Herbal supplements in US commonly have traces of contaminants

Hi, nator. How nice to type that again...In the other thread where this subject came up, I'm afraid Buz mistook my enthusiasm for his nick (c'mon--Buz favors herbal liberty ), his nickname for his wife, Buzgirl, their consumption of thousands of pounds of herbs (maybe only onifre and I can match that), and my "Right on, bro!" for opposition to the regulation of herbal remedies.One man's herb is another man's...herb. So I approach this from the intersection of cognitive liberty and public safety. If somebody wants to grow or harvest an herb and consume it, whether for recreation or medicine or poison, that's fine with me.They can take my herb away when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. Take that, Chuck.But herbal materials packaged as medicine and sold to the public as medicine shoud be subject to strict regulation and testing; outlandish, undocumented claims should be forbidden; materials contaminated with prescription drugs or heavy metals should lead to criminal prosecutions.Bit deregulation and defunding of regulatory agencies has created governmental watchdogs who want to lick industry's butt and roll over.We've seen the result of decades of lax enforcement and eight years of deregulation across the board: a coal mine industry regulated by people they party with finds it easier to pay paltry fines than to maintain workplace safety. So people die.Coal companies are cited and fined; but they don't have to pay while the fines are appealed, and the appeals take years. Regulation never actually costs them anything because they seldom have to pay, and when they do the fines are trivial, an accepted cost of doing business.BP drills offshore in the gulf without any real review, turns off its alarms, has a spill contigency plan that was a cut-and-paste from Alaska, including arctic animals and dead men as resources to call upon for expert advice. People die, and the Gulf Coast faces economic and environmental disaster.Now BP threatens to "be unable" to meet the costs of the clean-up unless we give them more permits.Food safety was simiarly defunded. Result? Deadly hamburgers, ptomaine chicken, and food stuffs imported from China with the most bizarre industrial chemical contaminants. Tens of thousands of industrial chemicals--including potent endocrine disruptors--enjoy a "grandfathered" status under the law and need pass no safety tests, while amphibians and Florida cougars develop increasingly devastating reproductive anomalies.Even now the manufacturers need not demonstrate safety: you can make it and use it until someone else proves that it's dangerous, the exact opposite of the more enlightened European practice. Organophosphates were recently linked to an increased risk for autism: in agricultural communities out west, poor communities are paid off with trival sums when a fog of organophosphates floats over their homes and schools.I can't go to the feedlot and inspect my beef and chicken; we have little choice other than to rely on government for that. I can't undertake the studies that would eliminate those thousands of dangerous chemicals: I have to rely on the government for that.We should regulate and test commercial herb; we should legalize all homegrown herbs.

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Have you ever been to an American wedding? Where's the vodka? Where's the marinated herring?!
-Gogol Bordello

Hi, Buz. Please, Buz, don't be disingenuous: we have to set a better example for the young'uns.I know the herbals are sold as food supplements. That's the problem we're discussing, not the answer. I could sell methamphetamine as Mother's Little Helper, too, but it would still be crank.If your herbals have any effect, good or bad, it's because they contain chemicals: chemicals active in the human body are called drugs. You want unfettered access to your herbs while completely denying me access to mine. So your appeal to liberty rings pretty hollow. I couldn't agree more, Buz. War? Good Gawd, y'all! What is it good for?I haven't done hot and sandy, but I've done hot and wet, and cold and hard.Nobody seemed to get free, just dead. Edited by Omnivorous, : fix-up iPhone post.

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Have you ever been to an American wedding? Where's the vodka? Where's the marinated herring?!
-Gogol Bordello

Hey, I'll stand up for Celebrex.Celebrex and the other Cox-2 inhibitors are incredibly effective drugs against pain and inflammation from osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and sports and other traumatic injuries.Used properly, for limited periods of time, they can suppress the cycle of ever greater inflammatory pain, providing both relief and an opportunity to heal better and faster. In many cases, where surgery is not an option, they are the only alternative to narcotic pain control.The problem was that the sales divisions pushed the Cox-2s for every minor ache or sprain, especially among the aging and ever pill-hungry boomers. I saw this first-hand while working in a private medical group: a dozen physicians and dozens of staffers were treated by drug reps to lunches at least three days each week, often from expensive caterers.Doctors were paid thousands to make advocacy presentations to other doctors at swank restaurtants, sometimes during three-day junkets to resorts.After some wimpy legal reform, happy hours with an endless buffet of expensive liquor and appetizers were followed by a form attesting to the educational value of the night, and we would all solemnly sign it. Drup reps handed out expensive gimmes and bags of drug sample packs to staff and physicians for their personal and family use.When a new, powerful medication hits the market, it's happy-days-are-here-again all round.Between corporate greed and our hunger for cures and pain relief, it's difficult to maintain cautious treatment protocols. An astonishing number of physicans have confessed to passing out antibiotics for the common cold and other viral illnesses just to get patients off their backs.I regret the even more powerful and scandalized Vioxx was pulled from the U.S. market. Used intermittently and sparingly, Vioxx let me devote two years to an attempt to treat a traumatic spine injury with physical rehab and traction rather than surgery.When surgery became unavoidable, small doses of Vioxx helped me enter rehab sooner and recover faster. and reduced my need for narcotics. I was fortunate to be at low risk for the possible negative side-effects of a Cox-2 inhibitor--fairly young, active, nonsmoker and in good cardiovascular condition--and to have careful, judicious physicians.Most modern drugs carry long lists of risk advisories, as they should. None of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have been fully vetted for safety; some researchers suspect all will carry some cardiovascular risk. Even aspirin can be dangerous at the wrong dose, in the wrong patient, or over too long a time.Pharmaceuticals are the most abused drugs. Big pharma pushes their use to the boundaries of good sense and beyond; patients demand pills they don't understand from physicians who rarely have the time to explain. I suspect many drugs now abandoned altogether, like Vioxx, are valuable tools lost to good physicians because they were misused in this way by bad ones.

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Have you ever been to an American wedding? Where's the vodka? Where's the marinated herring?!
-Gogol Bordello

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Real things always push back.
-William James