HealthBeat

Here is an article that raises a number of questions: First and foremost, why must every problem of medicine be eventually given over to the Big Pharmaceutical Companies and conglomerates for their synthesized solution? Of course this is bound to breed fakes and counterfiets - when the supply becomes short and the demand high and the desperation great. This article mentions a shortage of the raw material - a plant. So here is another question: why, with fields lying fallow, or being devoted to the production of illegal crops such as opium, or growing surpluses of grains that are then warehoused or wasted, why are farmers not encouraged to grow some of these life-saving herbs and plants? Could it be that Big Pharma doesn't want to have to rely on agriculture, preferring to have better control over their processes by keeping everything possible in the sterile confines of their synthesizing labs? The WHO might do well to shift their focus from "accrediting" pharmaceutical companies (ie: providing Big Pharma with "licences to print money") to encouraging farmers to shift ther their efforts away from growing life-taking crops such as opium poppies or no crops at all to producing life-saving crops. But then, that would be to acknowledge that perhaps the old ways - the herbal, natural ways - might somehow be as good as the modern, synthetic ways or Big Industry. And we couldn't have that, right?