Posted on 06/04/2011 6:29:25 AM PDT by ruralvoter
Federal authorities have seized bottles and drums of elderberry juice concentrate from a Kansas winery, contending that the company's claims of its benefits for treating various diseases make the product a drug. (snip)
The government contends the juice concentrate is an unapproved and misbranded drug because the winery claims it is used to treat diseases such as the flu, cancer and AIDS.
"Products with unapproved disease claims are dangerous because they may cause consumers to delay or avoid legitimate treatments, Dara Corrigan, the FDA's associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, said in a news release. "The FDA is committed to protecting consumers from unapproved products on the market."
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
I know nothing about the Winery or the claims it made WRT the positive effects of ELDERBERRY.
Let’s look at what the north European ancestors claimed elderberry was good for. Seasonal allergies, sinus distress, runny nose, etc.
The American Indians used Elderberry for the very same ailments.
We, my family that is, have used it for generations to fight off the discomfort brought on by the pollen in the spring. It is as effective as any of the big pharma remedies and you don’t have to show a photo ID to buy it.
Get it in capsule form and take enough to work. Many herbal remedies as as effective or more so than big pharma’s offerings. Saw Palmetto is a fine example!
Curing HIV is a very strong claim for an herbal cure. Aside from monogamous behavior the other best hope is to have the right DELTA-32 gene variation.
Caddis the elder
Good question.
Limo liberals will not tolerate anyone speaking of health foods now that they centrally control the food (recent agricultural leglislation) and bodies (obamacare) of the “masses.”
Liberal jack boots don’t bother to hide their nature of hatred and disrespect for the “stupid” peasants they rule. The farmer is lucky he and his family were not wackoed on their farm “compound.”
Because you can’t seize anything if you do that.
Tomorrow all benefits of elderberry magically return.
So are you saying that the federales were right to seize the winery's stock? /sarc
(attempt at singing)
Elderberry wine, makes you feel so fine;
Just help yourself, it’s on the shelf,
Elderberry wine.
Yes, I get a kick out it. They read off all those serious side effects with a big smile on their face.
Sounds like pure speculation to me.
Soon the people will exercise their right to replace it. And, that government will oppose their actions to the best of it's ability.
Like it or not, there is a constitutional case to be made for the existence of the FDA. The constitutional mandate of the government is to protect citizens, and the FDA is one form of protection.
The same way they did before there was an FDA. Some learned the hard way. Some had their grandpa pull them aside and say " don't mind that nonsense, son."
Now people are looking for an alternative to officially sanctioned quackery, sanctioned by the same government that is dipping into their pocket over "Anthropogenic Global Warming", scamming them on ethanol and alternative energy, and has been trying to take away their guns to "make it harder for criminals to commit crime".
There will always be suckers, but anyone with a shred of common sense has no reason to believe the Government, either.
Until the Government quits being one of the foremost purveyors of junk science, extracting its fees at gunpoint, why in the Hell should I or anyone believe them?
If anyone has fostered a market for alternatives to 'official' medicine, it is the government itself. Twenty of minutes of watching virtually any cable channel will enable one to make a list of compounds or pharmaceuticals the government approved, and ..."You may be entitled to a cash settlement! Call now!".
People may not all be educated, but that does not make them dumb.
Funny thing about many natural alternatives (many, not all), they have been in use for generations, and if they didn't work, why would people continue to use them? (Why don't the drug companies?--because you can't patent a naturally occurring substance).
I'm not saying there isn't good medicine being practiced out there, nor that there is an absence of good science.
But the bottom line with medicine is that you get better, or you don't.
Let people weigh in on what worked for them, and let the marketplace (now electronic, connected, and global, not just standing in front of the minstrel show wagon) decide.
Elderberry and grape juice have both been solidly proven to cure cancer, and their regular use should probably cure numerous other conditions.
>> “Why not simply tell them to stop making the claim?” <<
.
Because if they stopped making the claim, people would continue to buy the juice, and get cured, and that is the crux of the problem.
The FDA wants death to all who refuse to patronize the quacks that push ineffective and deadly treatments at hospitals.
Obamacare now makes it mandatory that you patronize the quacks.
>> “The legitimate treatments may not always be better for you.” <<
.
The “legitimate” treatments are guaranteed to shorten your life.
>> “120,000 die form bad prescriptions again this year!” <<
.
Then its way down from last year.
One of the cornerstones of free market capitalism is “Buyer Beware”
It is my job to take care of me. Not the Gov’t. I think a little bit of your ‘dem’ slip is showing. But you’re heading in the right direction. And we love you regardless of your hair.
If the products weren't sold across state lines, the states would step in to regulate. And that includes the red states, like Texas.
The issue is not whether you have the right to take care of yourself, nor is it free-market capitalism. The issue is that there are criminals who will tell you anything to separate you from your money. These criminals are counting on the fact that you do not have a PhD in a life science (PhD educated people make up less than 1% of the population, and the life scientists are only a fraction of that). So they can literally tell you anything, making it sound scientific, and you have no basis on which to judge their claim.
Medical science can cure people or manage conditions that were death sentences not so long ago, but it is limited. The scam artists take advantage of this and people's emotional distress when dealing with serious medical issues. For example, a family might be told that little 2 year old Johnny has cancer, and the chance of being able to send it into permanent remission is only about 40%. The scam artist tells the family that he can sell them a miracle cure for little Johnny, with a romantic background story about how some rogue scientist developed it in his basement (insert scientific sounding gibberish here) and tested it on his friends and neighbors, with a 100% cure rate. I can tell from this thread alone that there are plenty of people who would jump at that sure-fire chance of curing little Johnny. Unfortunately, while that scammer is taking his money and disappearing, the well-meaning family is depriving Johnny of his 40% chance of remission.
In your scenario of caveat emptor, that family has no protection and no recourse against snake-oil salesmen.
I hate to point it out, but there really is not free-market capitalism. The government has always put regulations into place to try to protect people against criminals who would scam them. I'm not a libertarian; I'm a conservative who believes that people should be free to live their lives as they choose, and that there should NOT be freedom for those who would take advantage of others through dishonest methods.
The FDA has been around since 1862, and laws against selling unsafe or ineffective products existed long before that. It developed in response to a real problem.
Now people are looking for an alternative to officially sanctioned quackery, sanctioned by the same government that is dipping into their pocket over "Anthropogenic Global Warming", scamming them on ethanol and alternative energy, and has been trying to take away their guns to "make it harder for criminals to commit crime".
What quackery are you referring to? For drugs/medical devices/etc. to get FDA approval, companies must demonstrate through a process of rigorous testing and documentation that their product meets a very strict set of safety and efficacy standards. The government does not do this testing; it is performed by scientists working in industry, government, and universities. (I will point out that in working for the government, I have always had complete freedom to choose the subject of my research and how I will conduct that research. No one tells me that I should produce a specific result.) Scientists from a variety of backgrounds review the documentation, make judgments as to the scientific merit of the claims, and make the determination as to whether the product should be approved.
I'm not going to go into a full discussion of the FDA approval process; it's way too detailed for a forum post.
I will, however, point out that the FDA has nothing to do with the whole anthropogenic global warming (AGW) scam; that is driven by politicians who reward scientists for producing results that agree with the political agenda. A full discussion of that does not belong in this thread, although it is certainly worthy of discussion.
There will always be suckers, but anyone with a shred of common sense has no reason to believe the Government, either.
Until the Government quits being one of the foremost purveyors of junk science, extracting its fees at gunpoint, why in the Hell should I or anyone believe them?
Please. The government is not a monolithic entity consisting of a bunch of bureaucrats all marching in lock-step. If, by "junk science" you are referring to AGW, then you're talking about something that is politically driven, not scientifically driven. I do not know of any junk science that is purposefully developed and promoted by government scientists. If you have an example of real junk science being disseminated and supported by the FDA, please provide it.
If anyone has fostered a market for alternatives to 'official' medicine, it is the government itself. Twenty of minutes of watching virtually any cable channel will enable one to make a list of compounds or pharmaceuticals the government approved, and ..."You may be entitled to a cash settlement! Call now!".
What this comes down to is that human beings are not omniscient. While the extensive testing process that a product goes through is meant to catch problems before the product is approved for market, it is simply impossible to predict every single issue for that drug. If the drug turns out to have serious enough side effects that were not revealed during testing, the FDA can and will pull its approval for that drug. There is also the issue that not every drug has the same effect on every person who takes it. The fact that there are lawyers out there who are eager and able to make money off of people's misfortunes is irrelevant to the fact that we're dealing with a quite heterogeneous population and a very complex issue.
People may not all be educated, but that does not make them dumb.
Funny thing about many natural alternatives (many, not all), they have been in use for generations, and if they didn't work, why would people continue to use them? (Why don't the drug companies?--because you can't patent a naturally occurring substance).
I'm not saying there isn't good medicine being practiced out there, nor that there is an absence of good science.
Again, there are a lot of issues here. The issue is not the native intelligence of people. My IQ is around 160 or so; let's say there's a gifted composer who also has an IQ of around 160 or so. That does not mean that the composer has any special ability or the resources to sort between various scientific-sounding claims and arrive at something close to the truth. It also does not mean that I have any ability to write great music. There is a reason scientists, not composers, sit on FDA panels to review data.
As for natural alternatives... many of the drugs in use today were developed from naturally occurring substances, and there is on-going research into finding natural chemicals with therapeutic properties. Aspirin and digitalis, for instance, have natural origins (willow bark and foxglove, respectively). If there is a belief that some extract from some organism has medicinal properties, the chances are that it is under scientific investigation. It *is* a rather romantic notion that there are all these miracle cures among "natural" remedies.
There is a downside to this belief; according to a paper I just read recently, the numbers of people taking "natural" herbal supplements has tripled since the 90s. Since many people have a mistaken belief that natural=safe, they don't tell their doctors about the supplement use; this can lead to life-threatening interactions with prescription drugs, or even worse, with anesthetics used during surgery, and people die as a result. Personally, I have no desire to load my body up with pharmaceutical substances, whether they are of "natural" or human-produced origin.
But the bottom line with medicine is that you get better, or you don't.
Let people weigh in on what worked for them, and let the marketplace (now electronic, connected, and global, not just standing in front of the minstrel show wagon) decide.
True, you get better or you don't. We've made great progress with medical science, but we're still a long ways away from Star Trek technology, where the doctor can just scan the patient with his hand-held device and cure the person on the spot.
As far as letting people weigh in on what worked... I honestly don't see how that can possibly work. Without some sort of clearing house (e.g. the FDA) to vet the claims, anyone can run a Google search and find all sorts of contradictory information on any subject. How is the average person whose science background consists of the two or three classes they took in high school a decade or more ago supposed to decide which claims are based in sound science and which aren't? From what I have seen of people, sometimes they don't even respond to any perceived scientific merit of the claim; they respond, instead, to the "tone" of the claim--e.g., it appeals to their anti-government or anti-big business feelings, or portrays a romantic picture of a lone scientist, shunned by the "establishment" for telling the "truth" who, nevertheless, has the wherewithal to conduct his own scientific research in his lab.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.