From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2012-02-07 17:41:33 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] Re: Vanadyl Sulfate for Insulinoma AND Melatonin for Adrenal
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
When people notice the shortcomings of any treatment approach that is not being critical of the person. It is providing the full picture on the treatment approach.
The downsides some people (sometimes many, sometimes not) encounter with classical medicine drugs are also discussed openly here. One of the problems with some types of alternative medicine is that federal law does not require things like side-effects, counter-indications, drug interactions, medication interactions, or potential toxic/poisoning situations to be on the labels. Pick up any book on poisoning and you will find hundreds (even thousands if it is thorough text) of pages on natural poisons.
The reason these approaches don't have the disclosure is not because they are safer because probably neither category is safer than the other when looked at overall. In most treatments anything strong enough to help is also strong enough to harm. The nondisclosure is because Orrin Hatch led a fight in Congress that got through and was signed in quite some time ago which removed almost all regulation and disclosure for a wide range of alternative medications. There also was one that removed almost all federal control over the quality of the alternative meds UNLESS they happen also cause a lot of deaths (which HAS happened since those laws went into effect) or happen to be discovered to also contain actual regulated drugs which are not on the labels (which has actually happened quite often).
Enough states have enough economic involvement in such approaches that those regulation changes went through, but they largely backfired because too many people have found too many of the products to be unreliable. In Europe the opposite was done, with improved disclosure and overview of ingredients with the result that the use of alternative approaches like herbals ones increasing more than in the U.S.
I recommend that anyone using alternative approaches for anything get reputable texts like the European Monograph, or the PDR for Herbal Medicine, other PDRs that are relevant, or other pharmacognosy texts that are complete enough in downsides and upsides to be used in those fields of study. There used to be a great university site on the topic with upsides as well as downsides but I don't know if such resources still exist; if I lack time to search another will have to do so.
Pharmacognosy is a respected and very useful field of knowledge! Heck, it is even what has led to great many of the classic drugs which just refine down to the active ingredients. The problem in the U.S. is not with pharmacognosy or with the alternative approaches experts study in that field (which is a subset of pharmacology) but the ways that those products are marketed without the same disclosures and regulations as classic medications. My own opinion is that use of certain of those medications would increase with disclosure and regualtion, others would decrease, but there would be an overall increase in use like happened in Europe.
So, again, filling in the blanks is NOT being critical of the person; it is helping the person with full enough info, the same type of stuff that is on drug disclosure labels of the classic approaches, and the same types of discussions people have here about those classic approaches, both upsides and downsides. In fact, in this very discussion itself you will find mentions of problems with BOTH.
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
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"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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