Trouble is, abandoning conventional medicine, with decades if not centuries of research behind it (and yes, I am biased as a trained biologist who spent a year in a research lab and who, if only I could get a PhD, would love to do three more) in favour of pre-Enlightenment remedies just because some work as well for many people is, IMO, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Sorry Carl - no slight against you or your friends, but, as someone once said "Alternative medicine does have its merits - it's just that we tested the remedies that it produced, and the ones that worked became conventional medicine".
I think few people realise that much of synthetic chemistry and pharmacology has been finding ways to produce in large quantities the same compounds found in those traditional remedies which worked. Let's face it, if a compound binds to a receptor or fits in an active site somewhere in the body, that body doesn't respond differently to it if it was produced by a multinational corporation in a sterile factory rather than if it was distilled from the plant in which it was first discovered by someone in a hut in the jungle.
Having said all that, if someone prefers to use alternative medicine as an alternative to conventional stuff then it's their choice and I wish them well. I just think that too many well-meaning people think that the product from a large pharmaceutical company must somehow be less effective or even harmful because the people behind it are driven to their plush offices in a Mercedes rather than cycling to work wearing ethically-produced cotton and hand-knitted wool clothes. The fact is that both can be brilliant or dangerous, and the idea that the research scientists are Machiavellian plotters in the mould of Dr Jekyll (which some hardline types do espouse) is pretty insulting. What I'm trying to say is that it's hard to make an informed decision if you only know the tabloid scare stories rather than the facts.
BTW, if anyone is interested in the real problems of the large pharmaceutical companies, Dr Ben Goldacre is well worth reading or viewing on Youtube. Health Trusts and other bodies responsible for procurement have a real job on their hands getting past the obfuscation and spin that some companies use to promote some of their new drugs, but, then again, considering the ludicrous claims made for some of their more way-out treatments, they're not alone.
