When all is said and done the amount and quality of the information
for non alternative is at a level far above all but the very few
percent which have some research supporting them. The problems with
some drug testing and confirmation are but reasons to want even more,
not less. That example of the depression drug was discovered by
research, not by the absence of it. A pig in a poke is always
inferior in all respects to research. Serious side effects are also
present in some alternative drugs, most being both harmless and
useless except to one's pocketbook. With the present state of the law
the research is us, we are the lab rats to see if alternative drugs
are harmful and we know the results when and only when it comes to the
governments knowledge often by accident.
Quoted message said:I appreciate the rationale, however the absence of scientific data
doesn't necessarily mean the absence of benefit. Depending on the
quality of data collected, it also doesn't stand to reason that
availability of data guarantees a positive risk-reward ratio. What is
the quality of data, for instance, on use of vitamin C and use of
Vioxx? We know that a diet absent viamin C will result in death in a
fairly short period of time. But clinically tested and approved Vioxx
has likely killed hundreds or thousands of patients who believed the
drug maker's study and trusted their doctors to prescribe it. We know
there are drugs on the market whose limited benefit, when compared to
placebo, make them a poor choice in light of their potentially life
threatening side effects. An FDA advisory committee expert who
evaluated a connection between suicide and antidepressant use stated:
"I think we have to come back to the issue of efficacy. We have I think
very strong evidence of harm and really not very good evidence of
efficacy, and although I know many practitioners are convinced that
these drugs work, if you look very closely at the [Prozac] trial, just
as an example, at the Childhood Depression Rating Scale, the
improvement with placebo was 19 points, and the improvement with the
drug was 23.4 points. You bring people in, you start a medication, and
you see an improvement, you are very, very likely to believe that the
drug is effective, and the reason why we do randomized, double-blind
trials is because personal experience, however compelling, is not a
reliable way to tell whether drugs work. In the study where they
worked, in the [Prozac study], the improvement over placebo was really
very, very small, and I would say not detectable by a clinician
treating individual patients..."PeterB