Re: Senator McCain Cosponsors Bill That Threatens Access To Supplements (Feb. 2010)

Adieu,

You are right, they are herbal medications but they would be violating the Big Pharma serving laws here to call themselves such.  In many countries herbal medications are considered "real medicine". In the U.S. only something that has gone through the FDA trial process at a cost of hundreds of millions to near a billion dollars is accepted as an approved medicine.  The rub is that you cannot patent nature, and thus no company could afford to spend that kind of money on an unpatentable supplement when all of their competitors could far undercut the price that would have to be charged to recover the huge expense of approval.  While the FDA approval process may sound good on paper, it did nothing to protect us from the horrors of Vioxx, Avandia, Fosamax, Alleve, Bextra and any number of other harmful drugs did it?  A natural substance with a history of use should not have to go to such expense and neither should it be absurdly forbidden to list any health benefits or use the word cure in association with it.  But such is the way the big money game is played here.

The US is by far the most medicated country in the world, and yet our world health rankings has steadily plummeted below over 40 other countries - many of whom rely more on herbal medicine and natural health than mainstream drugs - including two of the top three ranked countries in the world.

A very large number of mainstream medicines, btw, are derived from plants - but the way they do so (synthetic versions or unique isolates not found by themselves in nature) ends up with something that is not natural.  No doubt that is a major reason that, no matter whether they copy or isolate nature or whether they make a unique compound in the lab, over 95% of the 24,000 plus approved medicines have side effects.  Butthen what is the downside to having side effects that create further illness and leads to still more medications in a never ending spiral? It's a great business model and exactly the one we have in our mainstream managed illness industry.