FROM PHARMAPACT


TO : Mr O Pharasi

Chief Director

Registration, Regulation & Procurement

Dept. of Health

Pretoria

12 February 98

Dear Mr Pharasi

MEDICINES CONTROL COUNCIL REGULATION OF NATURAL HEALTH SUBSTANCES AS MEDICINES: ARGUMENT AGAINST ALLEGED LEGALITY.

Thank you for your letter of 11 February.

I am flabbergasted at the import of your reply, which makes no reference to the main report, which apparently is not going to be made available to the Task Force, for reasons we can only guess at, my first guess being a cover-up of the embarrassing circumstances at hand, confirmed by the lack of communication from the Department since the report was received by the D-G's Office on 2 February. We also protest at the once again undemocratic nature in which now this "expert" Task Team has been imposed on role-players without the invited input from all role-players, which is simply a repetition of the "listings debacle" and hence suffers from the same lack of credibility and likelyhood of total illegality. We hereby, formally request the affiliations of the two external experts and also the names and affiliations of the rest of the Task Team.

Having dealt with this aspect, we are compelled to return to our main concern, which is what the hell are the Department of Health going to do about our investigative revelations to the effect that 50% of black (direct quote) South African deaths (from acute poisonings) are attributable to traditional medicines, and in particular the blind eye turned by professors Schlebusch and Folb to this epidemic, over not only the last couple of decades, but to this very day, and all the while hypocritically masquerading as "the champions of public safety", and aggressively witch - hunting innocuous natural health substances whilst the majority of our citizens poison themselves to death on traditional African herbal and muti medicines, presumably as part of some rightwing genocidal plot against the African people, apparently aided and abetted by the Registrar and Chairman of the MCC.

An urgent detailed response is awaited with interest.

Yours sincerely

Stuart Thomson & Anthony Rees

National Co-ordinators

PHARMAPACT


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