Is it illegal to sell medicinal weeds?

[Geoff Dann]

i was watching something about this the other week stating that the government was trying to introduce laws that state that to be called "medicine" whether normal or herbal you would have to have proof that it works through documented trials etc

Fine. So I don't call it "medicine." I call it "wild plants."

TBH i'm not sure if this is coming or not but IMO its not worth the hassle

Dave

Maybe not... It just seems a bit silly that if I know that somebody wants a plant, and I'm going somewhere anyway where that plant grows, that I can't collect the plant for them.

 

[xylaria]

If dabblers in alternative medicine want a thread where there will be no challenge can I suggest its marked 'believers only' in the title, that way you and others won't get upset by any responses from us non believers; because I for one won't contribute to it.

It is not about believing in quackery, there are thousands of peer reviewed papers on the medical uses of plants. This is not a belief this is an absolute fact. Some of the chemicals in plants are hard to synthsise, or are too unstable to be extracted, this means the plant doesnt make it to stage where a tablet form drug can be made from it. Rank tasting tinctures with a persistant after taste [this discribes vertually all of them] are not as easy for people to take as a tablet. This is and profit issues of drug companies are the main reason herbal medicine isnt well perscribed by allopathic doctors in britian. It is not that herbal medicine doesn't work. Some herbs are perscribed by doctors in other countries as a first line treatment. I have repeatedly made this point.

Of course you get people that persist with stupid ideas, that will take some plant they read about on the net when they really should be on dialysis.

 

[rik_uk3]

It is not about believing in quackery, there are thousands of peer reviewed papers on the medical uses of plants. This is not a belief this is an absolute fact. Some of the chemicals in plants are hard to synthsise, or are too unstable to be extracted, this means the plant doesnt make it to stage where a tablet form drug can be made from it. Rank tasting tinctures with a persistant after taste [this discribes vertually all of them] are not as easy for people to take as a tablet. This is and profit issues of drug companies are the main reason herbal medicine isnt well perscribed by allopathic doctors in britian. It is not that herbal medicine doesn't work. Some herbs are perscribed by doctors in other countries as a first line treatment. I have repeatedly made this point.

Of course you get people that persist with stupid ideas, that will take some plant they read about on the net when they really should be on dialysis.

Who are the peers? I've absolutely no interest in what a doctor prescribes in another country, we have no idea of how stringent their regulatory bodies are. The facts are that herbal remedies do not stand up well in clinical trials, they simply don't work in the vast majority of cases. I've not seen anyone on dialysis (although that was my area for a while) through herbal remedies, but I've seen people come in with chest infections/pneumonia, septicemia and gangrene through relying on salves, 'home remedies'and poultices full of herbal goodness which effectively killed them or put them at high risk until tried and tested medicine got them back from the brink.

You ever had the smell of gangrene, necrotic tissue in your nostrils Xylaria? Ever debrided a wound the smell of which sticks with you for hours? I have, its not nice.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Who are the peers? I've absolutely no interest in what a doctor prescribes in another country, we have no idea of how stringent their regulatory bodies are. The facts are that herbal remedies do not stand up well in clinical trials, they simply don't work in the vast majority of cases.

Rik, I think you're conflating different issues, or oversimplifying a complex situation.

Homeopathy is bunkum, and we all agree on that I think. Herbal medicine is not bunkum, but it is a confusing mish-mash. This is because of its history. Once upon a time there was no pharmaceutical industry, just wild plants (and fungi.) So there was a folk tradition of herbal medicine that was based partly on experimental knowledge passed down through generations and partly based on pre-scientific theories such as the belief that the shape of flowers indicated what remedy the plant would make. The latter is bunk, and the former is unreliable but not bunk. In other words, there is no doubt whatsoever that some of these remedies did and do "work", and this should surprise nobody. Modern herbal medicine is further complicated by knowledge derived from modern medicine/botany which has revealed that certain plants contain chemicals with known medicinal effects.

So your claim that "herbal remedies don't stand up in clinical trials" is itself unclear at best, and total bunkum at worst. Plants contain all sorts of bio-active compounds. If they didn't, there would be no poisonous plants. Most drugs are simply poisons in very small doses.

I've not seen anyone on dialysis (although that was my area for a while) through herbal remedies, but I've seen people come in with chest infections/pneumonia, septicemia and gangrene through relying on salves, 'home remedies'and poultices full of herbal goodness which effectively killed them or put them at high risk until tried and tested medicine got them back from the brink.

Again, you're conflating different things. "Home remedies" is a reference to people fending for themselves instead of asking an expert. This is a totally different issue to whether or not wild plants contain medically-useful bio-active chemicals.

You ever had the smell of gangrene, necrotic tissue in your nostrils Xylaria? Ever debrided a wound the smell of which sticks with you for hours? I have, its not nice.

This is what is known as a "strawman." A blatant one at that. You are setting up a position Xylaria is clearly not advocating, then knocking down as if he did.

 

[xylaria]

Who are the peers?
the useal ie mircoboilogis, viroligists etc not witch doctors who channelled their wisdom off Isis
I've absolutely no interest in what a doctor prescribes in another country, we have no idea of how stringent their regulatory bodies are.
Germany
The facts are that herbal remedies do not stand up well in clinical trials,
some do stand up in clinical trials
they simply don't work in the vast majority of cases.
Provide clinical evidance please

I've not seen anyone on dialysis (although that was my area for a while) through herbal remedies,
I have known some that left a bladder infection until the kidneys became infected. they looked enough that everyone else was urging them to go to the doctors, she kept drinking cranberry juice.
but I've seen people come in with chest infections/pneumonia, septicemia and gangrene through relying on salves, 'home remedies'and poultices full of herbal goodness which effectively killed them or put them at high risk until tried and tested medicine got them back from the brink.
Some people are stupid. it doesn't mean that the whole of herbal medicine is complete quakery just because there is idiots that try to treat TB and septsis with figgen garlic. It is like arguing that allopathic medicine is rubbish because doctor misperscibe sometimes.

You ever had the smell of gangrene, necrotic tissue in your nostrils Xylaria? Ever debrided a wound the smell of which sticks with you for hours? I have, its not nice.
Yes, if antibotic resistant hospital aquired bedsores count. I have also clean up feacal vomiting, caused in part to medication. not drugs are perfect.

 

[rik_uk3]

"Yes, if antibotic resistant hospital aquired bedsores count. I have also clean up feacal vomiting, caused in part to medication. not drugs are perfect."

No, but most are a dam sight better than what you have to offer. If where you nurse you are encountering Hospital acquired pressure areas I'd stand up and shout about it. We did not tolerate it, certainly if caused by poor patient handling protocol and or equipment. Side effects of some medication is horrific, I know, I've experienced some but 'better alive than dead' springs to mind.

Any evidence for alternative medicine is slim and often dubious at best, why on earth promote it on a site where some members may take it at face value and come to harm having read your (and others) proud (and unsubstantiated) proclamations?

 

[Andy BB]

In answer to the original post, I'd have said you're on dangerous ground (if for no other reason than your post in now in the public domaine, and doing a track-back it could be demonstrated that you were aware that someone was intending to use it to treat a kidney ailment.) So the "I didn't know, officer" defense won't wash!

As to the rest, we see the typical "the pharma companies are only in it for the money and trying to wipe out the herbal medicine competition" complaint. Personally, I'm pleased that the medicine proscribed for my family has been thoroughly tested, and hopefully prescribed by a medical professional with a minimum of 7 years MEDICAL training, who is actually aware of my family's detailed medical history, allergies etc etc etc. And the fact that- for every approved medicine that actually makes it into production, probably hundreds of possible medicines fail to pass through the stringent testing process. And - believe it or not - that costs money............

 

[rik_uk3]

In answer to the original post, I'd have said you're on dangerous ground (if for no other reason than your post in now in the public domaine, and doing a track-back it could be demonstrated that you were aware that someone was intending to use it to treat a kidney ailment.) So the "I didn't know, officer" defense won't wash!

As to the rest, we see the typical "the pharma companies are only in it for the money and trying to wipe out the herbal medicine competition" complaint. Personally, I'm pleased that the medicine proscribed for my family has been thoroughly tested, and hopefully prescribed by a medical professional with a minimum of 7 years MEDICAL training, who is actually aware of my family's detailed medical history, allergies etc etc etc. And the fact that- for every approved medicine that actually makes it into production, probably hundreds of possible medicines fail to pass through the stringent testing process. And - believe it or not - that costs money............

Well said.

 

[Geoff Dann]

In answer to the original post, I'd have said you're on dangerous ground (if for no other reason than your post in now in the public domaine, and doing a track-back it could be demonstrated that you were aware that someone was intending to use it to treat a kidney ailment.) So the "I didn't know, officer" defense won't wash!

Except that is quite explicitly NOT my defence. I am not claiming I didn't know. On the contrary, I am claiming that I knew precisely what the plant is and what it was wanted for. That's my job: knowing about plants and what they are used for. My defence is that I am making no scientific claims about the safety or effectiveness of the plant as a medicine and that I was not advising anybody consume the plant for medicinal reasons. In what way can that be paraphrased as "I didn't, know officer?"

I'd be the wrong side of the law (or in trouble if it looked that way) if what I was doing was secretly acting as a herbal doctor and only pretending to be primarily an expert on where wild plants can be found and what they were traditionally used for. That means diagnosing medical problems and/or prescribing herbal remedies, and no amount of "backtracking" will support that claim, because I've never made any such claims, here or anywhere else. This is not the same as, say, supplying somebody with wild-growing hemp and claiming I didn't know what it was or that it was a controlled substance. Medicinal weeds are not controlled substances - that's what we've established in this thread, is it not? Therefore the important point is not the supply of physical material, but the diagnosis of the illness and the decision about the prescription/dose.

As to the rest, we see the typical "the pharma companies are only in it for the money and trying to wipe out the herbal medicine competition" complaint. Personally, I'm pleased that the medicine proscribed for my family has been thoroughly tested, and hopefully prescribed by a medical professional with a minimum of 7 years MEDICAL training, who is actually aware of my family's detailed medical history, allergies etc etc etc. And the fact that- for every approved medicine that actually makes it into production, probably hundreds of possible medicines fail to pass through the stringent testing process. And - believe it or not - that costs money............

Right. And yet everybody knows cannabis does indeed relieve the symptoms of certain chronic physical conditions, and that there is currently no legal means for people to supply themselves with it. The reason for this is entirely that the big pharma companies can't make any money out if it. This looks to me exactly like a world being run in the interests of large corporations and against those of ordinary people - a dying world that I and many other people are currently trying to help put out of its misery, if only by speaking the truth about it in public.

 

[sandsnakes]

Rikot,

I am in in agreement with Geoff. No doubt your observations from working in a hospital are true, what you saw was based on stupidity and in some cases fear. It was certainly not professionaly advised or clinicaly overseen by a qualifed practitioner of natural medicine. But the strawman argument applies as used against X.

The one observation which is plainly idiotic is ...... 'Who are the peers? I've absolutely no interest in what a doctor prescribes in another country, we have no idea of how stringent their regulatory bodies are. .....' If you dismiss non uk regulatory bodies, you dismiss most of the antibiotics, chemo, antidepressants, new range of oral diabetic medicines (many based on cinnamon compounds), phyto hormone compounds etc. These are produced in the western worlds sphere such as Japan, USA, Canada, Australia etc, etc. The peer review articles appear in dodgy magazines such as the New England Journal, The Lancect, AMAM ....

Please understand there is a considerable difference between the educated and informed use and the uneducated and ill informed use of anything. This is the fundamental standpoint that most of us are pointing out to you.

S

Rik, I think you're conflating different issues, or oversimplifying a complex situation.

Homeopathy is bunkum, and we all agree on that I think. Herbal medicine is not bunkum, but it is a confusing mish-mash. This is because of its history. Once upon a time there was no pharmaceutical industry, just wild plants (and fungi.) So there was a folk tradition of herbal medicine that was based partly on experimental knowledge passed down through generations and partly based on pre-scientific theories such as the belief that the shape of flowers indicated what remedy the plant would make. The latter is bunk, and the former is unreliable but not bunk. In other words, there is no doubt whatsoever that some of these remedies did and do "work", and this should surprise nobody. Modern herbal medicine is further complicated by knowledge derived from modern medicine/botany which has revealed that certain plants contain chemicals with known medicinal effects.

So your claim that "herbal remedies don't stand up in clinical trials" is itself unclear at best, and total bunkum at worst. Plants contain all sorts of bio-active compounds. If they didn't, there would be no poisonous plants. Most drugs are simply poisons in very small doses.




Again, you're conflating different things. "Home remedies" is a reference to people fending for themselves instead of asking an expert. This is a totally different issue to whether or not wild plants contain medically-useful bio-active chemicals.



This is what is known as a "strawman." A blatant one at that. You are setting up a position Xylaria is clearly not advocating, then knocking down as if he did.

 

[Geoff Dann]

So far we've learned...there seems to be a good deal of sense in the assertion that if you're going to sell medicinal plants then you should know what your doing and have some idea how to diagnose and prescribe the correct plant and dosage for a given patient...

Why? It looks to me like the opposite is true, or something close. Learning which plant has been used for which conditions in the past (or which illnesses it is being used for today) is part of the general information it is possible to learn about specific plants. This is so I can tell people interesting things about plants we happen to come across while out foraging (it is why I ended up noticing a plant growing by a wall yesterday, figuring out it was something called "Pellitory of the wall" and discovering that it was not edible but was used both traditionally and currently as a herbal medicine for kidney stones.) But as soon as I start learning how to diagnose illnesses and trying to make prescriptions and decide on doses then I really would be heading towards the job of herbal doctor - that is precisely what would get me into legal difficulties. My defence is not "I didn't know what the plant is or what it was wanted for", but it does include "I don't know how to diagnose illnesses or prescribe herbal medicines, and I never pretended otherwise."

 

[JohnC]

There are a few studies ongoing with cannabis in the uk for symptom control/treatment. In our unit theres a couple involving pain control and emesis.
Its quite intresting that there is a move now for identifying biomarkers in diseases (the area I work in is solid cancers), then identifying a target pathway in the condition, then either designing a drug to to act in that area, or looking back to the catalogue of exisiting substances and their actions to exploit the pathway.
Its a change/move from the "test everything in the forest or sea" method.
This thread is of great interest, it does highlight the the need for knowledge in any substance you take, and/or the trust that you have to have in the person giving or recommending the substance. I'm lucky(?) in that the peope I give treatmetns to sign an informed consent to treat, and this isnt always available or appropriate outside of a hospital. Ive said to people that our hospital/unit guidelines are there to protect (to a degree) both me and the patient.

 

[xylaria]

double post deleated

 

[xylaria]

rikuk; Any evidence for alternative medicine is slim and often dubious at best, why on earth promote it on a site where some members may take it at face value and come to harm having read your (and others) proud (and unsubstantiated) proclamations?

What part of clinical papers published in journals such as virology is are unsubstantiated proclimations.

For the OP have personally have moral dislike for commercial foraging, this my own personal opinion based on my own beliefs. however I respect your right to have beliefs other than this, if you wish to collect medical plants within the law and bylaws [ashdown forest requires a licience most other places require landowner permission] to sell, i wish you luck in your venture.

I supply only to people that have asked for a specific plant or know what they are doing. A herbalist that has spent 7 years getting their training doesnt often have the time or the skill to go out and collect the exact plant, they are too very differnant skills.

 

[rik_uk3]

Rikot,

I am in in agreement with Geoff. No doubt your observations from working in a hospital are true, what you saw was based on stupidity and in some cases fear. It was certainly not professionaly advised or clinicaly overseen by aA herbalist that has spent 7 years getting their training But the strawman argument applies as used against X.

The one observation which is plainly idiotic is ...... 'Who are the peers? I've absolutely no interest in what a doctor prescribes in another country, we have no idea of how stringent their regulatory bodies are. .....' If you dismiss non uk regulatory bodies, you dismiss most of the antibiotics, chemo, antidepressants, new range of oral diabetic medicines (many based on cinnamon compounds), phyto hormone compounds etc. These are produced in the western worlds sphere such as Japan, USA, Canada, Australia etc, etc. The peer review articles appear in dodgy magazines such as the New England Journal, The Lancect, AMAM ....

Please understand there is a considerable difference between the educated and informed use and the uneducated and ill informed use of anything. This is the fundamental standpoint that most of us are pointing out to you.

S

"A herbalist that has spent 7 years getting their training" trained in what? The use of 'treatments' that don't do a lot in most cases.

This is the fundamental standpoint I'm pointing out to you and others. Take your blinkers off and look at the hard evidence, herbal remedies in the most part are worth nothing. The new regulations making it illegal to make claims about a 'natural' medicine without clear, clinical proof were not drawn up on some whim, some person did not wake up and say "I know, lets really pee off the natural remedy mob" What they have said is yes, if you can clinically prove it works as a medicine then sell it as such, if you can't then no, you can't call it a medicine; does that not say something to you? When you look at a branch of 'science' that still in part relies on utter tosh such as 'water memory' what does that say about the foundations of 'natural remedies'.

Herbal remedy fans remind me of Apple fans....oh yes, Steve Jobs relied on the alternative route too long and died so was his choice of treatment based upon stupidity and in fear or did he not employ and pay the top people in their field, those who have trained for seven years only to be let down?

 

[sandsnakes]

Rikot

............The one observation which is plainly idiotic is ...... 'Who are the peers? I've absolutely no interest in what a doctor prescribes in another country, we have no idea of how stringent their regulatory bodies are. .....' If you dismiss non uk regulatory bodies, you dismiss most of the antibiotics, chemo, antidepressants, new range of oral diabetic medicines (many based on cinnamon compounds), phyto hormone compounds etc. These are produced in the western worlds sphere such as Japan, USA, Canada, Australia etc, etc. The peer review articles appear in dodgy magazines such as the New England Journal, The Lancect, AMAM ....

Hmmmm?

Steve Jobs, strawman argument again.

 

[Geoff Dann]

OK...this is now veering into "trying to have a conversation with a brick wall" territory...

 

[Ogri the trog]

OK...this is now veering into "trying to have a conversation with a brick wall" territory...

and I think enough has been said by all contributors that no further conversation will prove to be of benefit to the original post.

Thread closed

Ogri the trog