Mechanism Unknown

Does anyone actually eat food anymore? I know, of course they do. But you could be forgiven for thinking that people are chucking food in favor of pills these days, what with all the advertisements for more and more prescription drugs.
Plenty of my colleagues have already posted and written about food as medicine, and that with a balanced diet, you don't need half the drugs out there, so aside from that sentence, I'm not going to address it. I would like to focus on the hypocrisy of the drug industry vis-a-vis those of us who prescribe herbs.
Tons of these medications are being marketed directly to patients despite the lack of hard evidence for why they work. Don't believe me? Try looking up some on the web, or wikipedia, and you'll often times find the phrase, "...mechanism of action unknown."
Perhaps the biggest class of drugs with unknown mechanism that has been marketed most fiercely is the antidepressants. Knowing people that are clinically depressed, I'm all for prescribing someone something that may possibly help. However, the propensity to prescribe these drugs to anyone at the drop of a hat or at the earliest signs of sadness is definitely overkill.
People should give good nutrition a chance first, then move on to stronger medicine as warranted. Just today, it was reported on CBS This Morning yet again that exercise is definitely good for your brain. From a Chinese medicine point of view, exercise moves the Liver Qi, helping to augment the Kidney Qi and thus benefitting the "Sea of Marrow" (a Chinese Med term for the brain).
So, the next time a doctor sneers at you for getting acupuncture (admittedly an occurrence happening with less and less frequency as more doctors embrace Chinese medicine), just ask him: If big pharma doesn't know how they're stuff works, why so hot and bothered about knowing how acu works?