At the height of the Pan Pharmaceuticals media frenzy, the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON) managed to score a few column inches in the Australian around their particular response to the product recall, with a sober discussion of the effect of the recall on clients of the ACON Vitamin Service.
The story included a classical Aussie reality check; it came via the personal story of Roy Devellerez, a Vitamin Service client whose only medication has been “an array of vitamins, minerals and herbs” for the entire 14 years of his HIV infection. Although Roy was a bit concerned about the recall, he acknowledged that his health was in good nick, and admitted that he couldn’t be sure that his complementary therapies were making any difference at all: “I don’t know whether it’s these tablets or maybe it’s the placebo effect,” he said.
The placebo effect. Or maybe long-term non-progression, or just good luck I guess. Whatever it was, it was working for him and he was OK with that.
Our national tendency not to get too worked up or passionate about things does, of course, have its downside, but here’s a guy who is disarmingly frank and realistic about personal choice, therapeutic potential and future options — he certainly wasn’t averse to the idea of HAART at some point — and, what’s more, judging by the photo accompanying the story, he was pretty attractive too. An analogy for the Australian HIV response perhaps? Certainly it’s evidence of a level of realism within it about what works for who, and of how we’re OK with that.
Complementary therapy used to be a topic that could polarise a roomful of poz guys faster than a Dannii Minogue popularity straw poll. There was no grey area: you were either for or against.
That seems to have changed now, and just as well, because the anti-complementary crowd on the wider Australian scene have been having a field day lately. First there was the Pan Pharmaceuticals stuff, which seemed to suggest that whether the ingredients of your medicine were synthesised in a test-tube at World Wide Western Medicine Domination Labs Inc. or grown in organic gardens by ethnically diverse shaman-cultivators, they all ended up going through a bunch of chemical processes before rolling down a conveyor belt, past quality control checkers of entirely human fallibility, who — for all we know — might be more focussed on reading Best Bets.
Then there’s the ABC TV Catalyst program which in April screened a two-part BBC documentary which seemed to make a compelling case for the proposition that diluting that which makes you ill by a factor of 1 million produces not a homeopathic cure, but water. Highly marketable water to be sure, but water nonetheless.
A couple of weeks later, Catalyst was at it again, this time quoting unnamed sources at Southern Cross Uni in northern NSW, who claim that scientists there did a study on herbal medicines that uncovered “some serious problems.” Half the products they tested had significant variations in the active ingredients and a number of products had virtually no active ingredients at all.
I don’t know about you but “virtually no active ingredients” would do it for “serious problem” from my perspective, every time. No one from Southern Cross was prepared to talk publicly to Catalyst about the study, but researchers from the Universities of Newcastle and Sydney did talk about similar findings from their own studies. These included the disarming revelation that no two carrots — whether organically grown or not — would be likely to have the exact selfsame amounts of carroty goodness. Make of that what you will.
The pro-complementary therapies crowd, however, has no shortage of compelling personal testimonies with which to balance all this negativity. If people can point to personal benefits from Chinese medicine, from acupuncture, from herbs, berries or nuts in May then what price double blind control trials? Feeling good — or at least feeling better — is what it’s all about. The fact that individual PLWHAs keep chucking antiretrovirals down their throats is ultimately not really due to the rigorous evidence of efficacy obtained though extensive clinical trials — important though they are — is it? It’s more that we can tell that they work. Many of us can also attest to side effect alleviation via therapies — many of them legal — that might not meet with the ringing endorsement of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, but hey, they seem to be working for us.
“The gay boys come in, pick up the package, read it and chuckle and then get Viagra”
Let’s also acknowledge that a significant number of studies point to placebo effect being alive and well in western medicine. Antidepressants in particular have an alarming tendency in clinical studies to generate identically positive outcomes to placebo. Whether it’s the brilliant new cutting-edge pharmaceutical product “Fantastikor” or a sugar lolly — think “Fantale” — that’s consumed, people tend to feel better after taking a pill.
There’s no doubt that folk wisdom has produced all manner of useful alleviations to human suffering over many millennia. Nor is there any doubt that the introduction of a bit of judiciously applied science here and there can increase the benefit for lots more people.
Ultimately, the message seems to be one about balance, and one thing that the Pan saga told me was that the HIV sector might be more balanced than most in its response to the natural/western medicine divide.
Take “Horny Goat Weed” — that’s not an instruction to swallow it by the way — a popular and big selling natural, ah – restorative whose Australian marketer was, synergistically, also the Greens candidate in the Port Jackson electorate in the recent NSW state election.
I love the blurb: “Used by Chinese medicine practitioners for over 2000 years, horny goat weed is several species of epimedium, a leafy plant which grows in the wild, most abundantly at higher altitudes. The leaves of the plant contain a variety of flavonoids, polysaccharides, sterols and an alkaloid called magnaflorine. And while the exact way that horny goat weed works remains unknown, the plant has long been employed to restore sexual fire, boost erectile function, allay fatigue and alleviate menopausal discomfort.”
I particularly like the confidence-inducing bit about the plant in question growing at high altitudes. I wouldn’t waste my time with a wazoo sproinger that self-selected a lowland bog habitat, would you?
Of course, it occurs to me that Chinese medicine has attributed the selfsame properties to powdered rhinoceros horn and Siberian tiger penis for about the same period of time. And I daresay that Viagra and Caverject would probably hold their own (so to speak) against all three of these products, the major plus being that there are no threatened herds of viagras or forests of caverject being decimated in the wild to produce them.
My community pharmacy has a large gay male poz clientele — and a very prominent “Horny Goat Weed” display stand. “Moving much of this? “ I asked the pharmacist.
“No, not really, “ he said. “The gay boys come in, pick up the package, read it and chuckle and then get Viagra.”
I’ll bet. When it comes to “sexual fire,” do you really want to be rubbing a couple of epimedium sticks together when there’s the opportunity to get a gas pipeline laid on?
While the rest of Australia spends 2 billion bucks a year on natural therapies that may or may not be doing them some good — but which certainly add a distinctive richness to the colour of the national urine — we’ve learned some valuable lessons about perspective. You can engage with both western and natural approaches — that’s what “complementary” means after all. All you need is an open mind, a results-oriented focus, and a healthy scepticism about the advantages offering in the dietary habits of goats. Horny or otherwise.
*Geoff Honnor* is a Sydney-based writer, activist and goat fancier.
