Mark Freeman
The Therapeutic Products Bill is another attack on New Zealanders’ right to manage their own health, says Dr Matt Shelton of New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science.
The bill was introduced into Parliament last November and was then referred to the Health Select Committee. Submissions close on March 5 and can be made here.
According to the Ministry of Health, one aim of the bill is to provide for “acceptable safety and quality of natural health products” since there are risks if they are used “inappropriately”.
However, Dr Shelton*, who taught clinical nutrition at post-graduate level for ten years, says natural health products, which include vitamins, minerals, herbal medicines and traditional medicines, have been “part of the human existence forever”. Many people use natural supplements to support their nutrition and health, and many natural products are very powerful, he says.
The ministry says the bill is “not intended to stop people buying natural health products, unless there is robust scientific evidence to justify restricting it”.
But, Dr Shelton says, the bill is an attack on the natural supplements industry, and access to natural health products could be removed.
The way the bill is written it’s very clearly leaving open the likelihood of very, very swingeing fines [and] a jail sentence if a regulator doesn’t like what you‘ve written or what you say about a product that you use. … And it seems obviously slanted towards shoeing in really inadequately tested, brand-new and potentially disastrous biotech products.
Dr Shelton is urging people to lodge their “objections” to the bill, a term he prefers over the official term “submissions”.
We do not submit to this. These are our elected representatives. We put them there and we pay them, and they are supposed to be responsive to what we want and what we say. They’re supposed to only do things with our consent, and of course, most of the last three years has happened without the consent of many of us.
More information on the bill can be found in Liz Gunn’s interview with Dr Shelton and on Dr Guy Hatchard’s website.
* Dr Shelton does not currently hold a practising certificate.