Chris Zell wrote:
In a word, no, no, no, no, no
Supplements can't be fairly regulated because the ENORMOUS bias of money
distorts the whole subject. . .
If that is true, the method of regulating herbal medicine must be adjusted
to fix the problem. A simple solution would be regulate herbal medicine
pretty much the way we regulate food. People are allowed to eat just about
anything they want, even if it known that the food is bad for you consumed
on a daily basis (McDonald's french fries), or it stinks (durian fruit, and
the voodoo lily), fatal in large amounts (whiskey), or it has little or no
caloric content (celery and many other uncooked vegetables). There is only
one rule for food, and it is the same one I quoted the other day: First, do
no harm. As long as a food does not poison people, it is allowed. That
relaxed rule should be applied to herbal medicine, only the testing should
be more comprehensive because people do not eat herbs often, so we know
less about them than we know about most foods. As long as a herb it has
been tested carefully and shown not to cause harm, you can use it even if
it is probably ineffective. It is a placebo.
These tests will also probably reveal in the first approximation whether
the herbal medicine has the desired effect or not. If the tests indicate it
probably does no good, it should be labeled as a placebo.
That would be a bad rule to apply to conventional medicine, because most
conventional medicine is much more expensive than herbs, and it usually has
more of the active agent. It has a larger effect, good or bad. If it does
not cure you a probably still causes some undesired side effect.
This sort of thing happens time and time again - as promising treatments
for diseases are quietly shelved because drug companies know that they
are unpatentable or unprofitable. Examples: High blood pressure? You
can treat it with a simple $300 gadget called Resperate instead of
drugs.
Good luck finding out about it - my doctor never heard of it - despite
solid clinical trials.
I doubt it. $300 is quite a lot of money and high blood pressure affects
millions of people. If this device works, someone would probably be selling
it and making hundreds of millions of dollars. I will grant that capitalism
does not always work, and there are missed opportunities.
In any case, unfair competition does not only affect the drug market. It
exists in every business, including software, clothing, vacations and so
on, yet by and large the market supplies these things at optimum costs. Of
course every market is different and the drug market does have some unique
problems.
Regulation is merely a pretext to get rid of drug company competition.
I think if you examine the history of medicine and regulation, and you see
how things were before drugs were regulated in the 19th century, you will
understand the wisdom of regulation. Perhaps it needs to be adjusted to
encourage competition, but it was not imposed as a pretext to reduce
competition. On the contrary, the drug companies vigorously opposed it.
The same goes for the regulation of addictive drugs such as cocaine, by the
way. People banned it back in 1914 for very good reasons. It caused 5,000
fatalities in one year, equivalent to 15,000 fatalities with today's
population. If a drug killed 15,000 people in one year we would instantly
ban it, and if it was imported from some other country we would go to war
to stop it. I do not think that drug prohibitions have been effective. They
should be adjusted to emphasize prevention and treatment instead of
interdiction. But to suggest that they be dropped altogether is to ignore
history and court disaster.
- Jed
