Pharmaceuticals lack these advantages. The second problem is that conventional medicine does not know a lot about disease process. Doctors are good at interpreting lab results, but really don't have a clue when it comes to treating diseases. I could wirte a whole book just on the misconceptions accepted as fact in conventional medicine. Actually I love the folklore.
Science gets it's ideas from folklore, and research is used to back the claims.
A pharmaceutical company does not go to South America and just start grabbing plants at random to test. Instead they go to the local Shaman to learn which plants are used medicinally. They then test those plants to verify the medical claims. So folklore is a very important part of science. I totally agree.