Pharmaceuticals are in the top 5 leading causes of death in this country. That's not good for something designed to heal people.
http://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/new-prescription-drugs-major-health-risk-few-offsetting-advantages
Few people know that new
prescription drugs have a
1 in 5 chance of causing serious reactions after they have been approved. That is why expert physicians recommend not taking new drugs for at least five years unless patients have first tried better-established
options, and have the need to do so.
Few know that systematic reviews of hospital charts found that even properly prescribed drugs (aside from misprescribing, overdosing, or self-prescribing) cause about 1.9 million hospitalizations a year. Another 840,000 hospitalized patients are given drugs that cause serious adverse reactions for a total of 2.74 million serious adverse drug reactions.
About 128,000 people die from drugs prescribed to them. This makes prescription drugs a major health risk, ranking 4th with stroke as a leading cause of death. The European Commission estimates that adverse reactions from prescription drugs cause 200,000 deaths; so together, about 328,000 patients in the U.S. and Europe die from prescription drugs each year. The FDA does not acknowledge these facts and instead gathers a small fraction of the cases.
Meanwhile herbs and other forms of alternative medicine have been healing people for literally thousands of years. Tell the practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine or Aryuveda or any of 100 other alternative medicine systems that herbs are not effective for healing. They will look at you like you're stupid, because that's exactly what that statement is, stupid.
The coli science brigade always takes the attack on bogus pharmaceuticals as an attack on scientific medicine, and as a knee-jerk reaction try and turn the tables and say ignorant things like natural healing methods don't work.
Attacks on bogus pharmaceuticals are just that, attacks on bogus pharmaceuticals. It's no secret that our health care system is prescription-happy, and it's also no secret that a lot of pharmaceuticals are harmful and/or unnecessary. But that doesn't subtract from the positive contributions of some pharmaceuticals to modern health, just like a handful of snake oil salesmen doesn't subtract from the fact herbs have been healing people for milleniums, and millions of people, including myself, have been a witness and benefactor of herbal medicine.
I could post a dozen articles from WebMD just talking about the benefits of herbs alone. In addition most pharmaceuticals are derived from natural sources like plants and herbs, so please, stop with the ignorance.
