Intel Award Winner Tests Ayurvedic Herb on Pseudomonas

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060521/NEWS/605210380/-1/FEAT07



http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060520/fob7.asp



http://www.indiawest.com/view.php?subaction=showfull&id=1148511652&archive=&start_from=&ucat=11

I believe. It only makes sense that the practitioners of this art have discovered plants that help cure or manage many diseases. I've always wondered why in the world modern medicine doesn't check this stuff out. I've decided the drug companies can't patent a plant, and since they can't make money on it, they don't want people to know about it.

Modern medicine exploits plant extracts all the time--watch any documentary about the decimated Amazon rainforest, and you'll hear a lot about the use of newly discovered species and the tragedy of their extinction. No one contests this point.

The problem is that over-zealous advocates of "alternative medicine" often make an unsupported leap, as follows: "If an extract of insert plant name, used for centuries by insert group of healers turns out to have some medicinal value, then insert other plant name must also have a beneficial effect, and big pharma is covering it up."

This kind of efficacy-by-association is preached by a large number of advocates of alternative medicine, usually under the banner of "natural equals healthy."


Of course, uranium is natural, too...


But props to Ms. Gavini--if her research proves fruitful, then she'll have done humanity a great service!

I believe the OP was about someone who did NOT make an "unsupported leap" but was using a scientific method to determine if this stuff works.

Since I was replying to you and not to the OP, I thought perhaps that I'd address a point made in your post:

I've decided the drug companies can't patent a plant, and since they can't make money on it, they don't want people to know about it.

I was commenting on this claim, which I take to be complete unto itself. If you'd care to amend it, then I'll amend my response.

Specifically, your claim implies that if a plant--for instance one favored by advocates of alternative medicine--is somehow not a part of mainstream medicine, then there must be a plot by big pharma to suppress that plant. But your claim omits the other possibility that the plant has little or no particular medicinal value.

A broad range of plants are part of the "alternative medicine" canon, only a few of which have been shown to have the beneficial effect credited to them, and some of which have been shown to be dangerous. But over-zealous alternative practitioners tend to pile all of their remedies under the "knowledge forbidden by the FDA" or whatever.

My point, in brief, was to distinguish between altie-favored plants that have been subjected to rigorous clinical testing and those that have not.


Is that clearer?


And as I wrote before, props to Ms. Gavini!

you are entitled to yours. What you wrote hasn't changed my mind, and I seriously doubt that I could ever change yours, even if I were in a place where I had sources at hand that I can cite. Frankly, if you want to favor drugs and go that way, go right ahead. In my personal experience, drugs prescribed to me have nearly killed me. Alternative medicine cured my husband of a disease that is considered "uncurable".

I'm delighted to hear that your husband was able to be cured--what kind of asshole would I have to be to wish otherwise?

It's not a matter of wanting "to favor drugs" or wanting to favor plants. Instead, it's a question of supporting evidence. If a researcher can provide data supporting claims about some alternative remedy or another, and if that data can be reproduced by other, objective researchers, then intellectual honesty would compel us to accept it.

At present, and despite millennia of advocacy, most alternative therapies (plants included) simply don't have the evidence to support their claims.

It's that simple.

But I'm glad to hear that you husband was cured, even if I am not as willing to attribute his cure to an alternative therapy.

One thing to keep in mind in this debate is that the alternative treatments, usually herbal, have a heckuva hard time getting tested and for a very simple reason.

I have a friend who formulates and mixes herbal remedies for a lot of things, often for naturopaths or chiropractors or such based on their requirements. He tells me that he has a lot of trouble selling his formulations for the very reason cited. He can't afford naturally to fund these huge lab studies at some university or other and have a double blind set-up etc. Because of that, he can't make claims about the efficacy of his herbal remedies.

I've used a couple of them and I've talked to others who've used them and I feel there's a real effect to them and in line with the drugs on the market for the same problems. I tried a cold concoction he came up with and found it at least as effective (I felt) as the regular cold medicine I might have bought at the store.

He's from Iran and has an ancient herbal from old Persia and some other European herbals that he uses. He also keeps up with the testing of herbal remedies in Europe, where herbs are more often tested since evidently the huge kind of studies done in the US at universities thru Big Pharma's bank acct are not required in Europe.

Anyway, that's a factor to take into acct. The people here in the states who are formulating and selling herbals just have no way to test these things. It takes too much money.

I personally feel that herbals can be as effective as regular "drugs," and if they aren't effective, at least their side-effects are usually not nearly as serious as those asstd with the drugs of the pharmas. Just my two cents.

Rigorously controlled, randomized double-blind studies may indeed cost money, but that's how it goes. If I found an exotic isotope that stopped the aging process, cured all disease, and kept everyone happy and well-nourished, it would still be up to me to prove my claim.

The complaint of cost should never be allowed as a justification for why some alternative therapy hasn't been experimentally verified. Instead, less scrupulous advocates of alternative products prey upon the desperate or ignorant and claim that dogmatic science is suppressing some miracle product du jour.

For that matter, these same unscrupulous advocates absolutely do not want their products to be subjected to rigorous testing, because most alternative therapies tested in this fashion have been shown to have little real benefit, causing their proponents to fall back on "well it makes people feel better" or "at least it doesn't hurt anyone." Maybe, maybe not.

But the fact remains that controlled empirical testing is the best method we currently have for verifying the efficacy of a medical claim, alternative or otherwise. Cost is, frankly, irrelevant.

With a bigger pot of money. We need to leave this kind of stuff to sixteen year olds who have friends with health problems and relatives with herbal knowhow. The combination seemed to pay off. Screw the pharmaceutical companies. Ayurvedic texts are freely available and apparently nobody looked at this until the Mississippi schoolgirl came along.

herbs have been much more effective than antiboitics. My mother uses an herbal salve that is the only thing she's found that helps ease the pain of arthritis in her hands-and she's been one to go to the cut and drug type doctors. Interestingly, recently they prescribed a drug without looking at the other drugs she was taking; there was an interaction that caused severe side effects that will stay with her the rest of her life. The herbal salve hasn't caused her a bit of trouble.

With the price of drugs going through the roof thanks to Bushco, I suspect more and more folks will try out alternative remedies.