Re: alternative medicine..taught at med school?

One of Barratt's 'signs' of a quack site is one promoting herbs. I do not agree with this, I believe that herbs have their uses. However, mainly they are used as lead activity compounds by the big pharmaceutical companies, who will screen various plants etc to look for activity - an antibiotic, anticancer etc. There is certainly a desire for profit motivating them, otherwise they would go out of business and so are after something patentable (as an aside, I personally belive that there should be more central funding for drug discovery, to allow 'unprofitable' drugs onto the market). However, sometimes the compounds found are not ideal. Take penicillin G - a completely natural antibiotic. It is broken down by acid and so cannot be given orally - injection only, which is incovenient. The molecule was fiddled with a little to produce a semi-synthetic Antibiotic which could be given as tablets (penicillin V). The molecule was further altered to increase the types of bacteria it was active against, and to prevent it from being broken down by beta-lactamases. This is one example among many. So in answer to your question, yes the compaines are after something they can get a profit from, but sometimes they have to alter the molecule, which means a shed-load more testing, safety trials and stuff - all expensive! Western medicine is not embracing alternative medicine in the way members of this site are embracing it. Rather, they will test and learn, and only use the bits that are useful (I believe that there is some interest in how EMDR works). There are good alternative medicine sites and then there are those operated by people who are con-artists, part of the problem is seperating the wheat from the chaff, the good alternative medicine from true quacks. Part of the reason that we are learning about this stuff is to enable us to ask the right questions to help us do this, and to assess the effects of alternative medicine on Western medicine, in order to check for interactions and safegaurd the patient (ie St John's Wort and the contraceptive pill).