ABSTRACT
First, the good news: the quality of herbal information available online has improved considerably over the past few years and there are now many Web sites which provide good, reliable information on how to use herbal remedies. Now the bad news: you’re unlikely to find any of the best Web sites by simply typing search terms into an Internet search engine such as Google. Using an Internet search engine you’ll pull up thousands of Web sites, providing information of extremely variable quality, and if you look very closely at these sites you’ll notice that most of them are sponsored by herbal product manufacturers trying to convince you to buy their products-for which they often make extravagant and sometimes false claims! (Nowadays I only use a search engine when I want to find a Web site that I already know exists.)
It’s technically very easy and cheap to set up a Web site and this can be done by practically anyone with a computer, inexpensive software, and access to the Internet. Unlike the information you’ll find in medical journals, however, there is little regulation or standardization of Webbased information and its quality is often determined solely by the organizations and individuals who publish it. This is of particular concern
because misinformation or the incorrect use of medical information can be harmful. As the American public’s interest in herbs grows, so does the number of Web sites containing a large amount of dubious claims and misinformation.
