By Nick Jacobs

In the article, Dueling Therapies: Is a Shotgun Better Than a Silver Bullet? By Nicholas Zamiska of the Wall Street Journal, dated Friday March 2, 2000, a wonderful announcement appears that, for many of us may be the beginning of a period of healing and enlightenment like we have never before seen in Western Medicine. On the other hand, it just may represent one tiny pee pee step forward in our sometimes ludicrously regulated world.

Mr. Zamiska opens by contrasting the Chinese medicine philosophy of experimentation with combinations of herbs to cure diseases and the Western approach of finding that one molecule that that cures a disease, or as he describes it, “the elusive blockbuster therapy,” which is constantly being pursued by the major drug companies.

His fundamental question: Is it better to attack disease with one substance whose potency has been pinpointed? Or should treatments be administered, as the Chinese profess, by aiming a group of agents at the problem?

It has always been interesting to me that the chemo therapy mind-set and approach to Western medicine does not seem to be hampered by the number of abnormalities being treated. For example, if you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low HDL, stomach distress caused from those medicines which requires a prescription inhibitor, Plavix to protect you from your coated stents, aspirin, etc., when combined in your body in a pill cocktail, everyone admits there will be varying degrees of interactivity between and amongst those meds.

In other words, conventional wisdom is that the probability that there is some type of interaction between as few as five prescriptions when they are mixed in your body is 100 percent. Yet, the FDA had not permitted herbs to be introduced through our pharmacies until the particular molecule that makes it work has been identified? Degrees of caution or degrees of prejudice?

The announcement is that the FDA’s policy has evolved into one that is more accommodating to the Chinese approach. In June 2004 new guidelines were released that make it easier for drug companies to turn herbal remedies into Western medicine. I’m not quite sure just yet that I want the pulverized deer penis mixed with green tea that is used as an example in this article, but, what the heck, maybe we will be entering a new era of approval for known cures that here-to-fore has been even more intimidating than the 13 pills that some of us mix together each day in the name of health!