The only reason I keep Facebook is for unhinged stuff like this

  • nymnympseudonym@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Usually herbs found by ethnographers.

    Aspirin, for example, IIRC discovered by a scientist investigating traditional therapeutics (tree bark)

    • mirshafie@europe.pub
      0·
      2 days ago

      My pharma professors liked to say that if Aspirin was discovered today, it would never pass the bar for human trials, because after all these years the mechanism of action isn’t properly understood.

      That’s the best argument for alternative medicines that I’ve heard, and it’s also something to consider when we think about how insanely high the bar is for compounds that are approved as medicines.

      • Viceversa@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 day ago

        because after all these years the mechanism of action isn’t properly understood.

        That wasn’t a blocker with antidepressants, for better or worse.

      • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        2 days ago

        Most medications are poorly understood (at best!) lol, it’s trial and error all the way down.

        With some exceptions like the RNA messenger covid vaccine…

        • nymnympseudonym@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          1 day ago

          it’s trial and error all the way down

          Oh God LD50 is the craziest thing ever.

          Here’s how it works:

          Let’s just assume dose-response is linear. So, go find what concentration of chemical X (medicine, food additive, cosmetic, whatever) kills 50% of the bacteria/rodent/etc population. Draw a line from there down to 0% dead at 0 concentration.

          Now decide what % of deaths is acceptable, given the benefit of chemical X. Use the line we just drew and that tells you what the regulations should set for max concentration under as-directed usage.

          This ignores facts like

          • response curves are very often literally curves, sometimes with more than 1 minimum
          • response curves (and lines!) often depend heavily on all sorts of other chemicals’ presence in the environment, in varying mixtures & amounts

          It’s a combinatorial explosion we can never meaningfully test against. We do what we can, with the tools that we have.