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#51
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
" Oh, horse****.
Who is selling that as a dietary supplement? Does it treat horse**** deficiency syndrome?" I don't know about horse ****, but cow **** is used for alledged medical claims, as an "alternative drug" said to treat various complaints. |
#52
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
wrote:
" Oh, horse****. Who is selling that as a dietary supplement? Does it treat horse**** deficiency syndrome?" I don't know about horse ****, but cow **** is used for alledged medical claims, as an "alternative drug" said to treat various complaints. It's a major cause of neonatal tetanus in some parts of the world, where it is put on the umbilical stump. Of course, it must work and be safe, because it is so natural. -- Peter Bowditch aa #2243 The Millenium Project http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles Australian Council Against Health Fraud http://www.acahf.org.au Australian Skeptics http://www.skeptics.com.au To email me use my first name only at ratbags.com |
#53
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
GMCarter wrote: On 30 Nov 2006 14:13:31 GMT, wrote: "Dietary supplements in the US are generally recognized as Safe (GRAS) (including colloidal silver, grandfathered in). They include a lot of different agents." No, only such things as vitamins and minerals etc. are accepted as "safe and effective". Stop right there. MANY botanical agents are GRAS. http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/grasguid.html snip "There is no FDA mechanism for evaluating effects of DS on mitigating or curing diseases. FDA is corrupt and stinks worse than it ever has, a puppet to pharma. It took 40 years, for example, for FDA to recognize that folic acid supplementation can prevent neural tube defects." Three points here, there is under food and drug and cosmetics laws a way for "alternative drugs" to be accepted as otc, like aspirin. Whatever the flaws of fda it does not excuse the many many times worse oversight applied to "alternative drugs" under the almost useless laws applying to them. The fda does not initiat medical research as in folic acid. Who in the end did recognize on a scientific basis its benefit? In the end took a HELL of a long time--and lots of deformed infants. OTC status is one way to go. We need more public investment in health outcomes research is my view. But come on....if you think the FDA is pristine you're living in a bubble somewhere. They have become abject stinking whores for a pharmaceutical industry that has UTTERLY abandoned the last pretense of giving a flying **** if their drug helps people or is a significant advance over other treatments for a condition--it's all about the money. That distorts science, cripples physician's capacity to treat and destroys the tattered fabric of healthcare access, given we lack a single payer healthcare system in the US. None of that absolves egregious claims being made by dietary supplements on the other hand--but the difference in terms of overdosing US citizens, raping bank accounts and increasing morbidity and mortality unnecessarily and losing the best value of more conservative use of drugs FAR outstrips the worst the DS industry has done. The scale is not even close. What I want to see is SCIENCE restored and a consumer perspective embraced that looks at health outcomes, regardless of whether an intervention is considered pharmaceutical, CAM or grandma's best wisdom. George M. Carter that was a holy **** post...nice. |
#54
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
"Peter Bowditch" wrote in message ... wrote: " Oh, horse****. Who is selling that as a dietary supplement? Does it treat horse**** deficiency syndrome?" I don't know about horse ****, but cow **** is used for alledged medical claims, as an "alternative drug" said to treat various complaints. It's a major cause of neonatal tetanus in some parts of the world, where it is put on the umbilical stump. Of course, it must work and be safe, because it is so natural. Isn't it called: HRT - "Horse**** Remedy Treatment." or am I getting the wrong waste mixed up? Cheers, Rod Peter Bowditch aa #2243 The Millenium Project http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles Australian Council Against Health Fraud http://www.acahf.org.au Australian Skeptics http://www.skeptics.com.au To email me use my first name only at ratbags.com |
#55
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
In article . com,
PeterB wrote: wrote: I agree with what you said, except that I think the vast majority of supplements are as useless as snake oil, so the public would not be losing anything if they disappeared. There is no evidence the same is not true of the vast majority of pharmaceutical drugs. IOM has said that 70,000 mortalities annually are associated with properly prescribed and dispensed medication. I am unable to find any public records of data documenting the risk-adjusted outcomes for the majority of pharmaceutical drugs, nor have industry apologists operating here in the newsgroups been able to do so. Thus, no data exists to support the idea that these drugs are saving more lives than they take. "I can't find this info, and nobody is willing to spoon-feed it to me, therefore it does not exist." One hardly knows where to begin. Or when to stop laughing. -- David Wright :: alphabeta at prodigy.net These are my opinions only, but they're almost always correct. "If George Bush were my dad, I'd be drunk in public so often that James Baker would have me killed." -- Bill Maher on the Bush twins |
#57
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
Robert wrote:
The company can sell the supplement without any testing for safty or effectiveness. See DSHSEA. Look at the hundreds of supplements not approved by the FDA. Had you bothered to read the first sentence of the post to which you were responding, you would have known that the post was a discussion of what would happen if the law were changed to treat supplements as drugs. Bob |
#58
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
"Max C." wrote in message oups.com... Robert W. McAdams wrote: wrote: wrote: Reclassify these agents as drugs - for this is after all how they are marketed - and protect our patients from vile and cynical exploitation That'd work if the doc know a thing about nutrition or alt. health - and the more socialized the medicine is, the less you'll be able to find or choose one that does. No, it wouldn't. Let's review the economics of the drug approval process: 1) Someone invents a new drug which they believe will be successful in treating one or more diseases. 2) The drug is patented, granting the holder of the patent a 20-year exclusive right to control production of the drug. 3) The patent holder begins the lengthy process of trying to prove the safety and efficacy of the drug. This process frequently takes years, and costs a significant amount of money. 4a) If the patent holder is unable to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the drug to the satisfaction of the governing agency, the drug cannot be sold, the patent is essentially worthless, and all of the costs incurred in steps 1, 2, and 3 will constitute a loss. 4b) If the patent holder is successful in demonstrating the safety and efficacy of the drug to the satisfaction of the governing agency, the drug is approved and the holder can begin selling it, marketing it as a treatment for the disease(s) for which efficacy has been demonstrated. Doctors, however, are free to prescribe it for any condition whatsoever, even if its efficacy for that condition has not been demonstrated. During the remainder of the patent period, the patent holder has a monopoly on the drug, and can therefore charge a high price, allowing them to recover the costs incurred in steps 1, 2, and 3, as well as losses that may have been suffered due to failed attempts to gain approval for other drugs. Now, let's examine how the same process would work for supplements: 1) The supplement does not have to be invented, since it is already a known chemical, but someone has to discover that it may be useful in treating one or more diseases. 2) Because the supplement is already a known chemical, it cannot be patented. 3) The company that wants to sell the supplement as a treatment for the disease(s) in question begins the lengthy process of trying to prove the safety and efficacy of the supplement. This process frequently takes years, and costs a significant amount of money. 4a) If the company is unable to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the supplement to the satisfaction of the governing agency, the supplement cannot be sold and all of the costs incurred in steps 1, 2, and 3 will constitute a loss. 4b) If the company is successful in demonstrating the safety and efficacy of the supplement to the satisfaction of the governing agency, the supplement is approved and the holder can begin selling it, marketing it as a treatment for the disease(s) for which efficacy has been demonstrated. Doctors, however, are free to prescribe it for any condition whatsoever, even if its efficacy for that condition has not been demonstrated. But since the supplement cannot be patented, other companies can immediately begin producing their own versions of the supplement without any need to prove safety or efficacy beyond the fact that their version of the supplement is identical. Consequently, the original company will not be able to charge enough for the supplement to cover the costs incurred during steps 1, 2, and 3, and these costs will therefore constitute a loss. The bottom line is that any company attempting to go through the drug approval process for a supplement would be guaranteed to suffer a loss whether the approval process were completed successfully or not. So if Waxman's proposal were adopted, there would be no incentive for any company to go through the approval process for supplements, and the effect would therefore simply be to deprive the public of the benefits of supplements. Bob That was almost like reading poetry, Bob. Excellent job lining that out. You're very articulate. Max Even though the supplement part was mostly fiction. Robert |
#59
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
"GMCarter" wrote in message ... snip--someone with the rather despicable handle of "coonskin" wrote I agree with what you said, except that I think the vast majority of supplements are as useless as snake oil, so the public would not be losing anything if they disappeared. On 29 Nov 2006 13:18:17 -0800, "PeterB" wrote: There is no evidence the same is not true of the vast majority of pharmaceutical drugs. I think that both statements are merely absurd and polemical. Dietary supplements in the US are generally recognized as Safe (GRAS) (including colloidal silver, grandfathered in). They include a lot of different agents. Safe but not effective. There is no FDA mechanism for evaluating effects of DS on mitigating or curing diseases. FDA is corrupt and stinks worse than it ever has, a puppet to pharma. It took 40 years, for example, for FDA to recognize that folic acid supplementation can prevent neural tube defects. Some DS and some drugs are quite clearly beneficial. Many are abused, but the abuse by pharma is both more costly and FAR more likely to be more dangerous. Read Overdosed America. Great book. George M. Carter |
#60
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Time to reconsider "alternative" drugs
On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 21:10:49 -0800, "Robert"
wrote: "GMCarter" wrote in message .. . snip--someone with the rather despicable handle of "coonskin" wrote I agree with what you said, except that I think the vast majority of supplements are as useless as snake oil, so the public would not be losing anything if they disappeared. On 29 Nov 2006 13:18:17 -0800, "PeterB" wrote: There is no evidence the same is not true of the vast majority of pharmaceutical drugs. I think that both statements are merely absurd and polemical. Dietary supplements in the US are generally recognized as Safe (GRAS) (including colloidal silver, grandfathered in). They include a lot of different agents. Safe but not effective. So you think that folic acid is ineffective for preventing neural tube defects? Or that calcium and vitamin D3 are not important for bone health and preventing osteopenia? My point is that your statement is inaccurate. Dietary supplements can have efficacy. The PROBLEM is that we don't curerntly have -- well the next paragraph: There is no FDA mechanism for evaluating effects of DS on mitigating or curing diseases. FDA is corrupt and stinks worse than it ever has, a puppet to pharma. It took 40 years, for example, for FDA to recognize that folic acid supplementation can prevent neural tube defects. Some DS and some drugs are quite clearly beneficial. Many are abused, but the abuse by pharma is both more costly and FAR more likely to be more dangerous. Read Overdosed America. Great book. Robert, I've read some of your knee-jerk replies. They're not very helpful to the discussion and indicate a bigoted mindset. Am I wrong? George M. Carter |
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