HERBS OR DRUGS?
(Page 5 of 7)
In fact, 10 percent of all new drugs approved from 1975 to
1999 either acquired new warnings or were withdrawn,
according to a JAMA article, which concluded that serious
adverse drug reactions commonly emerge only after FDA
approval. Consider the drug Baycol, widely prescribed as
one of the newest and best defenses against dangerous
cholesterol. The parent company, Bayer, removed Baycol from
the market in 2002 after it was cited as the cause of more
than 30 deaths.
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The good news is that often it isn't necessary to resort to
drugs. Plenty of foods and herbs can help bring cholesterol
levels down. (See Natural Health, December/January
2002.)
Hundreds of reports of adverse side effects on the
antimalarial drug Lariam also are on file, and the Army is
investigating whether Lariam played a role in murders at
Ft. Brag, involving soldiers just returned from Afghanistan
who had taken the drug. Yet, according to Duke, whole sweet
Annie (Artemisia annua), an herb vastly cheaper than the
synthetic chemicals in Lariam, contains several
antimalarial compounds that have been promo to work against
malaria and even cling-resistant bacteria.
In January, the FDA announced that all drugs containing
estrogen for menopausal women must include a boxed warning
on labels stating that these drugs may slightly increase
the risk of heart attacks, strokes, blood clots and breast
cancer. This warning comes decades after the dings were
first placed on the market.
The sky-high cost of research also means that many
effective but unpatentable herbal medicines never get fully
tested so they can be marketed as dings. Instead they are
sold as nutritional supplements, and FDA rules prohibit
manufacturers from making health claims about supplements.
If consumers want echinacea to treat a cold, or uva-ursi to
treat a bladder infection, they have to embark on their own
research projects to discover whether the herb is
appropriate for them, if the herbal medicine has
contraindications, and how much and how often they should
he treating themselves. They can buy the herb, but they
won't find this information on the package.
Newer drugs are often more expensive and not as effective
as drugs that have been around for a while, but once the
drug companies' patents on new medicine nun cut, any
company can produce a generic version. So the companies
want to establish a beachhead quickly and sell their brands
as aggressively as possible before their patents expire.
Consumers are admonished to buy, buy, buy
medications that may be no more effective but are certainly
more expensive than their older cousins.
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