Posted by Meri-Tuuli on October 12, 2006, at 12:31:34
In reply to Lack of research behind herbs legitimate complaint, posted by psychobot5000 on October 12, 2006, at 11:08:10
I'm not saying that herbs are totally safe. I'm not saying they don't have any interactions. I'm not saying that people should ask the assitants in healthshops.
I am just annoyed that this sort of article isn't written more often about conventional medical drugs and that medical drugs you get from the doc are deemed to be more safe, more thoroughly researched etc. Just because some herbs have not had Big Pharma industry funded studies, does not mean that they're not effective, safe, free of interactions.
And if a herb has even a slight chance of having serious adverse effects it gets dropped like a hot potato. For instance, kava kava is completely banned in the UK. But I'm sure there have been far more serious injury from say, MAOI interactions than from Kava kava.
I mean, lets compare SJW and prozac, two popular medications on the market for depression.
SJW is a traditional folk remedy, been around for well, literally thousands of years - little or no side effects in most people.... and pretty effective. But not so many studies...no BIg Pharma funding you see.
Prozac, developed late 80s.... massive amounts of funding, hmm, side effects, well lets see - how about the fact that it increases suicide in young people? Insomnia, nervousness, dry mouth, the list goes on and on.
I not saying conventional drugs don't have their place - they do.
This quote sums it up for me:
'Faith in the integrity of biological psychiatry would be greater if the single strongest predictive factor in the outcome of any published clinical trial wasn't the identity of the funding body.'
sigh.
Kind regards
Meri
poster:Meri-Tuuli
thread:691467
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20060817/msgs/694161.html