The Medical Freedom Channel

Sometimes. finding a worthwhile topic from which to fashion my weekly editorial for this space can be a real challenge; other times, the topic essentially walks up to me and dares me to comment. This is one of the latter cases. The first entry below, under the “News” category, is just such a blatant abuse of reality, and such a thinly veiled “hidden agenda” promo-piece, that it requires much more than the usual one-liner ‘editor’s note’ entry.

So here goes: First, a summary of the issue raised, for those reading this elsewhere than on the Medical Freedom Channel itself. It seems that some researchers at the University of Rochester [NY] Medical Center have had nothing better to do with their time and energy than to give Big Pharma and the Drug Enforcement Administration (as well as the FDA itself?) more ammunition for their assaults on privacy and civil liberties. More specifically, it attacks the realm of “natural healing” that cuts into both their profits and their power over us all. And what better way to do this, than to “discover” a link between those who use herbal products (dietary supplements, etc.) … and users of so-called “illicit” drugs! (And, going one step further, to seek and find this “linkage” among “children” – of course, using that term as loosely as possible, to imply the abuse of toddlers and preteens in the process.)

The subject-base for the study, according to the article, were “teenagers,” and the results seem at first glance pretty conclusive: As the Fox News (why am I not surprised?) story notes, “Researchers found teenagers who had used herbal products, such as dietary supplements, were six times more likely to have tried cocaine and nearly 15 times more likely to have used anabolic steroids than those who have never used an herbal product.” It quotes one of the chief researchers as concluding, “Children who are open to experimenting with herbal products may be more open to trying illicit drugs.” (We’ll re-examine that a bit later in this text.)

Further down we discover that the study was performed in 1999, now going on seven years ago. (Why this is suddenly newsworthy today is certainly a question worth asking.) Meanwhile, the study defined “herbal products” as “herbal or other natural products – either to make you feel better, or to help you perform better at sports or at school,” and reportedly found “nearly 29 percent” of teens said they’d used some sort of herbal product (ranging from St. John’s wort to natural performance enhancers like creatine) at least once. So the usage involved here ranged from what we may take as a supplement alongside daily vitamins, to things are intended to help “pump you up” the way anabolic steroids do, but without the dangerous side-effects. NO distinction is drawn between these two extremes; if it wasn’t prescribed or strictly controlled and sanctioned by the FDA, it counted as an “herbal product,” and thus a target for the study.

Given this faulty set of controls, the study’s findings are at best ambiguous. Teens who had ever used “herbal products,” it found, were over four times as likely to have “used inhalants, or tried LSD, PCP, ecstasy or mushrooms.” They were even more likely to have used the more dangerous illegal drugs – cocaine (6 times), methamphetamines (7 times), intravenous injections (8 times) or heroin (9 times). On another front, they were also deemed “nearly 15 times as likely to have ever used steroids.” (It is notable that the study did not ask about prescription pharmaceuticals, which are lately becoming the new DEA target as alleged “drug abuse” favorites, but maybe seven years ago this miraculously did not exist as a problem…)

Only way down at the bottom of the story is there any attempt to put this whole thing into perspective, with that same researcher admitting “more studies must be done” to distinguish among “herbal products” and their alleged association with specific illicit drugs. “A teen using a sports-enhancing product probably has a very different substance use pattern than a teen taking echinacea for a cold,” she reportedly admits. (Oh great, so we don’t even have a correlation between steroid users, or heroin-shooters, and the identity of the “herbal abuse” that led down those self-destructive paths. Even if this study were not seven years old, it would be essentially irrelevant!)

Okay, let’s examine this more closely, outside the pre-conceptions of the study. The population base is “teenagers” (who from some story details appear to have been mainly high school students – let’s assume the subjects were actually all between the ages of 14 and 17) – perhaps the most volatile time of a human’s life, in terms of changing hormones, growth spurts and the testing of boundaries in general. So our study-sample comes from the least stable, most impressionable and clearly least predictable segment of our society. Good start!

So there are substances occurring naturally around us, with some reputation for any of a myriad of effects on the human body – but the medical and governmental orthodoxy says they’re … “untested and unapproved, and thus possibly not safe for you.” But so far they haven’t been able to ban, or even control them, so they’re available at the local GNC or Wild Oats, or even in small sections at Kroger, Safeway or other supermarkets. And someone, of whatever age, seeing them on the shelf – or having them recommended by friends, family, neighbors, etc – might try them out, and maybe either his acne clears up or her baby-fat melts off (accompanied by some exercise and smarter eating?), so now lots of fellow teens are using them as well (the study said 29 percent, but this was 1999).

Meanwhile, there are these other naturally occurring substances around us, and many people have found at least one of them not only harmless, but quite enjoyable, and even capable of relieving pain or nausea. It’s even become legal, for medicinal purposes, in nearly a dozen states. However, this substance (growing wild and easily in about 90 percent of the country as well as almost anywhere in the world) has been deemed “illegal” by the Federal government, and they even have their own police force whose primary purpose is to keep this weed illegal, and to persecute anyone who dares to defy them. As a result, this harmless weed has been lumped in with a number of far more dangerous and addictive substances, and forever blurred the line between what is and is not “good for us.” (Meanwhile, all such things – though they should perhaps be better controlled regarding quality and intensity, and strongly discouraged for use by actual “children” – should be no more “illegal” for adult use than any other “recreational substance” … but I digress!)

And so, these half-formed adults-in-training encounter a wide array of substances – all of which are considered by conventional society “unorthodox” at best, and dangerous at their worst – and must somehow figure out that some are worth at least trying out, while others are beyond the pale … but really have little idea where that line ought to be drawn. In other words, we’re expecting young people (who we consider “incapable” of consensual behavior, in matters both legal and sexual?) to distinguish and make intelligent choices between the merely “offbeat” and the potentially devastating, showing a sophistication of perception they aren’t supposed to even possess, until that magical day they chronologically become eighteen. (I’d compare this to the concept that an entity is not a human being until it/he/she passes through a birth canal, or that it mysteriously becomes one at the moment of the hypothetical joining of two microscopic cells – but that would be both repeating a message I’ve already flogged considerably … and an inexcusable digression from this thesis!)

If such a “teenager” faces a life-situation needing a solution, and a friend says, “try this – Don’t worry; they sell it at the health-food store!” … (s)he might consider doing so, given the “absolutely bulletproof” self-image we mostly have at that stage of life. If the results are positive, what’s to say that the next time around, that friend’s advice might also not be taken, and the envelope pushed a bit more. And under the right (or wrong) circumstances, that friendly advice might carry things even further afield, until one day the experiment is with the pipe or joint being offered, and maybe even beyond that realm into something with far more serious effects – maybe one of those offerings could be the steroids that seem to be the current societal concern.

Those who decry “gateway drugs” may have a field day with this one. However, it is patently obvious that if we insist on demonizing every substance that doesn’t precisely fit the narrowest definitions of “acceptable” we will eventually give everything outside of that little box the same temptation of “forbidden fruit” – and the same lack of credibility as being a harmful substance, for those who decide to experiment, anyway. Doing studies that “show linkage” of the sort this one has disgorged might pay the researchers’ mortgages, Lexus payments and kids’ tuitions, but they do nothing constructive for any of the rest of society!