Should the FDA require natural remedies to meet the same standards as prescription drugs? That’s hard to do in practice, because natural substances can’t be patented. Drug companies spend millions of dollars on clinical trials because they can patent the drugs that prove effective. Nobody can patent an herb, so nobody has a financial incentive to pay for a clinical trial. Don’t look for big changes in the regulations.
Meanwhile, it’s easy to find claims that ginkgo biloba is good for (as one website says) “hearing and vision problems as well as impotence, edema, varicose veins, leg ulcers, and strokes.’’ Common sense says you should be suspicious of claims that a substance is good for lots of possibly unrelated conditions. Statistical sense says you should be suspicious of claims not backed by comparative experiments. Many untested remedies are no doubt just placebos. Yet they may have real effects in many people—