The scene would not look out of place in Breaking Bad. Special Forces in camouflage gear and night vision masks stealthily break into a house and hold up its terrified owner, still in his dressing gown, shining a light in his face as they catch him holding a bottle of what appears to be illegal contraband.

The scene would not look out of place in Breaking Bad. Special Forces in camouflage gear and night vision masks stealthily break into a house and hold up its terrified owner, still in his dressing gown, shining a light in his face as they catch him holding a bottle of what appears to be illegal contraband.

Guys, GUYS,’ says the terrified owner, who turns out to be Mel Gibson. ‘It’s only vitamins.” The SWAT team are unimpressed. Gibson is still trying to get them to see sense as they arrest him and clamp on the cuffs: ‘“Vitamin C, you know, like in oranges?”

Gibson had donated his time for this 1992 video, which was meant to be a call to action for citizens concerned about US federal legislation, which the film said is ‘actually considering classifying most vitamins and other supplements as drugs. The FDA has already conducted raids on doctors’ offices and health food stores. Could raids on individuals be next?”

The American public certainly thought so, because the advert, and other aspects of a well organized grassroots movement, created massive support for what ultimately became the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, or DSHEA, the law that today protects American access to dietary supplements as well as information about these products.

Despite the passage of that bill, the desire of the US and the UK regulatory authorities to gain control of the vast natural medicine market has never quite disappeared. Nor has the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. 

The MHRA is increasingly populated with ex-drug industry old boys, and, like the FDA, indeed is now funded by Big Pharma. As US Health-freedom advocate Elissa Meininger, once said, “Among the events that led up to the passage of DSHEA was the publication of the FDA’s Task Force Report on Dietary Supplements. In it, there was a statement that I saw as a smoking gun. It stated that the presence of dietary supplements on the market represented a ‘disincentive’ (the FDA’s word) for patented drug research.”

As WDDTY recently discovered, the flak jackets were out in force recently, when investigators from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) staged an unannounced raid on the new laboratory premises of Immuno Biotech in Cambridgeshire, confiscating 10,000 vials of the naturally occurring glycoprotein called ‘GcMAF’ and closing down the facility before it had in fact ever opened (see News Focus, page xx).

GcMAF, WDDTY readers may remember, is one of the more promising new treatments for cancer. In our November 2014 issue we featured four cancer patients and one patient with autism whose conditions were entirely turned around with this natural ‘supermolecule’. Shutting down manufacture of this product on the most spurious of reasons, when very little other treatment for cancer or autism is actually working, is nothing less than a violation of human rights.

The climate seemed likely to change with advertising magnate Lord Saatchi’s Medical Innovation Bill, which would have allowed doctors to try experimental cancer treatments without running the risk of being sued. It had been promoted by Lord Saatchi after his wife Josephine Hart died from ovarian cancer. It had passed the House of Lords, after several amendments were introduced at the Government’s behest, and just had to make it through the Commons before Parliament dissolved in March in the run up to the election. Thousands of patients supported this bill, and it was also backed by the Conservative party.

Shockingly, instead of allowing for debate or improvement of the law, the Liberal Democrats broke rank with their Tory coalition and simply vetoed it out of hand, claiming they had listened to patient groups, professional journals, and professional bodies – most of them in some way reliant on the drugs industry.

Several weeks ago, we attended a meeting attended by many heads of natural medicine organizations held in Parliament announcing the results of two rigorous meta-analyses of non-contact healing, carried out by the University of Northampton. The studies showed strong evidence that healing of every regard works on animals, plants and human beings (see page xx), in fact, better than many drugs. When we discussed how to get this information out there, the consensus was that we shouldn’t waste time trying to convince sceptics or professional bodies; we needed to tell our MPs.

The only way to get natural medicine accepted and enshrined in law is to create a DSHEA-style grassroots movement to make it a political issue. Those at the meeting recommended that we tell our readers to visit their MPs’ surgeries and demand protection for natural medicine and innovations like GcMAF. Discussions are underway about creating such a movement. The conservative government (and no doubt every member of government) regards the drug industry as a backbone of British industry. But the one thing any politician wants, even more than a thriving economy, is to keep his job.

Make a point of making a nuisance of yourself at your MP’s surgery. This time, in the wake of the Scottish referendum and UKIP, believe me, they’re listening.