In article <[email hidden]>,
Peter Bowditch said:(Carole) said:It was only through Dr Rath's
website I found out that Travacalm was a pharmaceutical product.
Wouldn't you say that was misleading the public?
I would, but it is typical of the sort of misleading that Rath and his
ilk go in for.
The active ingredient in Travacalm is scopolamine, or hyoscine
hydrobromide, derived from a plant (henbane). It's in my 1931
botanical medicine book.
Indeed. What alties seem to forget is that a great many (if not most)
"conventional" medicines come from plants, herbs, and animal products. A
large number also come from chemical modifications of compounds first
extracted from plants, herbs, etc.
And if conventional medicine is supposedly so hostile to such things,
why is is that the NIH has several large programs designed to do nothing
but to find natural products that might be useful as drugs or therapies?
For instance, the NCI screens thousands of compounds against cancer; the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development screens natural
compounds for anti-HIV activity, among other things; the National
Institute of Mental Health looks for compounds that have promise for
breaking drug dependency, depression, and schizophrenia. In addition,
other government agencies have teamed with universities to locate
natural products that can be used as drugs and as agrochemicals that
will not harm the environment. Major pharmaceutical companies have
similar programs to screen natural compounds for medicinal activity of
interest, and you know they wouldn't put the resources into such
activity if they didn't expect success.
Conventional medicine has always been interested in herbal and natural
remedies. The recent interest in "alternative medicine" is nothing new.
Such seems to wax and wane over time. There was a similar upsurge in
interest in such remedies earlier this century in Europe, particularly
in the 1920's and 1930's. In any case, I have said here many times that
I think it is a good thing that science is finally testing alternative
remedies. It's time to find the ones that really do some good and to get
rid of the ones that don't work or that are harmful. The only way to
figure out which is which is to test them. I've also always said that
alternative medicine should be treated exactly the same as conventional
medicine. That means alternative remedies should be subject to the same
testing as conventional remedies, but if they pass they should be used
side by side with "conventional" medicine.
--
Orac |"A statement of fact cannot be insolent."
|
|"If you cannot listen to the answers, why do you
| inconvenience me with questions?"
