Natural Instincts

I suppose that in today's high-speed, high-pressure, high-tech world, where stressful lives revolve around fast food and instant communications, it is inevitable that things that hark back to a gentler, more relaxed age and a simpler way of life should be seen as desirable. Of course, nobody wants to renounce comfort and convenience in favour of a return to the pace of life of 50 years ago, but a limited 'return to nature' goes some way towards redressing the balance.

Over the last two decades there has been a rise in the number of vegetarians, sales of organic foodstuffs have rocketed, resistance to the concept of genetic modification has grown, and holistic medicine and alternative therapies have become widely accepted, even among many GPs.

But as Dr Sarah Houlton points out in her article: 'Dangers in the lore of the land', just because something is natural, it doesn't mean it is inherently safe. After all, many of today's most powerful cardiac and oncology drugs are derived from plants that most of us grow in our gardens. Indeed, a chemical isolated from the corn lily, that grows in mountain meadows in the western US, is currently being investigated as a possible new method of treating medulloblastoma.

But whereas years of r&d and exhaustive testing - not to mention enormous amounts of money - are required before today's pharmaceuticals are allowed onto the market, sales of herbal products, many of which contain equally potent active ingredients, are completely unregulated.

What are seen as tried and tested treatments are, in reality, neither. They do not have to undergo clinical trials to ascertain their efficacy or their safety, and their potency may vary widely, not just from batch to batch but even from capsule to capsule.

They also rely largely on self-diagnosis and self-prescription. There is no need to seek advice from a doctor or pharmacist - buying herbal medicines is as simple as putting them in your basket and taking them to the checkout. All of which merely reinforces the consumer's mistaken impression that these products are innocuous. After all, if they weren't harmless, you wouldn't be allowed just to pick them up off the shelf, would you?

But now that long-overdue regulation of the market is being considered, some consumers are outraged that they may no longer be able to buy the herbal remedies they have been taking for years.

Paradoxically, these are likely to be the same consumers who buy organic vegetables to avoid ingesting pesticides and pore over labels to ensure the product is not contaminated with GMOs. Yet they are guided by hearsay, folklore and old wives' tales to take products that at best may be ineffective and at worst could have adverse effects on their health, not to mention their purses.