Nice post. I am sympathetic to the idea that there are some important cures to be 'discovered' in existing traditional medicines. However, I have a few issues w

Nice post. I am sympathetic to the idea that there are some important cures to be 'discovered' in existing traditional medicines. However, I have a few issues with some parts of your argument. 1) You say that the bias the mainstream medical establishment is a bigger travesty than chemophobia. This is not an unreasonable hypothesis but if we're going to compare them we need to have some idea of their size or import. This strikes me as requiring some rigorous study so I am skeptical of any estimates without some sort of backing. More importantly to me, why is it one or the other? Maybe they are both problems. 2) When combining chemicals the effects may certainly be different than when taken separately, but is the difference always beneficial? "The hope, then, is that when taking something more "natural" as opposed to man-made is that that natural product will inherently contain a wider variety of compounds that taken together create a more potent, but gentle effect on the patient." I think this is optimistic. 3) "... so many people have taken natural products for hundreds of years without ill-effect ..." How do you know they have taken them without ill-effect? Even with rigorous clinical studies and modern statistical methods this can be difficult. I'm not saying no useful knowledge has been gleaned this way, but I would think that it would obtained much less efficiently. It's only the sheer length of time that has resulted in some useful outcomes.