The Ashwin is a webzine for
ΑΩ Labs' customers -- April, 2015 Edition
Formatted to 820 pixel width in this issue. Related Link:Ashwin Archives
Official U.S. Position:
"Only Idiots Take Herbal Products"
What the current herbal supplement scare in the U.S.
looks like once you strip off the obnoxiously fictitious
government / Medical Industrial Complex propaganda
A few months back, I began to
get emails from some of our customers asking for my take on the herbal supplement
scare that was going on in New York. If you don't know what I'm talking about,
allow me to give you some relevant background: In late 2013, the mainsteam media began
vigorously circulating a story that Canadian researchers tested
"44 bottles
of popular supplements sold by 12 companies" and, using a form of genetic fingerprinting called "DNA barcoding,"
found that a large percentage were "bogus." Not only did many contain useless fillers, but some contained NONE
of the herb that was purported to be in the bottle, or even WORSE, the bottle(s) contained herbal material
that imparted medicinal effects quite contrary to those one would expect from the herb on the label.
Lest anyone reading this thinks I would condone such
obvious fraud, let me say before we begin in earnest that such corporate behavior is deplorable and
should be punished. Nonetheless, the story itself soon degraded into
a twisted kind of resigned humor. As one associate told me in jest while making reference to this story,
"Only major pharmaceutical companies with the financial clout to pay off all of our
state and federal politicians should be allowed to rip off
the public like that." . . . or as the late, political comedian,
George Carlin
might have said, "They can't cheat the public like that!
That's OUR f**kin' job!"
And, of course, the story did become fodder for internet humorists, as well :
I've seen a lot in my 35 years in the
alternative health care business. And, yes, somehow I have known that certain people
didn't take this calling as seriously as I did -- other herbalists included.
I remember a meeting I had in
Los Angeles in 1988 with one of the biggest players in the health food industry.
Two years previously, I had founded a company called Lumen Foods, which made
vegetarian jerky (later, the company was to be known as
Soybean.com, which we sold in 2007).
Among other things we did vertical "form-fill-and-seal" work for other, larger
players on a subcontract basis. In any event, at this meeting, my counterpart was
bragging that his multi-colored corn chips, which were a huge hit in health
food stores throughout the country, would make "corn chip snacking" a healthy thing. "Why do you say that?" I asked. "Because they're lower in fat," came the knee-jerk response. "How is that possible?" I responded without thinking,
"Your product is fried, not baked. I can tell by the mouthfeel and the organoleptics that
your product is made just like
Frito-Lay's corn chips. I don't have to test it. I can taste it." Realizing I was being
too candid, I gave a big smile to try and spin my comments in a jovial, light-hearted way.
But it was too late. My comments were interpreted
as anything but light-hearted. "You really don't understand this industry, do you?" was the response. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," I replied --- to which my
counterpart made a very sad statement that I've never forgotten. "People don't want to be saved of their sins.
They want to be saved in their sins." Extrapolated to the medicinal herbal business, that
kind of thinking would translate into something like, "People don't need herbs that work.
What people need are herbs that they THINK will work." That kind of exploitative thinking
is why our planet is in the sorry condition it's in today, but the way that governments
seize upon it and use it to their own manipulative advantage is the worst cut of all . . .
for all of humanity . . . and this story out of New York is a good case in point.
It leads to videos like the one below (put out by yet another "pharma shill") that
despite thousands of years of successful ethnobotanical use, medicinal herbs have
no value at all :
[ As an aside, I take Gingko Biloba personally -- which this narrator trashes,
primarily because I notice a decided difference in mental acuity when I don't take it.
But, of course, that's just the placebo effect, right? ]
Back in 2004, I wrote an article for
inclusion in the first draft of Meditopia, entitled,
Gresham's Law:
Its Treacherous Application. In that piece, I explain how the FDA --- the
very same diabolical organization that Eric what's-his-name would have
regulate all herbal supplements -- secretly promoted adulterated, misbranded
versions of our flagship product, Cansema® As a result of this experience, I came
to understand that the FDA has no problems with deceptive consumer practices, as long
as it serves its political objectives. As I made clear in my
last Ashwin:
neither truth nor the law itself have any meaning in the eyes of psychopathic rulers
who feel they are beyond any legal constraints that are
imposed on the rest of society with such gravity and fervor,
to say nothing of the ethical and moral boundaries that are
part and parcel of Natural Law. It is for this reason that only free markets
(which do not currently exist in strictly regulated markets like the U.S.) are
the only reliable way of weeding out "bad product" in the marketplace.
No punishment is greater for bad producers than for consumers to strictly
shun their products in favor of superior products that are made by their
competitors. This is self-evidence to everyone except the bureaucrats
within organizations like the FDA who hide in the shadows while they
cut secret deals with large industrial concerns who have no more
ethics or morals than they do. Give these people even more power? I don't think so.