Dan Hannan: The madness of the precautionary principle

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHf8RcIGz7s[/youtube]

Yep...pretty much.

This man speaks the Truth.

He has some good points, but I disagree that it is "not a good business model to poison your customers". Actually, it is a perfectly good business model, as long as you can make your fortune before anyone finds out. Example: cigarettes.

Poisoning your customers is an excellent business model, provided that you are also in the business of selling antidotes.

Despite their nicer sounding names, herbal remedies, when they work at all, are doing it the same way regular drugs do. Just like regular drugs, they can have serious interactions with other drugs with sometimes lethal results.

On the other side of the issue is that often herbal remedies don't do anything at all. The good news is that they don't have drug interactions. The bad news is that someone who relies on an herbal remedy may forego real medicine until it's too late (Steve Jobs is one particularly well known example.)

Where there are some real strong arguments against herbal remedies is that there is little to no regulation to control dosage or to demand efficacy. One batch of an herb may contain a mild dose, the next may contain a much stronger dose. And if you are going to charge people for a product, it would really be nice if you could demonstrate that your product actually did what you claimed it did.

Demanding that herbal remedies be subject to the same controls and regulations as conventional drugs is the only thing that makes sense. We want to make sure that the drugs we take will actually be beneficial and we want to know that they are made adequately to ensure they don't kill us when we take them. Why shouldn't the same demands be made on herbal remedies?

The only argument to not demand that herbal remedies be subject to the same controls as regular drugs seems to be "We don't want to have to spend the money to do proper testing, but we want to sell a product that has not been proven to actually help people and still make claims that it will help them."

And what if one wants to grow and use their own herbs...I mean if they want to regulate herbal remedies more heavily I would hope no more laws of what you can and cannot grow in your garden come of it. Maybe herbs being sold as herbal remedies should be held to higher standards not not sure the same standards that work for pharmacutical drugs work for herbs as they are rather different...for instance you can't really make tea, tinctures or essential oils with pharmacutical drugs and the quality of herbs depends on how their grown which I don't see how pharmacutical drug regulations could be applied to that. The regulations need to reflect those differences.

Also not entirely sure this would be a result, but there are concerns about regulating herbs to the point they'd only be availible in pill form after very specific chemicals have been isolated or synthetic versions have been created. For one that increases side effects as most herbs have various chemicals that work better together than in isolation. Also, I think people should be free to use natural remedies not forced to depend on pills if they'd rather not.

Self interest is regulation enough.

Can't make billions off natural substances that you can grow yourselves. That's why the War On Drugs exists too.

I have no problem with people growing their own herbs and I have no problem with companies selling herbal remedies. But if a company is going to imply that their herbal remedy is good for something, they need to back that claim up with real evidence. Perhaps the best way to use an herb is to brew it in a tea. Then that's how it should be used. But the company has to SHOW that the herbal remedy actually works.

I think, as a society, we need to protect ourselves from con artists by demanding that companies show real efficacy rather than making appeals to "ancient wisdom" and "It's natural... What could go wrong?" It's no different from protecting ourselves from pharmaceutical companies that encourage people to ask their doctors to prescribe specific medication.

If you want to grow herbs in your back yard and eat them, that's your look out and the government shouldn't stop you. Heck, if you want to grow Jimson weed (a strong halucingen) or castor beans (sometimes used to make ricin) it's going to be pretty hard for the government to stop you as the stuff grows all over the place in southern california. But when someone claims they have a product that will help you, I want regulations put in place that require that they tell the truth.

If anything, with the insurance companies behaving as they do, it seems they would prefer to have everyone die and reduce the surplus population rather than pay for medication. If you don't want to take pills, don't take them. You may be better for it or you may be worse.

But taking herbal remedies without understanding what they will do to your biochemistry is no better than taking processed medications. In fact it's usually worse as regular drugs have at least had to undergo strict testing whereas herbal remedies are mostly given a free pass.

Statistically relevant tests cost lots of money, and It's my understanding that herbal remedies cannot be patented.

So you would be sending all that time and money on testing, likely going deeply into debt, only to have to compete with a bunch of growers that don't.

Some herbal remedies don't work. Many do. Nobody is going to spend the money to figure out which is which, which is a shame considering how cheaply such remedies can be produced.

Isn't it enough to warn customers that no modern test has been done, just the records of medieval monks, greek philosophers, and native american medicine men ? After all, how is that any less ethical than asking people to participate in a study to test a new drug? Well, I guess in that scenario you pay them, but at least you're not giving sick people placebos.

If you want to take herbal remedies, that's your prerogative. Why would you take something you think might hurt you? There is no reason a private non-profits couldn't test medicines. You assume the risk by taking something that is untested. Regulation has more to do with raising barriers of entry than it does protecting consumers.

Actually companies do spend the money to determine what herbal remedies work. They are called pharmaceutical companies and often the drugs they produce are the purified and controlled versions of a chemical that was found in nature.

But despite your claim, actually few of the standard herbal remedies work. Even the ones that do work (St. john's Wort, for example) can vary greatly between batches making it hard to get consistent results.

It seems that your argument is since it costs too much to determine if herbal remedies are actually effective, we should not demand that sellers make honest claims about their products? If someone claims he has as pill that, when dropped into water, creates gasoline, shouldn't he prove unequivocally that his product does what he says before we give him money? If someone says dandelion root cures cancer wouldn't you want proof before stoping other proven therapies? If you are willing to accept the unproven claims just because it cost too much to actually prove the claims, then you get the kind of treatment that comes from unproven claims.

I'm not saying modern medicine has all the answers. But at least it has some answers that work. There are very few herbal remedies that do anything at all, let alone do what their sellers claim they do.

A large part of the effect of any medicine whether it "works" or not is the placebo effect. If somebody believe a herbal remedy can help them, then they should have the right to buy and use them without big brother telling them what they can and cannot put in their bodies.

While regulations can certainly slow down access to medications and the process of testing can increase the development costs, do you really think things would be better if we just said to pharmaceutical companies, "make the drugs... We'll trust you to make sure all its properties and interactions are well understood."

I don't trust companies to look out for my interests. I would rather have careful regulations put in place to force them to ensure that their products meet certain standards and that the product actually does what they claim it will do. Regulations may create barriers to entry. But do you really want access to a product that is so untested that it might kill you or cause cancer or birth defects in your children? I don't want major pharmaceutical companies to get away with creating dangerous products and I don't want herbal remedy producers to get away with making dangerous products. If they are producing products for medical uses, they should both be held to the same standards.

Would you take untested medication?

I would not be inclined to take wholly untested medications. If it were part of a properly conducted clinical trial and the benefits seemed worth the risk, then I would consider it. Of course by the time a medication gets to human clinical trials, a great deal of testing has already been done.