Sir, - Recently questions have arisen in the political sphere about the qualifications of certain members of regulatory bodies to supervise others. Such questions are now unfortunately being echoed by the alternative health sector to which I belong, since the Irish Medicines Board, the regulatory authority for alternative medicines, recently circulated TDs and MEPs with articles which accused us of peddling quackery and compared traditional medicines with snake oil, calling them "voodoo medicine", "bogus science" and much more besides.
Such bias and prejudice sound strange coming from a body whose role is to advise the Department of Health and Children in a scientific and dispassionate manner on matters of health and safety. Given the hyperbole they use, it is hardly surprising that the IMB peremptorily banned St John's Wort this year, despite a lack of any official notification of side-effects from its use, while the Board continues to licence paracetamol for sale from supermarkets and petrol stations. This is a drug against which over 1,200 instances of side effects were recorded in Dublin over the same period.
The alternative health trade is ready and willing to work with the IMB and others to produce a much-needed regulatory system for traditional herbal remedies, but what confidence can we have that the IMB reciprocates our goodwill?
Last year 65,000 Irish people signed a petition calling for freedom of choice in healthcare. We can only hope that our politicians have the insight to heed that call and reject bias and vested interests wherever they occur, and that Mr Micheal Martin can tackle the thorny issue of regulation in an even-handed way, resisting prejudice and negativism from advisers whose expertise lies solely in conventional medication. - Yours, etc.,
Jill Bell, Ferrypoint, Youghal, Co Cork.