Enforced Regulation and The Censorship of Alternative Self-Healing Options in Britain
During 1993 The BMA published a report (1) which the SAFF at the time clearly warned was the first salvo in a campaign by the Medical Monopoly to discredit, limit and bring under their control the burgeoning alternative health-care scene. This BMA report dishonestly and biasedly misrepresented Alternative Healing and pressed for practitioners to be outlawed or brought within the control of the Medical Monopoly. The motivation for all this is not really one of protecting or healing patients but of circumscribing and gathering together one of the greatest powers over the individual that can be obtained, the gift of his life and death. If that had not been the case natural healers would not have posed such a threat to the church and the establishment. This was the major thrust of the BMA's 1993 report, as explained on the jacket of the publication itself.
'How are these (alternative) therapies regulated? Are therapists registered with an appropriate body, and how do you know if they are competent to practise?.....(this report contains)... a series of practical recommendations to protect the patient from possible harm'
The government's current (2008) White Paper, 'Trust, Assurance and Safety, The Regulation of Health Professionals ' is the successful end result of 15 years inexorable pressure by the Medical Monopoly to rob you of YOUR healing options.
Because this attack on Alternative Healing and Freedom of Choice appears to be coming from a secular rather than a sectarian source the public are being lulled into a false feeling of security over these exceedingly crucial rights to self-help. But if you look back into history you will see that this is not the first attempt to deprive free-thinkers of choice. In the middle ages the Churches' attack on occultism occurred as part and parcel of an attempt to retain a monopoly of power over the people during a period in which much social and civil unrest was occurring. It resulted in random victimisations which were excused away by having a modus-operandi built around them.
The existing healing system had evolved then over thousands of years through a line of self-taught Cunning Men/Women and was undoubtedly seen as a threat to the church at all levels because not only did it short circuit the monopoly on healing which those in power in the Church required in order to control the lives of the people (compare the interference in the third world in the 19th century via medical missions, many of which are still ongoing in the hinterlands of Africa) , but the Old Healing worked in contradistinction using philosophies such as The Doctrine of Signatures and Hermetic Laws which were entirely antipodean to Theological doctrine of the time.
Thus peasants who were healed by Cunning Healers had first hand evidence of the practical successes and genuineness of the pagan cosmos which didn't do Christianity any good.
It was, of course, easy to re-interpret Natural Healing practices (often based on the spiritual quality and actions of plants) as demonic/satanic and so cunning healers were, totally unjustly, often victimised. However Cunning Healers provided an essential social function in those days; in particular they naturally and automatically married effective herbal medicine with a concomitant psychotherapeutic treatment for each patient. A successful method which modern medicine in its obsession with over-specialisation has rent assunder. Yet historically it often appears to onlookers that there WAS a justification for the Church's action, for these healers using 'magic'
which was 'suspect'. No one who really knows about Hedge-Witches can think that is true. I can make a long list of the modern 'scientific' medical breakthroughs which were simply re-packaged age-old Cunning Healer wisdom. Penicillin for example, is a major illustration of this - mouldy bread poultice was used by natural healers for centuries before sci
ence rediscovered it as a wonder antibiotic of modern medicine. Witches staunched bleeding using spiders' gossamer a natural styptic. etc. etc.
By selectively ignoring the many successful results of Alternative Healing governments allow apologists to suggest that in essence they were correct to act when they did against 'archaic and mediaeval healing practices', just as the BMA is trying to do again today, hundreds of years later.
Another major point here is that medical knowledge in the possession of the Cunning Healers was on a par with or often exceeded officially sanctioned medical knowledge and so suppressing the Cunning Healers was a recipe for disaster and unrest in society by depriving ordinary folk of access to proper health services.
The very same situation occurred during the 15c in England when in 1423 the English Guild of Physicians (the forerunner of the BMA/GMC) demanded the outlawing of Natural Healers. In 1540 parliament gave them what they wanted and created the College of Surgeons monopoly. The deleterious effects of this Xist monopoly were so pernicious that within two years (a very short space of time for changes to register in those days) the King was forced to completely revise the law , for the vast majority of the population had been left without any recourse to medical treatment whatsoever, not being able to afford the charges of the Medical elite. The very same situation is occurring today in the NHS. Over-charging for health services is pushing people into trying alternative (and often much less expensive ) healing methods based on esoteric doctrines which the BMA decries - yet which have been shown to work during hundreds of years of empirical useage.
The new government regulations unfortunately WILL become law because they are adopting a softly softly approach and are beguiling the type of therapists who love to wear white overalls and sport letters after their names in a pastiche of 'professionalism'. But the SAFF warns all free-thinkers once again that this is just one plank of several different Xist strategies to diminish their freedom of choice over their own health-care.
An acquaintance of mine recently attempted to adopt a child - apart from the usual checks any reasonable person would expect he and his wife were asked to undertake a medical examination the result of which was that he was, horror of horrors, 1% (one percent!) 'overweight' compared with the parameters for obesity set down by the GMC and was told that he could not be allowed to foster a child unless he agreed to undertake a dietary regime.
The philosopher Hegel maintained that all principles and ideologies are of necessity circular and eventually become that which they originally were designed to replace.
Thus we see the astonishing sight of a socialist government working with state registered 'healers' to move speedily and inexorably towards a kind of Body Fascism where the measurement of bone-structure, racial characteristics, genetic 'abnormalities' , dietary enforcement, mental and learning capacities, enforced life-style modification of individuals and the production of a homologated European 'super-race' have become a real and very worrying reality.
You have been warned.
John Freedom, Mortlake, Lammas 2008
(1)(Complementary Medicine- New Approaches to Good Practice,
Publ: Oxford University Press; isbn:9780192861665 )
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