Re: OFF TOPIC - just this once more,it's too important - DON'T READ IF IT OFFENDS YOU

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Steve Crutchfield wrote:

> Personally, I know many hard working and honest folks at FDA, many of
> whom are invovled in drug testing and approval processes. According
> to a colleague's wife, who works there verifying claims made by drug
> makers for efficacy and safety, many of these so called "miracle drugs
> being squashed by the evil FDA to protect drug company profit$$$$" are
> in fact nothing more than the modern equivalent of snakeoil scams.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't get involved in this discussion for a variety of
reasons, not the least of them being that I have no background for
evaluating the merits (or lack thereof) in a subject like this one. But
my brother was a radiation oncologist for many years. He is very old
school, scientific method, skeptical of alternative medicine in general
but especially where lavish claims are made. He has expressed to me on
more than one occasion his belief that nearly all the "conspiracy to
suppress some breakthrough discovery" stories are apt to be extremely
dubious: if something really works, it cannot be suppressed for long; at
the very least, the same sort of powerful interests alleged to be
suppressing it would find a way to take it over and make a lot of money
off of it, even if that meant competing with other established interests.
I don't agree with him about many things, but that argument makes sense to
me.

And, as you pointed out, at any given moment, there is a lot of bogus
stuff swirling around the Internet.

Jordan