This herb VS. drug debate is very interesting to me, largely because
Mary is an herb lady who really seems to know her stuff, unlike waaay
too many herb folks who hold blindly to the proposition that if it is
'natural', it must be good.  Tobacco is natural.  It is not good for you.
As someone pointed out yesterday, so is arsenic.  Also not good for you.
And as we seem to be realizing on a national level, very possibly ephedra
is not good for you.
 
Mary is obviously not an idiot, like the guy I encountered in a grocery
store line once, who pointed out that the vegetables I had selected
were not 'organic'.  I countered that actually yes they were, as the
definition of 'organic' means 'containing carbon', which they most
certainly did.  So do truck tires, but I don't eat 'em, I explained.  An
unpleasant scene followed, I will spare you the details.  Some of us know
the definition of organic, some of us do not.
 
It is easy to define what is organic.  Harder perhaps to define the
difference between what is a drug and what is an herb.  But I think that
the discussion just goes off of its rails entirely when we start talking
about nebulous properties such as 'intention' and 'energy'.  The AMA
starts to look really good to me when we cross into THAT territory.  I
quote Mary here:
 
>I grow my own; make the remedy or the flower essence; and only my hands
>touch these in a sterile environment.  And here I can put the intention
>into the remedy as well as the energy.
 
When I hear statements like this the debate is over for me.  This isn't
chemistry or pharmacology, it's more like sympathetic magic.  It can't
be defined.  It can't be quantified.  It can't be reproduced.  It is a
beautiful sentiment, certainly.  I like the thought of all those rows of
beautiful flowers nodding and bobbing in the breeze, Mary collecting them
in the sunshine with loving hands.
 
But are those hands instruments of 'intention' and 'energy'?  This cannot
be demonstrated to my satisfaction.  Not at this time, and not by any
tools we have available to us.  It is certainly beauty, but truth?
 
The drugs I have to take every day to live are manufactured by impersonal
companies.  They are not labors of love, as Mary's tinctures are.  Still,
I take a certain comfort in knowing that the manufacturers make no claim
that their products are imbued with intention, or energy, or love, beauty
or truth, or anything else that they can't whip up in a vat for me on
demand.
 
Alexandra in Massachusetts
[Posted in FML issue 3933]