Rose Shapiro questions alternative medicine
Submitted by Natural Cures Blog
Written by Michael Vass
Recently I was speaking about the question of purity n natural cures sold across the world. In Canada there is legislation to submit various natural herbal supplements to the same tests used to approve new drugs. It’s a proposal I agree with, but there are some that doubt the entire alternative medicine industry.
England is seeing a surge in natural cures that is similar to the surges in Canada and the United States. And along with this surge has come the dregs that would swindle innocents of their money, and as a consequence in some cases their lives. Rose Shapiro took that especially hard and made no bones in highlighting the scams that exist in the industry.
Now I can understand her anger. Coldenza is a sugar pill and Rescue Remedy a small bottle of watered-down brandy sold at the equivalent of pounds 399 per litre and Malaria Officianalis is a useless protection from malaria. Each of these is harmless in general, but the consequences of their use can be devestating. And some are hardly harmless, like the estimated 25% of Chinese and Indian herbal medicines that are adulterated with either heavy metals or by the deliberate addition of pharmaceuticals such as steroids, Viagra and banned amphetamines.
So the users of natural herbal cures must beware the quacks that would use these items soley to make money. People like Radovan Karadzic, who renamed himself Dragan David Dabic, and lectured on yoga and meditation.
The use of scientific terms to make quasi-scientific claims is a warning sign for all interested in using alternative medicine. Likewise credentials from unaccreditied institutions, or those repackaging known procedures as ancient facts – like reflexology which was invented in the US in the 1930s.
Perhaps one of the worst things to fear and be aware of is when a quack packages every ill under one causation or claims that all ills have a singular cure.
But for all the questionable practicioners out there reasons to accept alternative medicine do exist. Like St Johns Wort
or various remedies used on the island of Curacao.
The fact is that there are positives out there. Modern medicine may often find cures in nature, but the history of Mankind shows that the ailments that have plagued society since it’s birth have had many cures that often were better in the past.
Care needs to be taken before any one solution is accepted. General cure-alls should be looked at with skepticism. While most think “what harm could it do?” they are not always correct
“Page wanted to lose weight and claims that she was advised by Nash to drink four pints of water a day and to cut out salt from her diet. Nash denies any fault, and although she paid Page a settlement of pounds 810,000 last week, she did so without admission of liability.”
Rose Shapiro is correct to warn us of the Dragan David Dabic’s of the world, but I do not think it also means we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
