naturopathic philosophy II: can drugs be nourishing?

We had an tangential but relevant discussion in our philosophy class today about how naturopaths view pharmaceuticals... The context was a discussion / introduction to the core principles of naturopathic therapy and the therapeutic order of treatment strategies. Mark Davis, a third year ND student (who will probably save the world one day) brought up a question, after a discussion of how pharmaceuticals or synthetic substances in general were in a "higher" level (in the schema laid out for us, the higher levels represented more invasive, acute, and allopathic measures), because of not being fundamentally supportive or nourishing to the body. "Can't drugs or synthetic substances ever be nourishing?"

Resistance to the question was immediate and widespread; this struck and puzzled me. Arguments were presented:


mark's arguments (and others)

we should be wary of supporting an ambiguous, dogmatic bias against synthetic drugs, present in the statement "drugs are never nourishing", because:

-herbs or plant extracts can be both as potent as any synthetic drugs
-herbs or plant extracts can easily be used in an invasive, "allopathic" way that doesn't treat the root cause of disease
-in certain cases, drugs can be used in low doses to elicit ultimately therapeutic and therefore nourishing effects, even if the immediate effect of the drug might be to suppress or to interfere with natural biochemical processes
-vitamins and other supplements that are commonly prescribed by naturopaths are not all completely plant derived; many of these are synthesized and are considered to have nourishing effects; where is the distinction?

counter arguments (from the teacher and others)

there is an important distinction which should be maintained between naturally derived substances and synthetically derived substances. we should always seek to use naturally derived ones when possible because:

-the process of extracting medicinal substances from plants is fundamentally different than the process of synthesizing new medicinal substances in the laboratory because oftentimes the naturally derived extracts have other compounds from the plant which can produce concurrent reactions. in other words, natural products might have a more holistic effect on the body.
-synthetic drugs might be used effectively to alleviate an acute condition, but there is always the danger that the person's biochemical makeup will become dependent on the drug (it was admitted that the same argument applies to natural products)
-pharmaceuticals operate by suppressing or hijacking one body process and often cause severe side effects in another process. natural products generally operate by supporting, rather than interrupting, natural body processes.

Mark was able to articulate his ideas briefly before a barrage of counter-arguments were presented-- many of these were simply counter-sentiments, not actually addressing the issue but more just personal anecdotes of the ill-effects of pharmaceuticals. The resistance to even considering the question was a little alarming, although understandable given what kind of school we're in. What I'm getting at is: the idea and the argument were interesting, but the idea about the idea was even more interesting. Why the immediate negative reactions? Why the blanket-hatred of allopathy and pharmaceuticals? What is the incentive to not even consider these ideas?

In any case, it was a great discussion and a nice way to end the week. First week of second year over.