I was at a Sierra Club meeting this week at which a pharmacy professor and a Native American healer presented information on native and imported plants used for healing. One of the more interesting threads came from the use of local flora to treat TB at Dr Briggs clinic up in La Crescenta. In the day of drug resistant strains, there are unexplored treatments that were never developed because the expense of testing to meet FDA requirements didn't look like it would pay off.
We certainly need regulation of medical devices and drugs since it is still so common that imported herbs have Viagra ground in them and pills sold on the Internet have no active ingredient at all. I just wonder if restructure of the health care system could bring about a more rational process of finding out what works. It makes me suspicious that there are more people employed in finding a cure for cancer than there are people with cancer.