Flawed St. John's Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal Extract

Flawed St. John's Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal
Extract
June 2008

http://www.naturalnews.com/023430.html

(NaturalNews) On the heels of shocking revelations that top psychiatric
research Dr. Joseph Biederman secretly took $1.6 million from drug companies
while conducting psychotropic drug experiments on children, it has been
learned that Dr. Biederman is now one of the key collaborators behind the
latest efforts to discredit St. John's Wort. In a study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association and widely reported in the
mainstream media, Dr. Biederman and fellow cohorts "concluded" that the St.
John's Wort herb is useless in treating ADHD in children.

What's astonishing about this study, as you'll learn in this article, is
that all the children used in the study were given inactive forms of the St.
John's Wort herb where the active ingredients had been oxidized and rendered
useless! In other words, this clinical trial, which was widely reported in
the mainstream media with headlines like "St. John's Wort Found Useless!"
didn't test the herb's active ingredients at all! It sort of makes you
wonder about the agenda of the people running the study, doesn't it?

Keep in mind that one of the study's authors, Dr. Biederman, is not merely
on the take from drug companies that sell competing pharmaceuticals, but
that he also lied about how much money he was being paid by drug companies,
hiding the truth about his income by underreporting $1.6 million he took
from psychiatric drug companies. See my report on that he
http://www.naturalnews.com/023408.html

Dr. Biederman has a clear financial interest in promoting patented
prescription drugs for brain chemistry disorders while discrediting
competing natural alternatives such as St. John's Wort. This blatant
conflict of interest was not disclosed by JAMA, nor was it mentioned in the
text of the study on ADHD and St. John's Wort. It appears Dr. Biederman
would prefer his financial ties to Big Pharma continue to remain secret,
even while producing questionable studies that desperately attempt to show
that herbs don't work.
Testing Herbs to Treat Fictitious Diseases
Well, beyond the fact that the herb used in the trial was entirely inactive
(meaning it was rendered useless even before the study began), there's also
another burning issue that questions the credibility of the study: ADHD
doesn't exist in the first place!

There is no such thing as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It's
something that psychiatrists just made up and voted into existence in order
to sell more drugs to children. There is no objective test for this
"disease," nor is there any physiological evidence of any kind that it
exists at all. Thus, to test an inactive herb on a disease that doesn't
exist, and then declare the herb doesn't work is an outrageous example of
extreme intellectual dishonesty. And yet it's precisely the kind of
sleight-of-hand quackery carried out by modern psychiatry -- an industry
that has nothing to offer society other than mind-numbing drugs, medication
addictions and chemically-induced violence, obesity and diabetes.

But why let modern psychiatry have all the fun inventing diseases? I could
just as easily invent a disease called "Stupid Scientist Disease" (SSD) and
then test aspirin on SSD. When I demonstrated that aspirin had no effect on
SSD, I could submit the paper to JAMA, get it published, and have the
national media report with blaring headlines, "Aspirin Doesn't Work to Treat
Stupid Scientist Disease!"

And if they actually print that, then we could move on to test aspirin on
"Stupid Journalist Disease," which also appears to be an epidemic in modern
society.
How to discredit natural medicine and spread fear, uncertainty and doubt
All this has the effect of making the medicine being tested look bad, which
of course was the whole point of conducting this study on St. John's Wort in
the first place. Modern medical research is not about pursuing science, nor
truth, nor objective understanding about health. It is about pushing an
agenda, and it's clear that the agenda of Dr. Biederman and colleagues is
about diagnosing more children with more brain chemistry "diseases," then
demanding that they all be put on mind-altering drugs, all while desperately
trying to convince the public that herbs are useless.

By the way, you can invent your own psychiatric conditions at the click of
your mouse by using my free, highly-entertaining Disease Mongering Engine
available he http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mong...

I had hoped to create a similar online engine where you can randomly
generate fictitious scientific papers filled with psychobabble nonsense, but
it appears JAMA has already beat me to it...

St. John's Wort, for the record, has been clinically proven to be even more
effective than antidepressant drugs for treating mild to moderate
depression. That makes it better than all the SSRI drugs ever invented, but
you don't hear medical journals reminding anybody about that simple fact, do
you? Instead, they go out of their way to test it for the wrong condition --
a fictitious condition! -- as an excuse to simply say St. John's Wort
doesn't work for something.


A Disturbing Trend: Bastyr Naturopaths Partner with Dr. Biederman to
Discredit Herbs
There's another disturbing trend in all this. The St. John's Wort study was
led by Wendy Weber, ND, a graduate of Bastyr University. Bastyr is an
"integrative medicine" med school that teaches drug-based medicine combined
with more natural modalities. It's one of the top three naturopathic schools
in the U.S., and yet to learn that one of its graduates is now collaborating
with a psychiatric drug pusher who has been paid $1.6 million by drug
companies is more than a bit disturbing.

It indicates that this Bastyr graduate either has no idea about the true
agenda of the people she's working with or that she doesn't mind that
agenda. Either way, she sort of ends up looking rather silly with her name
positioned above the scandalous Dr. Joseph Biederman, a widely-hated Big
Pharma disease monger who will hopefully soon be arrested and prosecuted as
a common criminal for conducting medical experiments on four-year old
children.

In the world of naturopathy, by the way, there is quite a chasm between the
more "conventional" N.D.s (like Bastyr graduates) and the holistic, natural,
salt-of-the-Earth kind of naturopathic healers who have no sponsoring
institution. The Bastyrs of the world are working hard to get naturopathic
medical practice legalized in many states, but they're also disliked by the
non-accredited naturopaths who end up being labeled criminals for practicing
their own brand of natural medicine in those same states.

Many non-accredited naturopaths insist that Bastyr is just a "green"
replacement for organized medicine's tyranny. Without a doubt, when people
see Bastyr graduates collaborating with top psychiatric drug pushers on a
study that clearly seeks to discredit a valuable herb, it just fans the
flames of dissent against Bastyr among more holistic practitioners.

What's my take on the issue? I think Wendy Weber must be a complete fool to
lend her name to such a study, because the very title of the study
presupposes something that's entirely false to begin with: That ADHD is a
bonafide "disease" in the first place. She even based the entire scoring of
the participants' symptoms on the American Psychiatric Association's
DSM-IV -- the tome of psychobabble "disorders" invented by a truly evil
industry that seeks to label every person still breathing with some sort of
brain chemistry disorder (and then demand that they all be "treated" with
mind-altering drugs that just happen to enrich their corporate sponsors, the
drug companies!).

Remember, the DSM-IV is the manual that declares fear of public speaking to
be a "disorder." In fact, all the following are "mental health disorders,"
according to the DSM-IV manual:

.. Questioning authority (i.e. asking questions of medical authorities)
.. Feeling overwhelmed by too many tasks (like we all are...)
.. Being excitable (WHAT?)
.. Frequently taking risks (like every entrepreneur in the world...)
.. Inappropriately messy (like my desk...)
.. Showing excessive stubbornness (No, I'm not stubborn!)
.. Being argumentative (Oh yeah? Say that to my face...)
.. Losing things (Where did I park my car, again?)

.... and this list continues, including descriptions of virtually every human
emotion, thought or behavior. According to the DSM-IV, these are all
diseases!

How many of these familiar to you? Don't we all lose our keys from time to
time? Don't we all have messy desks (except all you clean freaks, but don't
get me started on your cleanliness "disorder" okay?) Don't we all feel
overwhelmed from time to time by too many tasks?

This is the great gimmick of modern psychiatry: They just keep naming
symptoms, behaviors and thoughts until they find one that you've got! Then
they declare you to be "sick" and needing "treatment," and that's when the
mind-altering medications begin.

Personally, I'm shocked to learn of a Bastyr graduate lending any credence
whatsoever to the DSM-IV manual and the fictitious diseases of modern
psychiatry. It is shameful that such a well-educated individual would spend
her time and effort in such a futile psychobabble exercise that proves
nothing, and I can only hope that Wendy Weber refocuses her considerable
talents into a more productive direction in the future. (I also hope that
she denounces the actions of Dr. Biederman for lying about the $1.6 million
he took from Big Pharma while pushing psych drugs for children... but that's
her choice, of course.)


Problems with the trial
Beyond the fatal problem of studying the effects of an herb on a fictitious
disease in the first place, this trial suffers from all sorts of other
scientific showstoppers. For starters, there were only 54 people used in the
results of the trial, with 27 receiving placebo and 27 receiving St. John's
Wort. This is a very small sample size to justify any declaration that St.
John's Wort doesn't work, especially given the fact that it has been safely
and effectively used by tens of millions of people around the world in just
the last decade or so.

Secondly, more than 40 percent of the children used in the study had
previously used psychiatric medications, so their brains have already been
damaged by psych drugs even before the study began! Psych drugs actually
cause behavioral disorders and long-term brain damage (which is evidenced by
the fact that so many children commit violent acts against themselves and
others after taking psychiatric medications). So why would an honest
researcher study the effectiveness of an herb on the brains of children that
were already damaged by psychiatric drugs in the first place? Unless, of
course, they wanted the trial to fail... but we'll get to that later.

Thirdly, the study contains numerous protocol mistakes that distort the
final results. For example, six children who displayed a large response to
placebo were supposed to have been dropped from the study to isolate the
herb's effects from placebo effects, but these kids were accidentally
randomized and thrown into the mix anyway, thereby distorting the final
results in favor of placebo responders, which makes the herb responders look
weaker by comparison. This troubling error in the study is never pointed
out, of course, in the mainstream media (whose journalists don't understand
science anyway, and can't interpret statistics with any degree of
mathematical competence).

A fourth problem in the study is that young males are far more susceptible
to the kinds of behaviors that are labeled as "ADHD," compared to young
females, and yet in this study, the placebo group consisted of only about
50% males while the herb treatment group consisted of nearly 75% males. In
other words, the placebo group was predisposed to a positive outcome simply
due to its composition of females vs. males, while the herb treatment group
was predisposed to a less-than-favorable response.

And finally, it turns out that the children used in this trial may not have
been receiving any active St. John's Wort at all! As stated directly in the
JAMA publication for this study:

The product used in this trial was tested for hypericin and hyperforin
content at the end of the trial and contained only 0.13% hypericin and 0.14%
hyperforin.

Stop the presses! Are you telling me that the St. John's Wort used in this
trial contained barely one-tenth of one percent of the active chemical
constituents in the herb? Quality St. John's Wort supplements typically
contain up to five percent hyperforin, or thirty-five times the amount of
active ingredient used in this trial! In other words, the St. John's Wort
being tested in this trial was a sub-clinical dose, barely containing any
usable St. John's Wort at all!

It's kind of like testing a dose of 2mg of aspirin to see if it has any
pain-relieving effect. Of course it doesn't, the dosage is too small!

But it gets even better. As the study text published in JAMA also admits:

Hyperforin is a very unstable constituent that quickly oxidizes and then
becomes inactive, which is likely what happened to the product used in this
clinical trial.

What the heck? Did the study authors just admit that the St. John's Wort
they used in the trial was INACTIVE because it all oxidized? Yes, that's
exactly what they said!

Absolutely amazing, isn't it? This study, which was blasted across
newspapers, websites and cable news problems, was all based on a study of
INACTIVE St. John's Wort given at sub-clinical doses to a group of
placebo-biased children diagnosed with a fictitious disease!


A Classic Case of Junk Science
This, friends, is the state of junk science today in our modern medical
industry. It is disgusting to see such papers making headline news, knowing
that the whole point of this study was clearly to fabricate
scientific-sounding lies about the uselessness of a very useful herb, and
thereby misinform consumers and drive more people to take drugs for ADHD.
I'm not at all surprised, of course, to see that JAMA gladly published it.

Wendy Weber, you should be ashamed of your role in this junk science fiasco,
and your authorship of this obviously politically-motivated study brings
great dishonor to the university from which you graduated. If you're going
to push drugs and discredit herbs by using contorted, intellectually
dishonest trials that are engineered to fail in the first place, then you
might as well just slap the letters M.D. after your name and stop using N.D.
to describe your credentials. Don't parade around as a naturopath if you're
pulling stunts like this that result in consumers being gravely misled about
the efficacy of herbs for supporting healthy brain function.

For a Bastyr graduate to even take part in a study that lends any credence
whatsoever to the DSM-IV -- and all its loopy, made-up descriptions of
disorders -- really makes me wonder what's happening in the classrooms over
there these days. I've interviewed both Joseph Pizzorno and Michael T.
Murray on several occasions, and I've found them to be extremely
well-informed, high-integrity individuals who were highly instrumental in
the founding and the success of Bastyr University. I couldn't imagine
Michael T. Murray ever being involved in such a poorly-designed study that
seems to have set out -- from the very beginning -- to obfuscate the
efficacy of a valuable herb that's been used for literally thousands of
years to support healthy brain function.


How modern medical researchers use sleight of hand to commit fraud
This is a favorite tactic of modern medical researchers who wish to
discredit herbs, vitamins or supplements: They simply use sub-clinical doses
or poorly-assimilated nutrients that never make it to the bloodstream, then
they declare the herb (or vitamin, or nutrient, or whatever) to be useless!

This is exactly what happened in the recent trials that tested Vitamin D on
prostate cancer. The headlines touted the sensationalized conclusion that
"Vitamin D Has No Effect on Prostate Cancer!" But what was the truth behind
the study?

As it turns out, virtually none of the men used in the study showed any
appreciable level of Vitamin D in their blood. That's because most of the
men studied in the trial didn't take their supplements! It's no surprise
that if you don't actually take your vitamin D supplements, they probably
won't prevent prostate cancer for you, right? Yet this astonishing fact is
NEVER mentioned in the mainstream press reporting on this study. It's just
one fact of many that are routinely ignored by a national media more
interested in trashing natural medicine than actually reporting anything
based on facts.

We saw this same tactic with one study on women's bone health and calcium
intake, by the way. The headline blared, "Calcium Found Useless in
Preventing Osteoporosis!" but what the study actually proved -- to anyone
who bothered to read it -- was that women who don't take calcium supplements
don't experience any benefits from them.

No kidding? Gee. And people who buy books but don't read them somehow don't
learn anything from them, either.

Supplements don't work if they're still sitting on your shelf. You actually
do have to consume them to experience their benefits. This should be obvious
to health reporters working in the mainstream media, but sadly, they still
don't grasp this rather obvious fact.

Neither did JAMA, it appears, since they went ahead and published this study
about ADHD and St. John's Wort even when it turns out that none of the
children likely consumed any active St. John's Wort ingredients after all.

By the way, don't you find it curious that the study authors only tested the
potency of the St. John's Wort supplements AFTER the study was completed,
rather than before? It's almost as if they didn't want to know the potency
before they started the trials.

Bad science conducted under the guise of good science is worse than bad
science by itself, because it carries disinformation clothed in the
credibility of good science and thereby acts as a virus of the mind that
infects consumers. That mental virus is driven even deeper by the illusion
of authority, thereby making it ever more difficult for consumers to later
purge those lies from their belief systems so that they might awaken to the
truth about healing with natural medicine.

It is in this way that JAMA, and Wendy Weber, and the mainstream media all
perform a great disservice to the American people and further deepen the
epidemics of malnutrition, disease and over-medication that threaten the
very future of the western world.


Sample headlines from the mainstream media
By the way, here's a sampling of the headlines from mainstream media
sources. As you read these, realize that nobody bothered to actually read
the study! (Or if they did, they didn't understand it...)

St. John's wort fails to help kids with ADHD
The Associated Press

St. John's Wort Doesn't Work for ADHD
Washington Post

St. John's Wort No Help in ADHD
ABC News

St. John's wort no better than placebo for ADHD, Bastyr study finds
Seattle Times

St. John's Wort No Help for ADHD
TIME Magazine

Herb does not ease ADHD
ZDNet

St. John's wort doesn't help ADHD, study finds
Reuters

About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a passion for
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at www.HealthRanger.org

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:19:23 +0100, "JOHN" wrote:

Flawed St. John's Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal
Extract

If, as the author of that articles states "There is no such thing as
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" then why would it matter if
the herb used was active, inactive or incorporated in tomato soup the
result would surely still be exactly the same?

"JOHN" wrote in message
...
Flawed St. John's Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal
Extract
June 2008

http://www.naturalnews.com/023430.html

(NaturalNews) On the heels of shocking revelations that top psychiatric
research Dr. Joseph Biederman secretly took $1.6 million from drug
companies
while conducting psychotropic drug experiments on children, it has been
learned that Dr. Biederman is now one of the key collaborators behind the
latest efforts to discredit St. John's Wort. In a study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association and widely reported in the
mainstream media, Dr. Biederman and fellow cohorts "concluded" that the
St.
John's Wort herb is useless in treating ADHD in children.

What's astonishing about this study, as you'll learn in this article, is
that all the children used in the study were given inactive forms of the
St.
John's Wort herb where the active ingredients had been oxidized and
rendered
useless! In other words, this clinical trial, which was widely reported in
the mainstream media with headlines like "St. John's Wort Found Useless!"
didn't test the herb's active ingredients at all! It sort of makes you
wonder about the agenda of the people running the study, doesn't it?

Keep in mind that one of the study's authors, Dr. Biederman, is not merely
on the take from drug companies that sell competing pharmaceuticals, but
that he also lied about how much money he was being paid by drug
companies,
hiding the truth about his income by underreporting $1.6 million he took
from psychiatric drug companies. See my report on that he
http://www.naturalnews.com/023408.html

Dr. Biederman has a clear financial interest in promoting patented
prescription drugs for brain chemistry disorders while discrediting
competing natural alternatives such as St. John's Wort. This blatant
conflict of interest was not disclosed by JAMA, nor was it mentioned in
the
text of the study on ADHD and St. John's Wort. It appears Dr. Biederman
would prefer his financial ties to Big Pharma continue to remain secret,
even while producing questionable studies that desperately attempt to show
that herbs don't work.
Testing Herbs to Treat Fictitious Diseases
Well, beyond the fact that the herb used in the trial was entirely
inactive
(meaning it was rendered useless even before the study began), there's
also
another burning issue that questions the credibility of the study: ADHD
doesn't exist in the first place!

There is no such thing as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It's
something that psychiatrists just made up and voted into existence in
order
to sell more drugs to children. There is no objective test for this
"disease," nor is there any physiological evidence of any kind that it
exists at all. Thus, to test an inactive herb on a disease that doesn't
exist, and then declare the herb doesn't work is an outrageous example of
extreme intellectual dishonesty. And yet it's precisely the kind of
sleight-of-hand quackery carried out by modern psychiatry -- an industry
that has nothing to offer society other than mind-numbing drugs,
medication
addictions and chemically-induced violence, obesity and diabetes.

But why let modern psychiatry have all the fun inventing diseases? I could
just as easily invent a disease called "Stupid Scientist Disease" (SSD)
and
then test aspirin on SSD. When I demonstrated that aspirin had no effect
on
SSD, I could submit the paper to JAMA, get it published, and have the
national media report with blaring headlines, "Aspirin Doesn't Work to
Treat
Stupid Scientist Disease!"

And if they actually print that, then we could move on to test aspirin on
"Stupid Journalist Disease," which also appears to be an epidemic in
modern
society.
How to discredit natural medicine and spread fear, uncertainty and doubt
All this has the effect of making the medicine being tested look bad,
which
of course was the whole point of conducting this study on St. John's Wort
in
the first place. Modern medical research is not about pursuing science,
nor
truth, nor objective understanding about health. It is about pushing an
agenda, and it's clear that the agenda of Dr. Biederman and colleagues is
about diagnosing more children with more brain chemistry "diseases," then
demanding that they all be put on mind-altering drugs, all while
desperately
trying to convince the public that herbs are useless.

By the way, you can invent your own psychiatric conditions at the click of
your mouse by using my free, highly-entertaining Disease Mongering Engine
available he http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mong...

I had hoped to create a similar online engine where you can randomly
generate fictitious scientific papers filled with psychobabble nonsense,
but
it appears JAMA has already beat me to it...

St. John's Wort, for the record, has been clinically proven to be even
more
effective than antidepressant drugs for treating mild to moderate
depression. That makes it better than all the SSRI drugs ever invented,
but
you don't hear medical journals reminding anybody about that simple fact,
do
you? Instead, they go out of their way to test it for the wrong
condition --
a fictitious condition! -- as an excuse to simply say St. John's Wort
doesn't work for something.


A Disturbing Trend: Bastyr Naturopaths Partner with Dr. Biederman to
Discredit Herbs
There's another disturbing trend in all this. The St. John's Wort study
was
led by Wendy Weber, ND, a graduate of Bastyr University. Bastyr is an
"integrative medicine" med school that teaches drug-based medicine
combined
with more natural modalities. It's one of the top three naturopathic
schools
in the U.S., and yet to learn that one of its graduates is now
collaborating
with a psychiatric drug pusher who has been paid $1.6 million by drug
companies is more than a bit disturbing.

It indicates that this Bastyr graduate either has no idea about the true
agenda of the people she's working with or that she doesn't mind that
agenda. Either way, she sort of ends up looking rather silly with her name
positioned above the scandalous Dr. Joseph Biederman, a widely-hated Big
Pharma disease monger who will hopefully soon be arrested and prosecuted
as
a common criminal for conducting medical experiments on four-year old
children.

In the world of naturopathy, by the way, there is quite a chasm between
the
more "conventional" N.D.s (like Bastyr graduates) and the holistic,
natural,
salt-of-the-Earth kind of naturopathic healers who have no sponsoring
institution. The Bastyrs of the world are working hard to get naturopathic
medical practice legalized in many states, but they're also disliked by
the
non-accredited naturopaths who end up being labeled criminals for
practicing
their own brand of natural medicine in those same states.

Many non-accredited naturopaths insist that Bastyr is just a "green"
replacement for organized medicine's tyranny. Without a doubt, when people
see Bastyr graduates collaborating with top psychiatric drug pushers on a
study that clearly seeks to discredit a valuable herb, it just fans the
flames of dissent against Bastyr among more holistic practitioners.

What's my take on the issue? I think Wendy Weber must be a complete fool
to
lend her name to such a study, because the very title of the study
presupposes something that's entirely false to begin with: That ADHD is a
bonafide "disease" in the first place. She even based the entire scoring
of
the participants' symptoms on the American Psychiatric Association's
DSM-IV -- the tome of psychobabble "disorders" invented by a truly evil
industry that seeks to label every person still breathing with some sort
of
brain chemistry disorder (and then demand that they all be "treated" with
mind-altering drugs that just happen to enrich their corporate sponsors,
the
drug companies!).

Remember, the DSM-IV is the manual that declares fear of public speaking
to
be a "disorder." In fact, all the following are "mental health disorders,"
according to the DSM-IV manual:

. Questioning authority (i.e. asking questions of medical authorities)
. Feeling overwhelmed by too many tasks (like we all are...)
. Being excitable (WHAT?)
. Frequently taking risks (like every entrepreneur in the world...)
. Inappropriately messy (like my desk...)
. Showing excessive stubbornness (No, I'm not stubborn!)
. Being argumentative (Oh yeah? Say that to my face...)
. Losing things (Where did I park my car, again?)

... and this list continues, including descriptions of virtually every
human
emotion, thought or behavior. According to the DSM-IV, these are all
diseases!

How many of these familiar to you? Don't we all lose our keys from time to
time? Don't we all have messy desks (except all you clean freaks, but
don't
get me started on your cleanliness "disorder" okay?) Don't we all feel
overwhelmed from time to time by too many tasks?

This is the great gimmick of modern psychiatry: They just keep naming
symptoms, behaviors and thoughts until they find one that you've got! Then
they declare you to be "sick" and needing "treatment," and that's when the
mind-altering medications begin.

Personally, I'm shocked to learn of a Bastyr graduate lending any credence
whatsoever to the DSM-IV manual and the fictitious diseases of modern
psychiatry. It is shameful that such a well-educated individual would
spend
her time and effort in such a futile psychobabble exercise that proves
nothing, and I can only hope that Wendy Weber refocuses her considerable
talents into a more productive direction in the future. (I also hope that
she denounces the actions of Dr. Biederman for lying about the $1.6
million
he took from Big Pharma while pushing psych drugs for children... but
that's
her choice, of course.)


Problems with the trial
Beyond the fatal problem of studying the effects of an herb on a
fictitious
disease in the first place, this trial suffers from all sorts of other
scientific showstoppers. For starters, there were only 54 people used in
the
results of the trial, with 27 receiving placebo and 27 receiving St.
John's
Wort. This is a very small sample size to justify any declaration that St.
John's Wort doesn't work, especially given the fact that it has been
safely
and effectively used by tens of millions of people around the world in
just
the last decade or so.

Secondly, more than 40 percent of the children used in the study had
previously used psychiatric medications, so their brains have already been
damaged by psych drugs even before the study began! Psych drugs actually
cause behavioral disorders and long-term brain damage (which is evidenced
by
the fact that so many children commit violent acts against themselves and
others after taking psychiatric medications). So why would an honest
researcher study the effectiveness of an herb on the brains of children
that
were already damaged by psychiatric drugs in the first place? Unless, of
course, they wanted the trial to fail... but we'll get to that later.

Thirdly, the study contains numerous protocol mistakes that distort the
final results. For example, six children who displayed a large response to
placebo were supposed to have been dropped from the study to isolate the
herb's effects from placebo effects, but these kids were accidentally
randomized and thrown into the mix anyway, thereby distorting the final
results in favor of placebo responders, which makes the herb responders
look
weaker by comparison. This troubling error in the study is never pointed
out, of course, in the mainstream media (whose journalists don't
understand
science anyway, and can't interpret statistics with any degree of
mathematical competence).

A fourth problem in the study is that young males are far more susceptible
to the kinds of behaviors that are labeled as "ADHD," compared to young
females, and yet in this study, the placebo group consisted of only about
50% males while the herb treatment group consisted of nearly 75% males. In
other words, the placebo group was predisposed to a positive outcome
simply
due to its composition of females vs. males, while the herb treatment
group
was predisposed to a less-than-favorable response.

And finally, it turns out that the children used in this trial may not
have
been receiving any active St. John's Wort at all! As stated directly in
the
JAMA publication for this study:

The product used in this trial was tested for hypericin and hyperforin
content at the end of the trial and contained only 0.13% hypericin and
0.14%
hyperforin.

Stop the presses! Are you telling me that the St. John's Wort used in this
trial contained barely one-tenth of one percent of the active chemical
constituents in the herb? Quality St. John's Wort supplements typically
contain up to five percent hyperforin, or thirty-five times the amount of
active ingredient used in this trial! In other words, the St. John's Wort
being tested in this trial was a sub-clinical dose, barely containing any
usable St. John's Wort at all!

It's kind of like testing a dose of 2mg of aspirin to see if it has any
pain-relieving effect. Of course it doesn't, the dosage is too small!

But it gets even better. As the study text published in JAMA also admits:

Hyperforin is a very unstable constituent that quickly oxidizes and then
becomes inactive, which is likely what happened to the product used in
this
clinical trial.

What the heck? Did the study authors just admit that the St. John's Wort
they used in the trial was INACTIVE because it all oxidized? Yes, that's
exactly what they said!

Absolutely amazing, isn't it? This study, which was blasted across
newspapers, websites and cable news problems, was all based on a study of
INACTIVE St. John's Wort given at sub-clinical doses to a group of
placebo-biased children diagnosed with a fictitious disease!


A Classic Case of Junk Science
This, friends, is the state of junk science today in our modern medical
industry. It is disgusting to see such papers making headline news,
knowing
that the whole point of this study was clearly to fabricate
scientific-sounding lies about the uselessness of a very useful herb, and
thereby misinform consumers and drive more people to take drugs for ADHD.
I'm not at all surprised, of course, to see that JAMA gladly published it.

Wendy Weber, you should be ashamed of your role in this junk science
fiasco,
and your authorship of this obviously politically-motivated study brings
great dishonor to the university from which you graduated. If you're going
to push drugs and discredit herbs by using contorted, intellectually
dishonest trials that are engineered to fail in the first place, then you
might as well just slap the letters M.D. after your name and stop using
N.D.
to describe your credentials. Don't parade around as a naturopath if
you're
pulling stunts like this that result in consumers being gravely misled
about
the efficacy of herbs for supporting healthy brain function.

For a Bastyr graduate to even take part in a study that lends any credence
whatsoever to the DSM-IV -- and all its loopy, made-up descriptions of
disorders -- really makes me wonder what's happening in the classrooms
over
there these days. I've interviewed both Joseph Pizzorno and Michael T.
Murray on several occasions, and I've found them to be extremely
well-informed, high-integrity individuals who were highly instrumental in
the founding and the success of Bastyr University. I couldn't imagine
Michael T. Murray ever being involved in such a poorly-designed study that
seems to have set out -- from the very beginning -- to obfuscate the
efficacy of a valuable herb that's been used for literally thousands of
years to support healthy brain function.


How modern medical researchers use sleight of hand to commit fraud
This is a favorite tactic of modern medical researchers who wish to
discredit herbs, vitamins or supplements: They simply use sub-clinical
doses
or poorly-assimilated nutrients that never make it to the bloodstream,
then
they declare the herb (or vitamin, or nutrient, or whatever) to be
useless!

This is exactly what happened in the recent trials that tested Vitamin D
on
prostate cancer. The headlines touted the sensationalized conclusion that
"Vitamin D Has No Effect on Prostate Cancer!" But what was the truth
behind
the study?

As it turns out, virtually none of the men used in the study showed any
appreciable level of Vitamin D in their blood. That's because most of the
men studied in the trial didn't take their supplements! It's no surprise
that if you don't actually take your vitamin D supplements, they probably
won't prevent prostate cancer for you, right? Yet this astonishing fact is
NEVER mentioned in the mainstream press reporting on this study. It's just
one fact of many that are routinely ignored by a national media more
interested in trashing natural medicine than actually reporting anything
based on facts.

We saw this same tactic with one study on women's bone health and calcium
intake, by the way. The headline blared, "Calcium Found Useless in
Preventing Osteoporosis!" but what the study actually proved -- to anyone
who bothered to read it -- was that women who don't take calcium
supplements
don't experience any benefits from them.

No kidding? Gee. And people who buy books but don't read them somehow
don't
learn anything from them, either.

Supplements don't work if they're still sitting on your shelf. You
actually
do have to consume them to experience their benefits. This should be
obvious
to health reporters working in the mainstream media, but sadly, they still
don't grasp this rather obvious fact.

Neither did JAMA, it appears, since they went ahead and published this
study
about ADHD and St. John's Wort even when it turns out that none of the
children likely consumed any active St. John's Wort ingredients after all.

By the way, don't you find it curious that the study authors only tested
the
potency of the St. John's Wort supplements AFTER the study was completed,
rather than before? It's almost as if they didn't want to know the potency
before they started the trials.

Bad science conducted under the guise of good science is worse than bad
science by itself, because it carries disinformation clothed in the
credibility of good science and thereby acts as a virus of the mind that
infects consumers. That mental virus is driven even deeper by the illusion
of authority, thereby making it ever more difficult for consumers to later
purge those lies from their belief systems so that they might awaken to
the
truth about healing with natural medicine.

It is in this way that JAMA, and Wendy Weber, and the mainstream media all
perform a great disservice to the American people and further deepen the
epidemics of malnutrition, disease and over-medication that threaten the
very future of the western world.


Sample headlines from the mainstream media
By the way, here's a sampling of the headlines from mainstream media
sources. As you read these, realize that nobody bothered to actually read
the study! (Or if they did, they didn't understand it...)

St. John's wort fails to help kids with ADHD
The Associated Press

St. John's Wort Doesn't Work for ADHD
Washington Post

St. John's Wort No Help in ADHD
ABC News

St. John's wort no better than placebo for ADHD, Bastyr study finds
Seattle Times

St. John's Wort No Help for ADHD
TIME Magazine

Herb does not ease ADHD
ZDNet

St. John's wort doesn't help ADHD, study finds
Reuters

About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a passion for
sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary
health
He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers
guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the
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phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an
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at www.HealthRanger.org




Flawed St. John's Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal
Extract

If, as the author of that articles states "There is no such thing as
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" then why would it matter if
the herb used was active, inactive or incorporated in tomato soup the
result would surely still be exactly the same?