Healthcare in the good old U.S.A.

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Manus, that adds up to the same thing. Just because you eat the actual leaves instead of taking it in pill form the active ingredients are the same. It is the chemicals in the herbs and plants that make them effective, the only difference between a herb/plant and "modern" medicine is that science has isolated the effective chemical in a herb and reproduced it in a synthetic way. Thus you dont get those other 200 different chemicals in the herb who no one really knows what they do.

 

Gotta go with Manus on this...I agree that modern medicine has progressed to where it can accomplish some truly remarkable things...the new life-saving surgical techniques are modern wonders, but as far as the elements that you use in your life to maintain, preserve and restore health...Medicine should only be a part. As viking said:

I would never advocate allowing a child to languish without necessary medical care...the key word being necessary. I do encourage everyone to doubt what the doctor tells you...many of the very maladies that we rush off to the doctor over, have already been exacerbated by the doctors fairly limited approach and general ignorance on matters such as nutrition. Medicine has it's uses, but it must be taken in careful, considered balanced doses.
Jschild, I do take exception to this:

Not to pick at the crappy health care remark, but at the US infant mortality rate. The reason why the US has such a high infant mortality rate is because we have the highest rate of medical childbirth intervention...medication, epiduerals, epesiotomies, c-sections...you name it...we lead the world. With all of that medical might, there can be only two possible conclusions...either American women are low Constitution wimps or the Medical treatment of birth leads to it's own complications. Medicine has come to the outlook that birth is a sickness that needs to be treated by some sort of action...it needs to be intervened with. Also, medicine is afraid to not act...to not do something...in the event of possible litigation. Medicine needs to be able to tell the court of law that all reasonable actions were taken. As a result, in the US, those "reasonable" actions are taken with all women. Any "reasonable" action will carry some inherent risk, so the risks multiply, the odds pan out...voila...you have high rates of mortality and complication. This is one of most clear cut illustrations of the dangers of Medicine, and the tunnel vision employed in our care.

On the topic of Herbal medicines...I agree that they can be dangerous, but so is jumping off your roof. Herbal medicines can be as potent as synthetic drugs, and need to be handled with care.
Joacqin said,

Trust me, no one really knows what those synthetic chemicals will do to you either...except for in @ 20 years when the case studies are done! Your comment on pharmaceuticals being reproductions of naturally occuring chemicals is partly true...most of the new drugs have nothing to do with anything natural and would probably kill the poor little herb plant.

Oh well, I'm done. Going back to cave now.

 

Hacken Slash - you prove my point exactly, there have been no serious studies at all on the long term effects of "herbal" remedies - which I will state again ARE DRUGS. We know less about "Herbal" interactions than even normal "drugs". Some alternative medicines are effective, that I do not doubt and some herbals are effective but again, they unfortantly lack serious studies. And no one can doubt the effectivness of the vast majority of vacccines, but there are side effects that are well known. We need studies on these to determine which are bull**** and which are effective. Also what works for some doesn't work for all. For example, my father-in-law has had great success with Chiropractic procedures. I on the other hand, no no success with it at all. Why is that? We don't know. And we should.

 

Studies = $ = Medicine = Pharmaceuticals

Nowhere in this equation is herbal or alternative medicine, nor will it ever be. Exercise prudence in all things (including prudence ), and it will all work out.

 

Ummm. hate to dispute you HackenSlash, but the Herbal market is making billions around the world. They don't want it to be regulated. Why? Because the vast majority of them only work to a limited degree if at all. If there are studies that show they don't work, then people stop buying them. They don't want people to know they actually are drugs, and they don't want to be regulated. They even bought off the FDA to keep them from being regulated which they need to be.

 

I agree with you that herbalists and alternative medicine sources don't want to be regulated, but for other reasons than you state. They would be submitting to regulation by the very agency that doubts their effectiveness. There was a recent thread here about God and health that discussed that Medicine is starting to acknowlege a link between healing and faith...alternative medicine has long known that. They both use radically different approaches to healing, and to make the alternative health care field subject to the AMA would be similar to having one State religion. Not good for anyone in the long run.

If the Herbal / Alternative sphere is making billions around the globe...bully for them! It's still a drop in the bucket compared to the advertising costs of "Big Pharmaceuticals" newest stay hard / stay happy drug.

I think this statement is totally unsupportable. How could the herbal industry "buy off" the FDA? They don't have that kind of money...they're not doctors.

 

Again Jschild, you're confusing the (American) Market of these drugs, with the use of them. I am well aware that anything that seems like a good idea will be copied and indescriminately used (read, abused) by charlatans - but this does not mean that the thing in itself is bad. Also, 'those other 200 different chemicals in the herb who no one really knows what they do' are probably what's keeping that thing from killing you, let alone the fact that, as Hacken Slash stated, the chemical is not in such a concentrated isolated form. Hacken Slash is right in everything he said, if you exercise due caution and thoughtfulness then you will be ok. There have been tests on these things by the way, both by modern-day groups, and the ones that were using them for the past thousands of years - and herbal medicine is only part of the answer.

Edit: You tell 'em Hacken Slash! Honestly, those who think we are wrong should listen to those medical doctors and big drug companies belly-aching about the 'alternative' sphere, complaining and saying how bad they are, until they get proved right and then who do you think is the first to jump on the band-wagon? That's right, the very people who made so much fun of them are real quick to change their tone when they think they can make a buck. They just don't like the competition.

 

HS - The FDA is largely a government agency and, as we've seen with the FCC, it is a politcal agency, and servant of the admistration. Thus, donations that are put into the coffers of elected officals by the drug companies are really just another way of buying them off. Or so some believe.

 

We're really on the same page, Chandos. I wasn't expressing doubt that a govt agency could be bought off...they can. I was just expressing doubt that the huge and powerful Alternative Medicine lobby and PAC group was capable of doing it.

Getting back to your original post that started this thread, I agree that we have a problem. I don't think it can be blamed on either Conservative or Liberal politics, but needs to be addressed by both sides. It's been "broke" and getting "broker" under two different administrations, so I think we transcend party lines.

Just a final thought...every time you see those $'s deducted from your paycheck for health insurance...everytime you pay an obscene medical bill...everytime the hospital charges you $9.68 for a Band-aid...You are helping to pay for the illegal alien who required medical care here, before he was sent back home.

There is no easy answer.

 

I would have to say that you Manus and Hacken Slash sounds extremely naive, so just because the big pharmaceutical companies use the system to squeese every last buck out of it with little or no concern for their customers/patients that makes herbal medicines and alternative treatments heaven on earth and better from a medical point of view?
The main effect of most such herbal remedies is the simple plaecbo effect experienced by a lot of people just because they have the same views you have. I actually have more trust in the big evil pharmaceutical companies than alternative cures even if those companies are moneygrubbing bastards because they are under scrutiny, they are regulated, they have to submit to tests and checks. Then that they overprice their stuff is a whole other matter.

 

Joacqin that wasn't our point at all, and you know it. That is so far from what we were saying I am led to believe that you would rather attempt to ridicule those you do not agree with than consider their assertations.

Actually, I was highly doubtful of many of these things until I found they worked so well. Besides, you're contradicting yourself now. First you say that herbs contain the same drugs in the chemical pharmaceuticals, and many more you say you are fearful of, then you say they don't have have any related affect to these compounds at all. You're grasping at straws.

Go to China for a while - they have tested and formulated these things for millenea, the proof is right in front of your eyes if you are willing to look for it. The West has too, but have forgotten most of it.

I am much more willing to trust the tests and experience of a family friend who has spent their life working with these things than a huge corporation with ties to the government who benefits most in their discreditation, and has displayed their lack of scruples, and their unwilingness to learn the truth about the world around them.

I can tell you something else, I am certain you will doubt it, but I defy you to provide another explanation. It has nothing to do with natural remedies as we have so far discussed however (yet is related to healthcare), so I'm not going to post it here unless I get the go-ahead.

Edit: I can't believe I fell for that. Look joacqin, even if you were right in your second take on natural remedies - which you are not - I wouldn't care in the slightest. I'd rather go out in the garden and munch on a couple of leaves, and be totally cured, using only the power of my mind, then any of those other methods. I defy anyone to disgree with this. Any way you look at it, as far as I'm concerned now, this is a moot point. What possible reason do you have to object? Either the chemicals are there (and they work even better if you analyze the long case history of these things, longer and further documented than modern medicine), or they're not (why on earth you tried to say this I don't know) and they still work, minus any other damaging concerns -a very real concern with pharmeceutical drugs.

So what is your objection now? I'm sure someone has one.

[ November 10, 2003, 16:32: Message edited by: Manus ]

 

That was part of my old point. You seemed to think that that be basis for herbal remedies and "scientific" remedies was somehow different. I said that they werent, that they all were efficient due to one chemical or another, if they are efficent at all. My main point was that I prefer and trust the medicines from the evil corporations simply because they are under scrutiny and have to tests their substances thoroughly. Many many "alternative" treatments has been submitted to such scrutiny and passed and are now embraced by the medical community, do you reject for instance acupuncture just because it has been widely accepted by the scientific and medical community? I have nothing against alternative treatments but I think it is heedless to submit to them before they have been tested properly and not trust on hearsay.

You have one point though, it doesnt matter how or why you get better if you are getting healthy. If that is due to a placebo effect it doesnt matter one whit as long as you are healthy. I tend to prefer medicines that work whether I believe in them or not though, even if I prefer to believe in them as they tend to work better then, alternative or not.

 

Btw, according to the FDA, the miniscule herbal market made 19 BILLION in the US alone.... stop portraying it as a tiny market that cannot affect the FDA because they spent tons of money to keep it unregulated a few years ago. The FDA only just recently insisted that they control the amount of product so that the dosage is consistant.

 

Well joacqin, agreed then. If the effects of these products have not been proved to you, then by all means wait until they are. My life differes from this however, as not only do I have faith in the efficiency of these means, but I try to have as little as possible to do with the government or commercial corporations, or any other large body, as this is the way my own beliefs and ethics take me. Nevertheless, I do understand your hesitancy, I only feel you should look into these things further as I am equally wary of the dangers I see in these other areas as you are of the one I have chosen.

Jschild, I don't know, as I don't live in America. But I think you are confusing the thing in itself, with one possible method of obtaining similar products. I'm probably almost as opposed to this corporation as any other due to what is required of someone to be involved in such a thing. I put more faith in them however, than another, solely because I value (some) of their product.

Which brings me back to the point Hacken Slash has brought up. There is no definate party at blame for this - so I blame everyone. It is the mindset of all the people involved in this system which leads to such problems. The doctors who charge so much, the companies which reneg on their word, the governments which support them, the people who abuse a situation, the people that have led those others to believe that they had little other choice. All we can do is try to do the best we can, if that means pulling away, then that is what we should do. If we can handle things for ourselves, and convince others to do the same, I think the system as we know it will collapse (with no-one to support it) and thus the only things that may arise or survive are those in alignment with the way of thinking which we have all ourselves decreed, and live within.

Is there anyone here who does support this current system- from it's face to its roots, or any part in-between?

 

@jschild...Can you provide any proof of the 19 billion dollar claim that you have made. I do find it hard to believe, but will look at any evidence you can provide.

 

Here you go, plus the article talks about why you don't want to get the kava supplement anymore, the figure listed is for 2002, sales in 2003 have been reported to top 19 billion

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/2935103.htm