Why do so many people think that natural pharmaceutical ingredients (taken from plants) are safer than artificial pharmaceutical ingredients?

You are so right. People have an aversion to the word “chemicals”, that’s been programmed into them through media histrionics. What they forget is that air and water and eveyrhting we eat are also chemicals.

Judging by this and one of your other recent questions, I would recommend you read the book “Risk”, by Dan Gardner, if you haven’t already. Talks a lot about all this kind of thing, as well as the perception of fear. It’s a great book.

It’s a common enough misconception to have earned its own label: the Appeal to Nature Fallacy

@jo_with_no_space – Thanks for the tip. I’ll check him out!

@Harp – Interesting link. Yes, “simply 100% whole-leaf natural tobacco” but the Google Ad displayed “Cigarettes – Visit our Smoking Cessation Center for expert tips, tools and advice” sounds a lot more sobering when it comes to certain products of Nature…

I know certain herbs and homeopathy remedies can kill. I may follow a natural lifestyle, but I don’t deny medicine :)
Homeopathy honestly scares me. Like Hyland’s Teething Tablets contain Bella Donna, at the incorrect dose, that can do A LOT of harm, I think even kill. And, since homeopathy remedies aren’t moderated by the FDA, each pill might contain a different dosage.
Now, that by no means, means I trust the FDA…far from it. But, I wouldn’t risk my child’s life.

And, of course “natural” doesn’t always mean better, when you’re talking about poisonous mushrooms…but I still believe natural is better than synthetic.

@casheroo – Homeopathy is unsupported by modern scientific research, but I’ve not heard about cases doing harm to patients. On the contrary, in some cases the healing due to the powerful placebo effect is very real.

There are a couple of causes for this, I think: First is the peculiar Western habit of seeing humans as divorced from Nature. Maybe this schism is a legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition of seeing Man as a special creation given dominion over the rest of creation. We’ve thoroughly sublimated this notion that we exist as souls on a spiritual plane separate from Nature, and that human involvement renders something “unnatural”.

Coupled with that is the far more recent fear of our own technological power. It’s only been within the past century really that we’ve seen in concrete fashion the destructive potential of our own handiwork. Until then, Man had an unmitigated reverence for his technologies. Now we’ve developed an equally profound mistrust of technology because not only have we become utterly reliant upon them, but we’ve become aware that they can be far from benign.

I also think it has a lot to do with the peculiarly-American love of conspiracy theories. Many people want to believe that “Big Pharma” and the “medical industry” conspire to keep them sick and that the peddlers of natural nostrums are knights on white horses fighting the battle against the greedy capitalist dragons.

If you want to see examples of this that will make your head spin with the illogic, try looking at the weird theories and treatments advocated for “curing” autism. It’s heartbreaking and maddening. The vaccine issue is only the tip of the iceberg. Chelation therapy, megavitamin therapy, no gluten,/no casein diets, various “natural” remedies…despite the fact that the science is clear that none of these work, desperate parents spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on them.

@crisw If my child were diagnosed with Autism, I’d try to get him into a program to help him immediately, but I’ve heard no gluten/no casein may help, and it doesn’t cost thousands of dollars…I think it’s worth a try.

@casheroo

The problem here is that these parents try all of this, with no scientific support, and then credit any improvement to the New-Agey stuff, and any regression to the more scientifically-based treatments, without any real backing. So they are convinced that their kid is hitting his head against the wall because someone gave him a Cheerio at school, for example, rather than considering that they haven’t followed through with the behavioral program that was recommended to them. So it can harm the kids and the parents.

@crisw is absolutely correct.

oh, i didn’t know you two had autistic children. just because a parent tries multiple things, some not mainstream, doesn’t mean they aren’t getting the proper care for their children. why would you assume someone who changes their child’s diet, doesn’t get the appropriate therapy an autistic child would need? judgement on your part, one of the reasons parents avoid doctors like that, and talk poorly of them. in my opinion, people like you are the problem, not the natural remedies.

@casheroo

I am assuming you have autistic kids, then?

“just because a parent tries multiple things, some not mainstream, doesn’t mean they aren’t getting the proper care for their children”
So, here’s the issue. Let’s say a parent with an autistic kid decided to drop the gluten and casein, give megavitamins, and administer chelation therapy. Let’s say the kid’s behavior improves. How, then, do you know which, if any, of these changes caused the improvement? What if the kid gets worse? How do you know what caused it?

Humans have an innate tendency to assume that correlation implies causation. The Web is filled with stories of “I did X and my kid got better!” The problem with all of these stories is that there’s no actual testing going on; no way to actually show that the treatment really caused whatever changes were seen. To do that, you need randomized studies and control groups. Otherwise, you don’t really have any way to really make a case that the treatment is what actually caused the behavior, and not something else.

Compare that with treatments that have been shown to make an improvement in autistic children. The one with the most evidence, by far, is applied behavior analysis. There are reams and reams of evidence- including those randomized trials- showing that this is an effective method of educating autistic kids.

@crisw I do not have an autistic child. I do not see what is wrong with trying multiple therapies, at one time. If I had an autistic child, and he was in behavioral therapy, and I also changed his diet..I wouldn’t assume one or the other was causing a problem. I’m just one parent though, who knows what other parents would think.
Also, if you say that a diet change can’t help, are you implying it can hurt the child? You say there haven’t been any studies, so how do you know?

@casheroo
“I do not see what is wrong with trying multiple therapies, at one time.”
Maybe Benny can explain it better if he drops back by.

The problem is that you have no idea if they are working or not, and thus no idea whether or not to keep going or stop.

I’ll do a bit of research on the diet issue and get back to you; I don’t know if there have been reports of malnutrition or not. As many autistic kids are also extremely picky eaters to begin with, it wold be a tough thing to study. Definitely the megavitamin and chelation therapies have been shown to potentially be very harmful.

@crisw I understand what you are saying, about multiple therapies. Changing a diet will not harm a child. I’m sure parents do not starve their child. You are judging people far too harshly, for trying everything they can to help their child.
Also, I’ve never heard of stopping behavioral therapy because it’s not working. But, then again, most parents cannot afford the therapy an autistic child needs, so they can’t get the proper care they need.

@casheroo

Yes, turns out the gluten/casein free has been studied-and has been shown to have the potential to cause harm.

“The plasma amino acid profiles of 36 children with autism spectrum disorders were reviewed to determine the impact of diet on amino acid patterns. Ten of the children were on gluten and casein restricted diets administered by parents, while the other 26 consumed unrestricted diets. No amino acid profile specific to autism was identified. However, children with autism had more essential amino acid deficiencies consistent with poor protein nutrition than an age/gender matched control group. There was a trend for children with autism who were on restricted diets to have an increased prevalence of essential amino acid deficiencies and lower plasma levels of essential acids including the neurotransmitter precursors tyrosine and tryptophan than both controls and children with autism on unrestricted diets.These data indicate that larger,more focused studies of protein nutrition in children with autism are needed in order to determine the extent to which restricted diets might place the developing brains of children with autism at risk from protein malnutrition. The high rate of tryptophan and tyrosine deficiency in this group is also of concern given their role as neurotransmitter precursors. ”

@casheroo

I think you’re misunderstanding what applied behavior analysis is. It isn’t a “therapy” in the sense of something administered by psychologists or the like- it’s a system that is used to teach the kids, and good schools for autistic kids use it. Special education is free to any kid who needs it- our school, for example, is a private school, but parents don’t pay for their kids to attend it.

@crisw Listen, you’re not going to change my mind on my views. Just to give you a hint, I believe more what Jenny McCarthy says, than you, on anything regarding autism..as she has an autistic child, and has stated (as many mothers I know, with autism) that they are working to try to afford the expensive therapies their autistic children need. She keeps writing books just to afford the care she needs for her child, I can’t imagine what would happen if I had an autistic child. We’d be screwed. I do know of the free state evaluation, but I don’t know much else about any free child care like that.
I don’t trust the FDA, I myself follow a very low-gluten intake because of the disgusting amount people consume, and I limit the intake my son has. I don’t know what else to say to you, to get you to realize I believe in natural remedies..as I stated in my first respone to this thread. Is it that hard to comprehend?

@casheroo

I think we may have a very basic difference in the way we think.

I try to make decisions based not on emotions or what I want to be true, or unfounded speculation, but on what can be backed up with evidence. I will change my mind on anything if you can present me with enough verifiable evidence. I don’t do anything based on faith or belief alone- I want to see evidence. Luckily, this is also the policy of the school where I work, which is widely-recognized by professionals throughout the U.S. as one of the leaders in educating autistic kids. My colleagues have spent their professional careers testing and documenting what actually works to change the behavior of autistic children.

I don’t know who Jenny McCarthy is, but she probably exemplifies the opposite approach. She may be driving herself to ruin over a huckster’s claims. I find that both sad and unnecessary. Shooting in the dark is a byproduct of desperation, not rationality.

@crisw Well, I’m not going to try to convert anybody to a particular point of view here, but I just want to say that I believe in evidenced based medicine. There are a lot of people out there who prey upon people’s fears and belief systems, and suck a lot of money from unsuspecting patients.

@Harp – Yes, our own technological power seems to scare a lot of people. I also see it as one reason for the rise of creationism (which interestingly occurs on a much smaller scale in Europe). Change happens too fast for some people. And it’s accelerating.

@crisw and @casheroo – I fully support crisw’s view on this and we have to keep in mind that certain “therapies” are counterproductive, some even to the point of bringing great harm and misery. One horrible example is the “virgin cure” therapy, widespread in Africa.

Sexual intercourse with a virgin will cure AIDS: Virgin cleansing is a myth that has occurred since at least the sixteenth century, when Europeans believed that they could rid themselves of a sexually transmitted disease by transferring it to a virgin through sexual intercourse. Although the exact prevalence of this belief is unclear, it is believed to occur worldwide; however, the majority of modern reported cases of this event have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Sex with an uninfected virgin does not cure an HIV-infected person, and such contact will expose the uninfected individual to HIV, potentially further spreading the disease. This myth has gained considerable notoriety as the perceived reason for certain sexual abuse and child molestation occurrences, especially in Africa.