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To throw a different spin on the same data:
I don't know how the Brit equivalent works, but in the FDA regs listing as "food supplement" means that the substance has some nutritive value but no verifiable (meaning untested, or not yet tested) medical application. Food supplements are unregulated in terms of their contents, distribution, etc. which is why anyone can sell them.
In America, the food supplement industry is big business...specifically three or four corporations, GNC and TwinLab being the most prominent. Both are cash cows, given that they spend minimal input cash on researching results, thus only having production costs to offset the chunk of changes set down for every bottle of two hundred units of exceedingly dilute herb extract number whatever.... The image of the small-town herbalist belies the fact that the distribution and capital-procurement of the food supplement industry is rooted in the machinery of a very large, very greedy, corporations, who scruples are at least equally suspect as those of the eeevviilll pharmaceutical MNCs.
Now to tack a different direction: herbs are good medicine. Many plants have medical application, and have for yonks. But the majority of information about the use and combination of herbs has been in the hands of a minority of specialists...ritualists, shamans, elders, pick your title. The average "citizen" of presurgical culture had knowledge-access to a supply of relatively simple and benign compounds - analgesics, emitics, etc. - but left the body of serious practice to specialists. Kind of like your average housewife getting to toss about Vitamin C and Acetimetophen, but not digitalis.
But now we have a corporate edifice selling "alternative medicine" as Carter's little pills. Does anyone have any a problem with this? I know that there exists a sort of democratic ideal of every-man-his-own-doctor, but how valid is this position when it is being predominantly pitched by a business looking to line it's own pockets. Hell, given the history of herbal medicine, how valid is it? Wyrding women and Ayurvedics across the globe are laughing up their sleaves and spinning in their graves. We have already seen the minor ripple caused by idiots tossing about ma huang - which is a realtively mild stimulant in the realm of herbalism - but what happens when some genius decides that rauwolfia or foxglove is the new way to go?
Finally, I wish to point out that "natural" is a bullshit category in the context of modern products and media. It's an advertising ploy. The distinction between the pharmacological "manmade" and "natural" exists almost entirely in the minds of White Westerners whose alienations from their own delusions of some Walden-esque state of nature create a semantic validation of the "natural" as "more real." In the parts of the world where herbal medicine remains a necessity due to the rarity of distribution of manufactured goods, antibiotics and other "manmade" drugs are a godsend that save lives, and the two are both used with caution and diligence. The use of plant- and animal- derived medicines is approached with a caution and understanding of risk equivalent to the care taken with surgical and pharmaceutical standards of research.
Herbalism has been reconstructed by the medical "haves" of the West to represent the ontological vacuum left by the risks of modern medicine: in premise, herbalism is thought to also solve the same ailments as "manmade" medicine, only without the temporal inconvienience, the social discomfort of medical examination, or the potential for negative correllary effects. In other words, it is the imagined panacea...or is it the laudanum?
I've never met a Chinese herbalist, an Ayurvedic or Samkya physician who did not take as much care as a US physician with monitoring the progress of their patient in response to the prescribed medication and treatment. That a layperson would have access to their technology, without the extensive training they undergo, would garner a response...has garnered a response...of equal parts incredulity, horror, and amusement.
I'd also point out that the example of cancer medication is an incredibly weak one, given that the former is the absolute outside of last-ditch medical practice. There are very few things that help cancer...chemotherapy drugs are rough going because they represent the final line of defense...something tantamount to suicide bombing as a military...you intentionally poison the cells in the hope that the cancerous ones die...it's the height of long shots. The early AIDS drugs, like AZT, worked on this same final-chance principle. The world - correction, the world of people who can afford them - is screaming for cancer treatments that aren't so painful, so inconvienient, so drastic. Taxol was a glimmer of hope for some cancers, (derived from a rare species of yew tree, by the way) but there is neither sufficient natural supply nor a viable synthetic.
Hell, the desire to place more scrutiny on "alternative" treatments for cancer might have positive effects, like universalizing access to a viable treatment, like giving insurance credits for an herbal supplement.
So is regulation necessarily a bad thing cooked up by eeeviiill pharmaceutical companies? Regulation also means batch trials to prove what works and doesn't, above and beyond the testimonials. And what the side effects are, so that one can at least be a fully informed consumer. Regulation also means that groups like the TwinLabs can't just throw anything in a bottle and thrust it at you as the next panacea. Regulation also means responsibility on the part of both the corporate and the individual herbalist for the advice they give. |
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