Homeopathics exposed - Yay!

[RicodJour]

Hee Haw.

R

[RicodJour]

You do realize that the FDA is in charge of drugs _and_ McDonald's, right? That they're the ones that are okay with food-like substitutes and consider a chicken house with an open door to be free-range chicken, right? That they find no problem with feeding cattle food that it is pretty much incapable of digesting without harm, and pumping it full of antibiotics, and then serving it up at Cracker Barrel. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong there?

I particularly loved the FDA's "BPA can't _possibly_ harm you!" announcement, followed a year later with, "Well, maybe..." I predicted that one - it would upset manufacturing and the plastics industry too much to have an abrupt ban.

The FDA is a huge, scientific organization with top minds used to their fullest capacity analyzing drugs to make sure they're safe. And the FDA simply can't make mistakes.

nevermind.

Believing that the FDA knows all about drugs makes as much sense as believing OSHA knows all about construction. However, it is in keeping with your all-government-is-bad mentality, unless you're trying to make a point and then you point out an infallible governmental entity. Nice job of waffling.

Bingo. I do not find it surprising in the least that the guy with the most medical experience in this thread understands that a benefit to a patient is a benefit.

R

[Roy]

=3D=3D "Concocted" is the operative word for sure. =3D=3D

[Tony Hwang]

Hmmm, You do realize 75% of modern medicine is still comes from natural source. Your ignorance is dripping all over you. Give me one example, do you know how OTC product Imodium is made?

[RicodJour]

Ask fruits and vegetables.

Funny, that.

Your thinking gives me fits, not sure about the ben part.

Animals manufacture meat, skin, fur and all sorts of other things for their own purposes, and we still go after the benefits. Likewise with plants.

So to sum up your position - if man didn't make it for man, it's useless. Good point.

R

[HeyBub]

I really, really try to be precise, but I, even I, sometimes fall short. Like when I used the word "minuscule" and it was pointed out that "minuscule" may be the proper amount. I really intended the thought to mean "indistinguishable from zero," but I failed. Miserably.

No cookie for me tonight.

[HeyBub]

Yep. Long gone are the days when a botanist found a new chemical in a rare plant and everybody scurried around looking for a disease it might cure.

Today, scientists study the disease to find its areas of vulnerabilities and from there create the chemical that attacks that vulnerability.

I doubt there's been a new drug extracted from plants in fifty years. Or if there has, the number in that category is vanishingly small compared to those drugs created from scratch.

[RicodJour]

You doubt. Well, that's good enough for me! Oh, wait, no it's not. You're just using a weasel word while you're trying to score points. Just one more vast area where you have a smattering of information and a plenitude of opinion.

A very good customer's wife has a cousin who goes into the jungle two or three times a year and brings back plants for research. He's nearly died several times from one thing or another, but he is paid very handsomely by drug companies for bringing back promising candidates.

The reason that you wouldn't hear the stuff about plants in the raw is threefold. Primarily it is because the drug companies are the ones with the deep pockets, the only ones that can afford to jump through the FDA hoops over years of submittals and trials, and the only ones that can fund research without begging from the government. I've also heard rumors that the drug companies have a new guy, he's called a "lobbiest", but he may be part time.

The second reason - the drug companies would make no money from a straight up plant medicinal remedy, because they couldn't patent it, or trademark it, or control it entirely. When they find something, they synthesize the active ingredients and then control it.

Third and most obvious reason, you don't listen very well. Your Google seems to be broken.

Old article I particularly like this part: "In a commentary published alongside the study, Jeffrey McNeeley, chief scientist of the IUCN-World Conservation Union, pointed out that some bioprospecting efforts have been called =EF=BF=BDbiopiracy,=EF=BF=BD s= uch as when a drug company made $200 million in profits selling cancer drugs developed from Madagascar=EF=BF=BDs rosy periwinkle while that country =EF= =BF=BDgot nothing.=EF=BF=BD "

And more on biopiracy:

companies have been taking plants from less developed countries and reaping staggering profits. The countries are fighting back. Just your usual humdrum run of the mill story of drug companies playing for profits and not for cures. It's anti-human and absolutely capitalism in its lowest form.

It seems that the very idea that medicines can come from plants upsets you. It's really not a threat to you, a threat, I mean, and no one will force you to take any medicine unless you keep ignoring reality that doesn't fit in with your preconceived notions.

R

[RicodJour]

Eliminate the ",even I, sometimes" from the sentence and we are in

100% agreement. R

[krw]

No, but 96.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

[HeyBub]

My revised statement then becomes:

"I think you do not grasp the theory behing homeopathy. The theory is that something akin or affiliated with the malady under treatment, when ingested in amounts indistinguishable from zero, will trigger a bodily response to rehabilitate the diseased organ."

I'm about to twitch to death with glee over your agreement.

[RicodJour]

So...while on holiday all tourists are investigating the properties of the local flora and fauna for possible medicinal benefit? That seems like a tall order for a couple or three weeks. When do they find the time to go parasailing?

R

[RicodJour]

The death part sounds interesting but your twitching in glee sounds vaguely sexual and disturbing. :)~

I've already acknowledged that neither I nor anyone else know enough to say any medicine is entirely bogus or entirely infallible. You've already acknowledged that the placebo effect is real. We're already in agreement, though not the one you were looking to twitch over. Sorry.

I'll ask two really simple questions about a simple everyday item that everyone has been intimately familiar with since early childhood to help illustrate my point. What's the healthiest type of bread? What grain, and why? It's clear from your stance on more complicated matters of health and medicine, that absolute certainty is possible, and one type of grain _has_ to be better than another. If you can answer those questions with definitive, verifiable proof, I'll agree that the world is simpler than I thought.

Until then, I'll continue to believe that neither I nor anyone else know it all about anything.

R

[RicodJour]

I thought it was because of all of the recreational drugs. Apparently Harry has been hoovering up more than his share. ;)

R

[HeyBub]

It must be a lonely religion.

[RicodJour]

No, not lonely, but it is a minority. It must keep things simple to be one of those people that have the ability to be certain about things they know nothing about.

Read anything about the Earth's magnetic poles recently? That has me concerned.

R

[HeyBub]

Well, you could move...

[RicodJour]

I can't afford the flight. :(

R