Alternative medicine professions 'need statutory regulation'

If regular medicine does, the freaky stuff sure does. Some herbal products, for instance, are among the most toxic substances known -- e.g. ricin

Acupuncturists, Chinese medicine practitioners and medical herbalists should be formally regulated to ensure they are "fit to practise", the Health Professions Council (HPC) told the Government today. The professions are not currently subject to statutory regulation but the HPC formally recommended a system was introduced to make it easier to ensure people were "meeting standards".

HPC chief executive Marc Seale said: "The HPC has made a recommendation to the Secretary of State for Health advocating the regulation of acupuncturists, medical herbalists and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners. "The HPC was set up in order to protect the public and we strongly believe that statutory regulation can more effectively assure that practitioners are meeting standards and are fit to practise."

A Department of Health steering group report in June said regulation was "in the public interest". It said it was important people had confidence that practitioners from these fields were "properly trained, understand the limits of their competence and know when and to whom to refer". The report added: "There has also been widespread concern about the safety, in particular, of traditional Chinese medicines when inappropriately administered."

The HPC already regulates 13 health professions, including chiropodists and podiatrists, dieticians, paramedics, physiotherapists, radiographers and speech therapists. Each profession has a professional title which can only be used by those who meet the requirements to join the HPC's register. Using the title without being on the register is a criminal offence.

The steering group said the HPC had already demonstrated effective, safe and cost-effective statutory regulation and it was "convinced" this could be extended to cover practitioners of acupuncture, herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and other traditional-medicine systems practised within the UK.

However it recognised the workload associated with regulating acupuncture, herbal medicine and traditional Chinese medicine might be greater than that previously experienced in regulating well-established health professional sectors.

The HPC said earlier this year it would welcome the opportunity to regulate the professions although the final decision about regulation and how it was achieved rested with the Government.

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Hero Father Jailed for Protest

Jolly Stanesby, a divorced father of one, has carried out numerous daring, creative protests. He handcuffed himself to the English anti-father "Children's" Minister Margaret Hodge at a family law conference in Salford in November, 2004. He spent seven days on Tamar Bridge in Plymouth, England in January, 2004, refusing to come down from his freezing perch despite being told "you could die up there," and then enraging British police by cleverly eluding capture.

Stanesby is a registered child care provider and is thus allowed to care for any child in England except his own, who he is barred from calling and is allowed to see only four days a month. Stanesby became a registered child minder in the hope he could spend more time with his five year-old daughter.

In 2006 he helped take over the live National Lottery TV show, and in 2007 made international headlines by climbing Stonehenge dressed as Fred Flintstone with a banner demanding that family law be taken "out of the Stone Age."

Last week Stanesby was jailed for his role in a rooftop protest at the home of Deputy Prime Minister Harriett Harman. English fatherhood activists are organizing a campaign to "FREE JOLLY."

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UK Labour Party Councillor Glynn Evans dissents from global warming

QUESTION - what is the biggest lie ever told to the public? Answer - that manmade carbon dioxide is responsible for accelerated climate change and global warming. Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but it is only a trace gas that accounts for a small part of the atmosphere and it has had a tendency to warm the climate by about 0.5C during the last century. At this point in time global temperatures are relatively stable.

The Green Party's, and its wider associated movements', assertion that man's continued use of fossil fuels is going to heat the atmosphere to high temperatures in many years to come is wrong. There is no evidence to support this theory. It is time science revisited the manmade carbon dioxide driven global warming theory with some urgency.

At this point in time the green movement would have me burnt at the stake for heresy in challenging orthodox global warming theory, and no, I don't have shares in any oil companies.

Henrik Svensmark, the Danish scientist with research over many years with help from many scientists in all fields of science, has proved that clouds are the main greenhouse gas. The major breakthrough came in 2005 with the SKY experiment at the Danish National Space Centre that clearly demonstrated the pivotal role of cosmic rays and ions in the seeding and formation of clouds that affect climate change and global warming. This would make the manmade global warming theory redundant.

Do we make a bonfire of all our fossil fuels? The answer is no. Global warming is not in man's control.

A full-scale cloud facility is being built in Geneva by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern).

Sustainability is important to make the earth's fossil fuels and nuclear energy last as long as possible to allow scientists to bring forward alternative fuel technologies, if mankind does not achieve this it will be a case of "would the last person to leave earth please turn off the lights".

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