Walter A. Brown's Opinion piece, "Alternative Medicine: It's Time to Get Smart," (The Scientist, 12[24]:13, Dec. 7, 1998) is timely and balanced. It is wishful thinking to argue that no placebo-controlled clinical studies are needed because herbs and the like have been used for hundreds of years. Those of us who have worked in pharmaceutical R&D for decades have seen too many compounds that were sworn efficacious by both physicians and patients, but could not be shown superior to a placebo. All claims made by the purveyors of "alternative" medicines should have to be proven in controlled studies.
A second area that should be seriously addressed is safety. If nobody carefully follows up on the use of a medication in the population, side effects will not likely be detected unless they are serious and have high incidence. Plant products, if they are active, owe their efficacy to plant chemicals that ...
