The dangerous myth of ‘all-natural’ and ‘herbal’ medicines and supplements
Allright, it’s rant time. I’ve had this one cooking for quite a bit, and I’ll try to keep it focused. My skeptical beef this week is with ‘herbal medicines’ and ‘all-natural’ supplements. No, I’m not saying they’re all useless. But do hear me out:
I’ve noticed a disturbing tendency among a lot of otherwise rational people to believe the old bugaboo that if something is ‘all-natural’, then it must be safer than those weird chemical drugs the doctors prescribe, with their scary side-effects. And, at first blush, it seems like a reasonable proposition. Medicine X claims to cure Ailment X, but it says, right on the bottle, that it has side effects Y and Z. Meanwhile, Herbal Supplement X also claims to cure Ailment X, and its bottle doesn’t list *any* side effects! Herbal Supplement X is clearly better and safer. My doctor’s a quack. Right?
Listen, folks, the only reason there are no side-effects listed on the bottle of herbal pills is because the herbal supplement industry is not regulated like the pharmaceutical industry is, and, therefore, there is no government agency that forces them to disclose their side-effects or any other dangers. The stuff on the herbal supplement bottle is not written by doctors or health professionals: it’s written by *marketers*, who have a *product to sell*.
“But Katsu!”, I hear you say, “These pills are made out of herbs and natural substances, not out of dangerous chemicals like pharmaceuticals are! They *must* be safer!” I hear you. But you know what *else* is made out of ‘herbs’? Poison Ivy. Hemlock. Death’s Head Mushrooms. And many more poisonous or deadly plants. And what else is made out of ‘all-natural’ substances? Snake venom, arsenic, mercury, lead. All stuff that could kill or make you very very ill, and all of it, ‘all-natural’. Just ’cause it says ‘all-natural’ on the bottle, please, for the sake of your health, don’t assume it’s safe!
Take, for example, the case of Sandi Stay, in the UK, who had to have both kidneys removed after going to a Chinese medicine store and being given a herb to treat her psoriasis. Turns out that herb was Aristochlia, a known cancer-causeing herb that is banned in the UK.
Or read the following, from this article:
Dr Mark Thursz, a consultant physician at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington said he had seen a huge rise in the number of patients being referred to him with liver failure or hepatitis after taking Chinese herbal medicine.
He said: “Many people believe herbal remedies are safe, but they should be seen in the light as conventional remedies in that they can adverse reactions.
“When you get a box of pills you get a long list of potential side effects.
“You don’t get that with herbal remedies because practitioners try to make you believe they are safe.”
Under current regulations Chinese medics are treated as shop keepers rather than traders, so in the same way a butcher prosecuted for selling bad meat would be allowed to continue trading so are they.
At the end of the day, it’s up to you to play it smart. I’m not saying all herbal medicines are dangerous. Some can work, and some may even be more effective than regular drugs. But when you walk into a Chinese medicine store, or into the office of a herbal supplement dealer, don’t leave your common sense at the door. Don’t be fooled by the myth of ‘all-natural’ safety. These are not doctors, they’re shopkeepers out to make a living. Do your research beforehand, and dont take the word of any website that sells the product if they’re claiming it’s safe. If I was selling, for example, a herbal pill for losing weight, it wouldn’t be in my best interest to tell you that it contains fenfluarmine, a substance so dangerous that it’s banned for sale pretty much worldwide, now would I?
Be smart out there, folks, and keep a skeptical eye on anything that claims to be ‘100% safe’ simply because it’s ‘all-natural’.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:16 am
The “all-natural” scam is also perniciously ubiquitous in children’s food marketing. Beastie’s school purportedly has a “no junk food” policy, but they allow “all natural” fruit punch that contains less than 10% juice!!!!!! And, my daughter, of course, is well trained to spot the “all natural” tag at the grocery store and try to convince me any number of pre packaged products must be healthy. GRRR….
April 18th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Hey, all drugs are all natural, asprin, is made out of willow bark. Lithium, hey that’s on the periodic chart of basic elements, it don’t get more natural than that! Chemicals, those are all found in, you guessed it, nature! I have yet to see any super-natural or un-natural product go for sale anywhere, in fact everything sold on planet Earth is composed of 100% natural ingredients.
June 17th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Herbal therapies have been around for thousands of years and were widely prescribed by doctors until the late 1800s when the American Medical Association (AMA), a trade union of doctors committed to partnership with the budding pharmaceutical industry, used its economic and political muscle to suppress the use of natural substances. The use of herbs once was mainstream medicine but, because there is no great profit to be made from these unpatentable wonder drugs, they have lost their status as mainstream therapies.
Nevertheless, although the AMA, NCI (National Cancer Institute) and ACS (American Cancer Society) would prefer that you not know, several herbs produce patentable derivatives which are mainstays in the orthodox treatment of cancer. These herbs are “messed with,” biochemically speaking, to produce unique, semi-synthetic compounds which retain some of the activity of the original herb and yet are patentable. Examples are vincristine, vinblastine and eteoposide. Taxol, a new experimental drug for cancer, is derived from the bark of the Pacific yew tree.
The fear of the cancer establishment is, of course, that people themselves would be able to treat their own cancer at least as well as the approved therapies for a tiny fraction of the cost, simply by finding the proper herb and preparing a tea or by eating the plant. For this reason millions of dollars are poured into the creation of synthetics and into the advertising necessary to convince people that laboratories can improve over nature.
We will focus on only a few herbal therapies, because it is not possible in the confines of this book to cover all the herbal treatments which may be effective in cancer. Besides that, only two percent of the herbs in nature have been tested as possible cancer therapies. It is certain that many effective herbs still lie undiscovered.
Essiac Tea
In 1922 Rene Caisse (pronounced as one would pronounce the words “Rin Case”), a nurse in Ontario, Canada, noticed an elderly hospital patient with a scarred and gnarled breast. When Rene Caisse asked about the scarring, she was told that twenty years earlier the woman had her breast cancer healed by an Indian medicine man using an herbal tea. This woman had been told by doctors that her breast must be removed. She refused this advice and decided to take her chances with the herbal tea. This woman handed over the information on this herbal remedy to Rene Caisse.
Rene Caisse put the formula aside, deciding that if she ever developed cancer she would use it. Two years later, one of her aunts developed stomach cancer and was told she had six months to live. Caisse remembered the herbal formula and, in partnership with her aunt’s doctor, Dr. R. O. Fisher of Toronto, gave the herbal tea to her aunt. She recovered after two months and lived free from her stomach cancer for 21 years after that. Following this event, Caisse and Fisher began to treat terminal cases of cancer, curing many of them.
Not knowing what to call the stuff Rene Caisse spelled her own last name backward and came up with “Essiac.” It seemed as good a name as any, so this is how it has come to be known. Rene Caisse, beginning in the 1920s until her death in 1978, offered this tea to thousands of people, many of whom were restored to health and many whose lives were prolonged and whose pain was lessened.
By 1937, the fame of Essiac had spread to the U.S. and Caisse was commuting to Chicago to treat patients at Northwestern Medical Center. After a two year evaluation the doctors at Northwestern concluded that Essiac tea eased the pain of cancer and prolonged life.
As with all such discoveries, Rene Caisse was forced to battle the medical establishment. This resulted in the formation, in 1938, of the Canadian “Royal Cancer Commission.” Showing up to testify for Essiac were 387 of Caisse’s patients. Of these, only 49 were allowed to testify. People who free of tumor after using Essiac after the failure of orthodox treatment were interpreted by the Royal Cancer Commission as “recoveries from orthodox therapies.” In cases with no previous therapies, the interpretation was “misdiagnosis.”
Rene Caisse, after years of harassment, and fearing imprisonment for her work, closed her clinic in 1942. Over the next thirty years she treated patients in great secrecy from her home, even while under surveillance by the Canadian Health Department, I suppose the “Royal” one.
As with most cancer treatments, orthodox, as well as progressive, some people respond and some do not. Undoubtedly, some people have been made free of tumor with Essiac, and others have died from their disease. As I read the literature on Essiac, it appears that its main use is to cause regression of tumor size and to reduce the pain induced by the tumor. It is thus an excellent adjunct to other therapies. If I had cancer I would choose several progressive therapies and not rely on just one. Essiac would be one of them.
Caisse sold the formula to the Resperin Corporation in late 1977 and died at age ninety just over one year later. It is still possible to obtain Essiac. You can buy Essiac Tea at well-stocked organic groceries. Essiac is, after all, a blend of herbal teas ? not so easy for a government to regulate, although the government of Canada gives it a good try. They forbid the makers of Essiac to use the word “cure,” so they simply distribute patient testimonials.
Hoxsey Therapy
Harry Hoxsey, who passed on in 1974 at the age of 73, was not a doctor but rather a self-taught healer who used a combination of herbs which he said was passed on to him by his father... Hoxsey’s preparation helped many people with cancer, and his fame spread far and wide. In the 1950s, his clinic in Dallas and its seventeen satellite clinics represented the largest progressive cancer therapy approach in the world.
Naturally, his success drew the attention of the medical establishment and during the McCarthy era in the 1950s, Hoxsey was harassed by the AMA, FDA and NCI. They pronounced his therapy fraudulent without as much as a fact-finding mission to his clinic. (The FDA has not yet gotten the message that the McCarthy era is over.) Hoxsey closed his clinic in 1960 and three years later reopened in a freer country, at least from a medical point of view, Mexico.