While I certainly laugh at some of the “alternative remedies” out there, I gotta defend some of the herbal ones at the same time. I’m not claiming to have been cured of some life-threatening illness by them, but for what I’ve used them for, they’ve worked rather well. Part of this quackery, though is brought on by the FDA itself, though. I fail to see why one needs to do double blind testing in the case of terminal illness. If I’m dying and I’m cured of whatever it was that was killing me by the placebo effect, WHO THE FUCK CARES??? I’M GONNA LIVE!!! That’s what matters to me, not if it was drug X or the power of my own mind. Also, why restrict therapies in terminal cases to just a few lab rat type volunteers? What’s the worse that could happen? I die a little sooner? Puhleeze, at least I went out fighting. If the cigarettes I’m addicted to give me cancer, you can bet, not only will I be going through whatever treatment the docs push on me, but I’ll be scarfing down every herbal cure which might help. At least that way if I do die, I’ll be able to enter the afterlife knowing that God had to drag me kicking and screaming from this place.
CrankyAsAnOldMan:
Moxibustion and a handful of other therapies were the subject of an issue of JAMA a few years ago about holistic medicine. A randomized, controlled study was performed on moxibustion and breech presentation.
Here is the abstract:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v280n18/abs/joc80514.html
It does look like it increases fetal movement and therefore cephalic presentation (up from like 45% to 75% between control and experimental). A persistent criticism of these kinds of studies is that placebo may still be an affect, since it was not blinded and it is pretty easy to tell if the doctor is burning moxa on your fifth toenail versus doing nothing. A good control would be burning moxa (Artemisia vulgaris) versus another herb (like oregano or sage or hashish) and seeing if there is still a difference.
It seems to work given a flawed study. Mechanism unclear, far less effective than the treatments that we routinely give using “Western” allopathic medicine.
I dunno, when Dr. Boyfriend and I were dating, he took a whole rotation in “alternative medicine,” including a nutritionist, chiropractor, accupuncturist and massage therapist. Also, being Vietnamese, he valued the worth of some homeopathic/holistic/naturalistic remedies - he took zinc lozenges, ginseng and echinechea himself. And he’s no fool.
I figure if those in the far east have been using some of this stuff for thousands of years, there’s got to be something to some of them.
Esprix
Didja forget you could edit your post? 
As for the OP:
Does the FDA know about this?
No way dood, it’s top secret!
Don’t drugstores have a responsibility not to sell worthless products to ailing people?
Um, why should they? If something hasn’t been proven worthless (or worthwhile for that matter) why blame someone for profiting off of someone else’s probable stupidity?
Dude, that’s a seriously flawed argument. It’s exploitative of someone who’s desperate (or ill informed). Do you support Usury laws at banks? Do you support car title loan and check cashing businesses? Do you believe either of the two things mentioned should be regulated to protect consumers? Also, it’s hard to ‘know better’ than to buy something when the product itself and millions of stupid supporters are claiming how well it works.
–Tim
I work in a CVS pharmacy, and I had no problem with people buying such things until a woman told me that she was buying antioxidants to cure her strep throat. I gave the poor woman a lecture on why she needed antibiotics (bad things can happen if you don’t treat strep properly).