"We are a chemophobic culture." I take great issue with this statement. We are most decidedly not a chemophobic culture. People are more than willing to take medicines that are artificially synthesized and, as the author mentions, with good reason.

I, for one, am not chemophobic. I personally know an individual who developed one of the first total-syntheses (i.e. "artificial" chemical synthesis) of a very important anti-cancer agent, Taxol. The TS of Taxol was exceedingly important, since a single dose required the sacrifice of an mature Yew tree -- something that would have been entirely unfeasible for the millions of people that stood to benefit from the drug.

But there are miraculous, mysterious things that we do not understand about natural products and the human body. Take Yerba Maté, for example, a popular beverage in Argentina and coffee. Or wine and whiskey. What all these beverages have in common is that they rely on a principal chemical agent for their effect (methylxanthine or caffeine in the case of Yerba Maté and Coffee; ethanol in the case of wine or your favorite alcohol). Yet as the more sensitive among us have realized, each different concoction effects us differently -- even though the principal ingredient is the same (people report calming, yet stimulating effects from Yerba Maté as opposed to caffeine, etc.)!

It turns out there is a very simple explanation for this. There are other constellations of chemicals in these concoctions which, in concert create an altogether particular and unique effect. This, I believe, is where "chemophobia" lies for some individuals (though again, I argue it is not widespread among the greater population). It lies in the fact that we are applying something very strong in a way that is not balanced or integrated. One very real mainstream example of this is how calcium is accompanied by vitamin D, as the latter enhances absorption of the the former. Since vitamin D helps strengthen the effect of calcium, patients can take safer doses of calcium which have great physiological effect. Another example is the fact that African American heart patients who take ACE inhibitors (drugs that lower blood pressure) along with diuretics have much, much better clinical outcomes than taking ACE inhibitors alone, which is the standard of treatment for most individuals.

The hope, then, is that when taking something more "natural" as opposed to man-made is that that natural product will inherently contain a wider variety of compounds that taken together create a more potent, but gentle effect on the patient. Now of course, these effects could be created by taking combinations of man-made products. But first these combinations need to be discovered, and we are certainly a long ways off from that. And it is not easy--different people are affected by different combinations and deciphering the key players out of a set of natural products is not easy. This will take many more years of careful, non-biased research. And there is indeed incredible bias against natural products among mainstream medical establishment, which is rather absurd given that so many of the drugs we take today come from natural sources! To me this is the real travesty, not "chemophobia."

Moreover, we need to embrace treatments that work, even if we can't explain them (provided that they are safe--more on this and LD50's in a moment). Good scientists work with existing knowledge. Great scientists love the perplexing, paradoxical, seemingly impossible phenomena that are not well characterized, which the FDA (about the most mainstream medical organization on the planet) does not necessarily approve of, for which there are no established doses or LD50's. Why is the author so insistent on the notion of LD50's when so many people have taken natural products for hundreds of years without ill-effect (that's a pretty amazing safety standard, in a way -- the fact that people without any scientific background have safely taken and studied natural products without modern science; namely by studying themselves; in India and China there were masters at this sort of art).

Sorry for such a long response. I hope someone appreciates these comments.

EDIT: I just want to add one other thing. Rofecoxib (better known as Vioxx) has an established LD50. For mice it is 300mg/kg, for rabbits it is 3.2g/kg, and for rats it is 980mg/kg [2]. But you know what? Vioxx exacerbated heart disease for at least thousands of people and should have been recalled years earlier than 2004[1]. An established LD50 does not mean a drug is safe.

[1] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

[2] http://www.clearsynth.com/docs/MSD-CS-T-17609.pdf