Herbal meds don't seem to work

[]Originally posted by BTox [/i]


>>So yes, the risk is 100,000 die every year, the benefit is tens of millions of lives are saved every year. Not a bad tradeoff.


A completely unproven, and unproveable pronouncement. But here you prevously stated that prescription drugs were safe, effective, all double-blind tested and really cool.

-- Rouser
 
Rouser2 said:
[]Originally posted by BTox [/i]


>>So yes, the risk is 100,000 die every year, the benefit is tens of millions of lives are saved every year. Not a bad tradeoff.


A completely unproven, and unproveable pronouncement. But here you prevously stated that prescription drugs were safe, effective, all double-blind tested and really cool.

-- Rouser
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Not true. Read it again:
Another fictional and ludicrous statement by Rouser. All OTC and prescription drugs in the U.S. have, unlike herbal treatments, multiple well-controlled, double-blind clinical trials documenting efficacy and safety.
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Unforseen circumstances occur. Foreseen circumstances are taken into consideration. FDA approved drugs are safer than unregulated herbals because of known risks and learned consequences. If you're looking for a 0 (none) or 1 (all) statement, you won't get it. If you're looking for concession that just because FDA drugs aren't 0 or 1, so it proves your case, your arguement is fallacious.
 
Rouser2 said:
A completely unproven, and unproveable pronouncement. But here you prevously stated that prescription drugs were safe, effective, all double-blind tested and really cool.

-- Rouser
Click to expand...

Not at all, it's a medical fact. You don't seem to be able to understand the concept of risk vs benefit. There is no such thing as a therapeutic drug with no adverse reactions. In order for a drug to gain approval from FDA, it must be demonstrated that the benefits (i.e. lives improved, lives saved) significantly outweigh the risks (i.e. severe adverse reactions, including deaths). A very simple concept, really.
 
BoTox: Not at all, it's a medical fact. You don't seem to be able to understand the concept of risk vs benefit. There is no such thing as a therapeutic drug with no adverse reactions. In order for a drug to gain approval from FDA, it must be demonstrated that the benefits (i.e. lives improved, lives saved) significantly outweigh the risks (i.e. severe adverse reactions, including deaths). A very simple concept, really.


Reply: I absoiutely agree with you. And if you read the text underlying the numbers you would see that 100K may've died, and millions more have serious adverse reactions due to a variety of causes including medical errors, sound-alike drug name (Rx errors), dosing errors (a decimal pt in the wrong place can kill and has killed) and side effects and unanticipated negative reactions in some but not all. And your argument that there is a benefit versus risk is correct as well. What's it worth for a thousand to die when the availability of a drug saves a million or more. Of course we cannot be sure of the exact number for the risk versus benefit ratio but we surmise that there is one.

Putting aside the fact that by strict definition more than 25% of all mainstream drugs and many new ones are of plant origin, and therefore, technically herbal, are we makiing the same argument for herbal drugs only not calling them that? Are we also going to ignore the evidence provided by ethnobotanists and anthropologists that traditional medicines use innumerable effective herbs, that pharmaceutical companies are combing the rain forests looking for indigenous plants unknown to the "west" and that they are examining the molecular structure of known herbals as well as new finds?

So my question is why are we jumping up and down everytime somebody dies after taking an off the shelf herbal but not after they take an OTC aspirin? Is it okay for ephedra to kill if its made by a big name pharmaceutical company but not if its in some small packager's diet product?
 
SteveGrenard said:
So my question is why are we jumping up and down everytime somebody dies after taking an off the shelf herbal but not after they take an OTC aspirin? Is it okay for ephedra to kill if its made by a big name pharmaceutical company but not if its in some small packager's diet product?
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Good point. The issue for me is that herbal products in the U.S. are sold as dietary supplements, there are no warnings on possible adverse reactions as with OTC and scrip drugs. Also, they are not required to adhere to standardized quality control and purity of the "active". I believe that some herbal products have legitimate health benefits, but should be held to same standards as all other drugs.
 
I think the issue is not whether herbal meds work or not. The real issue is that herbal meds DON'T have to work in order to be sold to the public, herbal meds can be harmful, and still be sold to the public.. and herbal meds don't have to supply warnings about the side-effects or adverse reactions that may happen.
 
BTox said:


Not at all, it's a medical fact. You don't seem to be able to understand the concept of risk vs benefit. There is no such thing as a therapeutic drug with no adverse reactions. In order for a drug to gain approval from FDA, it must be demonstrated that the benefits (i.e. lives improved, lives saved) significantly outweigh the risks (i.e. severe adverse reactions, including deaths). A very simple concept, really.
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Funny how over 100,000 adverse reaction deaths a year don't count for much with the FDA. That, of course, is the visable, seen, proveable consequence of FDA "approved" drugs. The alleged benefits of playing Russian Roulette with these drugs for the alleged diseases they treat and allegedly cure -- that is truly unseen, and is entirely speculative.

-- Rouser
 
Rouser2 said:


Funny how over 100,000 adverse reaction deaths a year don't count for much with the FDA. That, of course, is the visable, seen, proveable consequence of FDA "approved" drugs. The alleged benefits of playing Russian Roulette with these drugs for the alleged diseases they treat and allegedly cure -- that is truly unseen, and is entirely speculative.

-- Rouser
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You aren't listening, are you? Admit it.
 
Originally posted by SteveGrenard [/i]


>>. What's it worth for a thousand to die when the availability of a drug saves a million or more.


Yeah, well I'd just like to know just what drug that would be.


>> Of course we cannot be sure of the exact number for the risk versus benefit ratio but we surmise that there is one.

Surmise? Yes. Modern Medicine does a whole lot of that.

-- Rouser
 
Rouser2 said:


Funny how over 100,000 adverse reaction deaths a year don't count for much with the FDA. That, of course, is the visable, seen, proveable consequence of FDA "approved" drugs. The alleged benefits of playing Russian Roulette with these drugs for the alleged diseases they treat and allegedly cure -- that is truly unseen, and is entirely speculative.

-- Rouser
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This topic blows right over your head, I see. So let's see, you believe the FDA and epidemiological studies that demonstrate the 100,000 adverse reactions that lead to death, but you do not believe the same FDA, clinical trials and epidemiological studies that prove the benefits.

"Alleged diseases" - that one is priceless!
 
Rouser2 said:
Originally posted by SteveGrenard [/i]


>>. What's it worth for a thousand to die when the availability of a drug saves a million or more.


Yeah, well I'd just like to know just what drug that would be.

Rouser
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Vaccines, antibiotics, statins, just to name three classes.
 
BTox said:


Vaccines, antibiotics, statins, just to name three classes.
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OOhhhh! I'll play woo-woo on this one and give a stupid, woo-woo answer.

You don't know that those millions of vaccinated people wouldn't have gotten whatever disease they were vaccinated for if there weren't a vaccination. There, I just figured I'd predict the next stupid, woo-woo comment before it came out.

You don't know that the antibiotics actually help infections, the human body can deal with infections without added antibiotics. Am I on a roll?

It doesn't take much to be a woo-woo, just a suspension of logic, reality and intelligence.
 
There's some strong reaction to that "100,000" figure..even if it is only 40,000-96,000 (does that range look kinda strange to you?

Fremont-Smith K. JAMA, November 25, 1998-Vol 280, No. 20,
1741-4:

"The authors' conclusion that fatal ADRs in the United States number
approximately 106,000 annually is erroneous as applied to the present.
This number of deaths was calculated by multiplying the total number
of hospitalizations in 1994 by an incidence rate of fatal ADRs of
0.32%, based on data from all studies published since 1965. Thus,
three quarters of these data are 20 to 30 years old. The studies
published in the last 10 years report a total of only 5 ADR deaths
among 11376 hospitalized patients studied, ie, an overall incidence
of 0.04%. Using the authors' estimation of the correct total number
of hospitalizations, deaths in the United States attributable to ADRs
is approximately 13,000. According to the data cited by Lazarou et
al, ADRs are not a leading cause of death today."

Same issue Kravitz GR:

"Fully 14 of the 18 studies [cited in the Lazarou paper] were
performed prior to 1981, and I question the appropriateness of
including these 14 studies in the meta-analysis... Reanalysis of data
including only studies published since 1982 reveals that the reported
mortality is only 3 cases per 5,854 admissions (ie, a mortality rate
of 0.0005 per admission), which is only one third that of the
estimate by Lazarou et al. All the reported mortality comes from a
single study by Bates et al done on medicine wards at 2 Boston,
Mass., tertiary care teaching hospitals. Extrapolating this rate to
non-teaching hospitals, community hospitals, pediatric hospitals,
chronic care hospitals, and psychiatric hospitals and then
multiplying the rate by the number of admissions each year greatly
overestimates true mortality. For example, the 335-bed community
hospital at w practice had 23,984 medical-surgical admissions in
1997. On the estimated mortality (0.0019 per admission) by
Lazarou et al, we should have seen 46 deaths due to ADRs. Even using
my adjusted figure from studies published since 1982 (0.0005 per
admission), the expected mortality would result in 15 deaths. The
number of deaths we reported is actually less than one tenth of the
estimates of Lazarou et al... The results of the meta-analysis by
Lazarou et al deserve a reality check. Lumping together voluminous
mounds of archaic data with more recent data from a sample of
hospitalized patients and then extrapolating to entire US patient
population can lead to egregious errors... The problem of serious
ADRs should not be compounded with erroneous estimates of their
mortality. The study by Larazou et al grossly overestimates the
magnitude of this problem."
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The original figure seems to be another one of the "joys of metanalysis".
 
kookbreaker said:
There's some strong reaction to that "100,000" figure..even if it is only 40,000-96,000 (does that range look kinda strange to you?



The original figure seems to be another one of the "joys of metanalysis".
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It's kind of like the way the 50,000 deaths of second-hand smoke number came about, eh? It's amazing what one can do to a number if one tortures it enough.
 
Originally posted by BTox [/i]

>>This topic blows right over your head, I see. So let's see, you believe the FDA and epidemiological studies that demonstrate the 100,000 adverse reactions that lead to death, but you do not believe the same FDA, clinical trials and epidemiological studies that prove the benefits.

Quite true. In many, many cases I do not. Death, however, is a fairly clear-cut outcome.

>>"Alleged diseases" - that one is priceless!

Why thank-you. Priceless, but at the same time, in many cases, true.

-- Rouser
 
thaiboxerken said:


It doesn't take much to be a woo-woo, just a suspension of logic, reality and intelligence.
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Yes, though I would modify to say there is no intelligence to suspend. ;)
 
Note that the FDA doesn't just say 'drugs kill you, use untested herbs instead'...rather, the idea that real medicine can have adverse side affects is know, studied, and reduced as much as possible. Also note that they are not claiming that most drugs are inherently unhealthy for you. Their figures seem to show that there are multiple causes, like that combining several safe drugs can cause death, and the implied idea that some people are simply very very ill, and simply taking them off all medication could kill them at least as surely as continuing the medication.

On the 'herbal' side, you have too many people saying 'it is all natural, so there are no side effects'...which is nonsense.
 
Rouser2 said:


Quite true. In many, many cases I do not. Death, however, is a fairly clear-cut outcome.
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Just as clear cut as a significant reduction, or almost total elimination, of deaths due to specific diseases.


QUOTE]Originally posted by Rouser2
Why thank-you. Priceless, but at the same time, in many cases, true.

-- Rouser [/QUOTE]

"True" in the sense that fairy tales are true - at least in your mind!
 
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