Medicinal herbs across entire European Union will be banned 1-Apr-2011 - no joke

[winz]

It's up to the individual to do his/her research to see whether it has any credit, anything that works shouldn't be ignored.

I disagree. The last thing I want to do when I'm sick is to do some research whether or not the product stated as cure for my disease actually works. I have no degree in medicine and most of my biology knowledge comes from high school, there for I'm in no way competent to judge if something might or might not work.

 

That's someone else jobs before the product hits the market. And when the product hits the market stated as cure, then it must have some laboratory testing done that'll prove it's actually a cure.

 

Standard drug has to have extenstive laboraty testing before it is allowed on market. Why should herbs be any different?

 

If you cannot prove its an actual cure, then sell it as nutrition complement.

 

IT IS A MATTER OF KILLING COMPETITION FOR MONOPOLIZATION!!!

What monopolization? You'll still be able to sell your hocus pocus herbs as cure, but you need to proove that they are a cure.

 

instead of letting them have an individual and democratic choice about THEIR OWN LIFE...

Let's drop any kind of customer protection then. Why have extensive aviation rules for companies? People should be able to decide themself which companie is dangerous and which are not. If general public is competent enough to judge something as complex as the effects of medicaments, then they should be able to handle aviation safety quite easily.

[allesok]

“It's not fair to let people buy expensive products which basically doesn't do anything. Nothing to do with democracy, just simple ethics.” What makes you think that they buy them if they don't know that they work?

It IS fair to let people have the choice! It is unfair to take it away from them! In some countries there are LICENSED natural healers, in Germany called “Heilpraktiker” (“healing practitioners”) who DO know what works and can cure effectively. They now will have their remedies taken away from them and many will have to give up their jobs. Democracy is to let people have the choice to go to a physician who practices chemical medicine or a “Heilpraktiker” who practices natural medicine. And don’t say that the latter are not doing a good job! If they didn’t, they would have disappeared from the “market” long ago.

 

“What monopolization? You'll still be able to sell your hocus pocus herbs as cure, but you need to prove that they are a cure.” Of course the MONOPOLIZATION OF CHEMICAL MEDICINE! By means of regulations such that those who in smaller companies have since many decades manufactured and sold effective natural remedies CANNOT AFFORD to have the approval. If you have, say 20 products and each on the average contains 5 ingredients and you have to pay $ 50 000.- for each ingredient to get it approved, you would have to pay $ 5 millions! This is really an effective way to drag the economic carpet away from their feet and kill them. That is what this is all about!

 

“Let's drop any kind of customer protection then.” Let’s drop the self-arranged protection of the profit of the big pharma! (See other posts by me above).

Edited January 10, 2011 by allesok

[GGTharos]

What a bunch of BS.

 

This is not unfair at all. Pharmaceutical companies are subjected to very strict and expensive requirements for proving their treatments work.

 

There is no reason why 'medicinal herbs' should not be subjected to the same rigor. Period.

 

As for people who offer hokus pocus dissapearing from the market ... LOL. Just LOL.

[Boberro]

Yes I agree GG - Pharma Corporations say alot of BS :]

[EtherealN]

As the son of a homaeopath, acupuncturist, reflexologist and generally so-called "holistic practitioner": what GG said.

 

Also, that whole thing about "big pharma" is just stupid. It's a conspiracy theory just like any other and not really worthy of attention.

[RIPTIDE]

As the son of a homaeopath, acupuncturist, reflexologist and generally so-called "holistic practitioner": what GG said.

 

Also, that whole thing about "big pharma" is just stupid. It's a conspiracy theory just like any other and not really worthy of attention.

Well.. Acupuncture seems to work for the treatment of pain associated with injuries. I know of some Physiotherapists that practice this along side their own trade. Whether this is placebo or not is actually irrelevant as it gets the job done without side effects. :)

[EtherealN]

It IS fair to let people have the choice! It is unfair to take it away from them! In some countries there are LICENSED natural healers, in Germany called “Heilpraktiker” (“healing practitioners”) who DO know what works and can cure effectively.

 

No they can't. I have actually (for payment) translated a lot of work by german so-called "Heilpraktiker"s and I can tell you: it's magic. That's all there is to it. It's worthless bunk that doesn't work.

 

You want some herbal medicines? Take an aspirin. Yes, seriously. That's how science works, and how "big pharma" does it: they find something that appears to have an effect, they then test it, research it, and figure out what exactly it is that is having the desired effect. They then find a way to produce that substance (and this is important: that substance only) in a controlled manner and the result is called "medicine". But that's the "big pharma" way, they actually test their stuff and make sure the stuff is under control.

 

Heilpraktikers do nothing of this. They woo about natural this and natural that (btw, arsenik is "natural" but that doesn't make it healthy - even though Homaeopaths will happily use it as a base in some of their "remedies". :P ) when they aren't off on some tangent about how you can diagnose both physical and mental diseases and disorders (and decide on the proper cure) through investigating the iris. (I'm not kidding: that's one of the things I translated from german, and I tell you - I felt really really dirty about it, but I needed the money.)

 

Hokus pokus is what this all is. As mentioned, my mother was (and still is) a Heilpraktiker, and interestingly enough our family was infamous for being constantly ill... Funny that? ;)

[allesok]

What a bunch of BS.

 

This is not unfair at all. Pharmaceutical companies are subjected to very strict and expensive requirements for proving their treatments work.

 

There is no reason why 'medicinal herbs' should not be subjected to the same rigor. Period.

 

As for people who offer hokus pocus dissapearing from the market ... LOL. Just LOL.

 

So I take it that you also believe in Santa Claus ...

[allesok]

As the son of a homaeopath, acupuncturist, reflexologist and generally so-called "holistic practitioner": what GG said.

 

Also, that whole thing about "big pharma" is just stupid. It's a conspiracy theory just like any other and not really worthy of attention.

 

There are conspiracy theories and conspiracy realities ...

The latter will always blame us for being making up conspiracy theories ...

[GGTharos]

No, quite obviously you do.

 

So I take it that you also believe in Santa Claus ...

[EtherealN]

Well.. Acupuncture seems to work for the treatment of pain associated with injuries. I know of some Physiotherapists that practice this along side their own trade. Whether this is placebo or not is actually irrelevant as it gets the job done without side effects. :)

 

No it doesn't.

 

I know the studies you might refer to, and take a real close look at the results:

 

"Real" acupuncture (needles on meridians).

"Random" acupuncture (needles on erroneous positions).

"Sham" acupuncture (needles that are like those theatre-knives, so there is no penetration of the skin)

 

All of these had the exact same result for pain relief when double-blinded. That is: placebo effect.

But the so-called "researchers" and especially the media still managed to spin this as "omg! it works!"

[allesok]

@EtherealN

Well, my friend, you obviously have no idea and judge on hearsay.

If you would have personal experience of the work of Heilpraktiker and the effects of remedies and treatments they give you, you would sing another song ...

 

I have ...

[GGTharos]

In that case, you are what we call a hypochondriac ;)

 

@EtherealN

Well, my friend, you obviously have no idea and judge on hearsay.

If you would have personal experience of the work of Heilpraktiker and the effects of remedies and treatments they give you, you would sing another song ...

 

I have ...

[RIPTIDE]

No it doesn't.

 

I know the studies you might refer to, and take a real close look at the results:

 

"Real" acupuncture (needles on meridians).

"Random" acupuncture (needles on erroneous positions).

"Sham" acupuncture (needles that are like those theatre-knives, so there is no penetration of the skin)

 

All of these had the exact same result for pain relief when double-blinded. That is: placebo effect.

But the so-called "researchers" and especially the media still managed to spin this as "omg! it works!"

I'm not referring to any study. And if you read what I actually said, before spitting your coffee, if pain relief is the goal and if its placebo effect that reduces said pain.. then its irrelevant.

[GGTharos]

Wrong. It is VERY relevant, because you are treating a different condition than something that actually causes pain. It is relevant because you most likely cannot apply this treatment to a different condition.

 

I'm not referring to any study. And if you read what I actually said, before spitting your coffee, if pain relief is the goal and if its placebo effect that reduces said pain.. then its irrelevant.

[EtherealN]

@EtherealN

Well, my friend, you obviously have no idea and judge on hearsay.

If you would have personal experience of the work of Heilpraktiker and the effects of remedies and treatments they give you, you would sing another song ...

 

I have ...

 

Ah, anecdotes. Come back when you have, you know, evidence. ;) Because anecdotes aren't evidence, and the plural of anecdotes is not "evidence" either - it's just more anecdotes.

 

Did you ever check whether what you got were placebos? Because, you know, placebo also "works". It is actually sold as a product for those that need it for whatever reason, and it has a documented "effect" for all kinds of things.

 

But I thank you for calling me a liar. Thing is, I suspect I know more about this stuff than you do. But that's neither here nor there - if you are going to insinuate that I'm a liar just because I go counter to your ideology there's no point in discussing the matter.

[RIPTIDE]

Wrong. It is VERY relevant, because you are treating a different condition than something that actually causes pain. It is relevant because you most likely cannot apply this treatment to a different condition.

And in the context of my example of trained Physiotherapists... they know exactly what is causing pain and they seek ways to reduce it. I know of Physiotherapists who use acupuncture to reduce pain caused in sport injuries while also treating the injury through their normal means. And whether it is placebo or otherwise is irrelevant.

[EtherealN]

No it's not, Riptide. Acupuncture works in the same way as almost anything works. To then say that "acupuncture works for X" is erroneous and dangerous. The correct way to state it would be "placebo treatments sometimes work for X".

 

There have been studies made where prolonged consultations with real doctors (which in the US is often difficult due to how the compensation scheme in the insurance system is set up), you get the same effect simply through talking to them and having the doctor do a physical. (In fact, doctors in my country will often do a physical on patients that they are 100% certain there's nothing wrong with, simply because the attention and care in itself grants an alleviating effect. You can see the same thing with the traditional Homaeopathic consultation, for example, where the Homaeopath spends a lot of time on the patient. But that doesn't mean Homaeopathy works for curing headaches - it means that "getting to calm down and being given caring attention works for curing headaches". HUGE difference.)

 

In the same way - acupuncture doesn't work. (Beside the whole fun thing of which school of acupuncture one is talking about, since they all have conflicting meridian lines.) Giving attention to the patient does, however, and very often the simple fact of getting a new treatment will vastly increase the anticipation and thus the placebo effect. Again: this is well known through many studies and a search on PubMed will give you a treasure trove.

[X-man]

@EtherealN

Well, my friend, you obviously have no idea and judge on hearsay.

If you would have personal experience of the work of Heilpraktiker and the effects of remedies and treatments they give you, you would sing another song ...

 

I have ...

Again with this personal stuff, it doesn't prove a thing... :doh:

Edited January 10, 2011 by X-man

[allesok]

I wonder if not a few in this forum are being paid by Big Pharma to write the junk the latter wants us to believe ...

 

By the way: personal experience ("stuff") is better than ignorance ...

[EtherealN]

The topics are intertwined: it is very commonly the same people. So-called Herbal medicine is not an isolated phenomenon, it's part of a whole culture of outlandish treatments and magical modalities. In some cases there is admittedly at least an active ingredient (as in proper "herbal" medicine), but the problem is that it is not refined nor does it have a controlled production process wherefore the consumer and not even the "Heilpraktiker" themselves can control the amount of active ingredients - in some tests of herbal medicine products it was found that the amount of active ingredient can vary by several orders of magnitude.

 

That's not in any way trivial - that's the kind of stuff that can actually kill people.

 

So the so-called herbal medicine and other Heilpraktiker/Complementary/Alternative "medicine" schools will just have to accept one thing: they'll have to live with exactly the same regulation as real medicine lives with. Why this is a problem I'll never understand - if it works then it's no problem!

 

But it quickly devolves into this conspiracy theory where "big pharma" and their stooges in the government is out to "shut them down" precicely because it works, and cured people means less money which they can't have!

 

...and thus, every medical doctor on the planet is in on the scam. I mean seriously, the 9/11 Truthers have a more sane conspiracy than that. :P

[asparagin]

Distract, devide and conquer ....

 

Wasn´t the topic the ban of herbs or more important so called soft-drugs (vitamines)?

 

Congratulations, you just saved this thread!

[EtherealN]

I wonder if not a few in this forum are being paid by Big Pharma to write the junk the latter wants us to believe ...

 

Yup, we all are. Anyone that disagrees with you is a liar paid for by big pharma.

 

Have you ever stopped to consider the size of your conspiracy theory? We are talking about tens of millions of people that would have to be on the take only to cover various medical doctors and surgeons, and while "Big Pharma" does have healthy profits, they'd run out of money stupid fast if they tried to run a conspiracy such as your position requires to be in existance.

 

Show me the research, or give up. Peer reviewed, double-blinded. Anecdotes doesn't count.

[winz]

By the way: personal experience ("stuff") is better than ignorance ...

Modern medicine saved my life.

 

Did herbs do anything more for you than to help you overcome a flu?

[EtherealN]

Fun fact: a really nasty case of the flu will usually take a whole 2 weeks to go away by itself, but with some herbs you can shorten that down to just 14 days. :D