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By Adam Smith
Science & Communications Officer, ANH-Intl
Danger, danger, danger...?
Anyone with an interest in natural healthcare cannot fail to be aware that the current mantra of lawmakers, regulators, the pro-orthodox healthcare camp and the allied skeptic movement is “natural healthcare is unsafe and a danger to public health”. The mainstream media, the medical journals, bloggers and personalities like Professor Edzard Ernst in the UK repeat this call, over and over, hoping that it will become a received truth among the public.
The black and white truth
Recently, the respected, peer-reviewed scientific journal Clinical Toxicology published the annual report by the American Association of Poison Control Centers, which presents the truth in black and white: in 2009, there were no deaths from multiple vitamins or any single vitamin, no deaths from herbal medicine, no deaths from any amino acid or dietary mineral supplement and no documented deaths from homeopathic medicines.
One death was attributed to an “Unknown dietary supplement or homeopathic agent”, but this cannot be verified as no supporting information is provided. The information is in Table 22B, journal pages 1138–1148. Trawl back through the prior Annual Reports published in the same journal and you will find a similar story year after year.
Protecting the public?
One of the prime reasons why people support natural healthcare is that they know, often instinctively, that it is extremely safe – especially when compared with the pharmaceuticals and surgical interventions of orthodox medicine. In the United States of America, where figures are easier to come by, adverse drug reactions are now the fourth leading cause of death, ahead of pulmonary disease, diabetes, AIDS, pneumonia, accidents and motor vehicle deaths [1,2].
And yet, despite this undeniable evidence of the overwhelming safety of the major forms of natural healthcare, greater regulation worldwide is the order of the day. Of course, these new restrictions are based on a proclaimed desire for ‘increased public safety’.
The aristolochia case
A prime example of this is the European Union’s (EU) Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD; Directive 2004/24/EC). This Directive was developed largely as a response to certain quality-control issues involving herbal medicines in some Member States. The most notable of these was a scandal in Belgium in the early 1990’s when an herb regularly used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) was associated with a number of cases of renal failure.
These instances involved a small group of medical doctors, not trained herbal practitioners, who had no formal traditional training in TCM. They prescribed a product made up of eight ingredients for use as a slimming aid. Four of the ingredients were potent synthetics – many of which have since been banned in their own right – and four herbs.
The herb singled out as the culprit was aristolochia (Aristolochia fangchi). Aristolochia has been used safely for thousands of years in TCM, when prescribed by properly trained TCM practitioners and according to the traditional usage laid down in the Chinese Materia Medica. It is important to bear in mind that the product in question – a slimming aid – did not use aristolochia according to the traditional indication given in the Chinese Materia Medica.
Additionally, at the time, the general health status of the renal-failure patients was not made clear, and neither was it disclosed whether they were taking any other medications. However, the cause of the tragedy was wholeheartedly attributed to the Chinese herb aristolochia!
The over-precautionary principle
These serious side-effects were indeed tragic, but to deny the public and properly trained traditional herbal practitioners access to thousands of herbal remedies, used safely for centuries, on that basis is a case of the precautionary principle gone insane. Or is it part of a more complex and sinister agenda to decimate the natural health industry?
What has effectively happened here is that side effects attributed to one particular herb, aristolochia, have been used to justify massively increased regulation of thousands of completely unrelated herbal medicines. As of the present moment, many stand to be banned from sale in the EU entirely. Can you imagine the outcry if a few adverse events caused by blood-pressure medication, for example, led to artificial insulin being banned?
Avoiding risk by preventing benefit
Over-cautious use of the precautionary principle is also evident in the development of maximum permitted levels (MPLs) of vitamins and minerals in food supplements proposed by the EU. The risk assessment methods being employed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to define these MPLs have been shown to be unscientific and inappropriate in articles published in the journal Toxicology by ANH-Intl’s Executive and Scientific Director, Dr Robert Verkerk [3,4].
Any MPLs calculated on the basis of such a flawed assessment will indeed ensure that virtually no-one experiences any adverse effects – but neither will anyone gain any benefit from the ridiculously low doses, thereby risking further deficiency in some vulnerable groups!
Regulation as a weapon of pharma
In short, it is clear from the published data that there is far more to increasing restrictions on natural healthcare than an altruistic desire to safeguard public health on the part of governments and regulators. Non-orthodox forms of medicine work and are cheap, popular, sustainable and safe – thereby posing a grave threat to the continued predominance of orthodox medicine and the lucrative pharmaceutical industry.
Nothing puts this into perspective better than this annual report. Bear this in mind the next time you hear regulators, or one of the anti-nature skeptic lobby, telling you that natural and herbal medicines should be regulated, and in some cases banned, in the interest of saving lives!
[1] Lazarou J, Pomeranz B, Corey PN. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: A meta-analysis of prospective studies. JAMA 1998; 279: 1200–1205.
[2] US Food & Drug Administration, Adverse Event Reporting System: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Surveillance/AdverseDrugEffects/default.htm.
[3] Verkerk RHJ, Hickey S. A critique of prevailing approaches to nutrient risk analysis pertaining to food supplements with specific reference to the European Union. Toxicology 2009;doi:10.1016/j.tox.2009.12.017.
[4] Verkerk RHJ. The paradox of overlapping micronutrient risks and benefits obligates risk/benefit analysis. Toxicology 2010; 278(1):27-38.
For more information
ANH Nurture Traditional Medicinal Cultures campaign page
ANH Good Science page
Comments
your voice counts
13 January 2011 at 12:32 pm
It is wrong and reckless to suggest that the lack of any reported deaths in the AAPCC report justifies your headline 'Natural healthcare proven amazingly safe – once again'.
The same report states that during 2009 there were no recorded deaths due to anthrax. Would you have us conclude from this that anthrax has, therefore, been shown to be safe?
It is also wrong to imply that there is nothing wrong with aristolochic acid because it is said to have been used for hundreds of years in herbal remedies.
There are no records of cause of deaths in the general population two hundred years ago so I have no basis to state that deaths arose just as you have no basis to state that they did not.
What is true is that aristolochic acid has been shown, beyond doubt, to cause renal failure in some of those who ingest it. This failure may occur after lengthy exposure to small doses, as happened in the Balkans, or it may occur quickly if large doses are involved, as was seen in Belgium.
13 January 2011 at 12:35 pm
The danger posed by unproven therapies is not only that of death, something that your posting should take into account. Suffering, pain and loss of quality of life are also issues, plus the fact that the anti-science, anti-medicine, histerical propaganad of fake medicine pulls people away from real therapies, with appalling results.
It is NOT enough not to kill people. You have to cure them and better their lives. And prove it under controlled conditions.
Hypervitaminoses, for example, are highly uncomfortable conditions brought about by some of the vitamins pseudomedicine (particularly orthomolecular beliefs) prescribes in doses well-above safe levels. A kidney stone built from megadoses of Vitamin C will hardly kill anyone, but the pain implied in passing the calculus is one of the worst imaginable, and I see no sympathy for that in your piece.
Of course, the mildest pseudotherapies like homeopathy are truly safe except for people with lactose intolerance (it consists entirely of lactose granules), since it has no active principle whatsoever, thus no side effects but also no real effects either, as has been proven by one study after another.
But the real danger in pseudomedicine is that it drives people away from real therapies whose degree of efficacy, dangers, benefits and outcomes are really proven. In the past, many sincere and well-known believers in quackery have died in the hands of pseudomedicine (Steve McQueen, Peter Sellers and Andy Kauffman, to mention but three) because they abandoned real treatments for the sake of magic. Something fortunately other celebrities such as Michael Douglas, Lance Armstrong, Robert De Niro or Kylie Minogue didn't do.
14 January 2011 at 3:07 pm
Dear ANH team,
A frank debate is welcome but I believe that the vitriolic lying tirade by Mauricio-José Schwarz here should be deleted.
14 January 2011 at 11:26 pm
I cannot concur with the obvious lack of discernment in these comments. Pharmaceuticals drugs are all synthetic and thus toxic, and are killing people not in the tens, not in the thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands every year, and you halfwits call this efficacy,(maybe effective mass murder), look at the history, the shocking statistics. And as for chemotherapy, this painful and stupid toxic irradiation of the human body has a very bad track record , it would not suprise me if Michael Douglas' cancer came back.
I find your comments myopic, and above all an insult to the human intellegence. currently my mother is experiencing the so called "side effects" (which is a mild terminology used by pharmaceutical corporations) which are in actuality "effects" of administered poisons for profit, i have been on these drugs before myself so i know just what they are like, (horrendous).
17 January 2011 at 12:42 am
@ Mauricio-José Schwarz: Excuse me but what world do you live on? When has Big Pharma ever cared about improving peoples lives? For that matter when has profit-driven corporate science ever truly helped the planet or people? Pharmaceutical drugs kill thousands of people in the US every year along with several injuries. Western "medical science" doesn't give a damn about quality of life. You call slowly poisoning people to death a life improvement? Do you know that basically all drugs are poisonous junk thats designed to eventually kill off the whole body. Chemotherapy is an excellent example of this.
"Modern" medicine is a joke. Natural medicine existed for thousands of years before big corporate science destroyed the world. You call poisoning people with barbaric treatments like chemotherapy "progress"? You call destroying nature progress? What a sick joke.
Just because something doesn't for into your reductionist-materialist paradigm doesn't mean its not true or proven. You think human suffering is okay? Because if you are actually dumb, brainwashed, and mainstream idiot enough you'll agree. Conventional medicine is the biggest con job their ever was and someday it will come to an end (as we know it now anyway). A disease is not caused by a lack of a drug. Its caused by nutritional, environmental, or emotional factors. If all you "skeptics" are so damn good at "science" why don't you know that? Oh, its because you know absolutely nothing about real science. You only know about your brand of reductionist corporate science that only does it for the money.
No one suffers when you get to the root of the problem. Maybe someday the world will be a better place when people finally wake up and learn that.
A drug never cured anyone. There is nothing proven about conventional medicine. All conventional medical doctors are the real quacks.
23 January 2011 at 6:17 pm
In note of the post by Mauricio-José Schwarz, I must question their proposition that vitamin C megadoses may cause kidney stone build up.
I have recently read The Essential Guide to Vitamin C by Philip Day & Nicholas Cockayne (of Credence publications) and I shall quote "There exists not one peer-reviewed study anywhere in the medical literature which shows that any level of vitamin C causes kidney stones."
Critics of Linus Pauling argued megadoses of vit. C metabolised into and excreted as oxalic acid should combine with calcium in the urine and deposit as calcium oxalate kidney stones. Well, those with large doses of ascorbate (a form of vit. C) do have elevated oxalic acid in the urine, yet with million of people in the world taking vitamin C, why is there not a mass epidemic of kidney stones been noticed?
http://www.doctoryourself.com/kidney.html
Quote: "“I started using vitamin C in massive doses in-patients in 1969. By the time I read that ascorbate should cause kidney stones, I had clinical evidence that it did not cause kidney stones, so I continued prescribing massive doses to patients. To this day (2006) I estimate that I have put 25,000 patients on massive doses of vitamin C and none have developed kidney stones"
Go to the link for more info.
However I do find 'thepoisongarden's comment of interest on the herb mentioned.
25 January 2011 at 8:41 pm
Poisongarden's story of celebrities like Steve McQueen who turned to Alternative Medical treatments after undegoing the devastating immune system destruction of Maistream chemotherapy and radiation to the point where he was told by his conventional; doctors that his case was hopeless is a very misleading and disingenuous illustration. More appropriate is the rapid deaths of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Senator Edward Kennedy and Elisabeth Edwards after conventional cancer treatment of Chemotherapy and radiation failed.
Most people make the assumption that those who are said to be experts and have all those degrees have to know more than most of us, or even less highly paid doctors without grants and honors from the medical/pharmaceutical establishment. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and local medical boards come down very hard on any doctors who try to get even true peer reviewed published data out to consumers. That is the real tragedy.
26 January 2011 at 1:29 am
Too much text in long black blocks. Use subtitles and shorter sentences if you want us mere mortals read your stuff and understand at least some. People are busy. We need short statements we can quote and send to others. Bumper stickers. Sound bites.
Someone has to digest these things before understanding can occur. If you expect your readers to do the digesting, you may be limiting the positive results you could otherwise have. If you do the thinking and condensing, you make it easier for us. These are important matters abut hard to get one's head around. Help us.
27 January 2011 at 5:36 pm
It's a fair cop! You're quite right that big blocks of text, with no sub-headings, are daunting and difficult to take in. That's why we normally include sub-headings and try to break up the text. In this case, we hold up our hands and admit we were a bit slack with the formatting - but in our defense, we are a small and incredibly busy team! We felt that this story was important, and in our haste to share it, we slipped up on the layout. Thanks for pointing it out, and we hope you prefer the new-look version of the story!
28 January 2011 at 12:53 pm
This is just part and parcel of the fascist nature of the EC. First the EC is not democratic since the primary law making body is made up of unelected officials, second this body makes of 75% of laws impacting on citizens in the EU but citizens have no opt out nor right for binding referendums on their decisions, third they are supposedly there to help facilitate trade and commerce within the EU but in fact do the reverse, anybody with a common sense understanding of the free market knows that government regulation is an impedance to creating wealth and growth in any economy. In the case of the herbal medicine directives it's almost laughable. Here you have a series of medical remedies that have been used in civilizations that are older than any within the EU for thousands of years being questioned by a bunch of bureaucrats of dubious scientific knowledge at best. The market has voted for thousands of years FOR these remedies because they work, are safe and cost effective. Now suddenly someone has to pay a prohibitive fee just to use them!?! It just make work programs for EU bureaucrats.
I sincerely hope that all the accumulating evidence of the worthlessness of the EU is taken on board by the British public (i.e. Brits pay 5x more than they receive in benefits from belonging to the EU with all the unbelievable waste of public funds that goes on there) and vote to leave the EU and have a relationship with the EU comparable to that of Switzerland which can trade with and travel within the EU without any issues but is not subject to all of its silly dictates. I know that a couple of the british newspapers have started pushing for this. Let's hope it becomes a major issue in the coming years.
28 January 2011 at 1:30 pm
Apologies but I just noticed the submission by Mauricio-Jose Schwartz who thinks that medicine only truly began in the 20th century with the inception of petroleum derived medical products. This is despite the fact that a little research would show that many of the medicines produced are derived from research showing the efficacy of herbs and vitamins in treating health issues. It is primarily because one cannot patent a product of nature that the synthetic version has been created.
I would also like to point out that again a little research would show that traditional medicines (i.e. chinese, ayurvedic, etc) have been used effectively for thousands of years treating a wide range of illnesses and continue to be used effectively today. That naturopathy and homeopathy have been effectively used since their inceptions in the 19th century and in the case of homeopathy was found to be more effective in treating typhus fever in 1813, cholera epidemics in 1831 (austria), 1854 (London), 1855 (Rio) and 1892 (Rio), Yello Fever, Smallpox, Diptheria, Spanish Flu and Polio with far lower death rates than allopathic remedies. In case of the cholera and spanish flu epidemics, you can find UK parliamentary reports on its efficacy. Only now is the science starting to catch up with discovering why traditional medicines, naturopathy and homeopathy (sorry but there a large body of research to show IT'S NOT A PLACEBO!!!!) are so effective.
Finally if they are all pseudo medicines as you say, wouldn't it be better to have a free market and competition in both "real" and pseudo medicines. That way people would discover (the process of which is the essence of the free market) that they are not as effective, far more dangerous and costly than your beloved allopathic medicine. Then it would be clear that you were right. But no instead of competition, that would weed out the good from the bad, the competent from the incompetent, the ones with high value for money from those with low value for money, we instead have the bureaucrat. Who thanks to his/her efforts in most of europe in medicine (where costs are rising far above the rate of inflation) as well as other areas now have most EU states with unsustainable levels of debt and on the brink of default.
Finally as to your comment about the celebrities who lost their lives, all you point out is that within a particular type of medicine, you have the competent and the incompetent. As for the efficacy of alternative treatment, I point you to Albert Schwiezer who was successfully treated by Max Gerson for cancer using nothing more than vegetable and fruit juices. Again I point to having a free market for medicine to allow for the incompetent to be weeded out from the competent as well as to what treatment the consumer view as most effective in terms of health as well as cost.
19 February 2011 at 2:52 pm
I'm glad to see everyone who commented on my post, from Max Pont, who is so open to debate that he demands censorship, to every other, gladly missed the point.
You've offered all the rhetoric arsenal of the trade, big pharma, "artificial vs. natural", the idea that "traditional is better" (which in some countries includes traditions such as stoning adulterous women and killing "witch-children"), the -unproven, but always touching if presented with enough hysteria- claims of thousands of deaths directly caused by a horrific murderous deranged cabal made up of each and every doctor, nurse, biochemist, farmacologist, physiologist and hundreds and hundreds of thousands who care nothing about people's pain, suffering or death (it scares me to think that someone can really believe that all biomedical professions are populated almost unanimously undertaken by raging psychopathic mass-murderers).
The point is proof. Some comments are quick to point that pre-scientific therapies (Chinese, ayurvedic, your choice) are efficacious, and mention "proof". Such proof would be welcome. Prove that it works and all critics will be defeated. But we know syphillis was rampant and laughing in the face of all kinds of magical therapies until the first evidence-based treatments came along. Leprosy, polio, smallpox, diabetes, pertussis, cancer, tuberculosis, filiarasis and many others were all incurable scourges of mankind until evidence-based treatments came along, and which also have the advantage of becoming better through research, even if they're far from perfect.
Which is why EBM is the one therapy advancing in the fight against cancer, of course: http://www.forschenheiltkrebs.eu/public/pdf/english/DIRECT_pressKit_WR_101208.pdf
So hey, if it works, prove it. I will promote it. I will devote my life to the therapy that works better than EBM. I'll go tell it on the mountain. But, as of today, there is no proof. No matter how many times you repeat "there are studies", it's not true, there is no rigurous, well-controlled, replicable research regarding most alternative therapies which would grant using them on sick people. Except for pharmacological research of herbal remedies, which is of course why many medicines work.
Forget about the ready-made responses. If your therapy has no proof that it works, no clear knowledge of its rate of success, dangers and options, don´t peddle it with propaganda. It's all about proof - clear, irrefutable, replicable proof.
And no, anecdotal evidence is not proof. Just as censorship is not debate.
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