Posts by Eleanor
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Eleanor, I'm very sure I'd have felt differently if you'd been fronting the campaign rather than Christine Rankin and Sue Kedgley. I actually learned something from your contributions, and adjusted my view accordingly.
That's all I could ask! :o)
Now that pesky Bill is dormant, I'm going to take a breather from this political stuff... I'm selective with my battles!
And there are luscious aromatherapy products to be made, after all.
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I think it's partially the way the campaign was waged - basically the approach was to bag the Bill and generate support for defeating it rather than promote a better alternative.
Exactly. It was wholly destructive, hysterical and contradictory.
I just don't think that's fair Russell. Researching and interpreting this bill was all-consuming. Have you read it yet?
Panic-buttons were pushed for me 18 months ago when I tried to get an audience with a MedSafe bureaucrat to address some of my basic questions. There was no other way to find out what I needed to know. I was told point blank by MedSafe that "it was not the best use of their time" to meet me (a natural health practitioner / small business owner / industry supplier). When I discovered on page 14,964,579 of the legislation's regulations (ok, page number = exaggerated) that MedSafe and / or the regulatory agency had an OBLIGATION to meet with stakeholders to guide them through the process, I approached MedSafe again. They told me to attend a consultation in Auckland. I spent my hard-earned dollars and took time off work just to attend the "consultation" - only to find that a panel of bureaucrats were repeating what I already knew, and that there was not enough time for questions from the floor. I finally had a meeting with MedSafe which was actually very useful (and so simple! considering it was such a long battle to be granted an audience) - but there continued to be communication gaps from the agency. I have not even had a formal response to a submission I made in time for one of MedSafe's deadlines - August 2006. I'm not joking.
How can we have any faith in a future agency if this is its attitude to people and businesses who genuinely wanted to comply? No wonder our response was to bag the bill. We were already suffering its consequences!
Writing and presenting submissions for the Select Committee process was arduous and overwhelming. I have a business to run and I am trying to get on with it while complying, but there was so much research to be done before I could really figure out the nuts and bolts of what would be affected by this Bill.
I'm pro-regulation and still thoroughly unconvinced that in this form, this legislation would have made products safer in the short, medium or even long term. That's a big call, but I just can't see it. Maybe I missed those seventeen thousand pages.
Now to suggest that we could somehow simultaneously come up with a preferable alternative for compliance, while struggling with this one, well that is truly exasperating.
Maybe we'll have a chance now - and maybe the government will realise it should actually speak with the people and businesses who will be affected before it trumpets about how badly informed people are (as if it's not the government's own responsibility).
Now I'll go back to lurking.
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Coffee existed here and was served before the Italians introduced it at large from the 20s.
My great grandmother made and served coffee in Wellington pre-1910.
She was Norwegian - a race of huge coffee drinkers.
Unfortunately I have no way to substantiate the finer details, including the site of this enlightened establishment. Also, don't ask me how she brought it here or what inspired her to do so (apart from her own habit, perhaps!?).
But my grandmother first told my mother about this well over 50 years ago, before any major coffee renaissance, and I grew up knowing about it - I have no reason to doubt its truth. I hate when good family stories get lost forever!
But: good old Nordic coffee-drinking pioneers! 100 years of coffee served in Wellington.
(They've been drinking it since the 1600s apparently)
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The Brits are incredibly stoic about bombs at home. I suppose the 20th century bucked them up. An London friend was here for the Lions tour two years ago when the bus bombs went off and we all flocked around him most concerned that he call and check on friends and family at home: he was remarkably relaxed, said "London's a big place", and went to bed.
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Annette King is the Minister of Police, Minister of Transport, Minister for Food Safety, and Minister of State Services.
...and former Minister of Health, more's the pity.
Yucky, yucky, BZP. That market was surely about to implode anyway wasn't it? A close relative of mine is a doctor who was involved with the study run by the Medical Research Council, which was cut short due to severe adverse side effects experienced by the participating volunteers. I volunteered as the "trialors' trialist" (in other words they put me through the motions before the real tests started, to iron out any system flaws, but did not include the results since I am related to the doctor). I was given a regular dose as recommended on the packet, and my vital signs were monitored as I performed a series of tests. I drank plenty of water all day (no alcohol). That night I had the worst headache I've ever had in my entire life. BZP gripped my brain in a vice and squeeeeeeezed. I couldn't blame anything else - I wasn't short of sleep, drunk, stoned, wasted, tired, hormonal, stressed... BZP alone gave me the nastiest headache ever invented. I was incapable of doing anything - I was in such stunning agony I could but whimper.
Also: my close friend killed himself three years ago (fortunately it feels like much longer ago than that now) and the music he chose to play at The Time was Nirvana. But he never liked or listened to Nirvana! I didn't even think he owned any. It's a strange thing about people who are close to suicide: they are drawn to the stories / methods of other suicides. Well to be honest, I think it's tactful and compassionate to keep suicide stories out of the limelight... however I also believe that those close to suicide will find these stories anyway because there appears to be solidarity in suicidal despair that luckily most of us aren't able to fully relate to.
These are anecdotes (one is particularly heavy), I'm making conversation not drawing conclusions. But both are pertinent I think.
(O alright it was just a premise to make a dig @ Annette King)
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Thanks for your comment Stephen, really glad I can enlighten you about some of the practical flaws and downsides to the proposed legislation.
Juha, as I pointed out in my first post, practitioners are exempt from this legislation and so can prescribe treatments - within the bounds of their professional code, ethics and expertise. That's exactly as it stands now. Maybe you'd find another word more satisfactory, like "recommend"? "sell"? "peddle"????
Your quotes:
You have to believe in all the "natural" stuff and if it doesn't work, well, you didn't believe hard enough.
the oils were found to act like oestrogen.
I wholeheartedly believe and know that essential oils work for targeted conditions, especially skin conditions. I do not believe they can cure you of any major disease or that they should replace medicine in many circumstances.
The most rewarding client experience I've had recently was creating a blend targeted to break a cycle of skin herpes outbreaks for a client, which was extremely painful and recurrent. The client applied it twice a day and the immediate soothing effect was described as miraculous - her herpes cleared up, stopped tingling and stabbing with pain and blistering, she was less stressed out and her overall mental state of health improved as a result of this. She had tried OTC medications for herpes and not had the success she would have liked. Nine weeks later she hasn't had a recurring attack but continues with topical application of the blend a couple of times a week.
I am not against Western medicine, or pharmaceutical drugs for the sake of it. I have used them, I was brought up to go to the doctor with any ills, there are surgeons, doctors, paramedics and nurses in my family. Who, I might add, are really supportive of my work and have just about all been treated with my products at various times!
The thyme gargle is probably the thing that has "trodden on the toes" of Western medicine more than anything else I've done; it cleared up a sore throat for pete's sake. What would a doctor have done for a sore throat? I don't prescribe essential oils for internal use.
Aromatherapy includes liniments, tiger balm, and vick's vapor rub. All tried and true by many of you I would think...
So again, if we're using these products anyway, and I can continue to recommend them in my practise whether this legislation comes through or not...
... then why jeopardise the locally-grown and produced ingredients that the industry needs, through suddenly applying crippling bureaucracy and manufacturing costs? Surely we should actually invest in these areas??
Then we would own our own research, too.
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John, with all due respect, a simple google search of "thyme" and "strep throat" will do that for you. It's really easy. Here's one.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051216184545.htm\
Now I'm going to work, but I'm glad John learned something today.
Have a good one all!
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Joe, yes teatree oil (and others) are a pesky thorn in the side for pharmaceutical companies, who cannot monopolise profits from natural products, nor chemically break them down - they are really too complex. It's easy to figure out what, say, 90% of the chemical composition is, but there are too many variations and miniscule amounts of things in the other few percent to crack the code. It makes testing and trialing very difficult too. While Juha has pointed out some appalling science partly subsidised by the industry, exploring efforts by pharmaceutical companies to discredit natural products is something I spend little time looking into. I prefer focusing on the positive results of my work.
Juha, most aromatherapists I know have children who were brought up around essential oils, and they were used on them for various ailments; this includes many little boys for whom long-term exposure to volatile extracts of lavender has resulted in zero breast-tissue growth. Luckily my husband has a hardcore of common sense that prevails in these matters and when we have children, in circumstances that demand it we'll both be happy to use manuka oil instead of / as well as, say, dettol.
Rich, of course, soap & water, great! ;o) I can prescribe a gargle containg essential oil of thymus vulgaris for strep throat, and it's really effective. In France doctors can take swabs of throat infections and match them to the most effective essential oils, then prescribe these to treat infections. What a great mechanism.
Of course thyme, which makes SUCH a great essential oil, grows abundantly in Central Otago; ANZTPA will provide a disincentive for NZers to explore and innovate with yet another wonderful NZ-grown cash crop.
We should be encouraged to innovate and create using renewable natural resources, shouldn't we?
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Yes, Anne, Bloch was an author who put his name to this as a "credible" scientist, and was funded grants from a serious cluster of pharmaceutical companies.
Of course this would not be too galling, really, if only the "study" hadn't claimed that “No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported”.
Juha did the medics of New England point out that one of the boys had a twin using the same products who wasn't affected in the slightest? Or that further analysis found actually very little evidence of the presence of tea tree oil in the cosmetics? Or that some of the products used were actually soaps and shampoos - which wash off?
O well... as my little sister (a doctor) always says, "everyone makes mistakes"
And as the hardy manfolk of Provence, the French lavender-growing district who on the whole had lower mortality levels during plagues than those in other regions and countries, said afterwards: "Ah, oui survived! Merci for the mammaries..."
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but Juha... that's the same study. With the same flaws.
Do you know if the products in question would even be regulated by the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill that we're discussing the implications of?
I can tell you - they would not be affected.
@ least two of the products used (two thirds of the study sample) would fall outside the legislation. Well wide of the mark, in fact.
(so will plastic bottles)
So nothing is resolved in Juha's example, even through this omnibus bill.