Which is how we’ve ended up with a regulated Pharma. Barely 100 years ago, they were exactly as regulated as the homeopathy people are now - and much of what they sold was exactly as good. The history of Pharma regulations is paved with disasters.
because if natural remedies/“alternative medicine” are shown to be effective and safe, they become medicine. Aspirin was once a natural remedy.
Yes - I don’t know about the USA, but for a decade or more now, Canada has been flooded with Cold-FX, an apparent non-medicinal remedy for cold and flu or their symptoms or something.
The basic problem is that herbal supplements are basically made from herbs. As the jokes go about home growing marijuana, the yield can vary tremendously. So how do you study something where the active ingredients could vary greatly, and perhaps are not even known?
As others point out, if the active ingredients can be isolated, studied, and proven to be effective - then they are sold as medicines. If they can’t, or it’s suspected the real benefits are close to nil, it makes more sense to keep grinding up snake-oil-plant leaves and seeds and selling them with weasel words. After all, if one study hints that there an insignificant but positive value, it can be weaseled to say it works wonders. “Study has show it can relieve the symptoms and duration of colds”. Doesn’t say by how much.
The problem is that deadly nightshade, for example, is just as much a herb as is garlic or pepper - I just wouldn’t put too much on my food. Just because it wasn’t concocted in a lab does not mean it’s safe.
Nitpick: aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid, which is not a naturally occurring compound. Willow and other plants containing salicylic acid were once a natural remedy because they possess similar therapeutic properties to modern aspirin, but we didn’t just extract aspirin from tree bark or anything.
“Elixir of Sulfanilamide” - yup.
https://www.fda.gov/aboutfda/whatwedo/history/productregulation/sulfanilamidedisaster/
Digitalis, then. 
To broaden the question a little, the OP should also be aware that the National Institutes of Health includes an organization dedicated to studying alternative therapies, called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. It’s charge is to hold trials of everything from acupuncture to eating dirt pills, and evaluate whether there’s value in any of those treatments.
Quite famously, the Center has spent nearly $3 billion during its lifetime and has essentially found nothing important or useful. Even more famously, that really pissed off the Center’s top patron, former Senator Tom Harkin, who once commented: “One of the purposes of this center was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly that it has fallen short. I think quite frankly that in this center and in the office previously before it, most of its focus has been on disproving things rather than seeking out and approving.” Cite.
Do most folks who take herbal supplements (and/ or supplement with vitamins and minerals, for that matter) actually want factual evidence of efficacy? I think the industry depends on faith and the placebo effect.
Further nitpick: As far as I can tell the 1994 act didn’t deal with homeopathic remedies, but rather “dietary supplements”. Homeopathy’s protections under federal law go back all the way to the FDA’s inception, with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, and its sponsor Royal Copeland, purveyor of magic poison water.
Note: Never buy your drugs at “Herbs and Stuff”. :smack:
Don’t buy your stuff there either.
There’s a local pot store where I live called Herb and Legends. I thought it was clever.
I believe the herby-stuff thing St. John’s Wort (RXlist cite) has made into the government approved side, if you’re talking about the German Government, insofar as it’s effectivity against depression has been studied there the most, and controlled preparations of some sort have passed muster.
I recall going through one of my periodic find-the-right-medication-cocktail periods with my psychiatrist where he told me about the plant, and all the other herby stuff (Chinese oogy-boogy- powders, whatever) with valid therapeutic effects: it’s about dosing, as far as he was concerned.
One day the plant might grow on the shady side of the tree, or have different nutrients, etc. etc. and be different than the next one down the line. He wouldn’t prescribe something that did not have repeatable characteristics at the most basic level.
ETA: What’s a wort?
Here, let me wiki that for you: List of wort plants - Wikipedia
As a word-o-phile you’ll appreciate this.
The official term for that is “pharmacognosy”.
And a recent example of this failure to regulate:
“People aren’t the property of the state; they are free souls entitled to make their own health care decisions.”
- Congressman Tom McClintock (husband of Lori McClintock), 9/9/21, explaining his opposition to “forced Covid shots”.
Mulberry leaves, and mulberry fruit, are not poisonous.
All parts of the white mulberry with the exception of ripe fruit are at least mildly toxic. A large enough dose could cause significant illness.
Another question that’s been raised is whether there were other components to whatever supplement she was taking, including ones not listed on the label - a common problem, especially in imported supplements.
People usually pick and eat the ripe fruit; I can’t recall seeing anyone stuff a bunch of fresh leaves into his or her mouth, but people do steep the leaves in boiling water. Perhaps that makes a difference? There are also guides recommending to eat the twigs.
But if this is a matter of the dose making the poison, how many leaves is she supposed to have eaten?
If someone I knew died after taking a mystery supplement, I would be most curious what was actually in it.