ANCIENT HEALING AT RISK FROM NEW LAWS

Folk healer Prasat Ratanapanya is worried-like the rest of traditional
medicine practitioners across the country.

It's only recently that Thai traditional medicine emerged from state
suppression to regain public interest and respect. But the revival of
indigenous healing art will soon be crushed if the pending national
drug bill passes into law. Sponsored by the Food and Drug
Administration, the draft bill does not recognise Thai traditional
medicine. It also requires that all kinds of medicines, traditional or
modern, must comply to the same modern standard of industrial
manufacturing.

That's why Wiwat Chaiwatanamethin of the Traditional Medicine
Producers Association is worried.

Thai traditional medicine, he said, totally differs from western
medicine in its philosophy, diagnosis, as well as the application and
production of herbal medicines.

Under this draconian legislation, more than 90% of traditional
medicine producers in Thailand, most of whom are small family
companies, will collapse. At present, cash-strapped Thailand spends
more than 2.5 trillion baht a year on medical expenses. A significant
amount are for imports of medical technology and medicines.

The alarming increase of national medical expenses-which is marked by
medicine over consumption among the haves and poor services for the
haves not-has prompted health reform efforts in the Public Health
Ministry. Among its strategies is to improve and protect the art of
traditional medicine as well as to integrate it with conventional treatment.

But if the draft drug bill is law, it will be the end of Thailand's
dream to be self-reliant on health care. We can almost see big wide
grins on the faces of pharmaceutical giants.

This is a classic example of how destructive the top-down law-making
process is. Drug laws affect traditional medicine practitioners and
consumers nationwide, but they were not asked for policy input. It
also shows government agencies aren't talking to one another.

And while the government is talking about the promotion of small
businesses to trigger economic recovery, the cabinet approval for
FDA's draft drug bill, which will destroy small family businesses,
shows its policies are incoherent.

The draft bill also attests to the health authorities' lack of
understanding and appreciation of our ancestors' knowledge in healing.

Thai traditional medicine views good health as a state of balance
between different elements in an individual's body, between body and
environment and between mind and body.

When sickness occurs, it aims to restore such individual's balances
through different means, including medicinal herbs or concoctions,
massages and herbal sauna. But health authorities view traditional
medicine narrowly as only purified medicinal herbs for mass usage as
in modern medicines. That's why they want to standardise and
industrialise its production.

Their arguments that its GMP or good manufacturing practice mandate is
the best way to ensure consumers' safety is nonsense. The FDA already
has plenty of rules and regulations to do that. If the FDA fail to
deal with some quacks, why make new rules that will destroy the whole
system of our ancestors' knowledge in healing?What if the FDA has its
own way? The development of traditional medicine will be stunted. Some
big companies that can afford costly production may survive, but not
the majority family operators. It is only a matter of time that they
will sell their family recipes to rich pharmaceutical companies, most
of them foreign, who are ready to cash in on new consumer interests in
medicinal herbs.

Do we want to see that happen?