I refer to the Malaysian Medical Association's recent announcement in the press that the public should be wary about various claims by herbal manufacturers o­n its effects o­n Sars. Frankly, it is about time the MMA to stop misleading the Malaysian public.

In the recent years, the MMA has been acting and behaving as if they are masters of everyone's health destiny. With the majority of its members degree holders of allopathic medicine, it is about time the MMA put a stop to their paranoid behaviour about alternative health-care.

It must be made known that a degree in allopathic medicine (as opposed to alternative medicine) o­nly covers the basics o­n subjects like anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, pathology, medicine and surgery along with some of the miscellaneous subjects like jurisprudence.

It merely gives them the basic foundation to practice medical care for the sick. It does not make them masters of health-care for the universal compendium of the human population. I have heard enough of the MMA's opinion o­n herbal medicine and the lengths they can go to discredit herbal medicine and practitioners in alternative medicine. I liken this to the blind trying to lead the blind.

First of all, they are as unqualified to speak o­n herbal medicine just as they are unqualified to speak o­n engineering or actuarial science. Alternative medicine (herbal medicine or any other allied subjects like homeopathy) is a totally different subject matter from allopathic medicine - allopathic practitioners should not start interfering in something they are not trained in.

Yet they dare reveal their dubious and defunct minds to the Malaysian public as if we are still living in the 1920s. I call this outright misleading tactics of the allopathic doctors. The MMA should focus o­n commenting over allopathic health-care o­nly - leave the field of herbal medicine or any of the alternative medical fraternities to the experts in this field.

If there is an opinion that is required of a specific herbal product then let the experts in this field make it. Please refrain from making unauthorised statements or casting any unprofessional opinions o­n alternative medical practices or products.

Further, MMA should focus o­n the terrible crimes of negligence committed by the practitioners of allopathic medicine. The kind of negligence where wrong organs have been removed, or organs have been removed from the wrong patients, speaks volumes of professional misconduct. The practice of using highly destructive drugs o­n patients such as the likes of chemotherapy drugs when extensive medical surveys have proven in incontrovertible terms its total inappropriateness for use o­n humans. Yet allopathic medical doctors have not ceased its use, even insisting its use o­n cancer patients.

Why do they persist to use such archaic procedures o­n patients? These very same doctors inculcate such terrible fear into the hearts and minds of cancer patients that they resign themselves into accepting any and everything that is told to them by their doctors. Why haven't these doctors used their research-based knowledge to provide safer methods in the treatment of such diseases and let the patient get a new lease of life?

As far as the latest Sars phenomenon, let us be rational. In 1996 there were about 4,000 deaths in Hong Kong due to pneumonia and yet there was no outcry. Yet with less than 200 Sars deaths in Hong Kong, there is the huge outcry. Allopathic doctors have failed to provide the appropriate treatment, and express their helplessness simply because there isn't a drug to kill this so-called coronavirus.

When will they ever learn that drugs cannot cure the patient? Cure must come from the patient themselves. It is the duty of the doctor to help and assist the patient to achieve this cure.

In spite of all this, allopathic doctors have the audacity to make scathing condemnation of the well-founded systems of herbal medicines. The systems of alternative medicine are today based o­n excellent principles of medicine, science and technology, well proven and well established. It is about time the public be vary of the suspicious and cunning intentions of the MMA. They fear competition and realise that the world over has more faith in alternative medicine than conventional pharmaceutical drugs as their first choice of therapy.