The goal of the Natural Law Party is to create a disease-free society, giving everyone in Britain the best possible opportunity to enjoy a long life in perfect health.

Elimination of disease can only be achieved through prevention: the Natural Law Party will make primary prevention the top priority of health services.

To achieve this goal, the Natural Law Party will implement a comprehensive programme of prevention-oriented natural health care—Maharishi Vedic Medicine—that has proven its effectiveness in hundreds of scientific research studies.

The technologies of Maharishi Vedic Medicine utilize the inner intelligence of the human physiology—the intelligence of Natural Law—, which underlies and governs all bodily processes.

Research has demonstrated that key prevention programmes advocated by the Natural Law Party can reduce health care needs and costs by more than 50 percent over five years.

Through investment in this programme:

• millions of people will be spared the pain and distress of ill-health,
• everyone will enjoy greater well-being and an improved quality of life through the positive effects of these programmes on individual and collective health;
• savings of up to £34 billion can be made annually after five years (based on projected NHS spending).

The Natural Law Party’s prevention programme can be easily integrated into existing health services and will incorporate all that is truly useful and non-detrimental in the current system of health care, as well as other safe, evidence-based measures that have been so far been ignored or under-funded due to the current drug-dominated approach to health.

This programme will be made available equally to people of all ages and all social backgrounds in every part of the country.

Chronic ill-health remains highly prevalent in Britain. In a recent large study conducted by the International Association for the Study of Pain, approximately 50% of the British population were found to suffer from chronic pain. In half of those affected, the pain was either highly disabling and moderately/severely limiting; or was of high intensity even though they had relatively low levels of disability. These findings indicate that something very important is lacking in our current approach to health.

Of course, even these alarming figures do not reflect true extent of chronic ill-health in the nation since pain is frequently not a feature of many serious, incapacitating conditions (for example, heart failure, chronic lung diseases, and many neurological disorders).

While some conditions such as ischaemic heart diseases have declined over the past 30 years, many important chronic disorders have become much more common. The prevalence of diabetes is expected to double by 2010, affecting 3 million people, while obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, heart failure, and several common forms of cancer are also rising rapidly. With the growing impact of the ageing population, this trend seems set to continue unless new knowledge is introduced into health care.

The current approach to health care, perpetuated by successive governments, is overwhelmingly focussed on the management of disease. Thus, we currently have a national sickness service, not a national health service. The limitations of this disease-oriented approach as a way to improve health standards are becoming increasingly apparent.

Despite repeated lip service to the principle that ‘prevention is better than cure’, the proportion of the health budget spent on prevention has declined progressively in recent decades. Currently, less than one percent of NHS spending is used for true primary prevention—yet it is here that the battle for health is largely won or lost.

Not surprisingly, our current system of health care fails to prevent the majority of illnesses. As a result, successive generations are condemned to suffer chronic ill-health, treatment services are stretched to breaking point, and spiralling costs are controlled only by overt or covert rationing.

It is widely accepted that as much as 50 percent of illness could be prevented even if existing knowledge were implemented fully. For example, the government’s NHS plan acknowledges that smoking and poor diet are responsible for nearly 60 percent of all cancer deaths. Similarly, many other major disorders, such as heart disease, and diabetes, could be radically reduced if effective primary prevention were instituted.

Through effective prevention, the burden of ill-health can be progressively reduced, relieving pressure on over-stretched diagnostic and treatment services. This in turn will free financial and professional resources for delivery of a much higher quality of care for those who do fall sick.

Thus, the Natural Law Party’s prevention programme will not only benefit those who are spared the distress and pain of illness, but will also bring relief to patients who need treatment and are currently caught up in the intense competition for resources.

In addition, treatment services will also be immeasurably enhanced by inclusion of the comprehensive strategies of Maharishi Vedic Medicine, which ideally meets the current need for a genuinely holistic, patient-centred approach to health that is free from harmful side-effects. By implementing all that is truly useful for health, it is realistic to set our sights on creating a disease-free society.

Despite numerous NHS re-organizations under successive governments over the past 30 years, the same problems recur again and again. Although, well-intentioned, each new shake-up seems merely to have increased bureaucracy, demoralized NHS staff, and diverted attention and resources away from clinical needs.

Politicians have eagerly seized on the opportunity to make political capital out of issues such as waiting lists, poor professional performance, and dubious league tables, but have consistently failed to address the root cause of the health care crisis. This is not merely a matter of money or administration, but hinges on failure to prevent illness, coupled with dependence on treatments that have harmful side-effects.

Like its predecessors, the government’s NHS Plan offers little to reverse the long history of neglect. The impact of measures promised on the overall quality of health care in this country will be relatively small. Chronic illness will still be very common and largely incurable; the rising tide of age and life-style related disorders will not abate; and costs will continue to escalate.

Our nation’s fundamental health problems will not be remedied by raising funding to the European average of 7.6% of GNP, as promised in the last budget, nor even by emulating the much greater spending found in countries such as Holland, Canada, and USA.

Anyone who follows health issues beyond these shores will be aware that our problems are not unique. Despite great differences in mode of health care provision, funding, and numbers of doctors, all the western industrialized nations are facing increasing pressures on their health services and are similarly burdened by chronic ill-health (for example, over 100 million Americans are estimated to suffer from chronic disease).

Public dissatisfaction with health services is at an all-time high not only in the USA and Germany, but also in Holland and Canada, which have often been regarded as models of well-resourced and equitable health care. Meanwhile, rapidly escalating costs in France’s much praised health care system have resulted in closure of thousands of hospital beds, tighter controls on access to specialists, and caps on reimbursement to physicians.

These international developments serve to emphasize that there is a worldwide need for new knowledge in health care.

A new and more effective approach to health must go beyond the partial, fragmentary understanding of the body which underpins pharmacological or genetic manipulation of specific physiological processes.

Health involves processes of such enormous complexity and dynamism, not only within the human body, but also in its myriad interactions with the environment. This vast self-interacting network of Laws of Nature cannot be fully comprehended, let alone managed, by human intelligence. A higher intelligence is needed if optimal health is to be nurtured and sustained.

Fortunately, the human body already provides a perfect example of administration based on higher intelligence, integrating the needs and tendencies of 100 trillion cells and their countless interactions into a beautifully balanced whole. The body cannot survive for even an instant, nor can any medical technology succeed, without the operation and support of this inner intelligence.

Advances in our understanding of the genetic basis of life emphasize the shift in our understanding of the human body from a purely material viewpoint to a perspective that recognizes the primary role of intelligence at the basis of matter. In the self-organizing, self-expressing and self-propagating information contained in the DNA, modern science has glimpsed the enormously powerful intelligence that underlies and governs the body’s continuously changing material structure.

Meanwhile, the basic sciences that underpin modern medicine are also identifying intelligence as the fundamental element underlying all structures and processes in the universe. In physics, supersymmetric quantum field theories have located the source of all the laws of nature governing creation in the Unified Field of Natural Law. Analysis of the self-referral, self-organizing structure of the Unified Field reveals that it exhibits the defining qualities of intelligence, or consciousness.

With this discovery of pure intelligence at the basis of nature’s functioning, modern science has confirmed the ancient Vedic description of Natural Law, brought to light by His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi over the past 45 years.

In a remarkable development based on Maharishi’s work in the field of consciousness, neuroscientist Professor Tony Nader has demonstrated that the different aspects of the human physiology form an exact replica of the patterns of intelligence contained in the 40 aspects of the Veda and Vedic Literature—the 40 aspects of Natural Law.

The remarkable symmetry between the knowledge of Natural Law found in the ancient Vedic Literature and the modern understanding of the human body, built up over 400 years of biomedical research, provides the basis for a more complete and effective approach to health care—Maharishi Vedic Medicine.

The main principle of Maharishi Vedic Medicine is to restore and maintain proper communication between the inner intelligence of the body and its expression in the structures and functions of the physiology. As a result, the body’s innate capacity for balance, self-repair, and resistance to disorder can be harnessed to the full.

Maharishi Vedic Medicine is prevention-oriented, cost-effective, free from harmful side-effects, and fully complementary to all other useful approaches to health. More than 600 research studies have documented the benefits of Maharishi Vedic Medicine for all areas of life.

Maharishi Vedic Medicine utilizes technologies drawn from all 40 aspects of the Veda and Vedic Literature, encompassing all areas of concern to health—physiology, psychology, behaviour and environment. These methods address many important aspects of health care that have previously been neglected, including:

• Introduction of the science and technology of consciousness—the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programme—into all aspects of health care. By culturing the ability to think and act spontaneously in accordance with Natural Law, thereby preventing violation of the Laws of Nature, development of higher consciousness through the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programme eliminates the root cause of sickness and suffering;
• Establishment of Health Education Centres in every locality and training of prevention-oriented health education specialists;
• Training for the whole population in a simple system of Self-Pulse Reading, which enables the individual to assess the degree of balance or imbalance in the physiology, thereby allowing timely adjustment of diet and behaviour in order to prevent disorder;
• Balanced diet according to individual need, with emphasis on promoting optimal digestion and metabolism of food;
• Promotion of natural, healthy, nutritious food, which is free from toxic substances, including a ban on genetically-modified crops and foodstuffs, and education about the benefits of vegetarian diet for good health;
• Behavioural measures, including guidelines for health-promoting daily and seasonal routines that are in tune with Natural Law;
• Suitable exercise according to individual need;
• Natural herbal preparations which strengthen resistance to disease and restore balance to the physiology, and are free from harmful side-effects;
• Physiological purification procedures to eliminate deep-rooted impurities and imbalances;
• Architecture and planning measures which ensure that the orientation and design of homes, schools, work premises, and communities are in accord with Natural Law, and therefore do not generate imbalance and disease;
• Measures to ensure that individual health is supported by natural cycles in the universe. Modern science is increasingly recognizing the influence of solar and lunar cycles on human physiology. Professor Tony Nader’s discovery of Veda in human physiology has demonstrated that specific structures in the human brain have precise counterparts in the structure of the solar system and the universe as a whole. Maharishi Vedic Medicine includes systematic methods for calculating the influence on the individual of these cosmic counterparts of human physiology, and for ensuring that this effect is always supportive of health and well being;
• The Natural Law Party will implement practical measures to create collective health for the whole society by establishing a permanent group of 7000 Yogic Flyers. More than 40 well-controlled scientific studies have shown that this technology creates a powerful influence of coherence and harmony in national and world consciousness, thereby reducing negative tendencies and promoting positive trends for the whole nation.15

The foundation of good health is the ability to act spontaneously in accordance with Natural Law. Although the technology to develop this crucial ability is available, successive governments have failed to utilize it. At present, the government not only fails to protect our young people from acquiring lifestyle and dietary habits that will inevitably undermine their health, but even encourages them to do so through policies that protect the tobacco industry and permit massive promotion of smoking, alcohol consumption and other harmful behaviours.

A news item in the British Medical Journal quotes evidence given by a solicitor about the tobacco industry to the House of Commons health select committee, stating that ‘judges in this country are ‘‘keen to protect the industry’s interests’’ while successive governments have colluded with tobacco firms and have failed to curb their unethical practices.’ The present government’s climb down over tobacco sponsorship for formula one motor racing continues this dishonourable tradition.

Thus, while the government talks piously of improving treatment facilities, its policies—like those of previous administrations—actually encourage development of the diseases that are overloading our health services.

Both the Natural Law Party and groups of medical doctors have independently informed successive governments of strong research evidence that the Transcendental Meditation programme reduces smoking, alcohol and drug abuse more effectively than conventional substance abuse programmes.

No action was taken, despite further evidence that this and other programmes of Maharishi Vedic Medicine also reduce major risk factors for disease, decrease need for health care, reduce health care costs, and combat stress in the individual, the family, and the work place and promote harmony in society as whole. Meanwhile, substance abuse, mental health and behavioural problems, and eating disorders among the young have continued to rise.

To condemn another generation to the ravages of tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, when an effective solution is at hand, would seem to be a clear violation of human rights.

The same neglect is evident in our approach to primary prevention of heart disease and cancer. Dr. Alexander Leaf, former Chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Harvard Medical School, described the current approach to coronary heart disease as ‘inadequate, despite massive efforts to apply costly treatments after the disease is clinically manifest... Doctors are too preoccupied with measures that only lessen symptoms and which will do nothing for the next generation of 30-, 40-, or 50-year-olds, dooming them to the same heart disease.’

The Natural Law Party will empower every individual regardless of age, social or economic background with the means to think and act spontaneously in accord with Natural Law, thereby avoiding suffering and contributing maximum to their own lives and to the well-being of others.

More successful self-care is increasingly recognized as crucial to the development of a healthier nation and reduction of pressure on health services. The Natural Law Party’s health programmes cultivate self-sufficiency in health for every individual—freedom from dependence on doctors, invasive procedures, and potentially toxic medication. The funds necessary to start implementing this solution are small compared to the vast sums currently defrayed on managing the effects of our failure to prevent illness. Moreover, the proven cost-reducing effect of Maharishi Vedic Medicine will ensure that any outlay is rapidly recouped.

As a recent issue of the British Medical Journal emphasizes, there is a new awareness of the need to reduce the incidence of iatrogenic disease, which currently poses a major threat to health in every country. In a textbook devoted to the subject, the eminent British physician and academic Lord Butterfield wrote that iatrogenic disease had become ‘one of the most prevalent conditions facing modern health services’. This view is strongly borne out by scientific research, as evidenced by many thousands of articles on hazards of medical treatment published in leading medical journals over the past three decades.

For example, the 1990 Harvard Medical Practice Study found evidence that iatrogenic diseases kill far more people in the United States than guns, road accidents, or many much more publicized disorders. Research on a series of patients admitted to the medical service of a university hospital in Boston, Massachusetts found that 36 percent suffered from iatrogenic disease. In addition, it has been estimated that 15 percent of hospital days in the United States are devoted to the treatment of drug toxicity.

Another study commissioned by the Australian Department of Health showed that up to 14,000 people died in 1992 as a result of preventable adverse events in hospital, with a further 25,000 to 30,000 suffering permanent disability. We do not know the position in Britain because data have not been collected, but there would appear to be no grounds for complacency.

The toxicity of drugs is especially disturbing in light of serious doubts about the effectiveness and appropriateness of much drug use. For example, researchers at Yale University School of Medicine reviewed studies showing that between 24 and 66 percent of antibiotics prescribed in American hospitals are inappropriate. In another study, from Harvard Medical School, it was found that nearly 25 percent of older people were prescribed potentially inappropriate medications, placing them at risk of adverse effects. The authors suggest that their findings represent only ‘the tip of the iceberg.’

Worryingly, Dr David Kessler, then Chief of the United States Food and Drug Administration, estimates that ‘only one percent of all serious drug reactions are reported’.

Significantly, the problem is not confined to a few major drug disaster, as the following quote from a major textbook on iatrogenic disease shows: ‘The thalidomide tragedy looms so ponderously over the history of side-effects that any inclusion of it in a general discussion all too easily distorts the entire picture, causing other events to pale into insignificance and suggesting that since 1961 we have solved the worst of our problems. That is most certainly not true. The number of patients gravely injured or killed in epidemics of drug-induced disease since then is a vast multiple of the number of thalidomide victims; the range of injuries produced is also so wide that no simple solution to the problem seems likely to emerge.’

Thus, while extreme cases of drug toxicity may be terminated by withdrawal of the offending agent, the more subtle damage wrought by many drugs with ‘acceptable’ safety records goes on unchecked. Magnified through massive use, the hazards of such agents have become a much greater source of morbidity and mortality than any of the much more publicized drug disasters. A prime example is provided by non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which are among the most widely prescribed of all pharmaceuticals. A very large international study involving 200,000 patients found that around 2000 people are killed per year in UK as a result of gastro-intestinal bleeding caused by NSAIDS, with much larger numbers worldwide.

Commenting on these results in a British newspaper, a leading rheumatologist points out that ‘Very little attention has been paid to the effects of NSAIDs, despite the fact that they kill more people each year than cervical cancer or asthma. It is remarkable how much resistance there is to changing prescription habits’.

Drug reactions are especially troublesome for the elderly, who are by far the largest consumers of medical drugs, most likely to suffer side-effects and adverse events, and most easily harmed by the common practice of prescribing multiple drugs with consequent risk of complicated and potentially fatal interactions.

Much attention has focused on the problem of medical error in the causation of adverse events.²⁰ Efforts to reduce error are long overdue and deserve strong support. However, many problems still arise from known or unexpected hazards of correctly prescribed drugs. Moreover, drug errors would not have such serious effects if pharmaceutical agents had only a very low risk of toxicity.

Thus it also makes sense to do everything possible to reduce the number of people who need to be exposed to potentially hazardous interventions. Fortunately, this can achieved through the Natural Law Party’s prevention-oriented health programmes.

The pharmaceutical industry has come to wield an increasingly powerful influence over governments, academic and medical research establishments, and the medical profession. As a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine shows, this influence does not work in favour of patients. Indeed, it seriously compromises the independence of academic medicine and regulatory bodies. It also undermines rational, evidence-based prescribing, diverts research and clinical funding away from effective primary prevention and health promotion, and obfuscates proper appraisal of the hazards of drugs.

Drug company influence has also highjacked much of the health care quality agenda, reducing it to a check-list of drugs that should be prescribed for specific disorders. Should not the quality of health care be defined by the standard of health that people enjoy, rather than merely by the treatments they are receiving for their diseases? Would not the highest quality health care actually reduce the numbers of people needing medical treatment? Through the Natural Law Party prevention programmes, such targets are now within reach.

The Natural Law Party has campaigned vigorously and effectively to inform the public about the huge uncertainties and unquantifiable dangers inherent in genetic manipulation, particularly in the field of agriculture, but also in medicine. In accord with the paramount medical principle of ‘safety first’, the Natural Law Party advocates an immediate ban on genetically modified crops and foodstuffs, and a wider moratorium on genetic research.

The human genome project was widely hailed as the dawn of a new era in medicine, emphasizing particularly the potential for genetically-based health screening. Now that the initial excitement has died down, a more balanced appraisal is possible. As a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine cogently argues, projections for a genetic screening revolution do not stand up to scientific scrutiny. This is because the majority of common disorders are caused by a complex interaction of many factors, involving not only multiple genes (nearly all of which are of limited predictive value), but also powerful environmental influences (which are frequently more important than genetic factors).

Moreover, even for rare disorders where a single gene that confers a high risk of disease can be identified, this does not make an effective treatment certain. The molecular basis of sickle-cell anaemia has been known for 40 years, but no treatment has yet been developed.

The authors conclude by saying: ‘In our rush to fit medicine with the genetic mantle, we are losing sight of other possibilities for improving the public health. Differences in social structure, lifestyle, and environment account for much larger proportions of disease than genetic differences. Although we do not contend that the genetic mantle is as imperceptible as the emperor's new clothes were, it is not made of the silks and ermines that some claim it to be. Those who make medical and science policies in the next decade would do well to see beyond the hype.’

Fortunately, technologies for utilizing the complete knowledge of Natural Law at the basis of life are available in Maharishi Vedic Medicine, and these methods have already proven effective in preventing illness and promoting good health for the individual and society.