The Weber-headed study by Bastyr, using NCCAM money and featuring Harvard Pharma pimp Biederman used an ineffective product to treat a so-called condition for which no practitioner in their right mind would ever use the herb, based on a completely hokey survey by some pharmacists in Texas that found 5 kids had been prescribed SJW for depression or ADHD.
One of the phenomena of the mainstream misinformation machine regarding herbal medicine is that any study, especially one published in JAMA, is apparently endowed with an aura of truth as if it were directly received from above on tablets of stone. This completely worthless and near fraudulent study of course failed to detect anything of consequence. But as a result the PR machine of mainstream news generation went straight into action, internet and press headlines proclaiming that St John’s Wort does not work for ADHD.
Mike Adams, an investigative reporter for Natural News Magazine in his expose of the Bastyr/ADHD/Hypericum study compiled a list of such headlines.
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
None of which should surprise regular readers of HERBLOG, and none of which should surprise Bastyr. Hopefully the Bastyr Board will look at this pile of stinking stuff and ask Weber at al some hard questions. Promoting an understanding of how to use of herbal medicine in the modern world requires a little more than brown-nosing Big Pharma, validating DSM IV, and collaborating with corrupt truth twisters with an agenda to promote chemical control of kids behavior. This study does all of this and more.
HERBLOG awards this appalling study the title of jackass trial of the year. Let us hope that the good people at Bastyr wake up and do some genuine soul-searching.
This kind of thing does them no good at all.
Time to move on.