by Martina Billings-McAtee, RN

Created on: December 04, 2009   Last Updated: January 14, 2010

There has been a sort of standoff in the medical community regarding holistic remedies or "natural cures". It seems that each feels one is mutually exclusive of the other. For centuries, the only option for survival once afflicted with an illness or injury was to rely on herbs, flowers, fungi and molds.There was often one person in each colony, tribe or community that had mastered the practice of potions and poultices. These people were elevated in their communities, usually the smartest and most revered and most often a tribal elder.

Some of our most powerful drugs on the market are plant based. The Foxglove plant gave us the drug digitalis and the belladonna plant, also known as deadly nightshade, have given us drugs such as atropine. Both plants, if given without training could easily cause death. How did these people from past eras know how to give these medicines? Research; well the research of their day which was more trial and error and no government regulations.

Yet, instead of embracing the contributions of natural remedies and recognizing that it is possible to have natural cures as well as lab created drugs, instead a line has been drawn in the sand and smear campaigns reign on either side. This is inevitably going to cause our society as a whole to suffer due to misinformation and deliberate sabotage on a corporate level.

Very few companies that market holistic medicine or natural cures can compete with the millions of dollars that the pharmaceutical companies have at their disposal for clinical trials and research. It is also impossible to stop the billions of dollars invested every year in attempting to discredit natural remedies and down play their benefits. For every one commercial put out by the naturalists there are fifty put out by lobbyists and pharmaceutical companies attempting to make natural cures seem dangerous. These naturalists retaliate by making accusations painting pharmaceutical companies as heartless corporate villains who care for nothing but profits.

That being said, their are also many unscrupulous companies that tout their product as being safe because it is "natural". There are many plants out there that are completely natural that could easily cause paralysis, coma, or even death. Some plants can cause deadly allergic reactions or interact with other medications. There is no way to know that anything you put into your body is safe without research. Therein lies the conundrum.

There cannot be any research without funding. The majority of funding can only come with the governments approval and like it or not, lobbyists control the politicians and lobbyists loyalties are usually financially driven. Until the medical community realizes that herbal remedies and cures are not going to cripple the entire industry there will only be tiny steps to furthering medical cures not the leaps that could be possible if the communities could put aside their financial motives and find a way to work together.

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