Posted by Mark S. Davies on November 01, 1999 at 11:06:39:
In Reply to: Re: Herbal diabetes treatment from the Phillipines posted by Allen Sanders on October 29, 1999 at 20:49:07:
To Allen Sanders -
I apologize for not changing the subject line when I responded to the Noni Juice entry by Graham. In my subsequent response to that sub-thread, I did change it. I realize that your product has nothing to do with Noni Juice.
I will also admit that my statement "I get angry very quickly at anyone pushing herbal remedies for diabetes when they don't bother to draw distinctions between Types 1 and 2 - and yes, I realize they could probably care less about the distinctions." is, in fact, aimed at you as well as Noni Juice distributors, and I probably should have kept them separate.
That's the last apology I'll make in this response.
I went back and looked at your initial posting on 10/29/99, and you know what? I'm right, and although you say in this post that "I'm well aware of the difference between Type I and Type II", you made no distinction between Type I and Type II diabetes in your initial post or any other that I've seen from you.
Do I think that there may be some herbs that may help reduce insulin resistance in some Type II diabetics? Yup, it's possible. Do I believe that there may be some herbs that will bring pancreatic islet cells back to life in Type I diabetics? No. If you want to prove me wrong on that statement, you're going to have to go through full-bore, double-blind, clinical studies before I'm giving anything to my son. You actually got some benefit of the doubt when you might have been only targeting Type II's, but when you say "we are finding some apparently dramatic responses among Type I insulin users", you're setting yourself up to a much higher standard.
I'm not "shooting from the hip". Yours is a story that has been seen many, many times before. You say "We are not snakeoil salesmen" but when your initial post includes such phrases as :
"10 of these herbs, which appeared to be clinically acceptable as far as toxicology, pharmacology, mutagenecity, and effectivity"
"We were then forced to develop some other way to sell our leaves"
"If there are any takers for our offer please contact us, not someone else or some regulatory authority"
you should realize that many people (especially parents) will react by assuming that you are yet another herbal rip-off operation.
You may be simply what you say you are, in search of more knowlege to help in your quest to validate your herbs. If you are genuinely surprised at the level of anger in response to your posting, use Deja News to search in misc.health.diabetes to find posts related to herbs. I think you'll find I'm being kind.
Lastly, think about what you're going to do when you're contacted by the parent of some newly-diagnosed Type I child who is frantic to find an alternative to insulin. Will you send them your herbs and your protocol? Will you take the responsibility for their health if the parent mistakes some interaction between your herbs and the "honeymoon effect" and takes the child off insulin?
Be very, very careful. Cumbersome as regulatory agencies can be, they are there in reaction to many years of greed-driven tragedies.
Mark Davies