Herbal remedies laced with steroids

In a delightful twist of irony, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency has found some herbal remedies to be effective, therefore immediately demanding their removal from sale. But before the home counties wives and hemp-sandaled hippies get too excited, it’s worth noting that the only reason these remedies are effective is because they’ve been laced with high-strength steroids!

So in effect, what we have is a situation where people inadvertantly decide to abandon a qualified healthcare professional who can diagnose disease and prescribe suitable drugs in appropriate quantities, and instead opted for ineffective “natural” herbal compounds sold by a private business. In order to drum up sales, the private companies lace their products with the same drugs that the doctors were previously prescribing, only now the patient is receiving completely unknown quantities of unknown drugs from untrained staff working for an unregulated industry. Wow, alternative medicine sure is a weird way of doing things. Perhaps these people just like to gamble with their children’s health for the thrill of the unknown. I can’t think of any other reason to do things this way.

2 comments December 13th, 2007