Some examples of licensed Chinese herbal medicines are shown in Figure
6.11.
Licensing of CHMs in Europe
Most herbal medicines on the UK market are sold and supplied as
unlicensed herbal remedies under the provisions of the 1968 Medicines Act
(http://tinyurl.com/ 3yhq9p). The main legislation requires that medicines
placed on the market must have a licence, which requires meeting standards
of safety, quality and efficacy. These licensing conditions pose inappropriate
demands on most herbal medicines, because plants are chemically complex
and variable, active constituents are not always known and the huge costs
cannot be recouped through patenting. Hence, there are very few licensed
herbal medicines on the UK market.
Under the 1968 Act, herbal remedies are exempt from the licensing
requirement if eitherthe herbal remedy is made up on the premises from
which it is supplied, after a one-to-one consultation (Section 6.1 of the Act),
orit is an over-the-counter (pre-prepared) remedy, in which case no thera-
peutic claims can be made for it (Section 6.2 of the Act). These exemptions
only apply to plant remedies, so medicines containing non-plant ingredients
require a medicine licence.
In recent years these provisions, which provide no specific regulation for
herbal medicines, have been considered inadequate to ensure their safety and
quality. There are a number of reasons including: adverse effects from some
herbal ingredients (natural does not mean safe); misidentification of some
158 | Traditional medicine
Figure 6.11 Examples of licensed Chinese Herbal Medicines.