspirin as a miracle cure. Aspirin itself of course is essentially a laboratory copy of substances found in the willow tree. Equally St Johns Wort is known to affect the production of oestrogen in the body. In other words, herbal remedies work and big business knows they do. Laboratory and hedgerow are complements not competitors. Hence complementary medicine.
Make it better.
You might like to reflect that some of the huge institutions involved have been responsible for holding back AIDS medication from the 3^rd World and marketing powdered as opposed to mothers’ milk in areas where there is no clean water. Some figure among the tax-averse companies in the news recently and the pharma industry retains the power to endorse or suppress alternative cures for maladies as diverse as cancer and the common cold. Profitmaking institutions have their place but they are not God.

So, in a rare case of coming off the fence and venturing beyond Chinese mumbo jumbo, I’d like to recommend that you sign right away the petition you will find at http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_herbal_medicine_ban/?vl . As I said now, the Dragon month, is when – for better or worse – rapid change occurs. Let’s make it better.

Thanks,

Richard Ashworth.
Thank you to Peter Firebrace and Linda Martin (LE&GM) for waking me up.