As a Yank, I have long believed that my country’s government has no legitimate authority to tell people what substances they can put into their own bodies.
But I have also long believed that there’s an excellent reason for strict and clear regulation about what substances others can sell for profit with the implication that OTHERS should put them into their bodies.
It’s amazing to me that the USA is maintaining our massive war on drug users while permitting cranks and quacks to become extremely wealthy marketing who-knows-what simply by claiming their products are not intended to treat any disease.
Why is that OK for someone like Doc Oz or Alex Jones but not for Eddie the crack dealer?
Good article! Given my background, I really appreciate the detail. The herb I researched promoted cell growth rather remarkably, but you can imagine where large doses of the herb led. I won’t name it, in case someone is stupid enough to dose themselves or others. It’s banned for human consumption in the UK and the EU.
I don’t think it any coincidence that huge rise in popularity of herbal medicine and alternative medicine in the US corresponded with the sudden gutting of pubic health programs all over the US, and particularly in California, that were brought to us by the first Reagan administration. Suddenly, the one place a poor person could go for medical care, the County Health Department clinics, disappeared. Medical costs, already rising since the Sixties, sky-rocketed. And just as abruptly, the question anyone was asked first, whether by a doctor’s office or the ER, was “Do you have insurance? With whom?” A negative answer denied treatment, of course. So desperate people turned to what they could afford: alternative medicine and quackery.
Why this move to alternative, and above all, much, much cheaper, medical care then crossed the ocean I do not know, although I suspect faddism amplified by the Internet. At any rate, the fundamental truth of a for-profit medical system is that the goal is profit, not practicing medicine; those who can’t afford to pay the protection money must find other ways of coping.
Perhaps the problem isn’t so much the destruction of the education system by the same folks that created the health care system that exists to generate profits as its first goal as it is the desperation of those locked out of true health care.
“Natural” drugs from plants are the result of millions of years of chemical warfare between the plants and the animals that eat them
It is amazing that so many of these “chemical weapons” can actually be used beneficially!
On a wider point we are finally becoming able to understand exactly what the various chemicals DO in the human body - this should lead to a massive expansion of what we can do (I hope)
I agree that there is NOT going to be some miracle medicine to make us live longer
BUT there will be thousands of medicines to help the problems - together I do expect them to extend our healthy years
My background is in manufacturing improvement - and there it was the thousands of tiny changes that added up to a doubling of productivity over about a decade
Ah this reminds me of when my mom chose to go to an Ayurvedic practitioner to cure a simple cough. It took her six damn months, but she persisted because she was sold on the belief that “Ayurveda solves the problem from the roots, while ‘western’ medicine just treats the symptoms”.
Today though, I find that ironic, Ayurveda does nothing but just treat the symptoms, while mainstream medicine is what targets the roots.
As a Yank, I have long believed that my country’s government has no legitimate authority to tell people what substances they can put into their own bodies.
But I have also long believed that there’s an excellent reason for strict and clear regulation about what substances others can sell for profit with the implication that OTHERS should put them into their bodies.
It’s amazing to me that the USA is maintaining our massive war on drug users while permitting cranks and quacks to become extremely wealthy marketing who-knows-what simply by claiming their products are not intended to treat any disease.
Why is that OK for someone like Doc Oz or Alex Jones but not for Eddie the crack dealer?
Good article! Given my background, I really appreciate the detail. The herb I researched promoted cell growth rather remarkably, but you can imagine where large doses of the herb led. I won’t name it, in case someone is stupid enough to dose themselves or others. It’s banned for human consumption in the UK and the EU.
I don’t think it any coincidence that huge rise in popularity of herbal medicine and alternative medicine in the US corresponded with the sudden gutting of pubic health programs all over the US, and particularly in California, that were brought to us by the first Reagan administration. Suddenly, the one place a poor person could go for medical care, the County Health Department clinics, disappeared. Medical costs, already rising since the Sixties, sky-rocketed. And just as abruptly, the question anyone was asked first, whether by a doctor’s office or the ER, was “Do you have insurance? With whom?” A negative answer denied treatment, of course. So desperate people turned to what they could afford: alternative medicine and quackery.
Why this move to alternative, and above all, much, much cheaper, medical care then crossed the ocean I do not know, although I suspect faddism amplified by the Internet. At any rate, the fundamental truth of a for-profit medical system is that the goal is profit, not practicing medicine; those who can’t afford to pay the protection money must find other ways of coping.
Perhaps the problem isn’t so much the destruction of the education system by the same folks that created the health care system that exists to generate profits as its first goal as it is the desperation of those locked out of true health care.
“Natural” drugs from plants are the result of millions of years of chemical warfare between the plants and the animals that eat them
It is amazing that so many of these “chemical weapons” can actually be used beneficially!
On a wider point we are finally becoming able to understand exactly what the various chemicals DO in the human body - this should lead to a massive expansion of what we can do (I hope)
I agree that there is NOT going to be some miracle medicine to make us live longer
BUT there will be thousands of medicines to help the problems - together I do expect them to extend our healthy years
My background is in manufacturing improvement - and there it was the thousands of tiny changes that added up to a doubling of productivity over about a decade
Ah this reminds me of when my mom chose to go to an Ayurvedic practitioner to cure a simple cough. It took her six damn months, but she persisted because she was sold on the belief that “Ayurveda solves the problem from the roots, while ‘western’ medicine just treats the symptoms”.
Today though, I find that ironic, Ayurveda does nothing but just treat the symptoms, while mainstream medicine is what targets the roots.
Please, someone, tell me it’s okay to keep consuming camomile tea…