Re: Blatant CDC lie (pharma shill)

From: Eric Bohlman (ebohlman_at_omsdev.com)
Date: 10/19/04 

Date: 19 Oct 2004 08:53:54 GMT

paghatSPAM-ME-NOT@netscape.net (paghat) wrote in
news:paghatSPAM-ME-NOT-1910040100430001@soggy72.drizzle.com:

> Pisses me off too that a bunch of loons taking ephedra for the
> "alternative" benzedrine effects, as addicted as any other tweeking
> speedfreak, getting it banned because those dolts were killing
> themselves with Safe Natural Drugs. Now I have a harder time getting
> it to use as a mild tea for rare bounts of conjestion. The problem
> with the rare alternative remedy that really works is it will also
> have side-effects, & it should be regulated given the public's
> willingness to misuse dangerous drugs pretending "natural" means
> "safe." There is no such thing as an herbal drug that is
> simultaneously potently efficatious & totally safe -- but the more
> worthless the remedy the fewer its side-effects. So take your Taheebo
> which is literally sawdust from a lumber mill, that's safe & legal &
> medicinally worthless, but ban ma-huang/ephedra which actually works.
> And it wasn't banned because doctors don't want us to be healthy, it
> was banned because stupid people misused when greedy vendors
> encouraged them to use it for things it should never have been used
> for.
>
> There's a lot of wacky stuff goes on in a hospital too, but nothing
> compared to what herb promoters are about; their scam relies on 90%
> fraud & 10% confusion, so that even the few things that are actually
> medicinally valid get recommended for the wrong things & no one
> watchdogging those cretins to keep them from lying their asses off
> while endangering public health.

You've touched on a really important point, which is that the traditional
uses of many, if not most, "natural remedies" do not correspond, either
qualitatively or quantitatively, to the current uses promoted for them.
Your own experience with ephedra is a perfect illustration. Its
traditional use ("thousands of years without any problems") was exactly the
way you used it: *occasional* consumption of *small* quantities in the
form of a *tea* to resolve *congestion*. It was *never* traditionally
taken *daily* in *large* quantities in the form of *pills* for *weight
loss* or for increased "energy" (i.e. tweeking). Or consider kava. It's
traditional use was consumption of small amounts a few times a year as part
of ritual ceremonies, *not* daily consumption to reduce anxiety or
"support" some bodily system (nobody used herbals to "support" a damn thing
until the DSHEA was passed and lawyers figured out what sort of language
would best sail through the giant loopholes in that law).

And the current free-for-all, anything-goes system *guarantees* that any
truly innovative genuine medical applications for "natural" remedies
*won't* be discovered. Consider, for example, several studies showing that
echinacea supplements didn't reduce the severity or duration of colds.
Despite the fact that the studies came to conclusions that were on solid
statistical ground, I can only consider them "inconclusive." Why? Because
there's no way those in the treatment arm of the studies could all have
been taking the same amounts of the same thing. The actual amount of
echinacea in commercial supplements has been shown to bear no relationship
at all to what's claimed on the labels and to vary wildly from pill to pill
and bottle to bottle. Many of the subjects who were supposedly consuming
echinacea might not have been consuming *any* of it (and were consuming who
knows what). Under those conditions, how could a study have found *any*
effect? (I'm not asserting here that echinacea *is* effective against
colds, only that there's currently no reliable way to find out if it is,
and even if the Real Thing were found to be effective, it wouldn't imply
that the Available Thing was.)

One of the posters to the Healthfraud mailing list expressed the opinion
that one of the reasons the peddlers of "natural" remedies really don't
want their products scientfically tested is that a big part of their
marketing appeal is based on being perceived as "fighting the system as the
underdog." The whole idea is to be as *outside* the mainstream as
possible. The more divorced from reality the claims are, the more credible
they are to the "more alternative than thou" crowd. Using those products
and therapeutic approaches is a form of simulated rebellion (a very "safe"
sort of rebellion in that it's unlikely to actually radically change any
aspects of society that really need changing, much as the entertainment
media portray "rebellion" as drinking, smoking, and driving fast. It's
also a form of "rebellion" that can be engaged in without *really*
distancing oneself from the mainstream).