Reply #16: The scientific method requires money. Name a biotech company

[The Diest]

that will invest millions so that they can turn around and tell you that the dandelions in your lawn will detoxify your liver. Seriously.

I am a biologist and have spent a lot of time in research. It costs a fortune, and if your original hypothesis was wrong then you just spend a ton of money on nothing.

There are a lot of untested claims about herbs, however most herbs were used for thousands of years by aboriginal people to treat illness. Example: the people we now call the Navajo used Mormon tea for urinary tract infections and as a diuretic. In a way that plant has been tested for thousands of years on people, not on some animals in a lab (which I am against anyway). I have a feeling that scientists would find in experiments that the plant is, in fact, a diuretic. In fact, I could take some Mormon tea myself and see if increases my pee output. But then my study would have to be peer reviewed, and published in a journal, and who would publish in a journal my personal pee record.

I know what you are saying about the "believe anything" culture. I have some friends who believe any and every book that is put on the shelf in the metaphysical store, yet they make fun of "fundies".

For myself, I prefer herbal remedies because every 2 or 3 years when I actually take an FDA-approved drug for something I end up with an allergic reaction, hives for ten days, and I figure its my body's way of saying "Get that shit outta me!"