I once met a pharmaceutical scientist at a meeting, and he told me that comparing plant extracts to pharmaceutical drugs, he found that the extracts were far safer and worked better. Of course, we’ve known this for decades.

The thing that ended the AIDS epidemic was the extract N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), which was able to treat people when the medical profession had nothing to offer. NAC increases glutathione, the cell’s most important antioxidant and toxic metal chelator. It has been shown to dramatically shorten the duration of viral infections and yet is extremely safe. It can also help prevent cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

At one time, the pharmaceutical companies did try to take over some of the supplement industry, but the products they created were enormously expensive and yet worked no better than what was already available. Worse yet, the pharmaceutical manufacturers used capsules made of gelatin, a protein product that is usually extracted from cattle.

Documents from the FDA demonstrated that some of those gelatin capsules used by pharma manufacturers had been obtained from vendors in countries on the high-risk list for prion disease (mad cow disease). In theory, such shipments had been banned, but in practice the products went through anyway.

The supplement industry was switching to vegetarian-based capsules until recently. But thanks again to rising costs, many if not most supplement manufacturers now also use gelatin capsules. It’s best to use only vegetarian capsules.

More than 100,000 people have died from complications of FDA-approved drugs supposedly proven to be safe. And many more than that have been harmed physically by these defective drugs, and will likely later develop adverse health conditions as a result.