Subject: herbs vs medicines (was ephedra)

From: [email-masked] (Heather Smith)
Date: 4 Jan 1995 02:44:40 GMT

i recently recieved an email'd response to my posting on ephedra that i 
thought presented some common concerns of people in this group (i'll see if i
can post it under my name in a minute) so i wrote back with the following 
comments that i thought everyone might be interested in.  here's my letter

i was able to understand what you
were getting at..you were refering to the chirality of the molecule which may
or may not mean anything to you, but its the difference, in layman's terms,
between an object and its mirror image.  now what your saying is on the right
track, but you're not alone in your misunderstanding of drugs and chemicals.
first, what your friend said is true, that a molecule and its mirror image can
indeed have very different properties biochemically.  but as luck would have
it,
in this particular case ephedrine (the natural product) and psuedo-ephedrine
( the OTC drug) are indeed (partially) mirror images of one another, but it
turns out that the natural product is LESS effective at producing the desired
effect.  so drug companies have synthesized "sudafed"  because it works better!
the second point that you inferred is that the OTC drug is unsafe because a
chemists can't synthesize only the desired molecule without getting some of
its mirror image.  This fact is rapidly changing, first of all.  Many new
syntheses have been designed that can actually form only one image.  But
regardless of whether this particular synthesis is enantioselective (sorry for
the jargon, its hard to avoid it completely) the drug industry has the
strictest regulations for chemical purity.  that's partially why medicine is so
expensive, because it takes extensive time and effort to meet the scrupulous
standards.  And they have to be high, imagine especially in this day and age
the lawsuits if they weren't!!!  Rest assured that if you buy the name brand
drug that you are getting the purest form of the chemical in a form that has
been undergone extensive testing on humans to be sure of its efficiency.
a final concern is that when you consume a tea, you aren't only absorbing the
active ingredient, but also many other chemicals that have dissolved as well.
Just because something is natural doesn't mean its healthy, and i think thats a
common misconception.  there are a ton of natural toxins out there in
plants-some are so potent that the body can't handle even a single cup of an
infusion, others that are so dilute, or not as potent, that the results will
be seen only with chronic use.

MInd you i'm not trying to change your mind, the herbs have served there place
in history for a reason!! in fact, although i can't tell you which came first,
my interest in herbs (and this group) and my career in organic synthesis are
intimately related. There are alot of people that feel the way that you do, and
i just don't want it to be because of misinformation. if you prefer herbs over
the pure active ingredient (which may have just been isolated directly from the
plant itself) it shouldn't be because of fear for the reasons you listed.

if you have any other questions i'd be happy to try and answer them!

peace,

heather

now let me see if i can get a copy of the orignal letter to this post....

i can't get it in this posting, please refer to the followup post

BB heather