This is a cautionary tale of vanity and stupidity. During the fall and winter of 1991-1992 while living in Germany I saw a Belgian diet doctor. He was the talk of the American female community, it was the easiest diet ever the weight just melted away. And beside one of the wives I knew had her husband a doctor have it analyzed and it was only herbs…………
This is an old piece from Harvard it is about half way down this page at this link if you would like to read the whole thing.
www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/fhgupdate/N/N2.shtml#herb
Caution Always Key in Using Herbal Medicines
A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine offers another important reminder on careful use of herbal remedies. This caution is rooted in the absence of strict pharmaceutical controls in the manufacture of such products and how the lack of these requirements can leave room for tragic errors.
In the mid-1990s, doctors at a clinic in Belgium treated 43 patients with end-stage kidney failure, requiring dialysis or transplant. Not surprisingly, these individuals had something in common in their medical histories. Between 1990 and 1992, each had used a Chinese herbal remedy in combination with two other drugs for weight loss. The herbal preparation supposedly contained Stephania tetrandra and Magnolia officinalis. But the sudden appearance of kidney failure in these patients caused their doctors to suspect that the herb Aristolochia fangchi, which is poisonous to the kidneys, had unintentionally been substituted for S. tetrandra. The Chinese names for A. fangchi and S. tetrandra sound similar and the two are often confused. Analysis showed that the herbal remedy did, in fact, contain aristolochic acids, which are derived from A. fangchi. Aristolochic acids cause cancer in rats and mutations in bacteria and mammals.
Reports of patients who had developed urothelial carcinoma (cancer of the tissues lining the bladder, ureter, and part of the kidney), as well as kidney failure related to the Chinese herbs, drew concern among the Belgian doctors. When one of their patients also developed this cancer, the doctors decided that all patients with end-stage kidney failure related to the use of Chinese herbs should be checked for cancer of these organs. By removing these organs, the doctors hoped to prevent cancer from developing in their patients. Thirty-nine of the 43 patients agreed to undergo the preventive surgery. Of these patients, 46% of them already had cancerous growths in the removed tissues. In addition, 19 of the remaining 21 patients had abnormal growths in the urinary system. The investigators also analyzed DNA samples taken from the kidneys and ureters of each patient. The DNA samples for every patient showed changes typically found after exposure to aristolochic acid. The researchers compared these results to analysis of DNA samples taken from eight patients with end-stage kidney failure unrelated to Chinese herbs. None of these control samples showed DNA changes formed by aristolochic acid.
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