The Complete Patient

How wide is the ideological chasm between backers of the existing medical establishment and of complementary health approaches? Still fairly wide, based on some responses to my latest BusinessWeek.com column questioning the FDA's decision to threaten cherry farmers with the full wrath of the federal government for claiming that tart cherries may help counter certain health conditions.

Dr. Stephen Barrett, one of the operators of Casewatch.com, which monitors "health fraud and quackery-related legal matters," wrote me, "I have no sympathy for the 'dilemma' of cherry sellers who got the warnings. The proper (and legal) thing to do is to stop making health claims. Period. Cherries taste good and contain some useful nutrients. They should say that and stop trying to boost sales by suggesting special health benefits when there are none." When I challenged him, and also invited him to post comments to my column at BusinessWeek.com, he reiterated his lack of sympathy for the cherry growers, adding, "I believe that many of them should be criminally prosecuted rather than just warned."

Contrast Barrett's reaction with that of Pat Sullivan, president of Jigsaw Health, a high-quality online seller of nutritional supplements, who on his blog writes of my column, "The scary thing is that the FDA could shut all these cherry growers down if they wanted to do so.  No due process is needed.  Pretty scary isn't it.  The FDA helped put out drugs like Vioxx which KILLED somewhere between 25,000 and 100,000 people.  Now they have time to threaten cherry growers with lawsuits?  How many people died from eating cherries?"

So there it is: lock 'em up, or treat them with respect for healing people.