I found two brief articles in today's Health Impact News that demonstrate a principle that seem to govern our U.S. medical establishment (the FDA and Hospital management) practices. This, I believe, will explain some of the obstinacy we see in how the same medical community treats the herb kratom.
The first article is more relatable to the kratom issue, where the Whitehouse, medical, and political leaders recognize that we must reduce the problem of dependence and addiction to opioids by providing safer alternative therapies -- and they pay "lip service" to this commonsense idea in the media -- but the FDA automatically throws up obstacles to using any non-pharmaceutical options, such as the one mentioned in the link (or kratom). It doesn't matter how many lives -- or dollars -- could be saved. All that seems to matter to the FDA is that FDA-approved products of the pharmaceutical industry are the ones used and no others.
This seems to be a variant on the "not invented here" principle that also stymies progress in the business world. I feel sorry for the conscientious Medical Doctors and their patients who must live under this kind of nonsensical restriction.
HERE is another example of the stubborn resistance of the medical industry to innovation: the opposition towards the use of intravenous Vitamin C in treating sepsis and the flu.
Off-label prescribing of pharmaceuticals is done all the time, with relatively few objections, but the use of a known, safe, biologically identical natural vitamin is treated as suspect and opposed -- even when it has a track record of saving lives! This, to me, is insane... and needs to be changed to allow medical progress to continue.
The pharmaceutical industry needs to be forced to relinquish its de-facto control over our options for medical treatment, including the patient's choice of using an herb to help them feel better. This common practice of letting patients die rather than allow the use of generally safe natural therapies should be viewed as criminal.