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Research has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work[1], to nobody's surprise. Sure, there's not a huge amount of research into the matter, but th
by jiggawatts 3y ago
Research has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work[1], to nobody's surprise. Sure, there's not a huge amount of research into the matter, but this is comparable to the small amount of research time sunk into verifying if prayer can cure cancer.
Nonsense like "rhino horns look like an erect penis, so surely they will give you erections" should be dismissed without further discussion, but unfortunately a multi-billion dollar industry continues to wipe out rare and endangered species for magic cures that can't possibly work.
[1] A large subset of such medications are basically stimulants that make patients feel better but do more harm than good. My father in law was scammed this way by a herbal doctor that gave him such huge doses as to cause heart damage.
- yosito 3y ago> Research has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work Plenty of herbal medicines are effective. Which is why we need research to understand which ones are, and which ones are bullshit.
- jiggawatts 3y agoWe have done this research, and the result is called "medicine" now instead of "herbal medicine". Aspirin used to be extracted from tree bark. Opium and morphine is the juice of the opium poppy. Penicillin is from a mould. Botox is from a bacteria. Heck, there's an entire subset of the pharma industry running around testing every damned plant, weed, and flower to see if it has some sort of useful effect! There's even been movies made about this! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/ We've tested herbal medicines, and use the pure extracts from those that do actually work every day in every country. That doesn't mean the guy selling dried tiger penis should be allowed to open shop next to a pharmacy and claim mysterious properties "unknown to science".