Herbal supplements in US commonly have traces of contaminants

Hi Nator and welcome back!Possibly even worse than the contamination is that; Very disturbing. Also very reminiscent of the Newsnight homeopathy sting of a couples of years ago. Their undercover reporter found that homeopaths were not only failing to advise people to take real anti-malarials, they were even failing to give sensible, holistic advice about prevention with insect repellent, nets, etc.Mutate and Survive

Hi Hyro, That's all very well, but in truth you cannot free yourself from this particular dependency. Nor can you wipe your own ass when you've been lethally poisoned by dodgy herbs, something that has actually happened in some cases.Suppose you want to take oh, say, silverweed. My Edible and Medicinal Plants book claims that it's good for "bladder and kidney complaints and diarrhoea", but it doesn't provide any evidence for that. Nor does it give any detailed advice about risk.Say you want to try and work out;
a) If it works;
b) If it is harmful and;
c) If it reacts with other medicines/herbs.How are you going to do that on your own? Perhaps there are existing studies on silverweed that you can look at - but perhaps there are not. If not, you're screwed. You can't conduct a clinical trial all on your own. You can't collect epidemiological data on your own. You are left with no meaningful way of assessing the effectiveness or harm of the product. We are left with a situation where manufacturers and vendors can make whatever medicinal claims they please, and you are powerless to assess their veracity.Now that may be good enough when buying most goods, but with healthcare, I think that people have a right to expect that any medicine they buy to work and be safe. Certainly they have a right to expect that they will not be poisoned, a guarantee that they will not be poisoned, something that the current US and UK systems clearly do not prevent. As far as I can see the only way to achieve reasonable levels of safety is to place the onus for testing upon the manufacturers and/or vendors, because the customer simply doesn't have the option.If you can show me how a non "dependant" system would work, I'm all ears, but I just don't see it.Mutate and Survive

Hi Hyro, sorry for the belated reply; That is their explicit purpose, to assure us that drugs have been tested and found to be both effective and safe. As I have demonstrated, you have no way of determining these things on your own, so you must rely on others to do it for you. That few? That's kinda small beer. You know full well that you're only getting those numbers because there are literally billions of people taking medicines. The market for herbals is much smaller. I agree. The FDA is not perfect. Drug company regulation worldwide is not perfect. That's no reason to scrap it all, it's a reason to improve upon the current system. This is doubly true if we're talking about setting up a new and similar system for herbals. Such a system could embrace the best aspects of the FDA and try to avoid its flaws.I do think that the pharma industry could do with a shake up though. Forcing them to publish all their trial data would be a good start, stopping them from cherry-picking what they make public. Nothing but mud-slinging. The two eras are not comparable. When did the "Refer Madness" crowd perform extensive clinical trials? Or publish their data? Never. There is no comparison.Mutate and Survive