A close friend of mine who suffered from a severe autoimmune disorder was unable to receive proper care from literally dozens of different doctors over the course of fifteen years of suffering. No experts could provide a useful diagnosis or safe drugs to treat symptoms. It was either tramadol and other potent narcotics or immunosuppressants, which have severe side effects.

Kratom was one of the only medicines that allowed him to function and it was getting more difficult to reliably source due to regulatory pressure.

He died abruptly 3 months ago due to rapidly progressing infection secondary to immunosuppressant / chemotherapy drugs prescribed to help him control symptoms.

He was 34.

Pay attention to the FDA's leadership. It's a revolving door with industry. Access to safe, effective medicine is not the FDA's goal in practice.

I'm torn between the need for effective regulation and the often dysfunctional real-world implementation of those controls.

Culturally, scientifically sanctioned pharmaceuticals are usually the only option provided to patients who are left to either seek alternative therapies or become dependent on treatments that often do not improve their well-being. "Non-traditional" medicine is often demonized as anti-science and lumped together with nonsense like homeopathy despite long successful histories in folk medicine.

This is unfortunate, because I believe that by treating medicines outside the mainstream -- medicines that are widely accessible, sometimes illegal, but primarily are not commercially viable (and thus are excluded from much scientific research) -- as akin to snake-oil means that a large and growing body of people are susceptible to things like anti-vaccination silliness. "Correct think" -- a culture of fetishism of scientific expertise that isn't actually scientifically motivated -- is responsible, in my opinion, for reactionary movements that are harmful to everyone. We live an an age of a narrow definition of scientific and off-load our critical thinking to experts who, in the best case, do not have the resources or data to look beyond the recommendations they learn in medical school, or in the worst case, produce phony medical trial results that exaggerate benefits and overlook harm. I would call it scientific myopia, but it's a cultural illness and not a problem particular to science.

It's possible to approach non-mainstream medicine rationally and not be casting bones in search of omens. But not according to our current cultural outlook.