Jun 14 2012
Forces of Quackery
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Sounds like a bad Ben Affleck movie.
“Most natural substances are deadly poisons.”
That’s a typo right? I mean, “Many” sounds pretty reasonable, but “Most”? What are you basing that on?
Rick
And yet, amazingly, Rand Paul, Gary Null, etc are arguing that the FDA is too powerful and needs to be deregulated even further!
http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/24/rand-paul-calls-for-an-end-to-the-fdas-i
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Zz5GjUcQ0
Strictly speaking that isn’t true – water is a chemical.
….so is sugar used in the pills. And nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. Boy oh boy would it be tough to live a chemical free life.
It probably already exists but I would very much like to make or find a t-shirt that says “100% pure organic” and have a random organic molecule on it.
Rick,
OK, I cheated a bit – because everything is a deadly poison if taken in sufficient amounts.
But look at it this way, a small percentage of plants in nature are safely edible. And for those that are edible, it is usually only part of the plant that is edible, while other parts are not – apples seeds are toxic. Some foods have to be treated to be edible. Raw almonds are toxic, for example.
So most parts of most plants are not edible by humans, some are toxic in small amounts, other in larger amounts.
For example, I would seriously not recommend going into the woods and eating random plants you cannot identify.
All herbal medicine are toxins, but if they are useful that means at a certain dose and in certain situations their toxicity can be exploited for a medicinal purpose – because they are drugs. All drugs are toxins, only with a useful dose range.
So there is some ambiguity in the question, but it’s safe to say that more than 50% of plant parts out there are not edible or toxic if injected as food.
@ Steve
Sorry someone will say this ingested not injected. The injected rate its probably more like 99%.
I read the story and comments at the link supplied by bluedevilRA.
In my view[1], it’s typical of much libertarian commentary: breathless exaggeration on the descriptive side, founded on some frankly goofy ideals on the normative side.
Rand Paul is steamed that the GubMint is sending “armed FDA agents into peaceful farmers’ land and telling them they can’t sell milk directly from the cow.” Hey, that’s nothing — where I live, we have armed highway patrol officers telling peaceful drivers they can’t do 75 in a 55.
[1] And, let me note, I was strongly sympathetic to libertarian views in my younger days. I’d still be, were it not for the apparent majority of libertarians who seem to prefer a comic book reality to the one I inhabit.
John and Belle may have said it best: http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/03/if_wishes_were_.html
“And yet, amazingly, Rand Paul, Gary Null, etc are arguing that the FDA is too powerful and needs to be deregulated even further!”
Those are not fact based opinions, but primarily driven by ideology. That mention did remind me that Gary Null was poisoned by his own crappy supplement. I think it was a vitamin D toxicity, and he took legal action a couple years ago when it contained amounts much higher than labeled. This desire that people have to take supplements still perplexes me
Use of the word “natural” is part of a broader class of logical fallacies that I have recently run across that involve mixing grammatically valid constructs with “meaningless” words or phrases.
I am interested in unraveling the neurobiological basis for why these logical fallacies work.
Consider the following sentence:
“More people were swept away by the blinding insight of the idea than I could have imagined.”
Totally meaningless and yet it appears to be grammatically correct and therefore a meaningful assertion.
One reason why it is meaningless is because there is no limit to what “I could have imagined”.
However the cliche grammatical construct of “More/ than” creates the illusion that a valid comparison is taking place.
Why does it work?
I didn’t watch the Rand Paul video, but if Reason’s text was correct — that one amendment was solely to prevent the FDA and Health and Human Services agencies from carrying guns and making arrests without warrants — then I approve no matter the political ideology of who proposes it.
It’s apples to oranges comparing state highway patrolmen to FDA agents. How many FDA agents have been killed in the line of duty? That’s not to say that police powers shouldn’t be closely watched at every level of government right down to village constable.
@Donna, I agree that the arming part is not really the issue. I have no problem with de-arming FDA agents. I did not even know FDA agents could carry weapons till this story. My problem is with the spin that Paul, Null, et al put on this issue. Apparently the FDA is a rogue agency, some sort of militant wing of the Big Pharma. Dr. Paul does not outright say this (he is not as extreme as Gary Null), but he is without a doubt calling for less regulation regarding supplements. He said that vitamins should be allowed to be marketed for specific health benefits, giving the example of prune juice for constipation. I think this is a downright dangerous idea and it has been discussed many times on this blog, SBM and others. People are still under the mistaken impression that Airborne (nothing more than a megadose multivitamin) can fight off the flu years after those ads were pulled.
Hope this is okay, but can I interject and point everyone to this article by Steven Novella in 1999, it’s hilarious:
http://www.theness.com/index.php/alternative-engineering/
I know it’s off topic, so my apologies, but it’s well worth a look. You could cut the irony with a knife.
If you don’t believe me, here’s a sample:
What has this new approach created? Well, Natural Design’s newest model sedan, the Millennium 2000, does not use air bags, or even seatbelts. “Seatbelts are dangerous, and air bags are kid killers,” complains Wiere. So he has come up with something better. The interior of the Millennium 2000 is coated with a patented psychoactive material, called Natural Safe. “All a driver or passenger has to do is think safe thoughts, and this miraculous material will do the rest. In a crash, the material will gently repel any safe thinking person in the vehicle, leaving them free from injury.”
Consumers are convinced. Not to be outdone, GM and Ford both have started putting Natural Safe coatings in their cars. Amy Zinger, of Arkansas, survived a 40 MPH head on collision in one such vehicle. “I was wearing my seatbelt, and the air bag did deploy, but I know it was the Natural Safe that saved my life.” Motivated by such testimonials, more and more consumers are insisting on only buying cars treated with Natural Safe.
You’d be surprised. Here’s an account of USDA inspectors shot to death while inspecting a sausage factory: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/06/ceremonies-to-honor-meat-inspectors-killed-in-2000/
I have myself had the, um … memorable … experience of an FDA audit, performed by a uniformed member of the US Public Health Service. She was not armed at the time, but told me that she always carried a weapon when inspecting food plants. Rand Paul’s excitement over armed FDA inspectors seems overblown. Inspectors carry weapons under circumstances where they might be needed — just as highway patrol officers do, and for the same reason.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/06/ceremonies-to-honor-meat-inspectors-killed-in-2000/
The owner was a clever chappie – convicted by evidence on his own security camera!