Nephropathy

[Guest guest]

First, Hello, to you , and everyone else who said hello, and those

who haven't.

 

I am inclined to agree with GGabrielle and David Molony on this issue. Last

week one of the students at PCOM sent me the article in question and here was my

reply:

 

While worthy of note, I wonder why we don't see any articles beginning with

the generalization, " Western Pharmaceuticals may cause cancer, heart

disease, liver failure, kidney failure, psychosis, insomnia, dementia,

respiratory arrest, anaphylactic shock, and sudden death (to name a few

things that are mentioned regarding many pharmaceuticals in the PDR). "

 

When I was in Chiropractic school, the JAMA reported a case of a person

dying from a chiropractic adjustment. Shortly after that, the president of

the American Chiropractic Association came to speak at our school and in his

speech he said, " Yes, it is true that someone died of a chiropractic

adjustment. In fact, in the past 35 years 12 people have died from

chiropractic adjustments. This is to be compared to the 150,000 people who

die of UNNECESSARY surgeries every year. "

 

When I said in the beginning " while worthy of note " I had in mind the same

considerations that had concerning this article. Dangers of

herbal usage are not something to be ignored or dismissed. However I would

imagine that in the two to five thousand years of herbal usage by the Chinese if

herbs in themselves were causing kidney failure this would have been noted

somehow. I wouldn't imagine that anyone here would think that the TCM concept

that the Jing stored in the Kidneys declines with age is some kind of historical

manifestation of an awareness of this problem in the use of medicinal herbs

which in this modern age is being redefined as kidney failure. Z'ev's third

suggestion of a toxicity in the herb supply remains as a more viable and serious

possiblility. Regarding David Molony's statement about the patients not going

to a Professional Herbalist or self-medicating, how do we know that this was the

case in these instances? And even if that were a valid argument, can we really

know that going to a professional herbalist insures that this will not happen to

a patient? Do we really know that much? Even in conventional medicine very

little is known about interaction between pharmaceuticals. Hippocrates said,

" The art is long and life is short. " We have to start by admitting we have much

to learn, the " we " meaning all of us human beings. However, I think the bottom

line regarding this article is that such statements are largely politically

motivated. Again, when I was in Chiropractic College one of our teachers made a

statement to that effect, that these sort of articles appear whenever

legislation in favor of alternative medicine is up for consideration. Over the

past 25 years I have seen this to be so. To cite an instance, when the FDA was

about to reclassify acupuncture needles from their status as " experimental

devices " I remember the appearance of a spate of articles in the media regarding

the dangers of acupuncture.

 

Later,

Jonathan Daniel, DC, LAc.

[Guest guest]

I wrote some software content recently for a program that deals with

dangerous drug/herb interactions. I researched and wrote the entire

section on chinese herb nephropathy and forwarded the piece that set off

this current thread. My research elicited dozens of medline abstracts;

in addition, I also thoroughly researched the issue of patent medicine

toxicity and adverse chinese herb reactions, in general. At the end of

this process, I felt that I could say unequivocally that all FULLY

DOCUMENTED adverse reaction problems with chinese herbs involved either

self medication or prescription by an lay herbalist or medical doctor.

The only serious cases of problems by a trained TCM practitioner

occurred in england and has now been determined to be a case of allergy

to a single herb, bai xian pi.

 

 

 

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