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Author | Topic: Childhood Vaccinations – Necessary or Overkill? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Actually, I stay away from antibiotics as much as possible because of concerns about creating antibiotic resistance. I also don't take any drug unless I really need it, and, of course, if it has been demonstrated to be safe and effective for what I'm taking it for.
quote: Well, yeah, they are rather unfounded and unreasonable, for the reasons I mentioned. There isn't very solid evidence that antibiotics weaken the immune system, or that the occasional candida imbalance in the gut causes a weakening of the immune system. You can believe it on faith in your "Naturaopathic Holistic Balanced Healing for Women"- type books if you want to, of course, but such a belief is not based upon reason. Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: You believe something, despite there being essentially no rational, evidence-based reason to do so. That's faith, not reason. You believe that castor oil packs applied to your abdomen are somehow clearing your liver of some supposed, but unconfirmed, excess estrogen, even though there is no evidence to show that castor oil packs can do that. You ignore the strong evidence that would strongly suggest that there is no way in hell that castor oil packs are able to do what you are using them for, and believe that they are working anyway. That's faith, not reason.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: To compare the quality of information available on conventional medicine with that which is proffered for "natural" drugs as anything even remotely similar is ridiculous. Look, PD, from what I have read over the years, most of the claims of the "natural" people are unsupported quackery. They are in it for the astonishing profits they can get from exploiting the scientific ignorance and emotional vulnerability of people who are intimidated and frustrated by the often impersonal and perfunctory "bedside manner" of conventional medical professionals. Add to that the enormous loopholes in government regulation that allows herbal drugs to be sold untested for safety and efficacy, and the incredibly strong lobbying efforts by the people who profit from this loophole, and I think it's clear that they are interested in money ONLY. But most of all, the fact that you believe what you do about the castor oil packs undeniably means that you have lost your bullshit detector.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: What we've also seen is that if it is a money maker, few, if any studies get done. The companies don't have to show that their drugs are safe and effective, so they don't, naturally, becasue testing them for safety and efficacy is expensive. Tell me buz, what makes you believe that herbal drugs have no or fewer side effects, interactions with food or with other drugs, problems with long-term use compared to synthetic drugs, or that purity and dosages and potentcy among and between brands are consistent?
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: A fungal toenail and excess estrogen in the liver are entirely different conditions, PD. That castor oil is supposed to be able to take excess estrogen stored in one's liver out of one's body by way of soaking through the skin directly to the liver is simply a preposterous claim.
quote: Um, exactly how do you know that they documented good results if you aren't able to actually look at the results? Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: But they are most definitely drugs, buz, and are promoted by the sellers as remedies (although slyly) regardless of how the government defines them. All have chemical compounds (many unknown) that are intended to produce a theraputic effect. That's the definition of a drug, and that's why you use them. If you didn't think that various herbs had theraputic effects on nasal congestion, or the flu, or fever, or pain, or whatever, you wouldn't take them, right? And about the FDA? It's been mentioned at least a dozen times in this thread, and by me in several direct replies to you, that the law that was passed that classifies all herbal drugs as "nutritional supplements" was lobbied heavily for in Washington by the manufacturers and retailers of these herbal drugs so they could continue to avoid having to test them for safety and efficacy. They contine to make a lot more money if they don't have to do that.
quote: No, buz, many herbal drugs sold as remedies or preventatives are not "foods". Goldenseal, Black Cohosh, Ginseng, Echinacia, Arnica, Mallow, Comfrey, Ephedra, Dogwood, and hundreds of other herbal drugs are not anything even close to "simple foods".
quote: That's due to several reasons, although they are perhaps less rare than you realize. How hard have you looked for such reports? 1) Far fewer people take specific herbal cures than take synthetic drugs. 2) Many herbal cures probably have no theraputic value whatsoever, so they have no negative, nor any positive, effects. There are plenty of cases, however, of people dying because they refused conventional treatment in favor of some quack "natural" treatment that promised miracles.
quote: But what are the percentages, buz? Billions and billions of people take synthetic drugs every year. When some people have adverse effects for a given drug, what you need to look at is not actual numbers, but the percentage of people who die against the number of people who took the drug. It's funny that you quoted my question but then proceeded to not answer the very specific questions containe within it! So, I will ask it again: Tell me buz, what makes you believe that herbal drugs have no or fewer side effects, interactions with food or with other drugs, problems with long-term use compared to synthetic drugs, or that purity and dosages and potentcy among and between brands are consistent? Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: PD, there is a list of questions in the OP of the castor oil thread that does exactly that. Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: So, you use comfrey and all those other items because you believe they have active chemical compounds which produce a theraputic effect, right? That means you take them as drugs. They are not food.
quote: source The use of comfrey in dietary supplements is a serious concern to FDA. These plants contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids, substances which are firmly established to be hepatotoxins in animals. Reports in the scientific literature clearly associate oral exposure of comfrey and pyrrolizidine alkaloids with the occurrence of veno-occlusive disease (VOD) in animals. Moreover, outbreaks of hepatic VOD have been reported in other countries over the years and the toxicity of these substances in humans is generally accepted. The use of products containing comfrey has also been implicated in serious adverse incidents over the years in the United States and elsewhere. However, while information is generally lacking to establish a cause-effect relationship between comfrey ingestion and observed adverse effects humans, the adverse effects that have been seen are entirely consistent with the known effects of comfrey ingestion that have been described in the scientific literature. The pyrrolizidine alkaloids that are present in comfrey, in addition to being potent hepatotoxins, have also been shown to be toxic to other tissues as well. There is also evidence that implicates these substances as carcinogens. Taken together, the clear evidence of an association between oral exposure to pyrrolizidine alkaloids and serious adverse health effects and the lack of any valid scientific data that would enable the agency to determine whether there is an exposure, if any, that would present no harm to consumers, indicates that this substance should not be used as an ingredient in dietary supplements. I did a google search on the term "pyrrolizidine alkaloids" and the second link was the following report from a man who is the director of a natural medicine center in Oregon.
source An excerpt of the report:
Case 1 (11): A 49-year-old woman in the U.S. was admitted to a hospital with progressive swelling of the abdomen and extremities over the preceding four months. Veno-occlusive disease was eventually diagnosed, allegedly caused by chronic exposure to PAs consumed in a comfrey powder, estimated at a minimum of 85 mg of PAs per day over the previous six-month period. She was a heavy consumer of herbs, vitamins and natural food supplements, and she drank three cups of chamomile tea per week and for the six months before admission had consumed one quart a day of a herbal tea known as Mu-16. In addition, for the 4 months before admission, she had taken two capsules of "comfey-pepsin pills" with each meal. The authors conclude "To our knowledge, this is the first report of veno-occlusive disease in any human after the use of a preparation claiming to be made from comfrey." Case 2 (12): A 13-year-old boy in England was admitted to a hospital with symptoms that were found to be caused by veno-occlusive disease. He had been suffering from Crohn's disease for three years and had been treated with prednisolone and sulphasalazine, which removed symptoms. At his parents' request, the drugs were discontinued and he was treated with acupuncture and comfrey root prescribed by a naturopath. Exact quantities and frequency are unknown. When admitted to the hospital he was taking prednisolone and sulphasalazine. The authors concluded that "the only possible causal factor in this patient was comfrey." Case 3 (13): A 47-year-old white non-alcoholic woman in the U.S. began to feel unwell in 1978 with vague abdominal pain, fatigue and allergies. A homeopathic doctor recommended comfrey tea. She consumed as many as ten cups per day in addition to taking comfrey pills by the handful, which continued for more than one year. Four years later, serum aminotransferase levels were twice the upper limit of the normal range, and four years after that she had further signs of liver disease. Case 4 (14): A 23-year-old man in New Zealand presented with veno-occlusive disease and severe portal hypertension and subsequently died from liver failure. He had eaten comfrey leaves for some time before his illness. The man presented with a three-month history of initial influenza-like symptoms followed by continued malaise and night sweats. Three weeks before admission he noticed peripheral edema and abdominal distension. For four years prior to this illness he had been living in a commune and had eaten a predominantly vegetarian diet. He had a striking binge-type eating pattern whereby he would eat large quantities of a particular food for days and weeks on end. In the one to two weeks before the onset of symptoms he ate four to five steamed young comfrey leaves as a vegetable every day. The authors suggest that the patient's protein deficient diet could have played a contributory role; they attributed comfrey as a possible cause due to the temporal sequence of events. In a separate review of potential risk to consuming comfrey published in the Australian Medical Journal (15), the author declined to consider this case in his report because "there is some controversy surrounding this case." I guess you haven't looked very hard at the problems with comfrey, buz.
quote: No, salad greens are nutritive foods. They contain mainly vitamins, minerals, fiber, water and calories. Some contain other substances known to have preventative effects. Herbal drugs, by contrast, are not ingested for their nutritive values, only for the chemicals they contain that are intended to be theraputic.
quote: They are all foods, not drugs. Comfrey, for example, is not a food. It is a drug.
quote: Why do you keep insisting that herbals are safe, buz? They have not been tested in any sort of controlled manner, so you have no idea if they are safe for long (or short) term use, to combine with any other chemicals, or if they even work at all.
quote: Another way to describe them is carefully formulated to be pure, extensively tested to discover their benefits and side effects, and regulated by law to be consistent within and between brands.
Tell me buz, what makes you believe that herbal drugs have no or fewer side effects, interactions with food or with other drugs, problems with long-term use compared to synthetic drugs, or that purity and dosages and potentcy among and between brands are consistent? quote: Oh, and confirmation bias isn't affecting you. No, of course not. You highly biased, miniscule, sample of anecdotal evidence means absolutely nothing, buz. I have real, carefully conducted scientific experiments to back up my side of the argument, buz, and all you have is the say so of some of your friends and relatives. Why don't you come right out and admit that you believe what you do about herbal drugs on faith, religiously, and that you don't care about evidence that contradicts your religious faith? That's why you won't even attempt to answer my very specific, yet entirely valid and fundamental questions. What verifiable evidence leads you to conclude that herbal drugs have no or fewer side effects than prescription drugs? What verifiable evidence leads you to conclude that herbal drugs do not have interactions with foods or with other drugs? What verifiable evidence leads you to conclude that herbal drugs do do not have problems with long-term use compared to synthetic drugs? What evidence leads you to conclude that anybody knows the appropriate dosage of any herbal drug? What verifiable evidence leads you to conclude that purity and dosages and potentcy among and between brands of herbal drugsare consistent? "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."- Richard Feynman "Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"- Ned Flanders
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: At Quackwatch.com The entire article at Quackwatch is referenced, and most of the footnotes are hotlinks that take you to more specific information. An excerpt:
In the early 1990s, Congress began considering two bills to greatly strengthen the ability of federal agencies to combat health frauds. One would have increased the FDA's enforcement powers as well as the penalties for violating the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act [1]. The other would have amended the Federal Trade Commission Act to make it illegal to advertise nutritional or therapeutic claims that would not be permissible on supplement labels [2]. During the same period, the FDA was considering tighter regulations for these labels. Alarmed by these developments, the health-food industry and its allies urged Congress to "preserve the consumer's freedom to choose dietary supplements." To whip up their troops, industry leaders warned retailers that they would be put out of business. Consumers were told that unless they took action, the FDA would take away their right to buy vitamins. These claims, although bogus, generated an avalanche of communications to Congress [3]. The end result was passage of DSHEA, which defined "dietary supplements" as a separate regulatory category and liberalized what information could be distributed by their sellers. DSHEA also created an NIH Office of Dietary Supplements and directed the President to appoint a Commission on Dietary Supplement Labels to recommend ways to implement the act [4]. The Commission's final recommendations were released on November 24, 1997 [5,6]. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act defines "drug" as any article (except devices) "intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" and "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or function of the body." These words permit the FDA to stop the marketing of products with unsubstantiated "drug" claims on their labels. To evade the law's intent, the supplement industry is organized to ensure that the public learns of "medicinal" uses that are not stated on product labels. This is done mainly by promoting the ingredients of the products through books, magazines, newsletters, booklets, lectures, radio and television broadcasts, oral claims made by retailers, and the Internet. DSHEA worsened this situation by increasing the amount of misinformation that can be directly transmitted to prospective customers. It also expanded the types of products that could be marketed as "supplements." The most logical definition of "dietary supplement" would be something that supplies one or more essential nutrients missing from the diet. DSHEA went far beyond this to include vitamins; minerals; herbs or other botanicals; amino acids; other dietary substances to supplement the diet by increasing dietary intake; and any concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any such ingredients. Although many such products (particularly herbs) are marketed for their alleged preventive or therapeutic effects, the 1994 law has made it difficult or impossible for the FDA to regulate them as drugs. Since its passage, even hormones, such as DHEA and melatonin, are being hawked as supplements.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Buz, come on.
Is that the best you can do? Did you even read what I wrote? How can you simply ignore those cases of people being injured by comfrey? You have nothing whatsoever to say about the poor people who were made ill and/or died because they ingested comfrey? Are you suggesting that the comfrey they ingested is merely a food, like, say, spinach or parsley? What about the liver damage or VOD? What about the pyrrolizidine alkaloids present in comfrey? They are hepatoxins, meaning "liver poisons"? And let me ask you...is tobacco a food? What about opium? Alcohol? Marijuana? Peyote? Hallucinogenic mushrooms?
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Hey, now we know why he's named himself "buz", eh??
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
So, is willow bark a food, or a drug?
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: FDA proposes regulating so-called "natural" cures, including herbals, hoping to enforce rules requiring any claim that a product treats a disease or condition needs to be backed up by evidence. Herbal manufacurers and retailers react negatively to this requirement and fund a huge lobbying and public relations blitz on Congress, falsly claiming that the FDA is going to prevent people from buying viamins.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Here's some more evidence:
Center For Media and Democracy-PR Watch Excerpt:
Under the FDA's proposed rules for implementing its powers, supplements marketed simply as nutritional aids would be subject to the same rules as other food products, while substances marketed as disease cures or treatments would be held to the same "safety and efficacy" standard as drugs sold by the pharmaceutical industry. Nothing in this labelling proposal would have prevented the manufacture or sale of food supplements, but many supplement marketers rely heavily on extravagant health claims with little scientific backing. Rather than submit to FDA standards, they fought back with a successful orchestrated campaign aimed at persuading consumers that the government was trying to take away their right to buy vitamins. Edited by schrafinator, : fixed link
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: There is nothing stopping the manufacturers of herbal drugs from following FDA guidelines right now. Isn't that incontrovertable support that they want to avoid doing it?
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