While "evil intent" may be over the top as a description of what's happening with adulteration of medicines manufactured in China, neither is it plausible that this is happening merely by accident or neglect. Time and again, it's been shown that prescription drugs not revealed on the label have been added to China-made supplements/herbal products, and the clear intent is to make them more effective while luring customers with a supposedly "natural" product. Check out the list of drugs found in Chinese supplements as indicated in this report. "...case reports showed that two or more adulterants were present in 14 of 15 Chinese herbal medicines. There was one death reported in these reports, and at least six potentially life threatening events. Suspicion of adulteration was based not only on adverse effects, but suspiciously good efficacy. Chinese herbal medicines may work because of the adulterants. Most people consider alternative therapies to be safe, and often do not mention that they are using them. Given that multiple adulteration of Chinese herbal medicines seems to be common, there is potential for problems, especially when other treatments are being prescribed. Imagine an older patient on NSAID and aspirin additionally taking a Chinese medicine containing indomethacin or phenylbutazone! We simply do not know what the rate of adulteration is. One UK study of 11 herbal creams showed that eight contained dexamethasone at concentrations up to 1.5 mg/gram of cream. In the absence of better information, we should assume that Chinese medicines are adulterated."

Thanks Daniella. I was gonna try Chantix - until I spoke to my friend who had such a bad reaction to it. She said she had to go sleep it off. The others says it makes them sleepy, tired. They're slowly getting used to it. Baby aspirin is about where I'm at - except for excedrin for migranes (has caffine) - otherwise - unless it specifically says for daytime - it's gonna put me in the drool zone. (Eyes glased, drool from my lip.) And unfortunately, I've got one of those jobs where I have to stay/be sharp. Can't be thinking through cotton. I wasecited until she told me she started thinking about it and what it was doing to her brain, and what it was attaching itself to, and why she felt so awful. She almost took food out of her mouth in a restaurant because she didn't think she could swallow it. I'm thinking the patch and gum is gonna be my route again. I just need DH to agree to do it with me. Whole family smokes. I won't be able to do it in the face of everyone else smoking. And I can't ask him to do it right now - heavy stressers in our lives right now. Soon though, very soon.

https://www.cadth.ca/generic-drugs/similarities-and-differences-between-brand-name-and-generic-drugs "Bioequivalent drug formulations have the same bioavailability; that is, the same rate and extent of ABSORPTION.... There is a common misperception that generic drug concentrations can be 80% to 125% of the brand name formulation; in other words, that the variance may be up to 45%. This is not true. One of the key parameters for bioequivalence is the area under the curve (AUC). The AUC is a mathematical calculation based on a graph of blood concentration versus time, and it correlates well with total drug exposure. The AUC of a generic formulation must be no less than 80% or no more than 125% of the brand name formulation. There is international consensus that differences within this range are not clinically significant. More importantly, the 90% confidence interval of the AUC must also fall within 80% to 125%. Recall that the confidence interval is a range of measurements within which we can be confident that the true result lies. So, for the entire confidence interval to fall within the 80% to 125% range, the variance is generally less than 5%."

If the FDA doesn't like an herbal treatment, it is probably good. Since its a forum about herbs. Most of the drugs and foods they allow shouldn't have gotten through. FDA is filled with people that have conflicting interests. They let the makers do the test to determine safety. They mislabel or ban it if it might get in the way of business. Even when they base drugs on a plant compound, it often causes side effects that just using the plain old herb doesn't. There might be a few instances where this can be beneficial, digitalis to avoid overdosing and its convenient ... in most cases its just to make profits. The drug gets patented and is easier to make large amounts in a lab to sell. And those problems are actually a plus. People get new symptoms and then get prescribed another drug. The point of a business is to make money... its legally required they put money first. They don't want to cure you, a cure isn't profitable compared to what they've got. Doctors offices are a business. They'll prescribe the expensive patented drug over the one that is no longer patented. Send you to other doctors rather than diagnose anything themselves. Mixing up an herbal prescription would eat up too much of your 15 minute visit and reduce the number of patients they get to see. They always are so scheduled that you can't get in if you're acutely ill. They don't know anything about herbs or nutrition unless they learned it on their own. "Adults have eaten the roots, mistaking them for medicinal plants. " The line from that source is simplistic and false. It is a medicinal plant. Herbalists don't go around telling people to go chomping on pokeberries or to devour roots, they tell them it is toxic and has to be used in a very specific way and dose. People who eat the salat know how to gather and cook it, and they'll tell you how, they don't just say to go eat it. If a person goes around eating things that they haven't bothered to ID or research then they're probably as likely to eat a handful of aspirin for a headache... usually its kids that get poisoned by the berries...doubt if adults just decide to eat some unknown berries that actually don't look like grapes. But the majority of herbs used as medicine are not even mildly toxic. People who cite "science-based-medicine" (buzzword for profitable AMA approved techniques, not to be confused with science or medicine) always choose a few potentially toxic plants or ones that aren't even used as medicine to bash. Or they choose the cures of early patent medicine "doctors" who are actually the originators of our current medical mess... talk about hypocrisy. Death and disease from the drugs taken as prescribed ... very high numbers. That's just the reported / admitted ones... The studies on plants like comfrey or sassafras root are nonsense. (If you want to declare it dangerous, stuff a rat full over long periods until it dies, or use highly concentrated extracts, or do studies on humans that can't be controlled very well since they weren't all raised in a box in the same environment over several generations.) How long would any pharmaceutical drug last subjected to those kinds of rules? There are other countries that do studies on herbs that don't ask what the desired outcome is supposed to be first.