🌿 Could This Ancient Remedy Be the Next Aspirin?

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Scientists are dismissing potentially life-saving traditional medicines as "quackery." But here's the truth:

Many modern drugs come from ancient remedies.

It's time we break this cultural paradigm. Here's why 👇

The problem with "alternative medicine":

• Often dismissed by US researchers

• Lack of rigorous studies

• Concerns about contaminants (e.g., heavy metals)

The cultural paradigm: Traditional medicine advocates 🆚 Skeptical scientists

This divide isn't new. Remember turmeric?

• 5000 years of use in South Asia

• Initially dismissed by US scientists

• Later studies revealed surprising anti-cancer effects

The double-bind:

• Scientists scorn imperfect past research

• Researchers risk being labeled "quacks"

Result? Potentially valuable compounds are ignored. We need a middle ground between blind faith and stubborn skepticism. We've come far, but let's not dismiss millennia of human knowledge 🌿➡️🔬

Remember: Almost every modern medicine was once a "traditional remedy."

By closing our minds to traditional knowledge, we might be missing out on the next aspirin. It's time to bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and modern science 🌉

Deep Dive version

Several years ago, researchers at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, reported that they had studied curcumin-free turmeric and found anticancer effects, indicating that curcumin is not the only compound responsible for turmeric’s bioactivity. The same study found that in vitro experiments were not predictive of “potent in vivo anti-tumor effects of curcumin free turmeric and turmeric.” They recommended further research to determine the mode of action, or what exactly is happening at the cellular level. (link)

We should not condemn skeptical scientists. The issue is that potentially valuable medical compounds, often known about by humans for thousands of years, are conflated with other dubious and sometimes-harmful alternative medicine practices hawked by charlatans and naturopaths. One of the agencies responsible for this conflation is the Office of Alternative Medicine—later renamed the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

In 1991, Senator Tom Harkin used his position as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to create the OAM after he became convinced he had cured his allergies by eating bee pollen. The first director appointed to the OAM insisted that all research be conducted with rigorous scientific methodology; Senator Harkin did not approve. He pressured the director to resign, drawing the ire of the scientific community. From then on, any research conducted by the OAM was labeled as quackery—and with good reason.

However, pseudo-science can only be undone by science. Too many scientists in the U.S. have become dogmatic, scorning potentially life-saving compounds as “alternative medicine.”

We may have emerged from the cave of ignorance, but let us not be too quick to dismiss the sum of knowledge that came before we extracted morphine from the poppy.

Look to the winding path by which aspirin found its way into our medicine cabinets. The pain and fever reducing effects of the willow tree were first described in Sumerian clay tablets and the Egyptian Ebbers Papyrus, dating to 1550 BCE. 

But it wasn’t until the mid-eighteenth century that a cleric named Edward Stone experimented with it on a whim. After chewing a bit of willow while suffering from malaria and finding it relieved his symptoms, he gave powdered willow bark to fifty patients with ague. The powder alleviated their suffering and he sent his findings to the Royal Society, who published his letter and ushered willow into the world of accepted science.

Eventually, salicylic acid was identified as the active compound, and after well over a hundred years of experimentation, Bayer patented acetylsalicylic acid and began to manufacture Aspirin in bulk. (link) 

Edward Stone conducted his experiment in this liminal period when natural sciences were still evolving and medicine was becoming scientific. If the attitudes then had been the same as they are now, Edward Stone might have been dismissed as a quack, and we might not have aspirin in our medicine cabinets today. 

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