Wayne:

I seem to remember you are correct about the FDA being the agency involved in the approval process of the aloe product Baldy was trying to market. Eileen says the same and I think he really discussed it more with her than he did me. The thing he was most upset about was that they (FDA) wanted the marketer's in the approval process to prove that it would not harm humans. In other words, prove a negative. His thought about the approval process, at least the way we remember the discussions with him about that part of the story, were THEY should be showing him or anyone else trying to market something, that there was harm involved in it's use. If they could not, get out of the way. Doing it the other way round as they wanted was putting an undue hardship in the way of cost, time, etc., on someone trying to market something that there was no evidence of any kind to start with that the product had ever hurt anyone, especially one that was natural and had been used for centuries by many cultures and had obvious healing properties. Makes perfect sense to me, but what do I know?

Regards the DMSO;

When Eileen and I first got married in 1973, we rented a house from a farmer about 40 miles south of St. Louis. He was in his late 70's when we first met him, but like most folks as they get older, was bothered by arthritis, and other assorted aches and pains. Because of his farm animal experience, he was familiar with DMSO from vet use on his animals, and used it himself, on himself, by rubbing it into his skin around joints and other affected areas several times a week. He swore by it as a product/means to keep his joints flexible and allow him to do the work on the farm that had to be done. He finally passed away at around the age of 91, showing no ill effects from that type treatment for the 12 years we knew him. I do not recommend that anyone run right out and use this product for the reasons he did, but I think it does show that there is a lot of misinformation out there about various home remedy's, their effects both harmful and beneficial, along with many other present issues of the day that incomplete or misleading information is spread about.