Congratulations on your recent write-up: 'Big Tobacco's grip over gov't revealed'. Such a report is very timely.

However, the case with the pharmaceutical industry is much worse. Take the case of Viagra. It normally takes two or more years to register a new drug with the ministry's pharmaceutical department. In Malaysia's case it took only eight months.

The food supplements industry currently stands in the way of pharmaceutical drugs industry from making mega bucks. But starting with the European Union - in contrary to the Codex Alimentarius Commission which labels vitamins and supplements as food - the pharmaceutical industry, which thrives on business of disease, are slowly but surely seeing to the ban of food supplements from the market.

It was recently World Aids Day. We heard our Health Minister Chua Jui Meng lamenting the failure on the war on Aids. We hear of Malaysian Aids Council chairperson Marina Mahathir lamenting the same too. We are conditioned into thinking and hoping for a vaccine to cure Aids. A patentable vaccine that can only come from the big pharma.

But the scientific community already knows that vitamin C can inhibit the proliferation of human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1). It was reported in 1990 that large quantities of Vitamin C can suppress virus production and cell fusionin HIV-infected T-lymphocytic cell. Three renowned scientists: Steve Haraketh, Raxit Jariwalla, and Linus Pauling published their scientific reports in a journal so well read amongst the medical community that there is absolutely no way this important research could have escaped the knowledge of the scientific community.

The key question is: why did the pharmaceutical industry ignore this bit of knowledge? Why hasn't there been any follow-up on this discovery? Why isn't the pharmaceutical industry putting their research funds into nutritional therapies?

The answer is plain simple. Vitamin C is in the domain of the public and cannot be patented. So there is not much money that can be made from it, even if Vitamin C can have preventive and therapeutic effect on all infections.

It was quite disappointing for us in the Society of Natural Health that newsprint editors declined publishing our press releases. Regarding HIV/Aids, nutrition, natural health issues, we have much to say and much to contribute to the welfare of the people of Malaysia. But what is the point of writing, knowing quite well our criticism of the current medical system and the pharmaceutical industry will not be published?


Dr Wong Ang Peng is the president of the Society of Natural Health and also director of the Humanitarian Project - Health for All.