The vast majority of commonly used plant medicines have undergone at least some scientific testing. The efficacy of specific drugs for specific conditions varies from extremely beneficial to completely useless or outright dangerous, the same as with any other medicine. And as with other medicines there are a lot of gaps and uncertainties in the research, although with plant medicines its usually because of lack of funding rather than because of bias stemming from the funding mechanisms.
Interesting, but marijuana is used in standard modern medicine already. Any examples of things not used by modern medicine that are shown to have efficacy?
Do you have a source to support the concept that the problem with plant medicine is the lack of funding in the face of promising early studies?
"Interesting, but marijuana is used in standard modern medicine already."
First, marijuana is still illegal for doctors to prescribe in all 50 states, so saying that it's already used in modern medicine is a bit dubious.
Any examples of things not used by modern medicine that are shown to have efficacy?"
This largely depends on how you define 'modern medicine' and 'have shown efficacy'. E.g. modern as in modernism, or modern just meaning anything that's currently widely used? Because if you're defining modern in terms of modernism, which would be the most natural use of the word, then by definition no plant medicine can ever be part of modern medicine since it goes against everything that modernity stands for. If on the other hand you're defining modernism as anything that's currently widely used as part of medicine, then you get into the issue of widely used by who? In any event I'm going to take a pass on answering that only because I think it's largely a moot point to begin with, as I was only arguing that naturopathy can be useful and not that it is never used by 'modern' medicine (however you define it).
"Do you have a source to support the concept that the problem with plant medicine is the lack of funding in the face of promising early studies?"
So lack of funding is only one of the problems. Another big problem is 'blobology', which Willoughby Britton explains here:
The basic concept is that every study is looking at something a little bit different, so even if there are hundreds of studies on some medicine and they are all positive, it still isn't necessarily conclusive. If you google for studies on the efficacy of, say, aloe vera for treating burns, you will see that pretty easily. And it shows up pretty widely, as it's just a problem that's inherent with science right now.
I haven't taken the time to find a great source for funding specific stuff, but just a quick Google search shows that total US biomedical research spending is about 94 billion as of 2003, and the total NIH grants for CAM research (so not just naturopathy) are 441 million. (And presumably the amount of commercial research done on naturopathy is almost zero since plants can't be patented.)
> First, marijuana is still illegal for doctors to prescribe in all 50 states, so saying that it's already used in modern medicine is a bit dubious.
Dronabinol is on formularies all over the US. There are marijuana dispensaries in many places. MDs write letters saying they believe their patients are best served by inhaled marijuana. What is legal and what has evidence are sometimes two different entities.
> And presumably the amount of commercial research done on naturopathy is almost zero since plants can't be patented.
Plant derivatives are patented all the time, so this isn't the reason that nobody is willing to invest in naturopathy.
Dronabinol and 'plant derivatives' aren't plant medicine. One of the core tenets of naturopathy is that it's often (but not always) better to have the full plant rather than just a single molecule.
Ok, perfect, that would be a fascinating question to ask. Is there any randomized controlled trial supporting that notion? I would suspect that everything is reducible, but experiment trumps theory.
"Is there any randomized controlled trial supporting that notion?"
There are definitely trials showing that marijuana is more effective than pure THC. As for whether it holds as a general rule, I don't think that's really empirically testable since there are probably an infinite number of cases both where it is and isn't true. I don't think everything is reducible though, because for any given plant there are trillions upon trillions of possible permutations of chemicals, and I think the fact that it's a little bit different every day and somewhat random probably helps to prevent the efficacy from declining over time, as happens with most pharmaceuticals. (The first rule of recreational drug is 'rotate your receptors', and I see no reason as to why that shouldn't apply to medicine as well.)
