Herbal Medicine in America

Abstract

Herbs and herbal products are relatively big business in America, but they are not commonly sold in pharmacies. Current federal laws do not permit the sale of herbs as drugs, that is, with claims of efficacy appearing on their labels. If such claims are made, the efficacy must be proven to the satisfaction of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, a process as much as $ 100 million per drug. Since no one is willing to spend this amount of money on a product for which patent protection is not available, herbs are sold labeled only with the name of the product, primarily in “health food” stores. Literature purporting to explain the uses of the herbs is also available in such establishments. Most often it is outdated, not scientifically of clinically accurate, and is written primarily to promote the sale of the products.

Because the laws and regulations applied to foods naturally do not raquire any proof of efficacy prior to sale, some manufacturers attempt to market herbal products as nutrients, food supplements nutritional products, or just plain foods. Another promotional scheme ist to combine minute of a variety of herbs with standard multivitamin-mineral preparations and then make extravagant claims for the products based on their herbal contents. Quality control in the American herb industry is, in general, very poor. Contamination or misidentification of herbs is commonplace, and herbs shown to be toxic in animal tests continue to be sold without restraint.

Although phytochemistry is not neglected in America, little attention is currently paid to the phsiological or clinical utility of herbs. For financial reasons, serios studies of herbs will probably never be carried out in significant numbers there. This leaves just that much more to do in the herbal field for European scientists.