On March 13, 2021, the Association of Complementary and Alternative Medicines (A-MCA) published a column in
Le Monde
announcing its intention to table a resolution in the National Assembly intended to give it the status of a government agency.
However, this association is, in fact, a lobby taking advantage of the enthusiasm for alternative health practices which promotes various figures linked to movements denounced for their sectarian aberrations.
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So-called alternative medicines represent a booming market today.
While they do not usually lead to sectarian aberration, they are nevertheless the source of most of the reports made to the Interministerial Mission for vigilance and the fight against sectarian aberrations (Miviludes).
This is how hundreds of thousands of people with serious illnesses (cancer, chronic pain, etc.) are victims of mental control, recruited into groups that isolate them from society and diverted from adequate and decisive care. .
Although little known to the general public, the founders of A-MCA (Véronique Suissa, Philippe Denormandie and Serge Guérin) have been lobbying for three years in favor of "complementary and alternative medicine", with the aim of promoting their development, their integration into the training of medical practitioners and their recognition by the State.
In a 2017 psychology thesis on "evaluating the impact of complementary and alternative medicine in cancer patients", Ms. Suissa supports some unconventional practices that she presents as not very dangerous, forgetting the 400 pseudo-medicines singled out by the World Health Organization and Miviludes as well as the 2013 senatorial investigation report “Therapeutic abuses and sectarian abuses: health in danger”.
Associated with M. Denormandie (doctor and member of his thesis jury) and M. Guérin (sociologist), Ms. Suissa co-edited in 2019 a collective work claiming to present a balanced panorama of around fifty contributors favorable or not to alternative practices.
However, only a tenth of the editorial staff was entrusted to recognized players in the fight against sectarian aberrations.
The vast majority of the 420 pages is an ode to so-called alternative medicine.
It is on this breeding ground of ambiguities that the future A-MCA benefits from significant political and academic support.
For example, a month after the publication of the book, Professor Jérôme Salomon, Director General of Health, welcomes him to the ministry for a first conference.
The Liberties and Territories parliamentary group then brought her inside the walls of the National Assembly for the First parliamentary meetings on complementary and alternative medicine.
The A-MCA was officially founded last September.
In February, it organizes the colloquium “Fighting against drifts in health”, sponsored by two deputies who signed the
World
forum
: Laurence Vanceunebrock and Agnès Firmin Le Bodo.
The latter are presented on the A-MCA website as "political experts" of the association alongside former ministers Myriam El Khomri and Jean Gatel, or deputies such as Jeanine Dubié and François-Michel Lambert, all signatories of the gallery.
However, during these lobbying initiatives, the need to scientifically assess and demonstrate the effectiveness of “alternative medicine” on the health or well-being of patients is largely overlooked.
Their validity is mainly justified by their popularity and the supposed absence of abuses if they are practiced by trained and well-intentioned people.
The A-MCA's plea in favor of training health professionals in these practices is not surprising: Mr. Denormandie is the director of health relations at the MNH mutual, and Mr. Guérin heads the master's director of health establishments. health at Inseec.
The association's last conference was also hosted by this higher education company which declares that it wants to develop in the field of health.
On the other hand, one can be surprised at their declared desire to
"fight against abuses in health"
, when several
"experts"
put forward on the A-MCA website or during public events are themselves linked. to practices singled out for their sectarian aberrations.
Thus, one of them claims to be the very controversial anthroposophic medicine, which belongs to an occultist movement born in 1913, while another promotes "cell decoding", a technique resulting from the "new Germanic medicine". postulating that diseases can be cured with thought and held responsible for many deaths.
Last February, the League for Human Rights expressed its deep concern at the maneuvers to formalize the activities of the A-MCA.
However, a first step has just been taken with the registration on March 18 of a resolution in the National Assembly.
Beyond the singular approach of the A-MCA to become a government agency, we fear that its actions will promote the entry, at the highest level of the State, of commercial interests and sectarian movements linked to pseudo -medicines.
Given the challenges and risks inherent in health issues, this situation is of the greatest concern, since it is likely to interfere with the interests of patients.
We, health professionals, academics and citizens committed to health abuses and mental control, ask the government and deputies to oppose the transformation of the A-MCA into a government agency, and more generally to the public authorities. to stop the promotion of this association.
Signatories: Association Skeptikón; Charline Delporte, Association CAFFES (National center for family support and training in the face of sectarian influence); Élisabeth Feytit, documentary filmmaker and creator of the Méta de Choc podcast; Karine Lacombe, Head of the Infectious Diseases Department, Hôpital Saint Antoine, Paris; Richard Monvoisin, science educator and teacher-researcher, Université Grenoble Alpes; Simon Schraub, Professor of Medicine, University of Strasbourg; The Extractor Collective; Joachim Thibault, ASSCO Association; Tranxen, popularizing video maker in Social and Political Sciences; Tzitzimitl, popular video maker in political philosophy; Un Monde Riant, popular video maker in scientific fact-checking; ACult, videographer; Rodolphe Bosselut, Lawyer specializing in sectarian aberrations, Paris; Lucienne de Bouvier de Cachard, Secticide Association; Secular circle for the prevention of sectarianism; Xavier Durando, Professor of Medicine, Jean Perrin Cancer Center, Clermont Ferrand; Jean-Jacques Fraslin, General practitioner, Nantes; Renaud Marhic, essayist; Didier Pachoud, GEMPPI Association; Grégoire Perra, professor of philosophy; Nicolas Pinsault, Physiotherapist and Teacher-Researcher, Université Grenoble Alpes; Simone Risch, Infos-sectes Midi-Pyrénées; Guy Rouquet, Association Psychotherapy Vigilance; Benoît Roux, regional development consultant; Mathieu Van Dessel, General practitioner, internship supervisor, University of Paris.
No conflict of interest is declared by the present signatories with the exception of Grégoire Perra who was sued by people and institutions related to anthroposophy (one case won and three in progress) and Jean-Jacques Fraslin who was sued for defamation by a homeopathic doctor and lithotherapist (case won).