HERBS OR DRUGS?
(Page 3 of 7)
Some of these treatments were no more effective than those
you and I might make up off the top of our heads. But many
traditional herbal remedies have passed the test of time
and deserve to be put on a front shelf in our medicine
cabinets (see "Herbal Remedies You Can Trust," Page 92).
This is not to say that synthetics are never useful but
simply that they aren't the only game in town. There's not
a lot of gold in them thar' herbs, since they often can't
be patented, so they're minimally—if at
all—studied, tested and advertised. The media
generally ignore them—and only the most motivated
consumers ferret out the facts about what ought to be as
natural as a walk in the garden.
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"The pharmaceutical drug industry spends between $8,000 and
$13,000 per year per physician to promote their
products," says James Duke, Ph.D., one of the world's
foremost authorities on medicinal plants. Recently retired
from a 30-year career with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Duke holds a doctorate in botany and has done
extensive fieldwork, which inspired his passionate advocacy
of herbal medicines—and an almost equally passionate
outrage over the promotion of expensive, often ineffective
and sometimes toxic synthetic drugs.
IS GARLIC RIGHT FOR YOU?
"A hundred times a day the television tells you to ask your
doctor if expensive Brand X is `right for you,"'Duke says.
"At the same time the press loudly lambastes herbal
companies for making unproven claims, they're meekly
sleeping through the even greater deficiencies of some of
the synthetic drugs.
"How many of us have heard that no herb has been clinically
shown to arrest anthrax? True, none have. But how many of
us has heard that Cipro (the synthetic prescription
antibiotic presumed to work against anthrax) also hasn't
been shown to arrest anthrax? How many have heard that
garlic often works with synthetic antibiotics? If
I were exposed to anthrax, I'd certainly want to take some
garlic (a proven antibacterial) and some echinacea (a
proven immune booster) along with my Cipro if I could even
get the Cipro. The garlic and echinacea, I have in my
garden and in my pantry.
The pharmaceutical drug industry spends between
$8,000 and $3,000 per year per physician to promote their
products.
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