Odyssey Magazine has always stood
for the rights of individuals to make
their own informed choices about the
medicines and medical systems that
they use. But a new law, an update of
the law imposed on novel chemical
drugs in the mid-1960s in the wake
of the thalidomide disaster, has
effectively made all of South Africa's
rich herbal traditional medicines
into drugs – along with the herbal
pharmacopoeias of China, Europe,
the Americas and the rest of the world.
And that is not all. The newly-signed
Medicines and Related Substances
Amendment Act may also cover all
other complementary therapies of
any tradition, new or old, under the
same sweeping all-encompassing
definition of medicines which is entirely
ill-suited for such treatments and
designed rather for Western-styled
allopathic, chemical-based and
synthesised drugs. We take a
close look at this new law which
threatens to destroy South Africa's
once-thriving complementary and
alternative medical (CAMs) treatments
industry – or effectively put it, and
our rich heritage of healing plants
and natural medicines, into the
hands of foreign-owned 'Big Pharma'
corporations.
ODYSSEY 15
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DIGIMAG