Ancient Nubians Drank Antibiotic-Laced Beer

eldavojohn writes "A new analysis of millennia old mummy bones (abstract; full article is paywalled) shows high concentrations of tetracycline, which indicates empirical knowledge and use of antibiotics — most likely consumed in beer. The researchers traced the source of the antibiotics to the soil bacteria streptomyces present in the grain used to ferment the beer. Astonishingly enough, 'Even the tibia and skull belonging to a 4-year-old were full of tetracycline, suggesting that they were giving high doses to the child to try and cure him of illness.' The extent of saturation in the bones leads the scientists to assert that the population regularly consumed tetracycline antibiotics knowing that it would cure certain sicknesses."

Comments

Where are they now?

[clickety6]

the population regularly consumed tetracycline antibiotics ... leading to the whole population being suddenly wiped out by the TRSA superbug !

Re:Where are they now?

[Fractal Dice]

It probably regularly happened. A new strain of disease comes along, old traditions and rituals don't work and societies get thrown into turmoil - most dramatically, look at what happened to some of the big civilizations of the New World when European diseases swept through.

Re:Where are they now?

[bhcompy]

Tell that to the Highlander

Obligatory...

[Adolf Hitroll]

"What's a Nubian?"

Re:Obligatory...

[hal2814]

What about you? You didn't tell me you were gonna scream "Black Rage!" I nearly pissed myself!

Re:Obligatory...

[Frankie70]

Nubian sounds like a new distro of Linux!
Wait for Knubian with KDE.

Re:Obligatory...

[sumdumass]

If it was a linux distro, it would be spelled Gnubian or Kgnubian something similar while sporting a picture of some bearded goat thing playing ball with a penguin.

Re:Obligatory...

[Crudely_Indecent]

I thought it was a type of ship in the Star Wars prequels...

So what killed the kid?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sickness, the tetracycline, or simply the high dose of beer?

Re:So what killed the kid?

[Narcocide]

Drunk driving.

Re:So what killed the kid?

[qwijibo]

The scientist. It would be inhumane to run these tests on a live child.

Re:So what killed the kid?

[tophermeyer]

Far better to let the child die from a possibly curable infection. That is why our current civilized society never offers experimental treatments to people after informing them of the risks, ever.

Re:So what killed the kid?

[drainbramage]

Agatha Christie.

That's just wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

giving a child drug-laced beer. Next they'll discover they also used medical marijuana, which would be an even greater sin.

Re:That's just wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it was the illegal downloading that led to the real fall of their civilisation.

Not really, no

[shaitand]

Sometimes sick people got better after drinking beer.

How is this any different than any historical herbal remedy? They didn't need to have any more knowledge of anti-biotics than natives eating mushrooms need know the shrooms contain psilocybin.

Bacteria infected their grain, this resulted in anti-biotic beer which became a local herbal remedy or healing potion. No actual discovery of bacteria or idea WHY the remedy heals. Interesting but hardly 'astonishing'.

Re:Not really, no

[somersault]

Or maybe they just liked beer.. I'm pretty sure most people consuming large doses of beer these days aren't doing it for the health benefits.

Re:Not really, no

[Sycraft-fu]

Ya this kinda sounds like herbal medicine BS in reverse. Rather than saying "People used herbs to cure illness so these herbs will cure you!" form of modern luddism this is kind of a reverse claim of forced sophistication "These people's remedy had anti-biotics so clearly they know about anti-biotics and did it on purpose!"

I doubt there was empirical testing going on here. As the parent said, the beer sometimes helped people get better so they used it. This is like any other herbal remedy. Once we got better at all this and started testing, we found that sometimes herbal remedies were on the money. People used willow bark as an analgesic and fever reducer and sure as shit, one of the ingredients works great and lead to aspirin. Others have some minor benefits, sometimes it is questionable if it is statistically significant but the seem to help in some things. Others were just placebo, they don't do shit.

None of this was know, hence why there's a great mixture.

I like what Dara O' Briain has to say about it: "Oh herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years. Indeed it has, and then we tested it all and the stuff that worked became -medicine-. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri. So knock yourselves out."

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

quite possible, they could have been drowning their sick children in massive doses of beer to ease their suffering.

In the Nubians defense, 'most people consuming large doses of beer these days' aren't consuming anti-biotic beer so they don't have the opportunity to drink it for the same health benefits. Besides that, anti-biotics can be ordered in pure forms now.

Re:Not really, no

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also the minor consideration that drinking "pure" water would kill you (cholera, etc) and the alcohol in the beer killed the bacteria up front so kids drinking beer was not unusual

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

I wouldn't go as far with herb bashing as you (you seem to be implying willow bark is the only herb with a better than minor effect). Half the herbs on the shelf in GNC have peer reviewed double blind studies backing them which is really all the prescription drugs show. The effects or many are significant enough they need to be considered right alongside prescription meds for contraindications.

None of that is to say that there is any sort of manufacturing oversight, claims testing (particularly in the diet and erectile dysfunction areas) or that a natural random soup of chemicals is somehow automatically safer than an intelligently purpose crafted solution. But there ARE many effective herbal remedies and some that seem to be more effective than prescription solutions (marijuana is far more effective than comparable prescription medications in not one but numerous areas). Another example is fish oil, like marijuana there are many physicians recommending fish oil over FDA approved supplements.

A lot of people have a bogus idea about herbal testing. They think because no testing is required that none is performed. Or they believe some odd myth that none of these substances have been shown effective in testing. Or that a single molecule is always responsible for the effects. There is less money to be made herbal remedies and less control of claims. As a result there are fewer studies into their effects. Just the same there have been many studies (though far less than of prescription meds) and they OFTEN show benefits vs placebo not rarely.

Re:Not really, no

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

If you've ever been to Africa, you'll know this. The reason you drink only beer, no matter your objections and thoughts on the matter is that you're relatively sure it won't infect you with an illness. Drinking water from a pond in the jungle is Russian roulette. Drinking water offered by inhabitants of a village is asking for poison.

Even today, in remote parts of Africa you drink either bottled water (which you check before you drink it), or beer. Nothing else. You just can't trust it.

And let's not talk about the food.

Re:Not really, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt there was empirical testing going on here. As the parent said, the beer sometimes helped people get better so they used it.

Isn't that empirical by definition?

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

Citation for what exactly? I didn't say anything that isn't widely known and easily findable with a simple google search. My examples can also be verified with simple searching. Of course my statements regarding herbs and contraindications are easy enough to find in the PDR. If you have trouble distinguishing noise from signal then try walking into a GNC and picking up a bottle then taking it to the counter.

GNC regularly distributes a large compendium of what, if any, studies have been conducted on the herbs in the supplements they carry or their (suspected) active ingredients. They only have basics, summary of conclusions, basic type of study (sample size, single or double blind, etc). If you want more detail you need to get more detailed with the question. GNC should be able to provide you with enough information to find the full text of any individual study yourself.

Of course your results at GNC are going to vary with the competence of the person at the counter. If you get an incompetent they will probably let you grab the book and search yourself.

I think a lot of the myths are supported with broad negative conclusions drawn from properly narrow studies. For instance a study on Ginko Biloba came out recently which showed that it wasn't effective at restoring memory function to the elderly who had already lost function. Previous studies showed that Ginko enhanced memory function in adults (without control for memory loss). These are completely different things but people immediately jumped on the Ginko is debunked now train.

Note: I'm not actually saying that Ginko is effective. I don't use any drugs (herbal or prescription) outside those in a carefully controlled diet unless I have an immediate medical need with risks that override the crapshoot that comes with haphazardly tossing chemicals into the delicate and poorly understood chemical balance that is my body.

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

Technically yes. I'm still not impressed. People have been observing and acting based on the results of those observations since the dawn of man. That didn't miraculously start with the formalized scientific method and I don't think anyone is claiming it did.

Additionally, this is how most other herbal remedies were discovered so there still isn't anything astonishing about it.

Re:Not really, no

[kahless62003]

I think it was here-abouts I read (so make of it what you will) that it's not the alcohol content, but the fact the one of the stages of the beer-making process involves boiling the water.

Re:Not really, no

[Anonymous Coward]

far in the future some asshole will stumble upon an almost entirely destroyed dvd of /. posts, will see yours and say "These people used some form of electronic medium to communicate. However, we, the self proclaimed clerisy insist that they didn't have any actual understanding of the technology they used, they simply used it to bitch about other people and yet were entirely ignorant of the underlying mechanisms that enabled their communication."

The guy will be almost as much of a dick as you are. dick.

Re:Not really, no

[plumby]

you seem to be implying willow bark is the only herb with a better than minor effect

I could be wrong, but I think you're reading something into his statement that's not there. I didn't see anything that suggested it was the only effective herb - it was just a single example.

Another example is fish oil, like marijuana there are many physicians recommending fish oil over FDA approved supplements.

You might want to look at what Ben Goldacre has to say about fish oils, and the poor science behind much of their promotion, on http://www.badscience.net/.

Re:Not really, no

[hal2814]

No, it's the alcohol content and relatively low PH (usually in the 4-5 range) that makes beer so unfriendly for pathogens. There are even styles of beer like Berliner Weisse that are not traditionally boiled but are still far safer to drink than water of unknown quality.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

The problem with all neutriceuticals is that there's a loophole in the law (at least in the U.S.) that allows them to bypass the FDA testing process. That's why with all of the TV ads, you'll see, "These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to cure, prevent, or treat any disease." Basically, they can make any claims they want in the ads, and the products only have to be as effective as PEZ.

Prescription drugs, on the other hand, have to go through clinical trials show at least three things to get FDA approval:

1) Toxicity (i.e., at what level is the drug going to cause an adverse effect)
2) Safety (i.e., testing to assure that the drug's components, at the formulation intended, is safe)
3) Efficacy (i.e., that the drug does what it's intended to do)

For the neutriceutical companies, the problem is that FDA clinical trials are expensive. It's much cheaper to conduct your own study, focus solely on the active ingredient, and tailor the study carefully to only talk about efficacy. And a study by Congress found that there are many neutriceuticals that either contain hazardous contaminants, or else don't contain enough of the active ingredients they're supposed to have to have any effect on health. (You probably won't hear about that at GNC, though.)

The bottom line is this: If a substance is potent enough to have an effect on your health, it's a drug, and is subject to regulation by the FDA. At the very least, the fact that these neutriceuticals aren't subject to testing by the FDA means that, at best, you're taking a placebo (i.e., you'd be better off taking PEZ, since it's cheaper).

Re:Not really, no

[JasterBobaMereel]

Beer : contains alcohol - which kills many water borne pathogens, is made by boiling water, which kills most of the rest

Medieval Europe and colonial North America drank large amounts of "Small Beer" Low alcohol beer, instead of water for precisely this reason, it was simply but very effectively abiotic

All the Nubian's added to this was that they stumbled across an ingredient that made it anti-biotic as well...

In the Ancient Near-East (Sumeria/Babylon etc) they drank Mead - Honey beer that is also anti-biotic ....

Re:Not really, no

[pedantic bore]

I'd mod you up if I had some points. This is the most likely explanation. It's why people many other places in the world throughout history have embraced fermented beverages.

Re:Not really, no

[tverbeek]

If a substance is potent enough to have an effect on your health, it's a drug, and is subject to regulation by the FDA.

This reasoning is about as sound as "Of course marijuana is bad for you: it's illegal!"

Until last year tobacco was not regulated by the FDA, and I'm pretty sure the active ingredient in it was known to be "potent enough to have an effect on your health" even way back in the dark ages of 2008. To say nothing of caffeine, which is not regulated by the FDA as a drug but as a food ingredient or dietary supplement... like an "herbal".

Re:Not really, no

[ptbarnett]

The reason you drink only beer, no matter your objections and thoughts on the matter is that you're relatively sure it won't infect you with an illness.

In colonial times, the United States was similar. The first batch of beer went to the pubs or into private stashes.

The wort was re-used for multiple batches, which were much lower in alcohol content. But, it was enough to kill the pathogens and was drank at every meal. It was even served to children.

Re:Not really, no

[tverbeek]

Is someone asking you to be "impressed" or "astonished" by this? Try "interested" or "amused" (because it's beer). It's just anecdote about how early humans developed primitive medicine, stumbling by blind luck into something that they surely didn't understand, but modern science has confirmed as medically effective.

Re:Not really, no

[dargaud]

You are wrong in attributing the drinkability of beer to alcohol: beer doesn't contain enough alcohol to kill most pathogens (2 to 8% in traditional beers). It does so thanks to competition with yeast. You have many germs in your brew when you start it, but if all goes well only yeast grows and eliminates the competition. Sometimes a brew can go bad where the yeast is eliminated by other germs, but then it's rather easy to tell: it doesn't smell, looks or taste like beer, so you don't drink it. With water you can't tell.

Re:Not really, no

[NotBornYesterday]

The basic process goes like this: Heat h2o until good and hot, but not boiling (about 150 deg f.), mix in grains, let sit a hour or 2 or 3, drain resulting liquid off the spent grains, boil liquid, cool it, pitch yeast, allow to ferment.

Initial boiling kills anything in the water used to make the beer, the alcohol from fermentation helps prevent subsequent infection from most other microorganisms. Other more herbal ingredients (hops, for instance) can add other antimicrobial properties. There is a period of time after boiling and before the yeast has established itself when other organisms could infect the beer.

That being said, technically speaking, you can make beer without boiling it.

Re:Not really, no

[John Hasler]

I doubt there was empirical testing going on here. As the parent said, the beer sometimes helped people get better so they used it.

That is empirical testing. The herbalists would have done better to stick to it. Unfortunately, they developed bogus theories.

And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri.

Well, no. Some of it is toxic.

Re:Not really, no

[moeluv]

Actually most of the reason for a lack of pathogens in beer is that it is boiled for a long time. Most recipes I use call for at least an hour long boil. The yeast and bacteria can live together and function, there may still even be some alcohol in the batch, but quite often if there is an infection it will be the bacteria who win out and ruin the beer.If your beer is infected it's because of poor sanitation. This hasn't happened to any of mine so far but I keep my equipment clean.

Re:Not really, no

[Stavr0]

Bacteria infected their grain, this resulted in anti-biotic beer which became a local herbal remedy or healing potion. No actual discovery of bacteria or idea WHY the remedy heals. Interesting but hardly 'astonishing'.

Fungus infected the grain, but otherwise you're probably right: Beer made of moldy grain = magic healing properties. Beer made of ordinary grain = headache in the morning.

Re:Not really, no

[MightyYar]

No actual discovery of bacteria or idea WHY the remedy heals.

Agreed. I have a feeling it went more like, "Baby Aapep is sick!"

"Fetch the physician!"

"We must feed him beer from the garden of Min. Also, wear this amulet."

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

"The bottom line is this: If a substance is potent enough to have an effect on your health, it's a drug, and is subject to regulation by the FDA."

Incorrect. This has nothing to do with effectiveness or strength. The 'loophole' is the FDA's own guidelines which state that any traditional remedy with a long established documented history or safe use is exempt from regulation.

Re:Not really, no

[gotpaint32]

Counter to what you say, I would venture to say caffeine is better regulated than most the herbal garbage out there. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 limits the authority of the FDA in regards to dietary supplements. Its scary but they have more authority over your chocolate milk than your multivitamin. And if for some reason one of these supplements turn out to actually have efficacy then chances are they will be locked down just look at ephedra. From: http://www.fda.gov/food/dietarysupplements/default.htm FDA regulates dietary supplements under a different set of regulations than those covering "conventional" foods and drug products (prescription and Over-the-Counter). Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), the dietary supplement manufacturer is responsible for ensuring that a dietary supplement is safe before it is marketed. FDA is responsible for taking action against any unsafe dietary supplement product after it reaches the market. Generally, manufacturers do not need to register their products with FDA nor get FDA approval before producing or selling dietary supplements.* Manufacturers must make sure that product label information is truthful and not misleading.

Re:Not really, no

[shoehornjob]

Sometimes sick people got better after drinking beer

Sometimes sick people drank a lot of beer and didn't give a shit if they got better...especially if it was infused with a lot of medical marijuana.

Re:Not really, no

[hal2814]

You drop a pathogen into a solution that's 2%-8% alcohol with a PH around 4-5 that's had most of its sugars and oxygen consumed and tell me how it does. Alcohol isn't the whole story but it's a big part of it. The yeast more or less have a scorched earth policy towards the unfermented beer. They use aerobic respiration as long as there is oxygen available so they can multiply. When there is no more oxygen, they'll resort to anaerobic respiration and eat up all of the sugars and leave behind alcohol and CO2. When that is done, they'll go dormant for a while but if left in the brew too long will even resort to autolysis and start eating each other. They consume almost anything and everything that can be consumed and leave their environment quite inhospitable afterwards to anything but bacteria like lactobacillus or less picky yeast strains like brettanomyces. Even infected beer is generally safe to drink because of the type of infection that would have to be present to survive the harsh post-fermentation environment.

Re:Not really, no

[Creepy]

I'm not sure how it affects other organisms, but yes, alcohol needs to be about 70% to kill bacteria directly, which is why first aid methanol is sold at 70% or higher concentrations. Grandparent is right that wort is boiled for an hour or more, however, and that should do in most bacteria and other microorganisms (like wild yeasts).

    Brewer's yeast is not exactly the best competitor - beer making generally requires a very clean process, often involving soaking pretty much everything in bleach and keeping exposure to open air to a minimum. The exception is lambics, which use wild yeast from exposure to open air, but these need to be brewed during certain months and in certain environments to avoid harmful microorganisms. Generally, beer makers go out of their way to give the brewer's yeast the most favor in the environment.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

Until last year tobacco was not regulated by the FDA, and I'm pretty sure the active ingredient in it was known to be "potent enough to have an effect on your health" even way back in the dark ages of 2008.

Of course, that's why treatments based on nicotine (and there certainly are some) are classified as drugs, and have been regulated by the FDA for some time now. (Nicotinic agonists are being investigated for things like asthma.

The issue with tobacco is that it's been a long time since cigarette makers have made any claims about the health benefits of smoking. The cigarette companies are now regulated to the extent that they're not allowed to say "light" or "low tar" in their marketing, they have to have larger warning labels, etc. That's quite different from the regulations the FDA puts on other drugs, because the claims are different.

Caffeine, your other example, is also subject to FDA regulation, when it's claimed to actually do something.

To say nothing of caffeine, which is not regulated by the FDA as a drug but as a food ingredient or dietary supplement... like an "herbal".

Caffeine absolutely is regulated as a drug by the FDA, when it's added to a product. There are levels of caffeine recognized as safe by the FDA, and those levels are adhered to. Caffeine drinks (e.g., Red Bull) carefully avoid making health claims, which is why they're not subject to the same testing, but instead are only subject to the regulation about caffeine content. Coffee, as one example, isn't subject to FDA regulation because it's not added, but naturally occurring. This is why the FDA is stepping in with alcoholic drinks that contain caffeine.

The bottom line is, if a health benefit is claimed, the FDA classifies it as a drug and regulates it. If it's not regulated by the FDA, it can't make any health claims (legitimately), and you might as well be eating PEZ.

Re:Not really, no

[asliarun]

I like what Dara O' Briain has to say about it: "Oh herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years. Indeed it has, and then we tested it all and the stuff that worked became -medicine-. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri. So knock yourselves out."

A lot of what you said is very true - herbal medicine in general is not as systematic or scientific as modern medicine.

However, to make a blanket statement that all herbal medicine is hit-and-miss, voodoo magic, and unscientific is also distorting the truth, and based on ignorance of our past. Science is not the fiefdom of the Greco-Roman system we have been following in the last couple of hundred years. Systematic and scientific study has indeed been followed by many old cultures, albeit not to the level of sophistication that we currently follow. Nonetheless, you cannot just trash it completely.

Look at what Sushruta used to do in India in 800BC for example.

To quote the wikipedia article:

"The Sushruta Samhita contains 184 chapters and description of 1120 illnesses, 700 medicinal plants, a detailed study on Anatomy, 64 preparations from mineral sources and 57 preparations based on animal sources."

Not just medicine, he has written extensively about surgery, especially plastic surgery, and some of his techniques and instruments are still being used today.

He wasn't alone, you can also read about Charaka.

What I am basically trying to say is that the basic principles of science such as logic and experimental proof did not get magically invented a couple of hundred years ago. Most scientists in the old days were let down by a lack of infrastructure and lack of mature manufacturing processes, among other things. They were not let down because their approach was unscientific or unsystematic. Don't trash herbal medicine just because the active chemical ingredient of a herb has not been isolated (because of lack of chemical or process know-how). No system of medicine (even herbal medicine) can withstand the test of time if it was solely based on hit and trial or voodoo/magic, instead of being based on logic and method.

To put it another way, should your great grandchild trash-talk and call you a scientific neanderthal just because you used to eat fruits, vegetables, and meat instead of ingesting (isolated) protein, carb, vitamin, and fibre tablets? Forget isolating nutrients from our food, we haven't even been able to properly bio-engineer the food that we eat. Imagine how barbaric it will feel to a person 500 years from now when they realize that our generation actually needed to slaughter animals for our nutritional intake. They'll probably look at us the way we look at cannibals.

Re:Not really, no

[ProppaT]

You're really citing Ben Goldacre? There's as much criticism of him as their are the studies he "picks apart." He's basically the medical equivalent of the modern day forum troll who adds nothing to the conversation but takes every chance he gets to point out the fact that someone didn't dot his i's or cross his t's. Granted, I think that scrutiny in the medical field is needed now more than ever, but we need people giving constructive criticism, not criticism alone.

I think a major issue with most medical science is that it's built on years and years of bad information. We're used to treating symptoms and not underlying issues. As it stands now, there's probably as many "valid" ways of showing that fish oil has benefits as there are to show ways that fish oil doesn't. The same can be said of dozens of other supplements that we take in droves. But these studies are mostly focused on the side effects we notice and can measure, not what these supplements are actually doing to the body.

(A bit of an off topic rant, but...) I think the saddest thing is that the medical community and society hasn't embraced the use of food as a drug. You have high blood pressure? The doctor tells you to eat better and take fish oil and other supplements? Doesn't work? You get lipitor or a similar drug. If you give someone a prescription, they'll take it because there's a mystique behind drugs. They're miracles in a bottle that cure you. Yet, you tell people how they need to eat and they scoff at it. I honestly believe if you could get most people to eliminate/severely limit fried food from their diet, gave them a glass of vegetable juice (because you know they're not going to eat enough on their own), and tested them for food allergies/intolerances and let them know what to avoid, that's all we'd need to get society healthy again and avoid half of all doctors visits. It's a shame, my insurance will pay for all the drugs my doctor will prescribe me...yet I spend a fortune every year on vegetables and healthy foods so I don't HAVE to have my doctor prescribe me anything.

Re:Not really, no

[operagost]

"Rubbing alcohol" is either ethyl or isopropyl alcohol, not methanol.

Re:Not really, no

[SteveFoerster]

The 'loophole' is the FDA's own guidelines which state that any traditional remedy with a long established documented history or safe use is exempt from regulation.

Shoot, then it should apply to cannabis.

Re:Not really, no

[Gilmoure]

So... yeast eats sugars, pisses alcohol and farts bubbles?

Cool!

Re:Not really, no

[Gilmoure]

All my foes are spelling or grammar Nazis.

You have magic Nazis after you who want to correct your grammar?

Dey-um!

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

That's simply false. Here is the FDA's own definition of a drug:

How does the law define a drug?

The FD&C Act defines drugs, in part, by their intended use, as "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" and "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals" [FD&C Act, sec. 201(g)(1)]. [Emphasis added]

That's why when you see a neutriceutical advertised, they're careful about what claims they make (or, more accurately, what they disclaim). If the compound in question is actually touted as doing something for your health, it has to come under the FDA regulations concerning trials. This commercial is typical of how the companies skirt the issue of effects.

Re:Not really, no

[sarkeizen]

Half the herbs on the shelf in GNC have peer reviewed double blind studies backing them which is really all the prescription drugs show.

Shananagans on two counts:

i) I think there is significant reason to doubt that you checked for studies with very much rigor.

ii) Even it you did check for some. It's not necessarily the same as what prescription drugs are required to show. I've read a number of journal articles on herbal remedies and what I tend to see are small-n, poorly controlled, terrible endpoint design...I could go on. Now sure this may be my sampling but the point here is that while there may be "evidence" for some effects of some herbal compounds. That's not the same as saying most herbal compounds have equivalent evidence to the vast majority of FDA passed drugs.

Re:Not really, no

[Beat The Odds]

Or maybe they just liked beer.. I'm pretty sure most people consuming large doses of beer these days aren't doing it for the health benefits.

I am!

Re:Not really, no

[Gilmoure]

The cool thing to me is that they found a consistent use of anti-biotic laced grain that held up through the brewing process. I wonder how this would effect societies. If one group had children growing up with less infections and sickness, would they have more children reaching adulthood? Would these people end up growing up taller/stronger? I wonder how many early empires got their start do to something weird like this?

Re:Not really, no

[Rogerborg]

Your statements, your burden of proof, Dr Quackadoodle. "Widely known" within the crystal-hugging moonbat community doesn't constitute compelling evidence for us rational beings.

Re:Not really, no

[Gilmoure]

I'm wearing an amulet. I made it myself. So far, it's rubbed a raw spot on my chest so it must be working.

Re:Not really, no

[tmosley]

So, people in the Iron Age didn't have steel because they didn't know what an iron atom was? I guess we don't have nuclear reactors because we don't fully understand the composition of matter, either.

Hell, Alexander Fleming didn't discover penicillin because he didn't know the atomic structure.

Geez.

Re:Not really, no

[rford]

ethyl alcohol is the one you drink also known as ethanol, methanol is not safe to drink.
BUT don't drink rubbing alcohol even if it is ethyl because it is denatured. (They add poison so it is not safe to drink)

Re:Not really, no

[Quirkz]

Keep in mind modern brewing methods don't necessarily have a lot to do with primitive methods. Wort wasn't always necessarily boiled, let alone for a full hour, just heated up enough to get the sugar from the grain into the water. Fermentation vats were sometimes open-air, or of questionable sanitation, depending how far back you want to go. Mostly traditional brewers just hoped that the yeast (either wild or from mixing in a bit of a previous batch) would out-compete the other stuff, and often it does, or at least close enough to call it "beer."

One good thing about wort (unfermented beer) is there's nothing that can grow in it that can really hurt you. It may go bad, meaning it looks or tastes really unpleasant, but the kinds of things that feast on room-temperature sugar water are not the kinds of things that infect people.

My guess is the relative sanitation of beer is a combined factor of a lot of things. Enough heating (even without a full boil) to kill some stuff -- possibly effectively pasteurization? I still think the small amounts of alcohol would make the liquid less hospitable to new germs, along with the competition with ferociously effective yeast.

I was recently reading about wine, which was also a safe drink in older times, and which was traditionally mixed with regular water (or even sea water) before drinking. Supposedly the wine had the ability to keep the mixture safe (not sure if it was the alcohol, or other properties) where the water on its own may not have been. I don't know enough about wine making, but I don't think it's boiled at all, is it?

Re:Not really, no

[dargaud]

Right. I didn't want to get into too many details as I need to go bottle my latest brew...

Re:Not really, no

[Quirkz]

I think it was here-abouts I read (so make of it what you will) that it's not the alcohol content, but the fact the one of the stages of the beer-making process involves boiling the water.

In modern brewing, yes. In ancient brewing, who knows? Some heating was likely, but a full boil is much less likely, though I know it varied a lot depending on the time and the region. Wine has also traditionally been a "safe" beverage to drink, and I'm not sure that it's boiled at all.

Re:Not really, no

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong in attributing the drinkability of beer to alcohol: beer doesn't contain enough alcohol to kill most pathogens (2 to 8% in traditional beers). It does so thanks to competition with yeast. You have many germs in your brew when you start it, but if all goes well only yeast grows and eliminates the competition. Sometimes a brew can go bad where the yeast is eliminated by other germs, but then it's rather easy to tell: it doesn't smell, looks or taste like beer, so you don't drink it. With water you can't tell.

I'm a long time brewer, and while you are right there is not enough alcohol in beer to kill all bacteria, there are no known pathogens that can survive in beer that will make you sick or have adverse effects. The worst that could happen is you get an infection and your beer will taste horrible, however drinking it wouldn't have any negative effect other than on your tastebuds. Plus alcohol isn't the only thing fighting pathogens, the water has to be boiled for about an hour, plus hops contain stuff to fight them too(too lazy to dig for the name of what it is in hops right now)

I've heard this from a number of head brewers at various breweries I've toured(note most pro brewers go through a ton of science classes), but since this is SlashDot, here's a link to an acrticl by a profesor at the U of CA talking about beer science. http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=716465BC-E7F2-99DF-3EAB0C599937C0E6

Scroll down to the part where he talks about pathogens.

Re:Not really, no

[CAIMLAS]

I remember reading a letter in a museum, written sometime around the time of the American Revolution, from a father to his child's aunt/uncle about this. It was quite fascinating.

The gist of the letter was "Here is some extra money to take care of my daughter better. Please see to it that she gets at least some decent beer so she does not fall ill. But with this much money I do expect to hear that she is able to have regular wine."

Also, meade: meade is not honey beer, it is honey wine (though I suppose you could fortify your beer with honey). The antibiotic properties of honey are destroyed when boiling it, and the antibiotic properties are largely beneficial for topical use, not internal.

Re:Not really, no

[Fjandr]

There are a lot of inconsistencies in laws and enforcement. Intrastate trade in marijuana also shouldn't be within the jurisdiction of the Federal government, since they're not granted power over intrastate commerce in the Constitution*, but it's not like that fact stops them from enforcement.

*If you** claim it's because of "some other clause," you're as bad as they are. There's no reason for an explicit interstate commerce clause if they have power over all commerce everywhere.

** Not "you" specifically. The general "you." :p

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

A healthy diet definitely goes a long way, but you can have the healthiest diet in the world and still have high cholesterol and heart disease, because not every case of these is due to diet. Most good doctors will tell you to change your diet if your cardiovascular system is out of whack, but there are also genetic factors that come into play. Not only that, but like any regimen (including drugs, also), it's one thing to tell a patient what they need to do. Getting their compliance is quite another matter. If you've got a patient who's been eating Big Macs for 20 years for dinner, and you give him a choice between meds and cutting out the Big Macs (or give him both instructions), which one do you think he's more likely to follow? So it's more than just a mystique associated with drugs. Some people need drugs for medical reasons, and with others, if you don't give them the drug, you're just wasting your breath, because they're not going to change their diets (as irrational as that may be).

Re:Not really, no

[GooberToo]

The reason you drink only beer, no matter your objections and thoughts on the matter is that you're relatively sure it won't infect you with an illness.

This is true almost universally around the world, and especially in Europe, if only 150 or so years back. For many, breakfast was stale bread soaked with bear followed by a coffee to counteract drinking that beer. And if you were lucky, it might be followed with an egg, a sausage, or maybe even a meat pie of some type. Not to mention, many old beers recipes are far more nutritionally rich and dense than the common breads of the area. For many cultures throughout history, beer, rather than plumbing, was the cure for poor sanitation and dirty water.

Beer drinking plus the industrial revolution resulted in many a dismemberment and/or death. Coffee is widely regarded as the cure for beer+industrial revolution woes, allowing for a widening of the gene pool and perhaps a chance at middle age.

Re:Not really, no

[ProppaT]

The thing is, most of these genetic causes for high cholesterol are due to diet. You could be eating a perfectly healthy diet...but what is healthy for you isn't necessarily healthy for the next person. We all come from different genetic backgrounds and the foods you eat work hand in hand with your genetics. This is why elimination diets that throw out foods that that contain possible intolerance (dairy, soy, wheat, nightshades (tomato, potato, eggplant, etc), certain nuts, etc) work so well. Take away everything your body could possibly have an issue with (all these foods are fairly well documented) and bring them back gradually to find your intolerance. You would be amazed what you'll learn about your body. You'll learn about irritations and intolerance your body has towards food that were hidden before, silently wrecking havoc on your body.

The human body is an amazing machine and will regulate itself if given the chance. There's always disease and there will always be a reason for research medicine and doctors because of this, but until insurance companies start paying for nutritionists we're stuck in a bit of a rut.

Re:Not really, no

[Hognoxious]

You drop a pathogen into a solution that's 2%-8% alcohol with a PH around 4-5 that's had most of its sugars and oxygen consumed and tell me how it does.

If beer or wine were as good at killing bateria as you claim there'd be no such thing as vinegar.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

If you** claim it's because of "some other clause," you're as bad as they are. There's no reason for an explicit interstate commerce clause if they have power over all commerce everywhere.

Intrastate acts can have more than one implication. For instance: If you kill a federal employee in the course of their duties or because of their duties, you get a federal punishment, regardless of what the laws say concerning murder in that state. Similarly, if you commit murder for a racist reason, then in addition to being charged with the murder by the state where you committed the murder, you could be brought up on federal charges of denying the person their civil rights.

In other words, people in each state are subject to federal laws. If something is illegal on the federal level, it doesn't matter which state you're in.

And yes, that's in the Constitution.

Re:Not really, no

[mdielmann]

None of that is to say that there is any sort of manufacturing oversight, claims testing (particularly in the diet and erectile dysfunction areas) or that a natural random soup of chemicals is somehow automatically safer than an intelligently purpose crafted solution.

Well, you'd think that, but there's one thing that biological processes are big on, and that is important in the realm of pharmaceuticals - handedness. Most chemical processes have no preference for handedness, but biologicals do. This is one of the aspects of invert sugar.
Many of the chemicals we use as drugs have side effects that are linked to the other-handed version of the active ingredient. If your process makes even amounts of the active ingredient and the one that causes side-effects, it may have no worth as a drug. If, on the other hand, you can get 90% of the resultant chemicals to be the correct hand, it may be very valuable. Sepracor made their money doing just that.

Re:Not really, no

[Hognoxious]

Wort becomes beer. You can't reuse it any more than you can reuse eggs to make multiple omelets.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

The thing is, most of these genetic causes for high cholesterol are due to diet.

That's not really the segment of the population I'm thinking about. I meant people with inherited hypercholesterolemia. These people are always going to produce more cholesterol than they need (as I'm reading it, anyway). Of course, such a person shouldn't make things worse by having a bad diet.

There's always disease and there will always be a reason for research medicine and doctors because of this, but until insurance companies start paying for nutritionists we're stuck in a bit of a rut.

I think we agree on this point. I just wanted to make it clearer that diet isn't always the ultimate solution to the problem.

Re:Not really, no

[Hognoxious]

The bottom line is, if a health benefit is claimed, the FDA classifies it as a drug and regulates it.

Last time I looked, lemons prevent scurvy. Are you telling me vegetables are regulated by the FDA?

Re:Not really, no

[hal2814]

Acetobacter isn't a pathogen. I specifically used the word pathogen for a reason.

Re:Not really, no

[tverbeek]

Which isn't what you said. Thanks for "admitting" your mistake and correcting yourself.

Re:Not really, no

[Spykk]

Also, I don't believe there are any known pathogens that can tolerate the ph levels found in beer. This gets mentioned a lot in homebrewing circles as there are several microbes that can infect your beer, but you can be relatively sure that none of them are dangerous.

Re:Not really, no

[Hognoxious]

Is there some sort of drug that can cure an outbreak of hyperhyphenitis? It's antibiotics - one word.

Re:Not really, no

[sjames]

It was fairly advanced empirical research, however. They apparently knew it wasn't just any beer, but beer with specific and known characteristics that they were able to recreate at will.

Further, they were able to do it all without a massive top-heavy insurance industry splitting the responsibility with an equally massive and top heavy regulatory agency. :-)

Re:Not really, no

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Well it's like cheese. What ends up on the bottom of the barrel can be re-used as yeast for the next batch, which is what most beers used to do before they could cultivate specific strains manually.

Some beers still do it this way.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

The bottom line is, if a health benefit is claimed, the FDA classifies it as a drug and regulates it.

Last time I looked, lemons prevent scurvy. Are you telling me vegetables are regulated by the FDA?

First, vegetables are regulated by the FDA. They're regulated as foods. They're not regulated as drugs because they're not drugs. They're foods that happen to contain beneficial chemicals. If you make claims about treating preventing, or curing any disease with a product, the FDA does consider that a drug.

Here you can see an example of a product for which specific claims were made to cure a disease:

Redco Foods: Salada Naturally Decaffeinated Green Tea (promoted for conditions that cause the product to be a drug; unapproved nutrient claim; unapproved health claim); [Emphasis added.]

Foods are not drugs, and if you make treatment claims on a food, it's going to be regulated as a drug (or you'd better remove the claim.

Now, you're free to say, in the abstract, "Lemons prevent scurvy", but if you try to sell lemons with that claim, the FDA will get involved.

Re:Not really, no

[sjames]

The FUD against and extreme claims for herbal medicine are all quite amazing. The FDA hates herbal medicine because it threatens their little power trip. Big pharma hates it because anyone can grow herbs. Meanwhile, way too many people somehow think herbal medicine can't possibly hurt you because it's natural.

The most interesting is the FUD over testing. Why in the world would I trust a few brief studies for a novel drug, all paid for by the psychopathic corporation that stands to make billions if the test results are favorable over hundreds of years of track record for an herbal remedy done by people who have little or no vested interest?

As for the fish oil, that situation is absolutely laughable. At least one of those very expensive prescription drugs actually *IS* fish oil. It's just the world's most expensive fish oil over processed so they can run it through the whole FDA process. The whole "it's safe and effective because it comes from big pharma with an FDA approval" is very nearly as far out there as "it can't hurt you because it's natural" but I see it several times a day on TV.

Re:Not really, no

[TheCarp]

I think you are missing part of the competition argument.

Once you sterilize a medium, there is no competition. That means anything that you toss in there (assuming the medium contains everything that it needs) can grow like gangbusters. Now... if you sterilize the wort and pitch yeast... you are putting WAY more yeast in, than anything else. The yeast takes over, and uses up all the sugar before anything else ever has a chance.

Sure bacteria can live with yeast, but, its like... bringing 1000 immigrants into a town of 2000 people vs a city of 1 million. In the first case, you are changing the town overnight. In the second case, it would be a shock if anyone noticed. So, the beer is pitched with a high concentration of yeast, in hope that any immigrant bacteria wont be able to take enough of a hold to change the culture (pun intended).

As the yeast starts growing and taking over within hours, it changes the environment quickly, making it hard for other organisms, especially ones not pitched at a rate of a million or so cells per gallon (I forget the actual rates, but I thought it was somewhere around there) just don't have a chance before the sugar is gone and oxygen replaced with CO2, Alcohol added etc.

Now all that said, don't hops have some antibiotic properties? Isn't it entirely possible that the antibiotics were an advantage because... the increased the success rate of beer making? With natural water being too dangerous to drink.... it seems like beer would be a precious resource, and anything that prevented grain from being wasted, was probably quite valued.

-Steve

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

It's actually exactly what I said, if you read the post, rather than extracting one line. Let me help you out:

The problem with all neutriceuticals is that there's a loophole in the law (at least in the U.S.) that allows them to bypass the FDA testing process. That's why with all of the TV ads, you'll see, "These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to cure, prevent, or treat any disease."

Now, anyone reading this with the intention of comprehending it would see that I was talking about health claims. Ingesting broken glass would have an impact on your health. Do you think I was saying that broken glass was regulated as a drug by the FDA?

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

Dietary supplements like Herbs are covered under the DSHEA and that changes the rules. Essentially the roles are reversed and the burden falls on the FDA to disprove any claims being made rather than the manufacturer to prove any claims.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/vitamin-supplements/fda-regulate-herbal-supplements2.htm

"Herbs' classification as dietary supplements comes from the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). The act essentially ties the regulatory hands of the FDA. Producers of pharmaceutical and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs alike must first demonstrate that their products are effective and safe. After an average of 8.5 years' worth of tests, conducted first in labs and then in clinical trials at universities, drug producers file an appeal for FDA approval. The FDA then reviews the claims and either approves the drug, classifying it as an OTC or prescription drug. If the FDA doesn't approve the drug, it cannot be sold in the United States. Only about 0.1 percent of the compounds first tested in labs ever receive FDA approval [source: FDA].

There is no similar process for herbs. Under the DSHEA, the burden of proof to demonstrate an herbal supplement or its ingredients are unsafe is transferred from the producer to the FDA [source: Doogan]. Essentially, anyone who can package, market and distribute supplements with herbal ingredients can do so with no oversight by the FDA. As such, herbal supplement manufacturers can make wide claims concerning the benefits their products provide people who pop them. Only after a drug has been proven an "unreasonable" health risk or "imminent hazard to public safety" can the FDA compile a complaint, file it and hope for the best [source: Doogan]."

http://www.fda.gov/food/dietarysupplements/consumerinformation/ucm110417.htm

"Unlike drug products that must be proven safe and effective for their intended use before marketing, there are no provisions in the law for FDA to "approve" dietary supplements for safety or effectiveness before they reach the consumer. Under DSHEA, once the product is marketed, FDA has the responsibility for showing that a dietary supplement is "unsafe," before it can take action to restrict the product's use or removal from the marketplace."

New dietary supplements still need a sign off from the FDA even if they have no burden to prove their claims. However, the GRAS or "generally recognized as safe" clause exempts supplements with a long history of safe use from even these requirements.

And yes, according to these rules whole marijuana clearly falls into the GRAS food additive category and should be completely unregulated by the FDA. It is improperly classified as schedule I by the FDA in contradiction to their own rules. Even so I believe there are other federal prohibiting marijuana and I know there are treaties we've agreed to requiring such laws.

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

From your source "This clause asserts and establishes the Constitution, the federal laws made in pursuance of the Constitution"

Congress can't just pass any old law they please. They have enumerated powers in the constitution and only a law consistent with those powers qualifies under the supremacy law. Falling afoul of federal law isn't enough, the act has to fall afoul of a federal law that is within congressional authority in the first place.

The constitution doesn't grant congress the authority to regulate intrastate commerce, that power is reserved to the states and the people, so any law they make in that regard isn't valid.

Re:Not really, no

[Schadrach]

"Beer made from grain grown in this place cures the sick, so let's give beer specifically from here to people who are sick!" is entirely plausible, even though the reasoning for why it helps the sick might be completely unrelated. It would show an understanding that this specific kind of beer contains something that fights disease, and a recognition of that.

You are right though -- a lot of current medicines are derived from analyzing traditional herbal remedies for things and figuring out A) if it really helped and B) what exactly in it caused it to help. That's not to say that some other herbal treatments aren't effective, just that they are either less effective than what we use currently or haven't been tested thoroughly enough. For example there are several herbs that can reduce swelling to various degrees, but most of them aren't as effective (if harsh on your system) as Lasix.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

The rules that you cite apply as long as the supplement in question doesn't make health claims. Yes, anyone can package herbs and sell them. The FDA would only come down on the herb manufacturer if claims are made to treat, prevent, or cure any disease. If you make specific health claims, you have to back them up. (e.g., recently, ginko manufacturers have come under scrutiny from the FDA for making Alzheimer's claims.)

Potency comes into play because a lot of these supplements (see the NY Times article I posted earlier) don't contain high enough concentrations of their active ingredients to have a therapeutic effect. If they did contain high enough levels of their active ingredients, they'd have to be classified as drugs.

Re:Not really, no

[sjames]

That's not the problem, it's a feature!

It's why people can actually afford them. Meanwhile, in spite of the expense of the FDA process and the very expensive market inefficiencies created by the patent system, you'd have to be hiding under a rock to not have heard about a few rather spectacular failures in the area of safety testing for FDA approval.

As for the efficacy studies, those are bunk. My new very expensive patented drug doesn't have to prove that it is in anmy way shape or form superior to the dirt cheap generic it purports to replace, it only has to prove that it's slightly more effective than a placebo. Even that is often done with deeply flawed studies. For example, SSRIs have side effects, so patients cannot be considered properly blind in studies unless the placebo has similar side effects. That was not considered in ANY of the SSRI studies.

The bottom line is this: If a substance is potent enough to have an effect on your health, it's a drug, and is subject to regulation by the FDA. At the very least, the fact that these neutriceuticals aren't subject to testing by the FDA means that, at best, you're taking a placebo (i.e., you'd be better off taking PEZ, since it's cheaper).

Unfortunatly, there are plenty of bogus claims by shadier neutriceutical companies, but it would be a mistake to believe that all such claims are shady.

The FDA has no jurisdiction due to a combination of grandfathering and herbs being legally classified as foods rather than drugs. The FDA's authority over foods is quite limited.

Consider, I can buy a foxglove at the Home Depot gardening center. The FDA has no say whatsoever over it. Foxglove is a source of digoxin which is still used in medicine today. In fact, it was isolated from the foxgove tea herbalists used to use to treat the very same conditions. Herbalists rarely use foxglove today since digitalis has a very narrow therapeutic index and so dosage needs to be tightly controlled. Any claim that foxglove is a placebo is patently false.

For a less extreme example, aspirin was originally isolated from the willow bark herbalists recommended for pain and fever. It appears to be the main (but not exclusive) source of willow bark's action. Certainly the processing and packaging result in something easier on the stomach and the synthetic form is cheaper now that all of the patents and even the trademark are long gone, but none of that means that the willow bark suddenly became a placebo (though it IS outside of the FDA's control). Attempts to improve upon the effect have lead to a few gains and some spectacular failures (all significantly more expensive, naturally). Vioxx for example, approved by the FDA but now withdrawn due to excessive deaths. There is some thought that other non-aspirin NSAIDs that have been long approved by the FDA and are even OTC now may also be a problem.

Re:Not really, no

[Error27]

These days most of Africa has pretty OK water. Governments and NGOs have put wells everywhere. I've drank water from hundreds of villages across southern Africa and I didn't get any sicker than when I only drank bottled water.

The locals are often paranoid about their water. They'll boil city water, or in Zambia they mix Klorin[tm] into it.

I drink filtered water at home because it's no work, but if I were visiting someone's house I'd be fine with drinking whatever water they drink.

Except if it comes from a river. Only drink well water or tap water. Never drink water from a river.

And the can't hurt you. Except for the raw beaf in Ethiopia. It's risky to eat raw beaf, but it's good to try new things. :)

Re:Not really, no

[sjames]

The pharmaceutical companies are still searching the herbal pharmacopoeia to this day. It took until the late '60s to "discover" taxol as a chemotherapy agent. It was derived from the yew tree. I put discover in quotes because that was long after yew tea was used to treat "growths" amongst other things (including suicide). The modern "innovation" was figuring out how to make you hand over your life savings to get the treatment.

It's a good point that some people look down on herbal medicine for not isolating the active ingredient (beyond making a tea or a simple reduction that is). I have to wonder though, in some cases if the isolation is more by modern custom than any sort of practicality. In the many cases where there is a wide therapeutic index, the dose control is not much of an issue and teas are certainly not less pleasant than swallowing pills. The one thing it does for certain is pat people on the head and tell them this medicine stuff is all complicated and sciency and so it's better to just pay whatever the company demands and swallow the pill. In other cases, the dose control and better knowledge of effective and maximum doses is quite valuable, but it's simply a linear improvement to an old remedy rather than a breathtaking modern discovery (though the press releases would have us believe otherwise).

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

I'm not saying they can regulate intrastate commerce. I'm saying they can regulate marijuana in ways that have nothing to do with intrastate commerce. If they regulate whether or not you can possess a substance, whether or not you can sell it is a moot point.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

Meanwhile, in spite of the expense of the FDA process and the very expensive market inefficiencies created by the patent system, you'd have to be hiding under a rock to not have heard about a few rather spectacular failures in the area of safety testing for FDA approval.

Absolutely true, but you have to take into account the situation that the FDA was trying to address with the rules. Time was, a person/company could sell anything in a bottle/box, and claim it had medicinal benefits, with no proof at all. While there are certainly some instances where things get past the FDA without problems being found, you basically have the inverse of the old situation, where most "treatments" either did nothing, or caused harm.

It should also be said that the Vioxx situation didn't come about because of a lack of or ineffective testing. It came about because (to the best of my recollection) Merck knew that doing certain tests would raise flags, so they simply avoided those tests. (If I remember right, they didn't do tests against people w/ heart conditions.)

While foxglove and willow's bark are the sources of digoxin and aspirin, respectively, that has little bearing on whether or not they'd be classified as drugs (and therefore regulated as such) by the FDA. What triggers the regulation is selling them for their therapeutic effects. If you simply sell them as plants, it's not an issue. But put them in a bottle and make medicinal claims about them, and that triggers regulation, because you're selling them as if they were drugs. And the whole reason the neutriceutical companies have to run the disclaimer about not treating, preventing, or curing any disease is that they haven't gone through the clinical testing they'd need to go through to be sold legitimately as drugs.

Also, keep in mind: There's a difference between willow bark and aspirin. Aspirin is refined to include willow bark's active ingredient in sufficient potency to be medicinally beneficial. When you buy a neutriceutical, there's no guarantee that you're getting a medicinally valuable dose at all. That's why I called neutriceuticals placebos: If they were potent enough to make legitimate health claims, they wouldn't be hiding behind disclaimers. They'd do the FDA clinical trials, and bring the substances to market as drugs (because you'd make a boatload more money that way). Nobody in their right minds would take a substance with a measurable therapeutic effect and not try to market it as a drug. The revenue difference is enormous.

Concerning efficacy: We can both agree that efficacy standards should be higher with drugs, but at least there are efficacy standards. With neutriceuticals, there are no standards of efficacy at all, so the only thing you're really buying when you buy one is the promise that it's just as good as doing nothing (i.e., a placebo).

Re:Not really, no

[darrylo]

As hal2814 said, he's talking about pathogens and not bacteria in general.

From what I understand, nothing bad (e.g., botulism) can grow in beer, due to the low pH (acidicity) caused by the addition of hops. Yes, bacteria and other yeast can grow in beer, but I haven't heard of any that can cause serious health issues. They'll often cause undesirable off-flavors, though. On the other hand, for some beer types, you want certain bacteria to grow (e.g., lactobacillus in the case of lambics).

However, there is a possibility where beer made from improperly stored/used/made canned (unfermented) wort may contain botulism toxin, and the brewing process may kill all of the botulism bacteria but not neutralize all of the toxin. For this case, there is an issue. Reference: http://www.byo.com/stories/recipes/article/indices/58-yeast/437-canning-yeast-starters

Also, see this thread, towards the bottom of the page: http://www.brew-monkey.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=862

Re:Not really, no

[Fjandr]

That's true, but the reasons that they use in most cases are bullshit*. In the case of marijuana, they claim that regulation occurs as a result of their power to tax things. Of course, using that same logic means that they can ban any product or activity at any time simply by taxing it and refusing to issue tax stamps. Technically (though when has Congress respected any boundary for long?), they have no legitimate authority to prevent the possession of anything unless it is related to one of the enumerated powers. If they can prohibit the possession of marijuana, they can prohibit the possession of paper goods, pens, pencils, clothing, water, oxygen, or food products. There is nothing in the Constitution that differentiates those things, which means if the Federal Government can prohibit one, it can prohibit any. There are very few exceptions to scope of the enumerated powers, and none that are specific in that regard.

The Supremacy Clause means laws passed within the scope of powers granted by the Constitution have supremacy over state laws that conflict with them. It does not, not, not mean that any law the Federal Government decides to pass automatically overrides everything else. It still has to be within their enumerated powers. You can't use the Supremacy Clause to justify a law, you have to use some other part of the Constitution. Once you've done that, then you can use the Supremacy Clause to prevent the states from overriding it. Otherwise, the jurisdiction is limited to Federal lands.

* Just look at the individual mandate in the national health care law. The proposed enumerated power authorizing that is the ability to regulate interstate commerce. If you enlarge the scope of the ICC to include indirect involvement, the ICC covers every situation conceivable. The Federal Government might as well have unlimited ability to regulate or mandate anything, at any time, to any degree without any limits. That's the logical extension of claiming indirect links are covered in enumerated powers. Why enumerate limits on governmental power if you really meant "there are actually no limits, just kidding?"

Re:Not really, no

[sjames]

You seem to be missing the point. Yes, the "supplements" avoid making medicinal claims to avoid the FDA red tape and massive expenses.

However, that's NOT because they don't have enough active ingredient to be effective. I have used willow bark quite effectively in place of aspirin. In fact, it is somewhat MORE effective due to the additional components, but it's also harder on the stomach for the same reason. The dose is certainly effective. However, when I use herbal medicine, I prefer to buy the loose herbs.

There are many good reasons for not going the FDA route. First, they may not have a big enough budget to get through the process. Next, even when they do, it's already a generic, FDA testing doesn't grant a patent. Third, they lose the market of people who choose the herbal route specifically BECAUSE the FDA doesn't like it.

As for Vioxx, there was a test that would have revealed the problem and it was not done. That necessarily means the lack of a test contributed to the problem. The FDA FAILED to understand the drug they were reviewing well enough to realize the test was needed. That is, their review was ineffective. As a result of the FDA's failure and Merck's fraud, people died. One must wonder why nobody at Merck was charged with negligent homicide at least. I can't imagine why we continue to allow a company that has proven it's willingness to kill people for the sake of profits to continue manufacturing drugs. If a doctor knowingly let patients die to make an extra buck, he would be drummed out of the profession and then tried and convicted.

It would be nice if herbals COULD make tested claims of efficacy. They no doubt WOULD if the FDA wouldn't crush them for it. There have been entirely independent tests of some herbal remedies with all necessary rigor but the vendors don't dare cite them. The FDA would land on them like a ton of bricks. That leaves the lesser claim that the product contains X amount of Y ingredient. It's up to the buyer to know how much is needed, when, and for what purpose either by finding those studies themselves or consulting a traditional source.

Currently the FDA does a sufficiently poor job at all of it's mandates that I prefer to consider established track record above any FDA approval for both safety and efficacy. To top it off, risk/benefit analysis isn't even on their radar apparently.

That's not to say that some sort of regulatory framework and agency isn't needed, it's just that we need one that actually does it's job and only it's job. Really, it should focus first on safety (and should be willing to accept hundreds of years track record in lieu of rigged testing). Where the risks are non-zero it needs at least enough efficacy data to justify that risk. That too can be through testing or track record. It must also recognize and accept that drugs that nobody can afford might as well not exist at all.

Re:Not really, no

[ardle]

“Streptomyces produce a golden colony of bacteria, and if it was floating on a batch of beer, it must have look pretty impressive to ancient people who revered gold,” Nelson theorizes.

Re:Not really, no

[Gaffod]

You drop a pathogen into a solution that's 2%-8% alcohol with a PH around 4-5 that's had most of its sugars and oxygen consumed and tell me how it does.

First off, many bacteria produce the ethanol themselves. For ethanol to be sterilizing, it must be 60-80%, at which point it chemically degrades cellular envelopes of cells.

Second, oxygen is a non-issue. Anaerobic respiration is the default, not exception with prokaryotes.

As for how the "pathogen" will fare, it will see the low pH and lack of abundant energy sources, and form an endospore. Once it is drank, the pathogens will happily resume their life cycle and multiply inside your body.

Re:Not really, no

[gstoddart]

"These people's remedy had anti-biotics so clearly they know about anti-biotics and did it on purpose!"

I doubt there was empirical testing going on here.

They may have not understood the specific science behind it (at least in terms of how we think of it), but I suspect they had more insight into it than you think. By the time a civilization has been around long enough to be building pyramids, using agriculture, apparently doing astronomy ... they've been around quite a while. We're not talking cavemen here.

While they might not have been as sophisticated as we are now, and while some of their science may have been a little dodgy in that superstition came into play (or just an incomplete picture), they'd developed the ability to do some fairly complex observations about the world around them.

Why do people assume that a people who were as sophisticated as the Egyptians or the Greeks were total morons? Ancient people may not have had computers ... but they had sophisticated building, astronomy, music, culture, food, art, and damned near everything else. Things we think are "modern" in some cases were invented 5000 years ago (like plumbing).

Discovering antibiotic benefits to your beer hardly seems a stretch. Statistically, ancient medicine had to produce some winners; this one was a fairly likely one given the nature of beer making and how long people have been doing it.

Re:Not really, no

[quenda]

If you've ever been to Africa, you'll know this. The reason you drink only beer, no matter your objections and thoughts on the matter is that you're relatively sure it won't infect you with an illness.

And the local home-made liquor will send you blind!

Re:Not really, no

[fizzding]

The grains used to make the wort can be reused though. It is called party-gyle brewing. Your first run will be much stronger, and each subsequent batch will get weaker.

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

What you seem to not understand is that by default congress CANNOT regulate anything. They have very specific areas they are allowed to regulate. All other areas are reserved to the states and the people.

Almost all of federal law is derived from a very liberal reading of the commerce clause of the constitution. For instance, the entire authority to create an FDA and regulate drugs (like asprin and marijuana) is taken from a twisted reading of the commerce clause. The commerce clause only grants congress permission to regulate interstate commerce (which is considered to include more than actual for profit activities since had a broader meaning when the clause was written).

Congress claims it has the right to regulate the production of marijuana because you COULD transport it interstate even if it is only legal intrastate.

Re:Not really, no

[plumby]

Do you class things like selectively publishing only the studies that support your claims and brushing the rest under the carpet as simply not "dotting the i's and crossing the t's"? Do you have links to any of his legitimate critics? I'd be interested to see what they are complaining about.

As it stands now, there's probably as many "valid" ways of showing that fish oil has benefits as there are to show ways that fish oil doesn't

Most "effective" treatments don't suffer from this issue. If you do enough properly run trials on something that has an effect, the number of trials supporting the claim will start to outweigh the ones that don't. There's not a great deal of legitimate studies showing that aspirin isn't effective for example.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

What you seem to not understand is that by default congress CANNOT regulate anything. They have very specific areas they are allowed to regulate.

In regards to marijuana, the Supreme Court has upheld the federal drug laws -- including those regarding marijuana.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

Certainly, any law Congress passes has to be within their constitutional power to pass. The Supreme Court has found the drug laws constitutional, though.

Re:Not really, no

[hitmark]

Nope, i think a wine brewer would consider you a barbarian if you as much as suggested it.

Re:Not really, no

[hitmark]

I guess it's also a chance that any bacteria that survives the beer process would be so weakened that their introduction to the human body (via the stomach no less, not exactly a friendly environment to bacteria) would result in something closer to a inoculation then a infection.

Re:Not really, no

[Fjandr]

Quite true. The Supreme Court has done a lot of stupid things over the years that don't actually follow logically.

Re:Not really, no

[Ol Olsoc]

What kind of herb is fish-oil?

But you are correct about the herbal meds. For instance, In some countries, St. John's Wort is prescribed for depression. Here in the US, pharma meds hold sway. Yet in tests, SJW has proven as effective, and it lacks the side effects of making you suicidal. It can make you sensitive to sun, I've heard.

Lessee, wear a hat? or kill myself. Tough choice, eh?

There are other herbal remedies that are bogus, but people on both sides tend to fixate on this cure good, that cure bad.

Re:Not really, no

[Ol Olsoc]

Have an effect? So Jalapenos are a drug? No question they have an immediate and a delayed effect.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

If you look back at what I actually wrote, rather than using just one sentence from it, you can clearly see I was talking about manufactured and marketed products, not plants you picked out of the ground.

Jalapenos are not drugs because they're not created. If you were to extract the active ingredient that give jalapenos their effect, that would be a drug.

Why is this difference so difficult for people to grasp?

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

Quite true. The Supreme Court has done a lot of stupid things over the years that don't actually follow logically.

Quite so. And perhaps someday, they'll reverse themselves on the drug laws. However, until then, the drug laws are constitutional. It's the Supreme Court that makes the final determination on that point. If they made a mistake, either a) they have to overturn the decision in another case, or b) Congress needs to enact legislation that specifically deals with the ruling in a constitutional way.

Re:Not really, no

[Hognoxious]

The same drug can also be used to treat the antisocial psychological disorder which causes a person to complain publicly about someone complaining publicly about someone using a single unnecessary piece of punctuation. See your doctor. Ask for STFU.

Re:Not really, no

[Ol Olsoc]

Because your differentiion is quite simply wrong!

A drug is a drug is a drug!

Weed is a drug whether you smoke the source or extract the active ingredient.

Let's try a few others on for size:

digitalis

Arnica Montana

Monkshood

Lithium salts

They're real, they have a definite effect. Some strange definition when the "non-drug" has the same effects as the drug.

The main reason that the digitalis is refined is for strength control, the natural product works the same, but being a plant, there can be variance in strength, not always a good thing for such a powerful drug.

Not sure why Arnica Montana isn't used more. We make our own, it works like muscle rub, and smells great - imagine fresh mown hay and a preserved flowers.

Monkshood is a pretty powerful topical analgesic. It was replaced by safer ones, a lot of them less powerful.

Or lithium salts. They are obviously a natural substance - its the reason that they can't be patented. What's more, they occur in nature. You won't see many commercials for them on TV. Not much money in that product. But try defining that as not a drug.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

Because your differentiion is quite simply wrong! A drug is a drug is a drug! Weed is a drug whether you smoke the source or extract the active ingredient.

Please learn to read before you respond. (This being /., I know that's a lot to ask, but at least give it a try.)

I was talking about something very specific in my post: The difference between a drug and a neutriceutical. Here's what the FDA says a drug is:

The FD&C Act defines drugs, in part, by their intended use, as "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" and "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals" [FD&C Act, sec. 201(g)(1)].

A marijuana plant doesn't have an intended use. A marijuana cigarette has an intended use. That's the difference.

Re:Not really, no

[Ol Olsoc]

Please learn to avoid being condescending.

I just changed my definition of drugs. Drungs are all green.

Now if I were you, I'd tell you to get a clue before replying to people who were actually intelligent.

But I won't. I'll just write you off as someone who cannot be wrong. Let me know how that' works out.

If you think that items that have been modified are the only drugs have at it. A person can take any of the non human produced things in order to diagnose, cure, Mitigate, or prevent disease, well then have at it.

Re:Not really, no

[bhartman34]

If I sounded condescending, it's only because this is a very basic concept, which anyone with actual pharmaceutical experience would not have to be told. None of this is very hard to understand, if you understand the industry and have been following the results of the investigations.

I'd be happy to admit I was wrong, but in this case, I'm not. (There are numerous threads on /. where I've admitted being wrong, in fact.) I just quoted you the definition of "drug" as used by the FDA, which is the only definition that matters (this being a discussion about drugs in the U.S.). You can define a drug as "a shiny metallic object" if you really want to, but that doesn't make it so. The definition of "drug", as used by the FDA, uses the word "intended". That's what distinguishes plants and neutriceuticals (which is where this all started) from drugs. If the substance is intended to have an effect, then it's a drug.

To put this simply:

Caffeine in coffee: Not a drug (because it's naturally occurring).
Caffeine pills: Drug (because the caffeine is manufactured in pill form).

See the difference?

Now, to be 100% consistent, marijuana plants shouldn't be illegal to grow, but that's a separate issue. All kinds of inconsistent laws exist on the books.

What is true is that neutriceuticals aren't necessarily just placebos. They certainly could have some effect, intended or unintended. But what you're buying hasn't gone through any of the testing that would tell you if it has an effect, and the ads have disclaimers to tell you they don't have the effect they're marketing is trying to imply.

Mmm ...

[thomst]

... beer!

Re:Mmm ...

[lennier1]

Beats the story about whisky made from a diabetic's urine.

Re:Mmm ...

[M8e]

Please mod this funny!

Re:Mmm ...

[pinkushun]

I'll drink to that.

Let's see

[Exitar]

1. A new analysis of millennia old mummy bones shows high concentrations of tetracycline.
2. The researchers traced the source of the antibiotics to the soil bacteria streptomyces present in the grain used to ferment the beer.
3. Even the tibia and skull belonging to a 4-year-old were full of tetracycline.

Why my conclusion isn't "the population regularly consumed tetracycline antibiotics knowing that it would cure certain sicknesses." but "the Nubian were a bunch of alcoholics, including the children"?

Re:Let's see

[RivenAleem]

Or, "expecting mothers drank copious amounts of beer during pregnancy, for it's 'antibiotic' properties"

Re:Let's see

[glebovitz]

Gosh, maybe if you did a little research you could find better interpretation of the facts. Tetracycline and penicillin are rapidly excreted by the body. This means that you must consume lots of the drugs to be effective. This actually confirms that the Nubians knew more about the process then one might think.

As a side note, we don't have this issue because the discovery of probenecid increased the time penicillin remained in the body making it much more effective.

Re:Let's see

[delinear]

Quite a lot of expectant mothers drink copious amounts of beer just prior to pregnancy, too.

Re:Let's see

[mar1boro]

This means that you must consume lots of the drugs to be effective. This actually confirms that the Nubians knew more about the process then one might think.

No. No it doesn't. No causality has been established. As of this moment, high levels of Tetracyclene mean one thing only: large quantities of Tetracyclene entered their bodies. That's it.

Re:Let's see

[Muad'Dave]

My guess would be that the leftover mash contained tetracycline and was eaten by the children.

Can anyone attest to the fact that the mash, after being relieved of its wort, would still contain tetracycline?

Today that sort of stuff is fed to livestock. Back then it was likely a good source of calories for humans.

Of course

[nicc777]

It's because of the irresponsible waste of antibiotics by Adama and Roslin that humans had to learn it all over again :-)

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[digitig]

2: Since the reason their beer had antibiotics was due to a lucky coincidence of having soil laced with the antibiotic, did they really know about antibiotics or did they just think they had "magic beer" that cured illnesses.

Perhaps you didn't understand the bit in the summary that referred to empirical knowledge and use of antibiotics?

Either that or

[salesgeek]

Ancient nubians used moldy grain when making beer.
(Yes, streptomyces is a bacteria, but colonies look like and are often confused with mold.)

Sometimes a duck is just a duck. Sometimes, a duck is a cornish game hen in an inflatable suit.

Re:Either that or

[teridon]

The full article notes that simple contamination wouldn't have generated enough tetracycline to match what they detected.

The extent of the [osteon] labeling suggests that the population received tetracycline during osteon mineralization, which occurs during periods of ~80 days. This finding contradicts the notion that the osteons were labeled by a one time event of bacterial contamination of grains or foodstuffs. [...]In contrast, surface inoculation of cracked and water-treated grains would produce tetracycline, but in low yields compared with liquid fermentation

So, the population must have cultured this brew to generate enough tetracycline. Whether it was deliberate (because they knew it had health benefits) or just a happy accident that they kept using the right culture is unanswered.

Re:Either that or

[foniksonik]

Question should be: "what other kinds of mold grow on the plants being fermented which were not selected for due to their dangerous effects?" such as the mold that has LSD in it.

There are many possible combinations that would not be good, so actively selecting one which is = cultivation of medicine, not randomness.

Re:Either that or

[JasterBobaMereel]

Making and drinking beer was extremely common in the ancient world - the Water was often full of parasites and disease and the process of turning water into beer killed most of them, this was "Small Beer" i.e. with a very low alcohol content, and everybody drank it rather than water ....

In the ancient near east they drank Honey Beer (Mead) which is also slightly anti-biotic .....

Re:Either that or

[darkstar949]

If the NAX population did produce gruels or beer fermentations using Actinomycete bacteria, they would also have needed to inoculate the media used with greater than 10% of an active culture or previous fermentation broth to achieve the growth needed to produce sufficient quantities of tetracycline in a liquid fermentation medium (McCormick et al., 1959). In contrast, surface inoculation of cracked and water-treated grains would produce tetracycline, but in low yields compared with liquid fermentation (Novotny and Herold, 1960).

If I am understanding the article correctly, it sounds like they are implying that either the Nubian population was using really moldy grain to brew their beer, or they might have stumbled upon something that made them want to use the moldy beer for some other reason. It could be something as simple as someone made a batch of beer with some moldy grain and found they liked the taste, to finding that someone got better after being given the beer which lead to them making it the standard brew. Hard to really speculate about something that far back, but based on the article it seems to me they knew what they were doing when they made the beer and had a reason for making it that way.

Re:Either that or

[Jeppe Salvesen]

The question is then if there is a higher dose of antibiotics in the remains of those who died from disease than those who died from accidents and violence. If there is a higher concentration of antibiotics in the remains of those who died from disease, then this suggests they knew about the healing properties of their beer. After all, the body is better at defeating infections when sober than when you're hammered so not drinking beer while being ill would be a better choice had they not known of the medicinal properties of the beer.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[DarkKnightRadick]

What surprises is me is the complete elitism of knowledge that shows its ugly head when an article like this pops up. "Oh they didn't have modern science so they must have been complete n00bs and were just drinking 'magic beer' that sometimes helped." This is completely regardless of the fact that this is already centuries after Plato and Hippocrates or any other ancient looks into philosophy and medicine.

Could it possibly be, as you and the article suggest, that they had empirical knowledge of what they were doing? God forbid if that were true! /sarcasm

to try and cure him

[BobZee1]

to try and cure him... to try to cure him.... which sounds better to you?

Re:to try and cure him

[Anonymous Coward]

to try and cure him... to try to cure him.... which sounds better to you?

The latter... if you're Hannibal Lector.

Re:to try and cure him

[noidentity]

to try and cure him... to try to cure him.... which sounds better to you?

I prefer "to try or cure him".

What...

[ZDRuX]

Even the tibia and skull belonging to a 4-year-old were full of tetracycline, suggesting that they were giving high doses to the child to try and cure him of illness.

And why wouldn't they give this "cure" to a child? Did they have clinical trials that showed liver damage with extensive use of alcohol? And it's not like their younger population got drunk and got into bar fights.

That's like finding out ancient tribes used to smoke marihuana or consume magic mushrooms and saying "Oh gosh! How could they do this, didn't they know Liberals in the future will outlaw fun and make it it illegal?!"

Re:What...

[fey000]

The average life expectancy we have today is significantly higher than it was back then. As such, it may well be that these Nubians never even experienced the consequences of liver damage outside a few extreme cases.

Re:What...

[locallyunscene]

Yes, because Liberals are the big supporters of The War on Drugs. Oh wait no, that's religious conservatives. It may have been expanded by FDR(Who was more of a Statist than a Liberal, desperate times I suppose.), but it existed before then, and has certainly the pet project of many conservative.Presidents and policy makers since.

Re:What...

[JasterBobaMereel]

The beer most people drank had a very low alcohol content, and getting drunk in public was frowned upon even then ....

Re:What...

[nhaehnle]

Greetings from Europe. Your congress is neither moderate nor left-wing. It is also not socially liberal, which would be the more precise term for what you want to say.
To substantiate, I recommend you take a look at politicalcompass.org to learn about the political coordinate system in a more objective light.

Re:What...

[locallyunscene]

Progressive or Liberal, pick one. If you think they are the same then you've been drinking too much Kool-Aid lately.

I'd agree that most of Congress and the Executive Branch is Progressive, but it's more like 99% for the past 20 years rather than 60% right now. Between the war on drugs, the FCC, banning of gay marriage, immigration control policies and much more Ron Paul is one the few that can claim to not have supported Progressive policies even when they happen to be along party lines.

I doubt you will take notice of this anyway given your last statement is classic party line double think. The war on drugs is bad and is all the liberal's fault, but we need a strong conservative gov't to control the immigrants and drugs that are coming into the country.

Re:What...

[operagost]

I know about that system. Thanks for totally missing my point, and having a contemptuous air while you did it.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[gtall]

"must have been complete n00bs", well....they were called Nubians.

Confusion

[Joebert]

I think it's more likely that these people just ate a lot of dirt with the stuff in it.

This isn't surprising

[geogob]

There are a lot of ancient evidence of indirect antibiotic use, usually through moulds grown on specific substrates (e.g. specific type of bread). The ancient use of penicillin is another good example of this. Of course, they didn't known what compound was responsible for this, but they nevertheless found efficient way to produce it and found out when it was good to used it to cure specific illnesses.

What's particularly interesting about TFA, is that this research seems to suggest that the use of antibiotics was very common and systematic.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[c0lo]

3: Maybe they just really liked their beer which is why so many of them drank it.

Yeap, and they used to feed their kids heaps of beer on regular basis (??!).Or maybe they weren't their kids after all? (hint: search for "nubians" on the page and read around a bit).

My point is: generating hypotheses (and verifying them) is quite risky when the cultural/ethical/time distances are huge.

BTW: does anyone know how stable the tetracyclines are in hydrofluoric acid?

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[DarkKnightRadick]

Yeah, I wanted to make that joke too, but I'm too fed up by the cultural elitism (and no, I'm not new to /.)

So where are they now?

[Skapare]

I don't see any around. Did it kill them off?

Why is this surprising anyone?

[tpstigers]

Why do modern people think everyone in the past was stupid? Is it really so much of a stretch to believe that ancient people were capable of figuring out that consuming certain substances helped cure certain ailments? They managed to figure out monumental architecture - is it so hard to believe that they could do the math and realize that drinking beer helped them feel better under certain circumstances? The fact that ancient people didn't have access to the internet doesn't mean they were idiots.

Re:Why is this surprising anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why do modern people think everyone in the past was stupid?

Maybe they are just assuming they were just like us.

Re:Why is this surprising anyone?

[dkleinsc]

Making beer - so easy a caveman can do it!

But beer was actually one of the earliest inventions of civilized humans, because it allowed them to drink liquids without having to worry much about waterborne diseases such as dysentery and cholera, and acted as a fantastic way of storing the food energy of grains. Basically, if a culture grew grains, they made alcohol with it.

Re:Why is this surprising anyone?

[OwMyBrain]

The fact that ancient people didn't have access to the internet doesn't mean they were idiots.

One might even argue that made them smarter.

Re:Why is this surprising anyone?

[Archangel Michael]

Progressives. They are the "enlightened class", and everyone else is stupid. It is even in that particular title, they've "progressed" beyond everyone else.

Re:Why is this surprising anyone?

[sysrammer]

I recently heard a theory that humans settled down to farming...to produce the wherewithal for making beer/wine/mead.

Also, basic arithmetic & writing was produced so the pharaohs knew how much grain was needed to make beer for the pyramid workers.

sr

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[marcello_dl]

In fact Science is a protocol to make the most out of observations, but empirical knowledge is the superset of experimental knowledge. Science supersedes it but empirical knowledge works for humans and animals since the dawn of time.

Besides, Science is about experimentation, publication, replication and validation of result, theories forming or being demolished because of such results.

But now?

We have NDAs, patents, trade secrets, corporate manipulation of the media,this is not the scientific process, this is a religion in disguise. "Believe our results".

To the guy dissing herbs, the origin of the medicament is irrelevant all it matters is its efficiency. If penicillin can cure and amanita muscaria can kill, natural stuff can have dramatic effects on health, obviously.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[glebovitz]

I wanted to make this joke too, but I was totally absorbed with drinking anti-biotic laced beer. Who'da thunk.

Bacterial drug resistance

[skeffstone]

Question: Is resistance to antibiotics energy-unfavourable for bacteria? Meaning, if antibiotics are not abundantly present to guide bacterial evolution, will bacterial strains revert to a 'simpler structure' and become susceptible to antibiotics again?

Re:Bacterial drug resistance

[dargaud]

Question: Is resistance to antibiotics energy-unfavourable for bacteria? Meaning, if antibiotics are not abundantly present to guide bacterial evolution, will bacterial strains revert to a 'simpler structure' and become susceptible to antibiotics again?

Yes. But it takes a long time. I know, citation needed, blah, blah...

Re:Bacterial drug resistance

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Most forms of anti-biotic resistance impose a cost (less efficient reproduction, use of resources to produce outer coatings that prevent contact with the anti-biotics, etc.). If anti-biotics stop being available for a long time, non-resistant forms that don't pay that cost eventually win out. How long that takes is open to question though.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[glebovitz]

Wasn't the discover of penicillin similar to this empirical discovery? Someone (Fleming) accidentally noticed that bacteria didn't grow around penicillin mold decided that this could work inside the body. As the time penicillin was discovered, we had little knowledge of how it actually worked.

The difference between the Nubians and modern researchers is peer review. Fleming originally thought that penicillin was not useful to treat illness because it was quickly secreted by the body and thus reducing its effectiveness. Based on his published work, other scientists were able to advance the science and increase its effectiveness as a treatment.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[delinear]

You're missing the guy's point. He wasn't saying that people didn't sometimes (or even often) nail it, he was saying that for every piece of evidence of someone using a natural remedy which science today validates, there is an ocean of examples of people using remedies that either did nothing or were counter-productive, even fatal (I mean it's practically yesterday in historical terms since the definitive treatment for most ailments was a good bleeding, and less than a hundred years since we thought it was a good idea to add radium to toothpaste). We only ever hear about the ones that were correct, which might give the impression that there's some vast untapped well of ancient knowledge instead of a hodgepodge of trial and error and superstition.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[JasterBobaMereel]

Science - If you do this it does this, Because....

Empirical - If you do this it does that, it doesn't matter why

Chewing willow bark can ease toothache, but most of the Willow bark is unnecessary it's just the salicylic acid that does the job ...

Antibiotics intended?

[fitzpatri8]

Was this just an unintended side-effect of making their water fit to drink, or did they recognize the benefit of antibiotics and intentionally grow bacteria? If the latter, did they perform double-blind tests to confirm medicinal effect or did beer drinkers simply live longer and therefore had more opportunity to procreate? Without clear documentation, we can only make semi-educated guesses about what they accomplished. There's a lesson here. Some day, after a stray meteor takes out humanity on earth, a curious alien race drawn by our projected radio signals is going to visit to assess our accomplishments. The stuff that is documented and committed to media that can withstand heavy impact and vibration and doesn't need electricity, that will go down in their History of Earthlings. But all the online content, the Internet-based research and collaboration? That'll just be material for aliens to argue about on their version of /.

Damn Fools

[OldHawk777]

They did not consume high concentrations of tetracycline.

They knew beer was good and healthy for people, and consumed very high concentrations of beer!

Bless the Gods Byggver and Silenus for BEER!

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[orateam]

New use for the word.. n00bians

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[jedidiah]

> Yeah, I wanted to make that joke too, but I'm too fed up by the cultural elitism

It is not elitism to fail to presume that Nubians had a contemporary notion of germ theory or chemistry or any notion of what an anti-biotic is.

Favoring the simplest explanation that requires the fewest overly-optimistic assumptions is also not "elitism".

Given how ancient societies actually ate and drank, there's a good chance that there as no observable effects of their behavior. It was simply too pervasive for many of the reasons already stated. There simply would not be a pattern to notice.

Beer and Pizza goes way back. The guys that built the pyramids lived on beer and pizza.

And That's Not All!

[DynaSoar]

The presence of Carbon 14 in their bones is PROOF! PerOOF I tell you! that they had empirical knowledge of radionuclide dating techniques, and consumed precisely enough of the stuff to tell us just exactly how long ago they lived. But how did they know how far in the future it would be when we got their bones and dated them? Because they had the same empirical knowledge of the same psychic pills being taken by the researchers who could read their dead minds to learn that they had empirical knowledge of antibiotics when the evidence only indicates they absorbed endemic soil bacteria whether or not it might have come along with something that they ate which grew in the soil.

1. Dirt (dirty dirt!)
2. Beer (dirty beer!)
3. ...
4. SCIENCE!

I say they got it mixed up. The bones were buried in the soil with the bugs in it. The researchers were the ones with the beer. I have empirical proof: This is my empire and I say that it's so.

Re:And That's Not All!

[JSBiff]

It's not a huge leap to suggest that, even though the Nubians might not have developed medical science as we know it, they might have made a connection between drinking the beer and curing certain types of illnesses. Hence the term *empirical* - knowledge gained through experience and practical demonstration that it's true, even without knowing *why* it's true at a theoretical level.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[jedidiah]

> for every piece of evidence of someone using a natural remedy which
> science today validates, there is an ocean of examples of people
> using remedies that either did nothing or were counter-productive,
> even fatal

The same goes for FDA approved pharmaceuticals.

Caveat Emptor applies no less for the "more sophisticated" stuff.

It's all ultimately snake oil because regardless of what they are
trying to sell you, they are all snake oil salesmen and act in
exactly the same way. They will subvert science or politics to make
a buck if they need to.

So don't put blind faith the snake oil salesmen from MegaCorps.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[silentcoder]

>Someone (Fleming) accidentally noticed that bacteria didn't grow around penicillin mold decided that this could work inside the body. As the time penicillin was discovered, we had little knowledge of how it actually worked.

No. This is bullshit. Fleming was a scientist who was studying bread-mould (as a fungus) to learn more about it. Among other things he did was to try and determine what sort of defense mechanisms it has (after all the defense mechanisms an organism evolves give good insights into it's history, what kind of predators it has etc.)
Fleming was well aware that fungus and bacteria are natural enemies so he introduced various bacteria to the fungus and studied the results UNDER A MICROSCOPE to see how the fungus would try and defend itself. He learned that upon being attacked by bacteria the fungus excreted a chemical that very effectively killed of the attacking bacteria.
This chemical is what we call pennicilin. It's discovery wasn't through medical testing directly but through biological research - but it WAS real scientific research. Fleming then proposed to others that the substance the fungus excreted could perhaps be useful for fighting bacteria attacking humans - and working with real doctors developed penicilin into a drug.

So while the active ingredient wasn't discovered by a pharmacologist the actual discovery was a result of real scientific research, of genuine study of the world. It was not some ... silly accident like you describe.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[radtea]

Could it possibly be, as you and the article suggest, that they had empirical knowledge of what they were doing?

They probably had emprical knowledge, given the high doses of tetracycline found in the bones, but empirical knowledge of what? They certainly didn't have "empirical knowledge of anti-biotics" because they had no concept of "anti-biotics", nor any of the foundational concepts it depends on, like the germ theory of disease.

Curiously, the Wisdom of the Old supposedly includes knowledge of life after death, mysterious "energies" that flow through the body (chi and all that) and so on, but somehow missed the relatively mundane fact that there are tiny creatures that live in water and wet environments that cause a wide range of diseases.

The difference between scientific empiricism and everything that came before it is that scientific empiricism is relentless in both its reductionistic and synthetic intent: scientists try to break things down into atomic causes and to find links between disparate things (the tides, falling bodies, the motion of the wandering stars...)

There is no evidence that anyone in the ancient world practised anything like this in a remotely systematic way, which is no fault of theirs because this attitude of mind is really really hard to learn and incredibly difficult to sustain, so difficult that most people in the modern world are incapable of learning it and many who do learn it fail to apply it the moment their favourite article of personal faith--be it political, religious, or techincail--comes up for questioning.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[radtea]

Wasn't the discover of penicillin similar to this empirical discovery?

It was "similar" in the sense that "human beings observed a pattern. Otherwise it was completely different both because of context and response.

Contextually, Flemming was working in an environment where he had a large body of well-established empirical fact to work within, notably the germ theory of disease, which had only been fully established for about thirty years when he made his discovery.

In terms of response, Flemming published his work and gained enough attention that others started thinking hard about how his discovery might be put to use. Apparently he wasn't the first to notice that fungus killed bacteria on agar plates, but he was the first to realize the implication in terms of the molecular basis of life, another very new idea in his time.

So no, the difference between Flemming and the Nubians is not peer review, it is science, which is the public testing of ideas by systematic observation and controlled experiment. The "public" aspect is important--if the work is not published it may as well not exist--but it is far less important than the "systematic" and "controlled" aspects, which are the major differences between what science does and what all pre-scientific cultures did.

I bet its better tasting

[mattwrock]

than the current stable of American light beers! It gives you a buzz and you will only get sick if you drink too much!

All beer is antibiotic...

[Beorytis]

No joke. If the yeast didn't have the ability to kill bacteria (just as other fungi like Penicillium do), it would lose out to the bacteria and fermentation would end with malt vinegar instead. Once people in central Europe got into brewing, they demonstrated empirical knowledge and use of of preservatives: The hops!

Re:All beer is antibiotic...

[gurps_npc]

Yes. But yeast don't use penicllin. The antibiotic yeast use to kill bacteria is called ...ALCOHOL. Hence the alochol gels used in purell, etc. Alcohol is a deadly poison. Drink a gallon of it in 20 seconds and find out for youself. But unlike most antibiotics, our livers remove it from the bloodstream before it reaches concentrations capable of killinng bacteria in our body.

Re:All beer is antibiotic...

[RockDoctor]

Once people in central Europe got into brewing, they demonstrated empirical knowledge and use of of preservatives: The hops!

People in central Europe (and outside) were preserving the calorie content of grains by brewing them into beers (and incidentally producing safe fluids for drinking) for millennia before the use of hops was known, or they were widely grown as a crop.

The anti-biotic (i.e. killer of all life forms) in beers, wines and spirits is ethanol.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[Creepy]

I recall reading that Egyptian mummies were found with traces of moldy bread on wounds, so they probably did have a knowledge of antibiotics in Africa. Many (like Ramses II) also had traces of cocaine and tobacco, indicating they likely had contact with the Americas - that or the formerly verdant parts of the Sahara were capable of growing coke and tobacco and eventually the plants died off there.

Western Europeans like to think they discovered numerous things like, say, the earth is round or that it revolves around the sun, but the Greeks (for one) knew that long before and those things had to be rediscovered, so there would be no surprise in my mind if this is yet another piece of lost knowledge.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[Local ID10T]

All this would mean is that they noticed they got better after drinking beer, which makes sense.

I certainly feel better after drinking beer...

Not eliteism - just being rational

[sarkeizen]

Probably not...and here's why.

It's not that they didn't have "modern science" - whatever that means. It's that there is no evidence of well controlled experimentation and statistical methods. Without those much of western medicine would be stuck in the stone age too. The only two compounds that I know of that showed empirical use in the history of Western medicine are Quinona bark as an anti-malarial and Salix for pain releif. However if you look at even the early accounts of Salix use you'll see that people like Rev. Stone who kept careful (but methodological retarded) records came to the conclusion that Salix could be used for Ague (fever) but if you do the math it's reasonable to believe that he never gave them a therapeutic dose for fever and his records don't really record much about pain (which is often tricky to measure anyway). That leaves us with Quinona which was fatal in about 20% of serious cases. That is - IMHO pretty close to the threshold that humans can detect without actually doing math.

Take a look at using ASA as intervention for preventing cardiac events - that had three or four small studies which all came up pretty inconclusive IIRC. It was only when *combining* the studies did we get a result that showed some effect.

This isn't cultural elitism just the acknowledgment that in order to use something intentionally you need large samples, good record keeping and at least some knowledge of probability.

Re:Not eliteism - just being rational

[DarkKnightRadick]

and none of which we have evidence for or against. It's almost 2,000 years ago. Paper doesn't last very long, even if kept in ideal conditions (look at the state of the Dead Sea Scrolls (just because it's a well known example of papyrus (I believe) scrolls from a very long time ago)).

Yes, there are no records so we shouldn't assume that there are any, but we also shouldn't assume they never existed. Or that they hadn't done a study.

I would imagine even back then, giving a kid beer wasn't a regular thing to do, given it's intoxicating effects and the dominant religions of the day view on alcohol (not assuming these Nubian's were one religion or another, just saying). I do know that beer is a good way to store the nutrients in the grain, but the alcoholic effects (intoxication) probably wouldn't have been seen as beneficial, especially to kids who were expected to work from a young age.

A question from the audience

[Tetsujin]

What's a Nubian?

Re:A question from the audience

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a Nubian?

Some sparse details on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_people

They still exist as a distinct culture in southern Egypt and Sudan. Nubian is also a term that is used to mean someone black in ancient times alluding to their standing as an advanced civilization in Africa.

A famous singer is Rasha, based in Spain. I think her music is awesome. http://www.afropop.org/explore/artist_info/ID/492/Rasha/

Re:A question from the audience

[RockDoctor]

A person from Nubia. Didn't you know that?

There's also the probability that many if not all "Nubians", including a number of Egyptian pharaohs, were dark-skinned to the point of being "black" by all modern meanings of the word.

"Nubia" is the Classical Egyptian (and hence, Classical Greek and Classical Roman) term for several not-very-well-defined kingdoms or regions further upstream on the Nile from Egypt. The area in question probably encompasses parts of modern Sudan and possibly as far upstream as Ethiopia.

Re:Fark filter

[The Archon V2.0]

Nubian please!

A side effect of which is that anyone used to reading Fark will unfilter this thread in their heads as they read it, making for the strangest article and comment thread on Slashdot ever.

giant smurfs

[cifey]

Nubians are like giant smurfs. Could the bones have gotten the tetracycline some other way? Maybe from the local soil, or teeth of azreal.

It wasn't necessarily knowledge of antibiotics...

[scourfish]

Maybe the ancient Nubians just knew how to party.

yes but

[fireylord]

is it keeping the bears away?

Re:yes but

[Gilmoure]

Actually, no. We've had a lot of bears coming down from the mountains. They had to trank and pick up 4 bears last weekend, all within 3 miles of our house. Now, they say it's because of poor food supplies up in the mountains but obviously, I put the rune on my amulet on backwards. D'oh!

So *that's* why...

[zooblethorpe]

So much for all that "reduce, reuse, recycle" business -- every time I've tried to make multiple omelets, reusing the same eggs, it never quite comes out right.

Cheers,

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[DarkKnightRadick]

And how long before "science" were people employing this remedy because it works?

Just because no one puts antibiotics in beer any more (or give beer to kids) doesn't invalidate what these people found to work. So because Nubians weren't Caucasians or Europeans their accidental discovery is somehow invalidated? Psht.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[DarkKnightRadick]

whether or not it was of antibiotics or whatever, if they found that moldy grain made beer that could help with disease, would that not be empirical knowledge?

No, the elitism is saying "this isn't evidence, the antibiotic was found in high concentrations in the soil around the bones" which isn't evidence in itself (have you never spilled your beverage) either.

India Pale Ale

[rHBa]

The British colonists in India used to drink IPA for the same reasons.

Problem : 4-year old kid wailing.

[RockDoctor]

Solution : get the 4-year old kid pissed into unconsciousness. No problem.

Yes - this is a joke, but not that far-fetched. Certainly, getting the complaining children pissed and/ or stoned is a tactic with a long history. Look at the ingredient list of things like "gripe water" : you'd have the same effect and a bigger bill from drinking raw gin. And no shortage of other past "soothing treatments" were laced with opioids, heroin, hypnotics and or hallucinogens.

But manufacturing beer is relatively expensive - in raw materials, in storage vessels, in time and effort. Getting wailing kids pissed isn't going to be an efficient use of these resources. Though getting an injured wailing kid pissed enough to splint a limb, or reduce a dislocation is more credible.

Hey, be nice! We are talking about SCIENCE

[VirtualJWN]

From the sarcastic comments here, it is a wonder any technology was developed by the human race! I think you guys are missing the point here. A good example of how this type a "herbal remedy" can develop into "real science" is demonstrated in James Burke's "Connections" series. In that program, he takes a modern invention (revealed in the final scene of the program) and traces "one" of the routes through history as discoveries of "tribal" and scientific lead the viewer through the series of seemingly unconnected discoveries that result in the final modern invention. The fact that that somebody did correlate the medicinal effects of the beer on curing illness, likely resulted form a shamanistic approach to healing the sick. It was through this type of cause and effect or deductive reasoning that most "pre scientific theory" discoveries were made. It doesn't matter if the practitioner understood "WHY" something worked in so much that they recognized that it "DID WORK". Do we REALLY understand DNA (or are we just using information gleaned from experiements to "poke around"? Science is a search for knowledge, so take this article as it was intended, an example of early cause and effect relationships between scientific discovery and common sense.