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Thank you for giving coverage to this vital issue, albeit briefly and somewhat inaccurately. I trust that you will allow me to respond to MCC Chairman Folb's recently published mischievously misleading letter of defense as follows:

Whilst most of what Folb has to say regarding "medicines" is correct, his presentation is seriously flawed by an invalid far too literal interpretation of the definition of a medicine without due regard for the vital context of original legislative intent, which was to ensure the safety and efficacy of the novel toxic synthesised drug phenomenon of the early 1960's and which now is responsible for hundreds of millions of serious adverse reactions and hundreds of thousands of iatrogenic and nosocomial related fatalities worldwide each year.

Instead of effectively utilising their limited resources to this noble end, the MCC and its secretariat are becoming increasingly neglectful of this duty and increasingly abusive of the intended emergency provisions of the Act which defines a medicine in such an open-ended way as literally anything "modifying any somatic, psychic or organic function" so as to enable the Act to be more widely employed "if necessary", now increasingly commonly to arbitrarily restrict virtually any substances, irrespective of their benign status and "health building" or "preventative" rather than therapeutic "medicinal purpose".

The statutes of the Act make reference to the significant contextual concept of "medicinal purpose' which it defines as "the treatment or prevention of a disease or some other curative or therapeutic purpose". I believe that this principle was meant to and should be the practical guiding parameter for the application of the otherwise unlimited definition of a medicine in cases where public safety and gullibility (the latter relating to the prevention provision) are not at risk from a natural health substance. This interpretation is in line with eg. the UK Medicines Act (we are now a member of the commonwealth) which reads that "whether or not a substance is a medicine depends on the "purpose" for which it is sold", rather than its health properties per se.

This leads to my contention that the MCC are acting unfairly against natural health products to protect the pharmaceutical companies towards whom the allopathic medically orientated and composed Council are historically philosophically advantageously biased and hence tolerate the high rate of adverse reactions and fatalities attendant to allopathic drugs which compare with those from alcohol and tobacco abuse, which are additional scourges paradoxically tolerated by the medical regulatory authorities and clearly due to the resultant significant financial contribution that these make to the allopathic patient load.

No amount of mere denial by the MCC can suffice to refute the pharmaceutical conspiracy since the facts are adequately recorded in the MCC and Dept. of Health's own files and in the case of this latest conflict, in the official submissions to and minutes of the meeting Folb refers to, the complainant which precipitated that crisis meeting being Pharma-Natura, a pharmaceutical company and the complaint being competition from imported herbal and other natural health products, which is a relatively new slant to the conspiracy. Other ominous factors supporting this contention is that the new MD of this company used to be the head of MCC inspectorate and has also recently developed an electronic regulatory programme for which he holds the copyright and further that he and the company's technical director shared a platform with Folb and the registrar of the MCC at a recent symposium.

Folb's further contention that at the meeting referred to, agreement was reached by all interested parties on all the issues raised in the M & G article is also a mischievous distortion of the truth, which is that the few pharmaceutical companies present held a minority view and were acting out of vested interests to empower themselves advantageously over non-pharmaceutical participants. If one correctly reads "parties concerned with natural health substances", as per the title of the official Dept. of Health agenda, then Folb's statement is seen to be fraudulent and once again confirms my contention of MCC bias in favour of the pharmaceutical companies.

I also note with interest that my previous charge relating to the "totally unregulated traditional African remedies" (the word "healers" was a misquote) is conveniently totally ignored in spite of the fact that it is reliably known that many of these are significantly toxic and put consumers at risk. This bias against exotic herbs and natural health substances is in serious conflict with Section 8, the Equality clause of the (Interim) Constitution which forbids discrimination on the basis of culture and reads further that "prima facie proof of discrimination shall be presumed to be sufficient proof of unfair discrimination unless the contrary has been established". It is on the supremacy of the Constitution preamble and section 8, amongst others that Pharmapact consider the Medicines and Related Substances Act to be of no force and affect and intends to challenge the MCC in the courts should sufficient funds be raised over the next few months. Our contact number is 04457-7765/Fax 7695.