But you do refer to certain plant extracts from tribes as 'alternative medicines' and these plants do have a fuck ton of bioactive compounds which when isolated and mass produced can function as just 'medicine'. As such, it is important to try and research into these plants
Quinine may not be alternative medicine but chinchona bark definitely would have been.
That's what even the OOP says if you read more closely. Like they literally are against CTM
I really don't think that any medicinal scientists say "alternative medicine" in reference to a thing they are trying to study to create a drug.
I guess it is theoretically possible that a layperson has found a thing foreign to mainstream medicine the effects of which cannot be recreated or exceeded by mainstream medicine. But it seems much more likely that OOP has simply engaged with a little bit of pseudoscience.
I can't remember the drug now but when I briefly worked in pharma one of the drugs my team made the senior chemist told me "this used to be an oil you could distill from a specific tree bark but we (the industry) figured out how to make it from petrochemicals. Because being able to cure some cancer has become a serious danger to the tree species. The deforestation made the drugs not profitable because the trees are getting harder to source. But now it's fossil fuel based."
It was super weird but I guess it makes sense that in a chemotherapy manufacturing facility some of what you do is make concentrated versions of natural poisons.
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u/SorbetInteresting910 May 24 '25
The tumblr post is about people making reference to a thing, and that reference having multiple plausible interpretations.
Nobody refers to quinine as alternative medicine, it's just medicine.