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The French state's official coat of arms during its collaboration with the Fourth Reich: perhaps it should be reinstated today? France under the MIVILUDES is heading in the same direction as Vichy France.
The war declared against 'cults' in France has today evolved into war against non-conventional medical therapies (so-called 'soft', 'parallel' or alternative therapies and practices). MIVILUDES ["an acronym for the French-language phrase Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte contre les dérives sectaires, i.e. 'Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances'" - Wiki] is officially incorporated into the state apparatus in France (bridging the justice, interior and health ministries), and is now asking physicians to alert the French government to any and all "suspect situations".

Repressive measures (in the form of the GATPNCT) taken against alternative therapies was today passed into law with lightning speed, putting into place a "technical support group on non-conventional approaches to therapeutic aims", designed to facilitate "the politics of struggle against non-conventional practices with dangerous therapeutic aims". After announcing its intention to forbid the Hamer method and 'Total Biology', a science about the connection between diseases and the underlying stress causing them, the French government, at the instigation of the MIVILUDES, now invites physicians to "denounce all suspect situations".

In other words, all forms of nursing, whether conducted by a physician or not, if practiced in accordance with an alternative therapeutic mode the French Academy of Medicine doesn't agree with, can be subject to denouncement henceforth. This is in fact already being practiced, but now it is officially being encouraged.

This medieval practice was generally believed to have been banished following the horrors of the Last War...
The MIVILUDES is preparing a guide on 'cultish behaviour' in healthcare for practitioners which will be ready in early 2012. A report will be dedicated to this theme in the January-February 2012 edition of the Bulletin of the Order of Physicians.
In fact, the rhetoric behind targeting 'cultish behaviour' is being deployed in order to present conventional allopathic methods as exclusively scientific and risk-free. Although the term 'cult' is not defined juridically, it allows the political and health authorities to conveniently repress alternative methods (while avoiding all evidence to the contrary), whether they be pioneering or traditional methods, under the pretext that they cannot be "scientifically proven".

A referent on cultish behaviour between French local authorities and the National Council of the Order of Physicians

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Hervé Marchi, Secretary General of MIVILUDES
In an interview for the newsletter of the Council of the Order of Physicians, Hervé Machi, Secretary General of MIVILUDES, evokes its 'partnership' with the medical authority: "Dr Patrick Romestaing, president of the Section for Public Health and Medical Demography, is our referent. He has attended our meetings for several years and participates in our work. The Order has appointed referents on cultish behaviour in every local council in France. Since then, MIVILUDES has been receiving about ten reports daily from local authorities, proof that a real need exists in the country."

In order to justify its activity, MIVILUDES always presents these 'reports' as proofs of the dangers of alternative practices. In the popular perception, MIVILUDES is unbiased and sincere. How could French people even begin to contemplate that a government agency organises an almost blind repression against potential pioneers in healthcare? How could they imagine that the state uses the pretext of protecting them in order to prevent competition that would dent the profits of the big players in the healthcare system?

Bypassing due process: How the MIVILUDES acts above the law

What then is advised to the physician "who suspects cultish behaviour"?

"It's best," answers Hervé Machi, "that he alerts, with the assistance of his local authority, three institutions: the ARS [regional agency of health], the local District Attorney and MIVILUDES. We invite physicians to inform us of all suspect situations, either by postal mail or by email. MIVILUDES doesn't have power of investigation, but it coordinates the actions of prevention and repression between police, justice, national education and the medical world. It can push the reports up the agenda and easily readily advance the issues."

After frightening the population by saying that quasi-terrorist and super-powerful cults are everywhere, and after creating a specific law to fight against these 'cults', the reality is that judicial condemnations of 'cults' in France are very rare. This is why it's necessary for MIVILUDES to mobilize itself and inflate the numbers.

Of course it's essential to evaluate the various therapeutic methods that have emerged on the health market. The problem in France is that the repressive route was adopted. In addition, those doing the repression are the same ones with special interests to protect and who decide what is good and what is evil in this field. And unfortunately a lot of actors, the press included, play their part in this scandalous situation which makes a mockery of the most fundamental principles of democracy, most notably the one which offers to all accused the right to be heard in front of an unbiased jury...