By: Joe Sprite

In the news this week was an item about a daughter of a well-known TV personality, who almost died taking a well advertised but un-prescribed slimming pills. Luckily she was able to survive and the father threatened to sue the manufacturer but such case may not prosper. The manufacturer is in China , presumably mainland. Perhaps it would be the distributor who would be taken to court. Or the vendor if it was a drugstore, which sold such goods.

As we had said before, various drugs had been touted over the air as cure alls. Taking advantage of the government program, which encouraged the use of alternative medicine, many manufacturers are marketing traditional and non-traditional medicine. We have experienced the appearance of the noni juice medicine, the vile tasting liquid extracted from a wild tree locally called nino. The nino despite the outrageous claims did not cure anything except AIDS of the seller the acronym, which stands for Acute Income Deficiency Syndrome.

Then the native sambong and lagundi had been made into medicine and sold over the drug stores or hawked by traveling salesmen without any medical training. Well and good. These native medicines have been used by the old folks with beneficial effects. However, imported medicines are hitting the market. Extravagant claims came in form of endorsements from users. We do not know what inducement did those people receive.

Our neighbor, a severe diabetic, was once enticed by a traveling salesman to take a well-advertised drug extracted supposedly from some South American tree. The salesman claimed that the drug was strongly endorsed by a practicing medical doctor, who eventually became a controversial mayor of this province. We were not sure if the good doctor and mayor knew his name was used. Needless to say, our neighbor died in spite of or because of the drug.

Centuries ago American traveling medicine men were selling the same type of medicines to hillbillies. Snake oil, among others was sold to cure many ills. Two hundred years after, the equivalent of the American medicine men are selling the sanos a panacea, which will cure anything from simple incontinence to cancer. It can even make one young. Out of a hundred users, only one may have been cured but like Bible, the people rejoiced at the recovery of one despite the non-effect of the medicine on rest.

Some medical doctors, particularly our own municipal health officer among them, have been trying to install a certain degree of order in this alternative medicine mess. They insisted that the drug should reach the patient in the traditional manner. There should be first a diagnosis to establish the illness or the disorder. Once the malady is identified, a medicine or batch of medicines is prescribed. The medicine may be traditional, which means produced by accepted pharmaceutical companies. The doctor may prescribe an alternative medicine, which he knew had been proven effective. Then a pharmacist fills the prescription.

The present situation is different. A traveling salesman who cannot distinguish bacteria from a virus or a loudmouth who claims that the medicine sold had passed the Bureau of Food and Drug Administration requirements tries to induce the gullible public to try out his wares. Everybody knows that the BFAD will just certify that the drug will not kill you but it cannot say that the drug will cure you. Reputable pharmaceutical manufacturers include the information No Therapeutic Value on their medicines, which has not yet been scientifically proven to cure people