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| Call to de-list natural therapies |
8-Nov-2006 |
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By Paul Smith
A CAMPAIGN is being waged to strip 2000 complementary medicine products from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods amid claims the listing dupes the public into thinking the therapies work.
Current regulations allow the Therapeutic Goods Administration to list therapeutics, despite limited evidence for their efficacy, because they are deemed low-risk and only carry claims for health maintenance for non-serious, self-limiting conditions.
But Ms Loretta Marron, a retired scientist from Queensland, said the system meant the TGA was giving fake legitimacy to remedies with “no basis in science”— such as homeopathy.
“If I am successful [in getting these products de-listed] it will help clean our pharmacies of placebo products that are sold on the basis that they are natural or traditional,” she said.
Ms Marron’s campaign is supported by Professor Lesley Campbell, professor of medicine at the University of NSW and director of the diabetes centre at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, who has written to Federal Health Minister Mr Tony Abbott calling for TGA reform.
A more rigorous approach to TGA listing is supported by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, which also said the availability of some products in pharmacies and doctors’ surgeries was giving “a pseudo justification for their efficacy”.
In a letter to Ms Marron, Mr Pio Cesarin, director of the TGA’s non-prescription medicines branch, said there were “appropriate regulatory boundaries” to cover non-conventional therapies and this was designed to allow consumers the choice “should they wish to access these medicines”.
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