It is fair to say that I am not naturally one of life’s royalists. From what I can tell, they’re a bit of a sideshow, an irrelevance to a modern society, but I can’t be bothered to argue the case for abolition because too many people like them. How else can you explain why so many people turn up to watch them wave or to wait outside a hospital whilst a junior royal has a baby? I am not sure royalists are all that sure either but if they’re happy, then I’ll have to live with it!
Prince Charles is not of my favourite royals. He is plainly not of rocket scientist standards on the IQ front and has far too much time on his hands. This is not an unusual state of affairs since most royals have too much time on their hands but Chuck fills his time writing letters, many to politicians. Some are harmless, like his keen interest in agriculture but others, like his interest in alternative medicines, are bonkers. In fact, in a letter to then PM Tony Blair, Charles said, “We briefly mentioned the European Union Directive on Herbal Medicines, which is having such a deleterious effect on the complementary medicine sector in this country by effectively outlawing the use of certain herbal extracts.” Well, thank god for the EU, I say. Just look at the claims made for the uses of herbal “medicine” and the scientific rebuttals:
They’re natural. (So what? Strychnine is natural.)
They’re safer than prescription drugs. (Maybe some are, some aren’t; how would you know?)
They’re milder than prescription drugs. (That would depend on the dosage of active ingredient.)
They’re less likely to cause side effects. (When they have been as well studied as prescription drugs, they may turn out to have just as many or more side effects. All effective drugs have side effects, and if an herbal medicine has fewer side effects it might have fewer therapeutic effects too. Formal systems for reporting adverse effects have long been in place for prescription drugs; not so for herbal remedies.)
They’re different from prescription drugs. (Some are identical to prescription drugs, like red yeast rice which contains the same ingredient as prescription lovastatin; and some herbal products have been found contaminated with prescription drugs.)
They’re less expensive. (True, but is a cheaper, inferior product a good bargain?)
They’re easier to obtain. (True, you don’t have to make an appointment with a doctor; but that means you don’t get the benefit of a doctor’s knowledge.)
The mixture of ingredients in a plant can have synergistic effects. (This is widely claimed but almost never substantiated. The other ingredients are just as likely to counteract the desired effect or to cause unwanted adverse effects.)
For every disease, God has provided a natural remedy. (Perhaps this is a comforting thought for believers, but it is not based on any evidence and is not convincing to atheists and agnostics. And it doesn’t help us find that natural remedy.)
This is the sort of nonsense spouted by, of all people, the heir to the throne; a man with no plan and a man without a clue. We are not talking remedies and cures that bear scientific scrutiny. Early humans used many of these herbal products, when there was no such thing as science or evidence. It was trial and error. You can imagine many people in those days consuming “remedies” that killed them. They wouldn’t have been trialled like modern day drugs. But then, herbal treatments are trialled nowadays either. People just assume they work. And of course Prince Charles is one of these people.
He’s entitled to a view, of course he is, and he’s entitled to write to whoever he likes in order to express it. It just worries me that our future head of state has such odd views. But then, I suppose I shouldn’t given that the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is a supporter of homeopathy and you don’t find a strand of medicine that’s any more than useless than that.
