Any Consumer Reports/Straight Dope for health/beauty/herbs?

[Stoid]

It's hard to effectively google product names looking for solid information, because of course the people who have an interest in promoting the products generally get the best hits.

Are there good, FAIR (not any more biased against than for... plenty of "pooh pooh, everything except drug companies and surgeons are snakeoil that will kill ya" exist, I'd like a balanced, open minded kind of zone) websites that examine the various herbs, non-drug products and so forth that are promoted as cures for whatever?

Current question is about haloxyl, but it comes up a lot.

Thanks!

[Harriet the Spry]

I find the Mayo Clinic site pretty informative: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/alternative-medicine/CM99999

In my opinion it seems balanced. The Mayo Clinic has a long history of providing general health information from a conventional medicine standpoint, so I personally trust that they value maintaining that credibility enough not to publish quackery. OTOH, they do not seem to be dismissing alternative medicine, including herbs, as completely ineffective. As a result of their balanced approach, however, information is more in shades of gray rather than black and white.

As an example, they have an article on butterbur for allergies. They discuss how the herb does seem to have similar effects to antihistamine drugs, warn about a specific chemical that you should make sure was removed in purification, discuss a risk of liver damage, and point out that it is similar to ragweed and thus not for ragweed allergy sufferers. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/butterbur/AA00066

A search didn't turn up anything on haloxyl, though, but for future reference you may like the site.