DIFUSSION OF THE USE OF HEALTH GIVING, CULINARY AND AROMATIC HERBS.
- The use of herbs should be fomented and not restricted. This diffusion should consist in all the forms that herbs and flowers are used, weather they be infusions, decoctions, in all types of artesian and modern packaging, such as elixirs, tinctures and macerated preparations, cataplasms, compresses, balms and other diverse phyto-therapeutic cultural expressions, aromatherapuetic or floral therapy. All the cultivators, which are deposited in a rich, old and beneficent tradition, often of family character, should feel helped by the State. In particular, the Chilean state should value and promote the herb use of our forefathers and our traditional cultures, especially the people of the Aonikenk o Tewelches, Atacameño o Likanantai, Aymara, Diaguita, Kawèsqar o Alakalufes, Kolla, Mapuche, Molle, Pikunche, Rapa Nui, Sel`nam, Kawèsqar, Yagàn o Yàmana, etc. This attitude should also be validated for all botanical elements pertaining to the patrimony of humanity, weather they be autochthonous, Latin-American or from other countries of a rich botanical tradition.
- At the height of the 21st century, diffusion and distribution of not one herb or vegetable plant should be restricted or prohibited, unless is possesses micro concentrations of proved toxic properties, or has been synthesized in laboratories.
- The investigations of the attributes and uses of the vegetable species on behalf of the official Chilean medicine should also be fomented, without pursuing ulterior motives of pharmaceutical monopolization. The possible interactions with other substances, food or pharmaceutical, can in no way justify any restrictions, prohibitions or sale to the businesses of clinics or pharmacies. What can only be justified is adequate labeling, that explicates the characteristics, possibly in visible places of the packaging.
- The country should not be left behind in the advance of knowledge of other herbs and health giving plants that are used around the world. For this reason, it is urgent and necessary to prepare a Traditional Medicine World Herbolarium (TMWH). Studies of this nature are essentially previous to all attempts to establish laws in respect to herbal medicines. To do the contrary is a simple administrative exercise, a theoretical error.
- The mix and the combined use of herbs, in all its uses: health giving, culinary, aromatic or cosmetic – is part of the traditional and strategically naturist culture, and therefore should be preserved. The preparation of herb mixes is perhaps the ethnic-botanical part most noble, creative and useful in the maintenance of health for human beings. For this reason, the Traditional Medicinal Herbolarium of Chile, managed by the Ministry of Health, should become more profound in its compilation of the aspects of herb combinations. These studies should be realized without ulterior pharmaceutical motives. This attitude is true science, and the rest is political or renders itself to powerful interests and the traffic of influences.
