Germany does have a strong testing and licensing program for herbals, and their patent law is sufficiently different from the US that there is an economic incentive for a company to do trials on herbals.

You touch on something involving both the proper standard of care by medical professionals, and the Good Samaritan laws for bystander aid. It is rare for medical malpractice to result in criminal charges, although I have seen rare cases where the conduct was so egregious that, for example, manslaughter was charged. IIRC, there was a case at Walter Reed where the anesthesiologist asked about allergies of a patient, was told she was severely allergic to an antibiotic, administered it anyway, and then tried to cover it up by altering records. The various cases where passive or active euthanasia may have been used are a different category.

I've had one experience where I felt an alternative medicine professional should have, at least, lost his licence. We all have if-only experiences in our lives, and this was one of mine. Usually, we talked to our inlaws once or twice a week, but it happened that I didn't talk to my stepfather-in-law, who had become like a father to me, for about 3 weeks. My mother-in-law mentioned he had a backache and kept going to the chiropractor, but that was nothing new.

Then, we got a call from Frank, my SFIL, himself. In a weak voice, he described the nature of the pain, which, until proved otherwise, was a classic description of visceral (internal organ) damage and was not associated with the back. I then learned he was calling from the ER, and the family asked me to talk to the physician. Establishing rapport with the physician, I was told Frank had blown an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, and the size of the aneurysm. At the time, Corpus Christi, where he lived, had no open-heart or interventional cardiology capability, and it was unlikely Frank could have survived a trip to Houston. He died the next day, and even the world-class facilities in Houston probably could not have saved him.

If the chiropractor, several weeks before, had recognized the nature of the pain and sent Frank to a physician, the diagnosis could have been made. At the time, surgical intervention for an aneurysm of that size had a fatal outcome about half the time, but, if the intervention succeeded, it restored quality of life and extended it. 50 percent is a lot better than zero.

I don't believe all chiropractors, and indeed alternative medicine practitioners, are quacks. I can think of several allopathic physicians about whom I would comment in duckspeak. In this case, though, the chiropractor didn't know enough about general physical diagnosis even to ask for a consultation. He was one of those that thought everything was controlled by the spine, and I consider him guilty of manslaughter.

Turning to a different area, Good Samaritans are usually protected against suit from actions done in good faith. There is, however, often the exception that the action is something the Good Samaritan was qualified to do, often by licensure. I know advanced paramedics that carry a trauma kit in their car, but will not, for example, insert an airway while in a state where they are not licensed. The paramedic is completely qualified to do so, but it is accepted practice that paramedics operate under medical control, and should not do advanced interventions when outside their system.

Still, there are tough calls. Were I in a remote area, and a friend was injured in a manner that was a serious threat to breathing, I'm not sure what I would do if there was no reasonable chance of getting him to a hospital. There are interventions that I understand anatomically and physiologically, that I've watched, and even had done to me, but I am in no way licensed to do the procedure. I hope I'm never in the ethical abyss of being in a situation where I'd break the law doing something that might kill a friend, but where the friend would almost certainly die without the intervention.

--

Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]