EHTPA Conference 2012
The European Herbal and Traditional Practitioner’s Association, an
umbrella organisation for several professional associations across
Europe, held its 2012 conference in London recently. I attended the event in my capacity as president of the Irish Register of Herbalists. The IRH are an associate member of EHPTA.
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The conference was centered around a number of high quality
presentations by Dr Rozz Gibbs researching the effects of Chinese herbs
in UTI infections; as well as the very entertaining Dr Andrew Flower outlining
general developments in research on herbal medicines followed by a panel ‘Scoping the next decade for Herbal Medicine’ featuring Simon Mills, Alison Denham, Nick Lampert, Andrew Flower and Dee Atkinson.
Dr Chris Etheridge lead the afternoon session with a fascinating
presentation on the effects of certain herbs on inflammatory pathways
and the role this has in cancer, including exciting new information on
Milk Thistle but the highlight was surely Dedj Liebrandt’s ‘Clinical Experience of Acute Medicine’.
Dedj has been on the frontline of festivals such as Glastonbury for
over 20 years and her accounts and practical suggestions for dealing
with acute symptoms were fascinating.
The event was book-ended by updates on the statutory regulation (SR)
of herbalists in the UK. Michael Guthrie from the HCPC, the regulatory
body, discussed what regulation might look like and how it would be
implemented, while Michael McIntyre summarised the latest information on
SR close the event. All in all an excellent event all round.
I do have some reservations about the overly clinical theme of the conference and the tendency to see herbal medicine solely in terms of research evidence. This ties in with the drive for SR itself of which I remain cautious, and of course only time will tell....
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