Sampson and Deliar

This emailed commentary was written by James "Jim" Duke, Ph.D., reknowned herbalist, former U.S. Dept. of Agriculture researcher on the chemical activity in plants, and author of the popular book "The Green Farmacy." He's also an entertaining singer/songwriter (see next post). Read more by Dr. Duke in this Mother Earth News article from 2000.

Regarding: Sampson, W. 2005. Studying Herbal Remedies. NEJM 353: 337-9, Jul 28.

On page 338 Sampson says, "Physicists tell us that negative studies (a sign of nonreproducability) should carry more weight than positive ones." He's of course carping about the herbal echinacea study. As I recall, the 2002 study that showed SJW [St. John's Wort] was no better than placebo also showed that the 2-billion dollar a year drug Zoloft was no better than placebo. What would Sampson do with this? Should they discontinue studies on Zoloft as he would have them do with Echinacea ("for viral respiratory disease"; as per first sentence [p. 337] in his careless tirade)? Still the leadoff fullpage ads in JAMA last month and possibly NEJM (I don't take NEJM) are full-page ads for this failed pharmaceutcial drug Zoloft that is no better than placebo. Now!!! Three years after the negative study on Zoloft!!! (Of course, few Americans heard about the Zoloft arm of that study and almost everyone heard about SJW, thanks to carpers like Sampson. I regret only that the NEJM study did not include, as a third pharmaceutical arm, a dilute (weaker than clinicians recommend) dose of Relenza (probably maliciously approved by the FDA) to compare with the dilute dose of Echinacea in the negative study. I expect as so often happens, when they compare an herb with a pharmaceutical (e.g. also Proscar vs saw palmetto) the pharmaceutical will frequently come out no better than the herb. Surely if Samson believes the herbs worthless, he too would encourage such comparison (and maybe quote the SJW studies as evidence-based science). If I trusted NCCAM, I'd urge that they do such trials. But I trust them no more than I trust NIH, FDA, and the pharmaceutical industry, and their carpers. That's why I keep carping too, hoping that all future clinical trials contain a promsing third herbal arm to compare with a promising pharmaceutical arm. Only then can Americans know which is best. That way Americans could compare costs, safety AND efficacy.