| (no subject) |
[Mar. 16th, 2009|10:06 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | assholes, bah, books, doomed, myth, ouch, religion, so doomed., tv, we like green, wrong | ] |
I have no words for how utterly stupid and awful the "Grow your own drugs" show on BBC2 was. I didn't see the first two eps, but it is about how herbal ingredients from the garden can be used to treat minor ailments. And sell his book.
I'm not complaining because it was unscientific or I think these things have no effect. (It was very unscientific, but it knew it. "Of course, this isn't a clinical trial, but our subjects said they felt a bit better after two weeks of drinking the tea...")
And I do think certain herbs and plants have an effect. I believe this very strongly. I DO think Pine resin is genuinely antibacterial/antifungal, but then so is Grapefruit seed extract (quite ferociously so depending on concentration) and (to a much lesser extent) Tea tree oil, although he only went for one substance per theme on the show. That wasn't my problem with it.
My problem was that every second sentence out of his mouth was either outright wrong, or so qualified as to be meaningless. Fine, fine, don't put a disclaimer on saying "since these are natural ingredients and you're stewing them in alcohol for a month in the dark, the resulting tincture might vary in strength! This isn't precise!". I'm okay that he's (mostly) describing treatments which are so weak, any variation won't affect them much. And he needs to sell his book.
But what a goddamn waste. All the things he could have said, and instead he's on bath bombs and anti-perspirants. He had an episode on trees, and mentioned that most pharmaceuticals you take as pills come from plants, but didn't relate it usefully to the public by saying something like "Aspirin comes from boiling up willow bark". Some of the other processes he espouses are going to have just as many impurities and potent active agents at the end of them, I don't see why he had to pick rubbish ones.
Wong is an Ethno-biologist. He's keen to stress that he's a real scientist. Well, I studied chemistry (and nearly did herbal medicine). I took up learning about it as a hobby instead (look, we're tree-huggers. It's traditional.) Having done the Uni side, I know that lily of the Valley stimulates the heart by making more calcium 2+ ions available, because it's a cardenolide. If I thought I could hit the right strength (without going just that leeetle bit too far and making a fatal potion) I could gather and prepare foxglove as a more potent version (although it has a slightly different action). Get it wrong and it's a heart attack in a bottle, but then that was its more frequent use historically...
But even if I hadn't immediately jumped on all the exciting poisons in the garden, I'd still be able to do a better show on the stuff I'd trust the public with than this patronising, misleading, pointless glut of self-promotion. There's so much he could talk about that would actually help people, in quantities and preparations they wouldn't kill themselves with. I mean, okay, they will kill themselves. Because they're stupid and clueless, and are boiling plants in a pot. They're gonna die. But that hasn't stopped him producing a book about it (of course there's a book) albeit with disclaimers all over every section. "This might be dangerous. And, er, not work."
Ginkgo tea improves bloodflow? You amaze me, inspector! Mankind's only known that for... how many thousand years? The idea that it can help with memory is hugely contraversial, and despite clinical trials (funded by a Ginkgo producer) still inconclusive. Or amazing, depending on who you listen to. But mostly contraversial. Ben Goldacre is going to have a screaming fit.
This was a chance to get the good ones out there, the ones with proven biological effects and safe preparation. They exist! Okay, I was always more interested in the tropane alkaloids, but the premise of this show could have really delivered something to the public. Instead we get a smug bastard who manages to be more annoying than Jamie Oliver without even the implied altruism.
Been a very long while since I got the roots, leaves and pyrex lab glassware together to do this stuff, and I could still remember 20 things off the top of my head that this twit should have put in the show. What was left was a near-useless, still occasionally dangerous piece of rubbish (oh, you think people should do an allergy test before playing with Ginkgo? Would that be because it acts like poison ivy to some people? Sheesh.)
There are a lot of good books out there. Very few of them are aimed at absolute beginners preparing herbal medicine to have a biological effect on their own bodies, because... well, it's really goddamn dangerous. But there's a gap in the market for teas, tinctures and various kitchen preparations.
Come on flist! Some of you do this for a living. Get out and write the public-friendly book on how to gather mugwort for fun and profit. Or at least do an actually useful list of herbs better than this blithering idiot. |
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