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FDA Says Homeopathic Cure Can Cause Loss of Smell
Hugh Pickens writes "The FDA has advised consumers to stop using Matrixx Initiatives' Zicam Cold Remedy nasal gel marketed over-the-counter as a cold remedy because it is associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia) that may be long-lasting or permanent. The FDA says about 130 consumers have reported a loss of smell after using the homeopathic cure containing zinc, an ingredient scientists say may damage nerves in the nose needed for smell and health officials say they have asked Matrixx executives to turn over more than 800 consumer complaints concerning lost smell that the company has on file. 'Loss of the sense of smell is potentially life-threatening and may be permanent,' said Dr. Charles Lee. 'People without the sense of smell may not be able to detect life-dangerous situations, such as gas leaks or something burning in the house.' The FDA said the remedy was never formally approved because it is part of a small group of remedies known as homeopathic products that are not required to undergo federal review before launching. The global market for homeopathic drugs is about $200 million per year, according to the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists. Matrixx has settled hundreds of lawsuits connected with Zicam in recent years, but says it 'will seek a meeting with the FDA to vigorously defend its scientific data, developed during more than 10 years of experience with the products, demonstrating their safety.'"
Seriously, I get a cold, I can't smell anything either. So really, it seems I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.
if it actually does anything at all.
The zinc gluconate is toxic to many bacteria, as well the cells that detect smell in some people, it turns out. But Zicam is not a homeopathic remedy, and was never marketed as such.
Homoeopathic medication consists of almost only inactive ingredients. The so-called active ingredients are typically diluted beyond the point of having any real effect. In this case, that could be an excellent defense for Matrixx.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd23gBkhf9A
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
If I hadn't used so much Zicam Cold Remedy I would say this smells fishy.
my site of misleading and incorrect information!
It seems to be still on sale though:
http://www.google.com/products?q=zicam
Quick, buy it, pretend that you lost a sense of smell (let me see them prove otherwise) and then wait for a nice settlement check. Just kidding, that would be dishonest.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Since when did Slashdot become CNN's day after repeat? Must be a slow geek week as this isn't the first repeat
Zicam
This product needs to be removed from the market. I'd like to see stricter controls on things like this. Anything that attempts to cure or prevent disease needs to be evaluated and tested by the FDA. All supplements, vitamins, these cold prevention products should all have to shown to be safe and do what they claim BEFORE they can be sold.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
I would hate to lose the ability to smell my wife's panties.
No sense of sight: Blind :-)
No sense of hearing: Deaf
No sense of touch: Numb
No sense of direction: Lost
No sense of smell: ???
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"My dog has no nose."
"How does he smell?"
"Awful!"
This warning only applies to the version of Zicam that you stick in your nose. When I have a cold, I use the lozenges that dissolve in your mouth, and I swear they really do help control the symptoms of a cold.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
The odd bit of this story that no one really seems to be reporting is that this medicine, although sold under the "homeopathic" provisions of FDA regulations (and thereby bypassing the normal approval process), is not a homeopathic medicine as the term is usually used.
If you go read the wikipedia entry on Homeopathy, you can see that the way homeopathic medicines are made involves taking a substance and then repeatedly diluting it with water, alcohol or sugar. Most homeopathic medicines are diluted repeatedly until the level of dilution is such that statistically, there is unlikely to even be a single molecule of the original substance remaining. Homeopaths consider higher levels of dilution to be more powerful. They generally believe that the water "remembers" the shape of the original substance.
The Zicam nasal spray is only diluted 100:1 (2X or 1C on homeopathic scales), meaning that it is within the range of normal dilutions used in preparing drugs for delivery, not diluted to a level used in homeopathic remedies. It's being governed by rules meant to only cover placebos, but at that concentration, it's not a placebo. It's a real drug which can have real side effects. If the rules have allowed this drug to come to market legally then those rules have a huge loophole and need to be fixed ASAP. But no one seems to be noting that.
Lost your sense of smell have you?
Then of course you'd have no problem spending a few hours in a room full of skunks would you.
I kinda think they could devise some test to show that you were faking it.
Homeopathic quackery is infamous and justly ridiculed for the fact that its 'remedies' contain exactly no active ingredients and - unsurprisingly - also have exactly no biological effects. This zinc based stuff is obviously not homeopathic.
I read it as "a-nose-MIA". A nose, missing in action.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
just put some of that in the drinking water
I know someone who was suckered into taking a sip of ammonia when she was a little kid. 40 years later and she still doesn't have a sense of smell. They still sell ammonia, granted I'm talking apples and oranges (cleaning product vs something meant for use INSIDE the human body), but the ratio of puyers/drinkers of ammonia may only be slightly higher than the ratio of buyers of zicam/people who lost their smell. I use it to clean certain kinds of messes (i tend to clean with a chemist's mindset, if it reacts, it is no longer a mess, it is a salt), but on occasion, I lose the sense of smell and get a sore throat for a few hours. Though that tends to happen more so with bleach than ammonia.
Zicam is everywhere, even if there was a recall, you'd probably have 3-4 cold/flu seasons before you couldn't find it anymore.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
According to the warning letter the solution contains "an active ingredient measured in homeopathic strength--Zincum Gluconicum 2X".
2X equals to 1:100 solution - which may be quite a significant dosage of the "active ingredient", depending on its nature.
Incidentally, this is not the first time this particular maker of this particular homeopathic drug has been a cause of this particular health concern.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm trying to think of a downside to making all medications and supplements require FDA approval.
The downside is that the process produces both:
- long delays (during which people suffer and perhaps die) and:
- enormous costs (which keep some safe-and-effective drugs from reaching the market and raise the costs of medications which DO make it through the gauntlet - and must pay for both themselves and their share of the ones that fail).
When the legislation was first proposed it was estimated that if it added six months to the introduction of new medications it was a net loss. Now it takes years and tens of millions of dollars per new drug that starts testing.
One estimate of these costs - in a Wall Street Journal headline - is that the delay required for approving the use of Beta Blockers in the US to prevent secondary heart attacks (after they were approved for that in Europe) resulted in 100,000 deaths.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At least I won't have a stuffy, runny nose as a result of my cold!
I've lost my smell to nasal polyps and chronic sinusitis years ago, it's a little disappointing sometimes but sometimes it's nice not having to smell awful things.
I've heard that when you can't smell you can't taste, which is bullshit. I can't tell the difference between some things but I do very much have a vivid sense of taste still.
And you know that "You lose one sense you gain another" thing? It doesn't work with smell.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
husband: honey, i have a cure for those smelly farts i have
wife: thats nice dear, Beano?
husband: no, this is better just one sniff and your cured forever
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
For what it's worth...
While I haven't used Zycam, I have, a number of times over the last few years, used zinc gluconate tablets (dissolved in the mouth and gargled up toward the nose) to try to mitigate an oncoming cold.
And I have also noticed, over that period, a significant reduction in my sense of smell (which I hadn't connected with anything and assumed might just be due to age).
Needless to say I'll be skipping the zinc treatments in the future, at least until this is resolved.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Homeopathic remedies (which I prefer to call homeopathetic...), as others have stated, are diluted until there is a low to zero probability of them containing 1 molecule of substance.
This is stated to be a 1:100 dilution, which is 1% active ingredient: a significant concentration of a proven active (and detremental) ingredient.
There use of homeopathic labels (2X, which means 2 dilutions of 1: 10) was done simply to avoid FDA attention, and they are likely to get into deep trouble because of it.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2000;(2):CD001364.
Update in: Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006;(3):CD001364.
Zinc for the common cold. Marshall I.
National Center of Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 0200. marshali@health.qld.gov.au
OBJECTIVES: Interest in zinc as a treatment for the common cold has grown following the recent publication of several controlled trials. The objective of this review was to assess the effects of zinc lozenges for cold symptoms.
SEARCH STRATEGY: A search was made of the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, MEDLINE, EMBASE and reference lists of articles. Searches were run to the end of 1997.
SELECTION CRITERIA: Randomised double blind placebo-controlled trials of zinc for acute upper respiratory tract infection or cold.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed trial quality.
MAIN RESULTS: Seven trials involving 754 cases were included. With the exception of one study, the methodological quality was rated as medium to high. For most outcome measures different summary estimates were used across the studies to describe the duration, incidence and severity of respiratory symptoms. This limited the ability to pool results. Results from two trials (04 - Mossad; 08 - Smith) suggested zinc lozenges reduced the severity and duration of cold symptoms. However, there was significant potential for bias, and further research is required to substantiate these findings. Overall, the results suggest that treatment with zinc lozenges did not reduce the duration of cold symptoms.
REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS: Evidence of the effects of zinc lozenges for treating the common cold is inconclusive. Given the potential for treatment to produce side effects, the use of zinc lozenges to treat cold symptoms deserves further study.
(This meta-analysis was actually withdrawn, and I don't know why, maybe to evaluate more recent data.)
It's much safer to stick with homeoerotic cures instead.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
But this product has nothing to do with homeopathy. Homeopaths sell water. They don't do active ingredients.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yes, but ammonia isn't marketed as something you snort or drink. Zicam is indeed marketed as a nasal spray.
I don't know, but it works for me.
I'm trying to think of a downside to making all medications and supplements require FDA approval.
Where to begin?
If you can't imagine that freedom is a viable option, then have you considered the thousands of people who die every year waiting for the bureaucrats to allow them to use the medicine they need?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's funny that they can market zicam as being "homeopathic". It's a total mass produced, corporate, industrially made drug and probably not good to snort up your nose. Most likely it has damaging effects to the olfactory nerves. -Ravi http://www.ravijaya.com/
Or you know, people can and do die because a cure can't be tested fast enough to be 100% certain that it works, however if it cures one life, its worth it. I mean, if someone was dying of cancer and had only a year to live, took a drug, it worked temporarily and they die 10 years later because of something the drug did, thats still better (no one can live forever). Plus, just look at the "miracle berry" case, where the FDA was essentially bought by the sugar industry that prevented a potentially useful item to market.
A free market regulates itself if it is free enough.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Life is full of wonderful smells...
Don't these guys know ANYTHING about homeopathic medicines?
Clearly not - they must be homeophobes.
The same people who are screaming that we need the FDA to regulate this kind of thing are the same ones who doubtlessly bitch about big pharma this and big pharma that.
What's so odd, you may ask? Obviously these guys don't know the industry as the FDA is the big brother that keeps big pharma in line.
If you think the pharmaceutical industry is out of hand now wait until you give the FDA power over supplements and herbals. It'll be a fucking slaughter by the largest of pharmaceutical producers with the FDA kicking anyone back in play who doesn't have the money to buy their way into legitimacy. No one with less than a few billion on their side will ever get anything to market without the blessings of the FDA.
Think it's a joke? Than please shut the fuck up until you learn how the industry works and how the FDA makes it near impossible to get even the least effective drugs to market without putting more money into their pockets than all the Wall Street bonuses over the last decade.
Next on the FDA's agenda: control all homeopathics. I guarantee you.
Health Freedom is almost as popular as Freedom itself.
Maybe they can sell Zicam to people who work around hog waste lagoons or people who pump out septic tanks.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Diluting the problem in the solution!
The guy that thought of that was a genious.
He just had one drop of genious though, diluted in a sea of being a complete dumb-shit.
That's quite anecdotal. Different people react to different medicines differently.
I know some people find relief from extreme pain only with the use of Dilaudid or similar.
I think it's a matter of finding where you can maximize the saving of lives. Either extreme would result in more people dying than somewhere in the middle. Absolutely no restriction would result in dangerous drugs being released to he public, or more likely, drugs that simply do nothing at all. At the other extreme, full government control will be too costly and take too long and people will die waiting for drugs that we know work to get approved. Arguing that we need no regulation makes as little sense as arguing that the government should run the entire thing top to bottom. Both notions are absurd.
Now, where in the middle is the life saving power of medicine maximized? I do not know the answer to that.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Usually my sense of smell does but one thing: annoy me.
I highly doubt that. You just don't realize what your sense of smell is doing for you. For example, about 70% of what you think of as "taste" when you are eating food comes from your sense of smell. Without a sense of smell, your food will taste rather bland and you probably wouldn't be able to appreciate the more subtle flavors (and definitely the aromas) of various foods. Try it yourself. Next time you are stuffed up with a cold, try eating one of your favorite foods and see if it is still as full of flavor as you remember.
While humans don't use pheromones as actively as other animals, the sense of smell still plays a big part in arousal (and in stopping arousal, to be fair). Good smells make sex better. You do want to have better sex, don't you? (insert the "oh wait, this is slashdot" quips here).
And finally, all those things that annoy you about sense of smell are probably also helping to save your life. It lets you know that something is wrong (bad air, bad food, bad place, etc).
So, for a person's overall quality of life, I'd say that the loss of the sense of smell is a pretty big deal. It is not one of the senses I would want to lose. I'd rather lose my ability to hear.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I've met some people are fans of homeopathic remedies. Losing ones sense of smell could be a good thing.
Have gnu, will travel.
...it isn't homeopathic.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Yes, but not as funny as rhinoplasty.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
That's easy: they just need to put some fermented dog poo under your nose while you don't expect it and watch your reaction :)
Just to clarify, it's actually a nasal swab. You basically jam a slimy q-tip up your nose and swirl it around.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
Even if you for some reason choose to ignore the science known as chemistry, data acquired in a good manner shows that homeopathic "medicines" have no more effect than a placebo. It most definitely does not work.
Being a "skeptic" achieves not being fooled into taking placebos instead of proper drugs, which can save your life in many cases.
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
I am someone who lost prolly 75% of his sense of smell over the 90s. Why, I do not know.
I do find favor with extra spicy foods, as they stimulate me in ways other foods cannot.
My wife has a hyper sense of smell. I take out the garbage.
Makin' money, makin' friends, makin' whoopee and wearin' Depends
... is what I am smelling right now.
The body has phenomenal healing capabilities
Sure, except when it doesn't, or is faced with a wound or pathogen that the body simply can't handle.
if people expanded their horizons and stopped popping Advils or taking Zicam when they aren't feeling well and taking another root (natural medicine, anyone?), It's guaranteed society would notice a difference
Ah, so you know of a root that is an analgesic, or which has anti-inflammatory properties? That's nice. Can you tell how to provide exactly the right amount of that root, prepared in exactly the right and consistent way, to produce just the anti-inflammatory effect needed without also causing liver or kidney trouble, or provoking an allergic response? Really? So, can you explain to a couple hundred thousand local witch doctors exactly how to predictably prepare, store, and dispense that substance so that anyone traveling can be sure they're getting just what they know will work, no matter where they go? I see, so we need some standards for preparation and dosing, just to be safe? I know, let's call those "pharmaceuticals."
I know precisely how much Ibuprofen will relieve a handful of aches and pains that I can routinely get from certain physical activities. I can find it anywhere, and bank on the results. I'm glad that I don't have to go into an "alternative medicine" shop and get what I hope will be the right sort of powdered root extract from a guy who also promises me that ground up rhinocerous horn will improve my love life.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Ah, a case of the cure worse than the disease! That doesn't sound pleasant.
I don't know, but it works for me.
pretend that you lost a sense of smell (let me see them prove otherwise)
That's easy: they just need to put some fermented dog poo under your nose while you don't expect it and watch your reaction :)
Well, have to be both blind and anosmic(can't smell) to ignore fermented poo almost in your face.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
Because before the FDA I could grow my own poppies for pain, brew my own ephedra tea for sinus infections and use whatever the earth gave me for whatever I desire. Take chamomile tea. According to you, the FDA (or someone) would have to prove it is safe and effective to be sold, essentially meaning that it would disappear overnight as no one would spend the money to do that. Its a slippery slope from being able to grow and use my own medicine to Equilibrium, where I have to take my government mandated dose every day and nothing else is available.
I had an "FDA approved" drug once that right on the label said (paraphrasing) "WARNING: Can eat a hole through your stomach and kill you". That's not an exaggeration. And this was a pain medication. I never took one because despite it being "approved", I'd rather just deal with the pain then potentially kill myself.
The FDA blocks shipments of e-cig nicotine inhalers that are basically 100% effective to stop people from smoking since people are still inhaling nicotine vapor as a replacement (note: it's not the puffer, it's much closer to a cigarette). Just instead it's safe (except the FDA won't say it's safe).
I've long given up on thinking the FDA really has consumer protection at heart. It needs to be revamped. It's like because the FDA regulates it, it's OK to have serious side effects. Because the FDA doesn't, it's not OK for a 1 in a million chance. Because the FDA doesn't regulate it, but doesn't understand it, it can't allow it even though it could stop 100's of 1000's of deaths.
Absolutely no restriction would result in dangerous drugs being released to he public, or more likely, drugs that simply do nothing at all.
This is the proper realm for tort law, and criminal penalties for fraud or reckless endangerment. If someone sells an ineffective product, then sue them based on your reliance upon any false claims they make in their advertising. If someone sells you cyanide as a cancer remedy, then they belong in jail for murder.
What I object to is the premise that our bodies are the property of the state, and that the state is entitled to override our own decisions as to what drugs we choose to use.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm trying to think of a downside to making all medications and supplements require FDA approval.
The downside is that the process produces both:
- long delays (during which people suffer and perhaps die) and:
- enormous costs (which keep some safe-and-effective drugs from reaching the market and raise the costs of medications which DO make it through the gauntlet - and must pay for both themselves and their share of the ones that fail).
When the legislation was first proposed it was estimated that if it added six months to the introduction of new medications it was a net loss. Now it takes years and tens of millions of dollars per new drug that starts testing.
One estimate of these costs - in a Wall Street Journal headline - is that the delay required for approving the use of Beta Blockers in the US to prevent secondary heart attacks (after they were approved for that in Europe) resulted in 100,000 deaths.
That was a Wall Street Journal editorial page essay -- which is a completely different thing from the reliable WSJ news stories.
If I recall correctly (can't find it on the WSJ's lame search engine) the author of that essay was a doctor who gave up the practice of medicine to work on Wall Street, and then became an FDA official under the Bush Administration. He has a right to give up medicine for finance, and work for a Republican administration, but it shows the free-market ideology that he's coming from.
Yes, it takes longer to approve drugs, during which the people who would have been helped by those drugs have to do without and in theory might die sooner. (BTW, there are very few "life-saving" drugs these days. Most of those drugs at best extend life by a few months. A drug that extends the life of a lung cancer or colon cancer patient by 3 months is a big deal.)
But when they put drugs on the market without enough testing, as they did when free-market conservatives ruled the FDA, they sold drugs that did more harm than good, like Vioxx and fen-phen.
So less regulation actually killed people rather than saving lives.
If you have a bunch of useful drugs, mixed up with a bunch of harmful drugs, and you can't tell which is which, those drugs can overall do more harm than good. You can't just throw drugs out on the free market and wait to see whether they save more people than they kill.
You can't figure it out from economic theory alone. You have to look at the facts. Before we had regulation, drug companies used to sell useless drugs that would kill people. When the Republicans cut back on regulations, drug companies sold more useless drugs that kill people. Regulation saves more lives than they cost.
130 people experience said symptoms and there is an outcry? If 130 people complained about a heavily backed pharmaceutical, it would be buried. How many people die from Tylenol every year?
I doubt it works, but lets at least be balanced here.
This actually happened to my mom like 2 or 3 years ago. She tried to file a lawsuit against Zicam and everyone treated her like she was crazy. She still can't smell anything. What action can she take against this company?
It's not necessarily the "medicine", I regularly lose my sense of smell temporarily in the late stages of a cold these days. The loss of smell generally lingers for a week or so after the cold has gone.
It's not medicine. If it was medicine it would be labeled as such AND it would have a provable effect.
It's water! How often does that need to be said? The only effect it has is as a placebo. And for those who believe that you can't overdose on homeopathy I have two terms for you: Water poisoning and drowning.
If one does a little digging and actually reads the letter the FDA sent to the company, they said that the "FDA has concluded that these products MAY pose a serious risk to consumers who use them....". Whereas, the press release says "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today advised consumers to stop using three products marketed over-the-counter as cold remedies because they ARE ASSOCIATED with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia)." The two differ a lot in meaning. The message to the company says that there could be a connection, whereas the news release just says there is a connection. Personally, I think that the FDA is being overly aggressive. The Obama admin. has encouraged a change from the (awful) years of Bush. Likewise, the FDA has taken a very aggressive stance toward companies. PS- I have used Zicam and it works, and I can still smell! Sources: http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm167065.htm http://preview.tinyurl.com/lq68wd
So the kid was cured by sugar-water?
I hope the kid never gets an actual illness, because if that's the way the parents 'take care' of their child, I'd call that 'negligence likely to cause death'.
Not particularly.
Spider Robinson didn't either, but he still managed to win a Hugo with a story on this topic, "By Any Other Name", which was expanded into a novel called _Telempath_.
Or you know, people can and do die because a cure can't be tested fast enough to be 100% certain that it works, however if it cures one life, its worth it.
Even if it takes 10 others?
I mean, if someone was dying of cancer and had only a year to live, took a drug, it worked temporarily and they die 10 years later because of something the drug did, thats still better (no one can live forever).
What if they die 2 hours later?
Plus, just look at the "miracle berry" case, where the FDA was essentially bought by the sugar industry that prevented a potentially useful item to market.
Miracle berries are shit. They make everything taste cloyingly sweet for at least an hour after you eat them.
A free market regulates itself if it is free enough.
Yes, and all people are completely rational actors with perfect information...
If you want to convince us that homeopathic medicines work, than by all means, put one of them through a rigorous, controlled clinical trial. (Not one anecdotal bit that may or may not be true and if it is may or may not be coincidental.) Tell one group they're getting the homeopathic "medicine" and give that to them. Tell the other group that's what they're getting and give them a placebo. Compare the results. That's how accurate results are obtained about the effectiveness of an actual drug against the placebo effect.
If you find significantly better results in the side that took the "medicine" than in those who took the placebo, and those results prove to be repeatable, you may have yourself a case. But until someone is confident enough in the method to submit it to rigorous, controlled testing, rather than "It worked this time! Really! Don't be so closed minded!", it's just quackery preying on the gullible.
When proponents of something are quick to tout its benefits and quick to ridicule its critics, but even quicker to duck rigorous testing that would show for sure if it really works or not, I become very closed minded very quickly. I've never taken Zicam, so apparently I can still smell bullshit just fine. If you're that confident in it, put it up for FDA approval.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Even if it takes 10 others?
10 others that know that it is untested and has no guarantee that it will work? Sure. Now, of course even without the FDA there is still some liability if they didn't properly test it on animals first, but if they knew the risks but still took it, its their problem.
What if they die 2 hours later?
Yes, and all people are completely rational actors with perfect information...
If the information is wrong, sue the manufacturers. There is no reason that a government that protected against fraud and force could not be a modern, free and productive society. If people aren't acting rationally on it, its their problem not society's.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I read Dan Hurley's Natural Causes and it opened my eyes to the supplement industry, and the relative lack of regulation. I recommend it to anyone taking supplements, including just vitamins.
I think it's worthwhile that we have some kind of system in place that stops such dangerous drugs and remedies from reaching the public at all, BEFORE anyone is harmed/defrauded. It shouldn't have to come to a legal battle because those dangerous products should have never made it to the pharmacy shelf.
And I fully agree that our bodies are not property of the state. I am for the decriminalization of all drugs, I just think they should be regulated like we do with alcohol and tobacco.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Quick, buy it, pretend that you lost a sense of smell (let me see them prove otherwise) and then wait for a nice settlement check. Just kidding, that would be dishonest.
I'd love to be the lawyer in that case. I'd show up to court with a gas mask and week old road kill, then collect my cheque when you pass out while offering to represent my client for the counter-suit.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
For your inflamatory problem, try buying an aloe vera leaf, cutting it open and putting the gel it releases on the affected area. Its not all witch docs that do this, many others do because they realize you dont need to buy into the bullshit the drug companies tell you. I mean common now, most medicine has more bad side effects than good effects. Also, its not necessary to pop a damn pill everytime your head starts to hurt a bit. suck it up.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
> but nowhere near the $20+ per pill mark that most prescription drugs hit
*most*?
About 15 years ago, I got prescribed Tagamet. Its fourth generation child, Famotidine, is now 130 for $9 at Sam's Club, but at the time, it was $1/pill bid.
That was fairly expensive as drugs went, at the time.
If you have handy even *10* examples of $20 *per pill* for something one takes, say, daily, I'd be interested to hear them.
Ridiculous hyperbole against things like Big Pharma makes their life *easier*...
And it's even in an effective dosage, at least that's what I got from this blog post http://cmpalmer.blogspot.com/2005/04/zicam-homeopathic-cold-remedies.html That is weird though, it's a fake "fake drug".
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Um, I think the writer meant "route" not "root."
And yes I agree it is preposterous to distinguish "natural" remedies as good because they came directly from a plant. Strychnine anyone?
The anti-pill arrogance can actually cause harm, as by discouraging people from seeking help. It's good I think to be skeptical of any treatment, but that doesn't prove you're special.
if people expanded their horizons and stopped popping Advils or taking Zicam when they aren't feeling well and taking another root (natural medicine, anyone?), It's guaranteed society would notice a difference
Ah, so you know of a root that is an analgesic, or which has anti-inflammatory properties? That's nice. Can you tell how to provide exactly the right amount of that root, prepared in exactly the right and consistent way, to produce just the anti-inflammatory effect needed without also causing liver or kidney trouble, or provoking an allergic response? Really? So, can you explain to a couple hundred thousand local witch doctors exactly how to predictably prepare, store, and dispense that substance so that anyone traveling can be sure they're getting just what they know will work, no matter where they go? I see, so we need some standards for preparation and dosing, just to be safe? I know, let's call those "pharmaceuticals."
I had a cold. I stayed in bed and ate chocolate for a couple of days, and my cold went away. From this I learned that (a) chocolate is a cure for the common cold and (b) having a cold causes you to gain weight.
Homeopathic and Naturalpath are historically based from Eastern Medicine - wherein "cures" and "treatments" take the form of their natural state: ie roots, dried/ground plants, etc. Many Western pharmaceuticals have their origins from actual Homeopathic cures. The difference between pharmaceuticals and homeopathic medicine is that pharmaceutical companies try to distill what the "active" ingredient in the cure is - and turn it into a pill with bulking fillers. The problem with pharmaceuticals is it destroys the synergy of the natural plants other ingredients.
That does not change my point in the slightest. If it really works this well, subject it to the same testing given to standard pharmaceuticals. If you're correct about how effective this "synergy" is, you'll blow the modern pharmaceuticals right out of the water.
It's not my guess that this would be the actual result of the testing, but by all means, put it to genuine rigorous testing to answer the question. Otherwise, going on about "synergy" and the rest of it are just obfuscation. If it's that good, prove it. Don't spout feel good but empty phrases about it.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
So isn't what the company did fraud?
They said something was homeopathic (but it isn't) and tried to profit from it.
And they have caused rather permanent damage.
The article does not explain whether zinc in general causes you to loose your ability to smell, or whether it is that putting zinc up your nose causes you to loose the ability smell. In the interest of science, I will perform a scientific experiment with Cold-Eeze lozenges, which unlike Zicam, are typically taken orally. Here I have two Cold-Eeze lozenges and a bottle of perfume.
*stuffs one lozenge into each nostril*
*takes a whiff of the perfume*
How very interesting, I can't smell a thi... gasp!
*collapses of axphyxia*
Conclusion: Zinc can cause premature death, when stuffed into nose.
Folic acid (a B vitamin) has been used for at least 70 years in the farming industry to prevent neural tube birth defects in cattle, but it's only in the last few years that it was acknowledged by the "official" medical industry that it does the same thing in people. These birth defects become more likely the older the mother is; supplementing with folic acid prevents them.
1. You're a fucking idiot. There is no "synergy". It's CHEMISTRY. 2. Homeopathy was invented within the last 120 years by a Western hackjob named Hahnemann.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"If the information is wrong, sue the manufacturers."
I say my medicine has a high chance of curing you of a specific problem, you take it, and it doesn't work. Prove I lied.
Medicine is by nature semi-unpredictable. We're dealing with a huge number of variable genes within the patient, many of which we don't understand, combined with a huge number of variable genes within a huge number of bacteria/virus (not sure if viruses qualify as having genes, but they certainly have RNA, which is variable) within the patient, combined with a ton of random chance factors (the pill just happens to land in a much higher PH bit of acid in the stomach than normal and is partially dissolved or something) and a good helping of head scratching about whether you have a certain problem or a different one with similar symptoms. We've made a lot of advances, but the day when we can have all the needed information about how a medicine will affect people without hugely expensive testings is way off in the future, so we need those government bodies to force the testing or we may as well be using an astrological chart to determine what medicine to take.
I'm normally a free market proponent but in the case of medicine there are simply too many variables to expect anyone, much less the average consumer, to know enough about the subject to make an informed decision.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
s/120 years/200 years/
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"For example, about 70% of what you think of as "taste" when you are eating food comes from your sense of smell. Without a sense of smell, your food will taste rather bland and you probably wouldn't be able to appreciate the more subtle flavors (and definitely the aromas) of various foods. Try it yourself. Next time you are stuffed up with a cold, try eating one of your favorite foods and see if it is still as full of flavor as you remember."
Bullshit. My grandfather and myself both have anosmnia, this lie gets perpetrated as fact time and time again with only the cold "evidence" as backup.
My grandfather is locked in a trunk with a skunk and not noticing smell-less, I am 90% there, I didn't believe him when he said taste was not affected, he is a wine connoisseur. I can't smell most foods, and I was conscious of my gradual loss of smell since I knew he couldn't smell. Everything tastes absolutely 100% A-OK. If we have colds, everything tastes wrong and dull just like it does for everyone else.
Smell is important for many reasons, gas leaks mainly, (my grandfather almost died) 70% of taste is not one of those reasons.
The is almost no research done into anosmnia, so somehow this smell myth has never been challenged. We taste great, I am an excellent cook, and a connoisseur of many items, with an ability to taste subtle flavors most miss, often accurately pinning down variations in ingredients, compared to my smell-full family have unrefined tastebuds and any X is an X, with no variation in quality.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
"If someone sells an ineffective product,"
Prove it's ineffective. Perhaps you simply have an odd body chemistry, or some chemical you're taking (food or medicine wise) is affecting the medicine in unpredictable ways. Entire group of people unaffected? I'm sure there's something they have in common that the company can claim wasn't present in their studies that could be the cause of the lack of healing, or many such things.
There are too many variables to prove conclusively that a medicine doesn't work, thus courts are worthless for stopping them. Just look at how long Homeopathy has lasted with tons of scientific (chemical) data saying it shouldn't do anything, for ever person who says a quack drug doesn't work 10 others will subscribe to the placebo effect and state conclusively that it cured them.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
data acquired in a good manner shows that homeopathic "medicines" have no more effect than a placebo. It most definitely does not work.
Care to reconcile those two statements?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
I had a cold. I stayed in bed and ate chocolate for a couple of days, and my cold went away. From this I learned that (a) chocolate is a cure for the common cold and (b) having a cold causes you to gain weight.
Bah. I never have modpoints when I need them so instead you'll have to accept my homeopathic strength chocolate as a reward.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
Specifically the subject stopped having uneasy sleep, which it had been having for a long time, just by taking a few drops of a bach flower remedy on a regular basis.
I just did a Google search. Bach Flower remedies are not homeopathic; they contain measurable amounts of flower extracts, plus 27% brandy as a preservative. Homeopathic remedies are made by astonishing amounts of dilution.
However, your basic point is not that Bach remedies are homeopathic, but that science is not all that impressed by them (just like science is not all that impressed by homeopathy). So I guess it doesn't matter whether Bach remedies are homeopathic or not.
Well, don't forget that placebos work too. Now, if you could demonstrate that the Bach remedies work better than placebos, I'd be interested. I'll tell you right now, in my book the Bach remedies are placebos. Placebos with 27% brandy content.
By the way, how many drops of brandy would it take to make a child sleep more deeply? :-)
Actually, I believe I remember reading (I forget where, possibly reader's digest) about some compound in dark chocolate that is a highly effective cough suppressant, supposedly better than codeine.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Our family uses the disposable swabs. Both the allergy and the cold swabs, not the spray for several years now. Nobody has this problem. But it has shortened colds. And helped with allergies. (None of us use any nose sprays by any brand)
Before we all go off the deep end and get's yet another "alternative cure" (regardless if you agree or disagree it's a cure) banned in lieu of big pharmacist, expensive drugs, big hospital bills, questionable safety in our vaccinations, all while having no health care, and a government which has welfare for banksters, warfare and surveillance.
Ever think this might be purposely targeted so you'll have no cure to specially crafted bugs which accidentally escape super labs?
I don't know that it is, or isn't and I ain't trying to be paranoid, I am just throwing the idea out there, cause I'm fucking sick and tired of the lies that come from my government, to the point where I don't trust anything they fucking say anymore. Which leaves me with validating facts on my own. The media has literally become a dangerous cult.
I don't know about you, but I am not willing to give up a product which frankly worked fine for my family several years now, in exchange for a Goebbels Media pushing a fucking "Prescription for America" when no opposing views including Single Payer were allowed in discussions.
The debate about if it's homeopathy or not, I don't care. It's a political narco profit motivated fascist argument. You go ahead and waste several million or billion on such nonsense and it's research, legal fights, and bureaucracy.
Keep in mind they are already trying to fuck with the codex.
I am much more simple.
I go by if the fucking thing works or not.
In OUR family's case zicam swabs (Cold and Allergy) works just fine, no loss of smell. We also followed the instructions carefully.
I can't speak to the spray.
We also use oil of oregano, and many other food supplements.
Of course all this is my opinion, and as it should be implied. Ask your friends and neighbors if they have problems. Not what they hear on the tv, you want to know first hand experience and use and results. There lay the answer, we don't need all this FDA, DHS, ATF crap, it's already too fucking big and too expensive!
Turn the tv off.
>Actually, I believe I remember reading (I forget where, possibly reader's digest) about some compound in dark chocolate that is a highly effective cough suppressant, supposedly better than codeine.
Honey is a damn good cough suppressant, backed up by randomized trials. (IIRC, it's definitely better than dextromethorphan.) I don't recall anything about chocolate.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Nah, not dramatic enough. What you do is lock up a fridge full of meat and veggies, unplug it and let'em set in the AR sun starting in June, and schedule the trial for late August. You dramatically have the fridge wheeled in, don your WW2 era gas mask, unseal the tape and let'er rip.
Granted by doing so you are probably breaking the Geneva Convention on cruelty to prisoners or something, but we are on a search for justice after all, sometimes sacrifices have to be made ;-)
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Only rhetorically. If taking "proper" drugs kills you one in 10,000 times and not taking them kills you 9 times out of 10, then it is not a "toss up", meaning 50%-50%. Is there a one-word term for "blindness to orders of magnitude"? Most ideologues seem to suffer from it.
"Furthermore, since water will have been in contact with millions of different substances throughout its history, critics point out that any glass of water is therefore an extreme dilution of almost any conceivable substance, and so by drinking water one would, according to homeopathic principles, receive treatment for every imaginable condition."
Alchemist: Be Thou For the People
"Measurable" is subjective. The same Wikipedia article you pointed me says they are extremely dilute. The amount of flower extracts remaining should be "measurable" as it is just diluted, not removed.
If the subject is unaware of the intended effect, how could it be placebo effect? Supposing it is the brandy, why the effect would continue after it was no longer administered?
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
There is a little bit of poison in every medicine.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Found it. Substance in question is theobromine. Study was at Imperial College London
Study in question (PDF warning)
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Moderators have lost their sense of humour?
The fact that the homeopathic nature of the sugar or water has no effect. Me hitting you with a brick could have a placebo effect if I dress up the treatment well enough, so that could 'work' as much as homeopathic cures. Working as well as placebo does not count as working, if you develop a new drug and it works as well as not giving the drug you don't declare your trial a success and start prescribing it to people.
Unaware of the intended effect? You mean it was slipped in their food without them noticing? The people giving it didn't know the intended effect either? (this has been shown to have an effect on how effective a placebo is). Was the uneasy sleep getting worse? why wait before trying this remedy? The underlying cause for the uneasy sleep may well have been resolved by itself.
Not knowing the specifics, one can never tell.
Last year I got a rather nasty, and persistent, cold. For the sake of being open minded I took some natural remedies, my cold DID go away shortly after. Will this happen again? Who knows. If I did this 100 times, and my cold went away shortly after 90 times, I could say that it might work, for me. If I did this 1000 times, with 100 people, I can come closer to an actual conclusion.
Did you try this on a representational, truly random sample, while controlling your extraneous variables? Did you achieve a certain level of statistical significance? Until you can answer this as "yes" it is merely an anecdotal account, and not worth the pixels its written in.
Last time I sneezed, there was lightening, therefore I am Thor, God of Thunder.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Unaware of the intended effect? You mean it was slipped in their food without them noticing? The people giving it didn't know the intended effect either?
The people giving it obviously knew what it was and it was not slipped to the food, but the subject didn't know what it was or what was intended to cure. I'm not sure if she even noticed the problem before it was cured. In those conditions, how other people knowing would do any difference?
Was the uneasy sleep getting worse? why wait before trying this remedy? The underlying cause for the uneasy sleep may well have been resolved by itself.
Why does it match the use of the flower remedies then? And why it didn't resolve itself before? The changes happened just after the first week of use. Only a single flask was used. I'm not sure, but I believe it lasts less than a month. It is a small window of time. Why it coincides then?
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
Except it is marketed as not being a medicine (homeopathic) otherwise it would have been required to mention said loss of smell as a side effect.
If someone sells you cyanide as a cancer remedy, then they belong in jail for murder.
Which does the patient/victim/corpse a WHOLE lot of good.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
"10 years of experience" does not constitute "scientific evidence"
Well the subject must have had some idea it was being given to help with something, the body language and way in which the people giving it act has a large effect on the placebo. I'm sure it was given just before the subject went to sleep... I wonder what they could possibly have thought it was connected with.
The reason the times may have coincided and why I asked about why that time was chosen to give the remedy is because people often do these things when the problem is at its worse, if the sleep problems were peaking at the time the remedy was given then you expect symptoms to get better with time anyway. This is actually how a lot of homeopathic and pharmaceutical cold remedies appear to 'cure' the cold.
You are confusing homeopathy with fytotherapy.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
"If it seemingly works for some people we shouldn't say "it doesn't work" just because we believe it is not supposed to work. We should ask ourselves why it works"
No, first we should ask "does it *actually* work?". You don't simply hear a couple of anecdotes and assume "well this obviously works".
So you set up a study to see whether the anecdotal experiences are replicated in the population at large. This has been done countless times with homeopathy. The better designed the study, the less likely that it is to show any effect. Properly conducted, double-blinded studies consistently show no effect whatsoever over placebo.
The line that sceptics reject homeopathy because "it's not supposed to work" is a claim frequently used by proponents. It's simply not true. People reject homeopathy because all the good evidence shows it doesn't work. There's no good evidence to show it does work, and reams of the stuff to show it doesn't. It fails before you even get to pondering the questions of the mechanism, the law of similars etc.
Ok, give my pixels back then.
I'm not the only one who have seen results out of it. While the explanations given about it are very unscientifical, science might have simply failed to find a good explanation so far.
Even common medicines depend on biological conditions to have good results. If results with non-standard medicines are unreliable, it might just be that the underlying principles are not well understood. And they surely are not.
That's my point. To say everytime it works is because placebo effect and everytime it doesn't work is because it doesn't work it's too easy. The same can be said about any medicine. I am not a pharmacologist, I don't know how the medicine I take works. Just because we can't figure out how it works it doesn't means it doesn't work, it only means we don't know.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
"If the subject is unaware of the intended effect, how could it be placebo effect? Supposing it is the brandy, why the effect would continue after it was no longer administered?"
Who reported the improvment? The same people that gave the child the "remedy", presumably.
The placebo effect improvement doesn't just have to be reported by the patient. It's well known in parents/children and owners/animals as well.
This is the single most coherent remark I've seen about this story. Unfortunately critical reasoning in the mainstream media doesn't pay the bills, so we'll never see it reported there.
I think it's worthwhile that we have some kind of system in place that stops such dangerous drugs and remedies from reaching the public at all, BEFORE anyone is harmed/defrauded.
Ever heard of the Underwriters' Laboratories?
Personally, I'd prefer to have the safety and efficacy of products I buy vetted by an organization that has something to lose if they're wrong, than by a bureaucracy which will probably see its budget increased if they fuck up.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Prove it's ineffective.
That's what lawyers, courts, and juries are for.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Homeopathic" covers a lot, though, and some things sold under the homeopathic label are just a bad idea - colloidal silver, for example. While the stuff isn't dangerous per se, some people assume it to replace all antibiotics and be effective when taken as a preventive measure. And hell, one gram per day should be fine; more helps more and since it's not a chemical like normal antibiotics it can't poison me.
Oops, I developed an argyria and my skin has been irreversively tinted gray.
Many people have an odd notion that homeopathic products are a panacea without possible side effects.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Given that in homeopathy, more dilution means more potency, then the people who think that taking more of a homeopathic remedy will help more are idiots _twice_ - first for believing in homeopathy and then for failing to follow the actual principles of homeopathy.
If you want to do homeopathy, at least follow the instructions of its inventors, please?
I'm not the only one who have seen results out of it. While the explanations given about it are very unscientifical, science might have simply failed to find a good explanation so far.
This verges on the "god of the gaps" type fallacy, and also begs the question. Before you can find an explanation, you must prove that an effect exists. Not enough people have seen results to actually show that there are any. This is my point, and the point of most of the people replying to your original post.
To say everytime it works is because placebo effect and everytime it doesn't work is because it doesn't work it's too easy.
No one said that it is ONLY the placebo effect that is behind the scene in the (statistically) few cases where it works. If we had a study on the effectiveness for any given treatment on any given condition, and it showed a 100% lack of effect, I would start worrying about the experimental design being terribly flawed.
If I give a homeopathic "insomnia cure" to 10,000 people (a HUGE sample size), there still would be hundreds of cases where the insomnia was cured. The probability of this would be lower than the threshold granted by random chance.
This is all that matters. Is there scientific proof that it works? I really don't care HOW it works.
Another tick against it that if homeopathy is true, it goes against most of what we know about chemistry. I'd generally put a giant, coherent, collection of data that agrees with the facts over one thing that may or may not exist that contradicts these facts. The idea of homeopathy also contradicts many other fields of knowledge, including logic.
The page on wikipedia has a nice blurb about how, if the principle was true, normal water would contain EVERY homeopathic remedy, thanks to the closed nature of the water cycle.
I don't mean to sound hostile. But it does raise a small bit of ire. There is no science saying it works, or how it could possibly work. To me this is more important than whatever someone wants to have faith in.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
No, homeopathy is based on considering the exception as the rule - treating a disease with highly-diluted substances that would cause the same symptoms if you took a large dose of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#Law_of_similars
Funny thing is, there are actually a couple of cases where the principle would work, if you didn't dilute the heck out of the active ingredient first. Malaria is one, ADHD would be another.
And in really "high potency" dilution, no less. ;)
But then again, the uncontrolled mixing probably disrupts the natural energy flow and renders the ingredients ineffective. At least that's something a homeopath would tell you, or some similar nonsense.
You can't prove that absolutely. However, you can prove that something is as effective as a placebo, or even less effective (i.e. actually harmful). All you need is doing a study with an appropriate sample size.
Chemistry is not enough. It's 2009 here. Quantum physics might be more appropriate. Anyway...
# Thermodynamics of extremely diluted aqueous solutions.
Elia V, Niccoli M.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1999 Jun 30;879:241-8.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10415834
# Permanent physico-chemical properties of extremely diluted aqueous solutions of homeopathic medicines.
Elia V, Baiano S, Duro I, Napoli E, Niccoli M, Nonatelli L.
Homeopathy. 2004 Jul;93(3):144-50.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15287434
# The 'Memory of Water': an almost deciphered enigma. Dissipative structures in extremely dilute aqueous solutions.
Elia V, Napoli E, Germano R.
Homeopathy. 2007 Jul;96(3):163-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17678812
Did you try a few drops of sugared water and see if that still worked? I expect it would have, and it would be much cheaper than back's remedies.
We do. If it's classed as a medicine (i.e. has clinical effect) then it's highly regulated.
If it's classed as homeopathy, it's classed along with fairy sprinkles and not regulated.
The problem is that here we have something being marketed as homeopathic which clearly isn't. If it has a clinical effect (bad or good) then the FDA will regulate and mandate their exhaustive testing.
I'm sure your survivors will be thrilled.
If someone sells an ineffective product, then sue them based on your reliance upon any false claims they make in their advertising.
If you're still alive. And live long enough to see the end of the lawsuit.
If someone sells you cyanide as a cancer remedy, then they belong in jail for murder.
What if someone sells you mustard gas as a cancer remedy?
What I object to is the premise that our bodies are the property of the state, and that the state is entitled to override our own decisions as to what drugs we choose to use.
Most people, unfortunately, aren't smart enough to understand mechanisms like resistance formation. If anyone could pop antibiotics whenever they feel like it, then soon no one would be able to effectively fight an infection with them. Is that what you're proposing?
and you could do this:http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/preprohibition.htm.
Check out Bayer's ad for Heroin, or the Cocaine Toothdrops.
Next question,
Did it really improve his sleep, or did it just make his parents think it improved his sleep?
You get that sort of placebo effect with fuel additives, engine cleaners and supposedly more powerful fuels.
I concur.
I have virtually no smell sense either, and I taste mostly okay. It might have upped my tolerance to outre tastes, but the normal tastes come through just fine.
But there has to be some corner case where some fragment of taste gets affected. I can't taste the difference between different brands of saltines. But they all taste "like saltines", so that's fine with me.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Quick, buy it, pretend that you lost a sense of smell (let me see them prove otherwise)
Nose, meet bucket of vomit. Next up, meet my friend, Skunk. Next up, ...
I'd like you to see not react at all.
The difference between pharmaceuticals and homeopathic medicine is that pharmaceutical companies try to distill what the "active" ingredient in the cure is - and turn it into a pill with bulking fillers.
As opposed to homeopaths who get rid of the active ingredient (if there ever was one) entirely, and turn it into plain water?
I suspect you are confusing traditional medicine with claptrap like homeopathy. Traditional medicines are natural substances that in many cases do have an effect. This is because they contain some substance. There's nothing magical about it - they can be tested scientifically. For example, willow bark can cure headaches - this is because it contains salicylic acid. These days most people carry it in pill form, as it's more convenient than lugging a tree around with you.
Homeopathy on the other hand is just turning things into plain water. There is no known way they could have an effect, and anyway, scientific tests have shown that their effect is no different to drinking water.
If you want to be an anti-drug person who prefers willow bark to aspirin pills, then good luck to you. But please don't confused scientifically tested conventional medicine with made up rubbish like homeopathy.
Look about it. They have "cures" that "get better the smallest the amount of "cure" in the water" (e.g. 1nanograms to make it "better") . They are butt crazy.
Innumerate.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Since your claim is that the nerves are damaged, a quick fMRI would prove that your brain is receiving signals from you undamaged nerves.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Yes, I can imagine that, but what does the medical insurance industry have to do with the limitation of freedom? ;^)
Too glib, I know. Let's get serious.
Where to begin? It is a common fact that might makes right, even though we don't wish it to be so, and right now individuals do not have enough might to even keep themselves healthy in light of a variety of mighty groups, often run by individuals shielded from liability and perfectly willing and able to start-up another corrupt company, who willingly mislead them and/or frustrate collection on benefits they have paid for. When the 'bad guys' do get their comeuppance, the lawyers, in their own groups, make the bulk of the profits.
Occasionally, a few outlier individuals will win the lottery, but it's really one they didn't want to play in the first place, at the cost of their health, and a meaningful settlement is only marginally more likely than winning the 'Lotto.' Most never see court because no legal group sees enough profit in taking the case.
Any mitigating factor against unjustified, unbalanced collective action curtailing individual liberty, which includes governmental, corporate, legal defense funds, and basically any large group of people who can tell an individual to go pound sand against his just rights to pursue his own happiness is a strike against tyranny. The difference between a functional government and the other groups and would-be tyrants is that governmental tyrants answer to all the people, not just those with money.
And no, I don't think the US government is functional right now, so if you're argument is don't give them any more power because they have demonstrated that they don't know what to do with it, I'm with you.
But "freedom?" Really?
'Anarchy' is your viable option. It's not what I would call freedom. Even the founders did not call for freedom. They called for liberty. What you hold up as freedom always ends up as might makes right, which is tyranny.
We need a functional government to preserve liberty.
--
Toro
Realistically we can't test everything sufficiently to be absolutely certain, but we can test in a prudent manner to at least uncover the more obvious risks.
Yep, who would have though to test for the possibility that a product that you put up your nose might damage your nose!
It would be easy enough to do a controlled study to compare the incidence of anosmia in people with colds using Zicam versus those with colds who don't use Zicam.
It would be easy enough for Matrixx to base their beliefs on science instead of speculation.
But no. They make no attempt to prove safety, even when presented with indications of serious adverse effects. Instead, they confidently speculate that their product is safe, and go into a holding pattern. Studies are expensive. Holding patterns are cheap. Safety be damned.
For companies like Matrixx (and almost all producers of "alternative remedies") "science" is no more than a word in a vast lexicon of marketing terms. The only objective to which these Charlatans show a genuine commitment is the gross sales of their products. Otherwise, words like "health", "remedy", "studies", "dosage", and other terms that are strictly constructed in the legitimate world of pharmaceuticals, important terms, are just smokey propaganda buzzwords in this vast industry of faux "medicines". The only word that comes to my mind that would properly be ascribed to these people is BULLSHIT. Not surprisingly, it's a word you'll probably never here them use, as it hits too close to where they live.
Hey, that would require actually thinking about it. If they did that they might realize they're being charged twenty bucks for 20 ml of water.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
My dad was born without a sense of smell. He has 3 smoke detectors and turns on a series of lights when he is cooking (so that he doesn't forget and burn the house down). One interesting thing is that the sense of smell is closely associated with taste(notice how bland things taste when your nose is stuffed up) so Dad likes to douse things in hot sauce or lemon juice so he can get some flavor. Over the years he has chugged a few containers of spoiled milk that would gag a crocodile. There are real dangers though. Someone carelessly tossed an empty container of a chemical into a trashcan next to his workstation. Without a sense of smell he simply breathed it in for hours whereas anyone else would have detected it in seconds. He ended up with chemical pneumonia. Other symptoms include being paranoid about BO and wearing too much cologne that was recommended to him by the pretty girl behind the perfume counter at the mall.
One minor point. In clinical trials, for ethical reasons you usually tell both groups of subjects that they could receive either the treatment or placebo, but they nor their physician will know which one until the end of the trial.
Actually, that has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with executing a proper study. What you describe is called a double-blind experiment, and it ensures that those executing the study can't manipulate the outcome, consciously or unconsciously (even an ethical researcher might inadvertently telegraph information to the subjects if they know who is receiving the drug and who is receiving the placebo).
Guys, we are missing the important bits. This medicine actually does something, it is not really homeopathic, the homeopathic label was put there either to evade FDA regulations and maybe to sell better too. Neither thing should happen, I don't think homeopathic medicine should not sell better than real medicine but what absolutely should never happen is for a medical product to be able to skip FDA regulations.
But... the future refused to change.
No, no, no, no, no!
Secretly assign subjects to be in one of two groups. Each subject gets a substance. It might be the medicine under test, it might be a placebo. Neither the patient nor the person administering the medicine/evaluating the results should know which group the patient was in, i.e. whether the patient got the medicine or the placebo.
Basic science, here. Only Change One Variable At A Time. My fourth-grade daughter learned that in science class. Patient knowing what they're receiving: variable. Administrator knowing what they're giving the patient: variable. Medicine the patient got: variable. Decide what you want to test, and change only that.
We should ask ourselves why it works.
Yeah, well if I believe that my ass is one end of a rainbow I might feel better too. That doesn't make it true...
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Watch out for that homeopathic strength chocolate. I think yukk might have kept the cure for himself, because you can't taste any difference between homeopathic strength chocolate and no chocolate at all.
mostly because my mother is really into it. I had pinkeye, and was given 100x homeopath pinkeye 'cure'. I put it in one eye, not the other, and the un'treated' eye got better about 2 days quicker. Look, if you want to believe that homeopathy works, drink some tap water. The concentrations will probably be higher, otherwise the water will remember the shape of the active ingredient that was in it at one point.
Part of the reason for the FDA's creation was to stop the horseshit 'therapies' that were being sold a hundred years ago. They have a responsibility to screen out the bullshit, especially when it hurts people like this.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
it's called measuring retard
Ah. And what are you measuring? The density of a particular chemical as found within a give volume of the plant material? And every example of the plant material will always have the same proportion of that chemical by weight or by volume, every time? No need to worry about how damp the material is when you make those measurements? So at what point does establishing a careful, reproducibly accurate method of delivering a specific amount of a chemical from a plant still fall short of being a pharmaceutical? Is it only a pharmaceutical if the measurement is accurate, and it's "alternative" if you can't really be sure how much of something is in there? Or is it only a pharaceutical if the person who's preparing it for you happened to incorporate their business?
Never mind. Obviously you don't actually think about anything that carefully anyway. How's that rhinocerous horn powder working on your virility problem, anyway?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Well I highly suggest that next time you have a bad headache, you start munching on tree bark instead of taking an aspirin.
It's actually both. There is (was) a swab and a spray version.
If it contains enough Zinc atoms to be detected (let alone have an effect) it's not diluted nearly enough to really be homeopathic.
Not saying homeopathy isn't a scam, mind, just this once they're being abused by worse scammers.
they have both a Gel Spray, AND the swabs. i've used the swabs, and they do seem to help, (but you just apply that around the inside of the nostril) If i understand what i'm reading, this is about the Gel Spray, which would be a much larger dose, applied farther inside the nasal passages.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
This doesn't make sense to me. Homeopathic is nothing but water, usually (or some other base, like alcohol), and as we all know - everything is diluted to ridiculous proportions - maybe one molecule of "cure" within billions of water.
So how can it be dangerous? How much zinc is actually in there? There's nothing actually in it, it's homeopathic!
I have a pretty open mind when it comes to metaphysical stuff and wortcunning and all that, but the one thing I just can't buy is homeopathy. It doesn't even have good psuedo-logic behind it. Water has no "memory", period. It's such a scam.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Because surely, an FMRI is the simplest method for testing whether someone can smell or not.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I didn't say it was simple or cheap, but it tells the absolute truth, even is the patient is asleep.
Plus, it's cool. 8-)
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
So, now that the FDA will be regulating cigarettes, how long will it take for them to figure out they are worse for your health than Zicam?
Isn't is a little odd that a manufacturer would associate themselves with homeopathy to add legitimacyto their product health claims???
I suspect that Zicam doesn't do a damn thing, and I really doubt that with the huge number of people who take it that an average of 13 people per year losing their smell would be a large enough number to even make the assertion of some sort of causal relationship - hell I don't even see any correlation there.
And finally, all those things that annoy you about sense of smell are probably also helping to save your life. It lets you know that something is wrong (bad air, bad food, bad place, etc).
It's a bit of a toss-up, really. Yes, there are annoying smells telling you that something dangerous and unhealthy is going on, but the law almost never gives you recourse--all you can do is run. Smokers can smoke, drivers can drive, Bostonians can dump shit into the (less stinky than it used to be) Charles, chemical companies (eg. NECCO) can dump whatever they like into the air, neighbours can spray TruGreen on their lawns... certainly it's not that hard to make a case that the dangerous things you can do something about are rare enough that the ones you can't are more trouble than they're worth. A life spent running from danger is pretty unhealthy, for very intense psychological reasons. It can be better to just deal with a little harm to your body than to live in a perpetual state of being the bitch of whomever is making stinky.
That said, I still pretty much agree with you :)
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/fashion/18skin.html?_r=1
still holds true, as long as people are willing to insert as much of pointless water magic cures there will be a business based around it. it's all hoax and no fact, and thus people buy it because it holds no fact (magic). it's like all those miracle diets, u don't have to diet if you just have a head with a brain on top of your neck...
No, shitbrick, you didn't. You mentioned them both. That's like saying you like Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, then saying you got Brad Pitt confused for Matt Damon.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Weren't we just talking about how to make the system more efficient and accurate?
I believe that what you've just designed is a system in which ineffective drugs flood the marketplace because it's too expensive (comparing the cost of the bottle to the likelihood of victory and the lack of damages) to sue them out of existence. We see this in... well... the herbal and homeopathic drug industry right now.
I don't have hard data in front of me, but I would guess that if you randomly grab a bottle of "medicine" from this unregulated part of the industry, your odds of grabbing something that actually treats your ailment are probably less than 50/50. If they were producing really useful remedies on a short timeline, then I'd be willing to consider adopting their model. As it stands, going that direction doesn't seem to have a lot to recommend it.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You'll note that Arthur Andersen was basically destroyed for their Enron fuck-up. They didn't get more money and get to continue their incompetence.
The UL's stock in trade is their reputation for thoroughness and accuracy. If someone wants to make substandard electrical outlets and bribe the UL to approve them, the UL would be risking their very existence, on top of the liability if anyone is hurt using the defective product.
I'd rather have some organization like a council of certified pharmacists testing and approving drugs, than leave it up to the FDA. Those idiots actually approve of injecting botulism toxin into your face to treat wrinkles, while they keep anti-clotting drugs that can save the lives of heart attack victims off the market.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
it doesn't have to be a government agency, but in an imperfect world with imperfect people that seems to be the most effective way to fund and maintain such an organization
Based on what real world example? Why would an organization subject to ever-changing political whims, staffed by employees with union protected jobs, and whose decisions are subject to every politician's pocket lobbyist be more trustworthy than one that lives and dies by its reputation?
Arthur Andersen messed up and paid the price. The bond-rating agencies were corrupted and are now paying the price. How many government agencies have been shut down due to corruption or incompetence? How many government agencies have increased their budgets and staff DESPITE their track-record of incompetence?
No human-built institution is perfect, public or private, but I'd prefer to put my trust in the one that depends on its reputation over one that depends on politics every time.
Weren't we just talking about how to make the system more efficient and accurate?
Courts are for exceptional circumstances. People who actually seek to harm others, or who do so through depraved indifference are exceptional; that's why they're big news stories when they happen.
What happens now is the FDA has usurped the power to decide what medications I can use. There's no constitutional authority for that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And of course, anything but that is unexceptional and doesn't get policed. So we end up with a huge pool of cures that are ineffective at best with (perhaps) a few legitimate remedies scattered among them--just like we see in the herbal/homeopathic area.
Once that starts happening, the next problem is that legitimate players who used to spend a lot of money putting out well-tested and effective medicine have to decide whether it's worth it. Putting out real medicine is expensive, and when you're competing with people who put eel farts in a jar, call it a cure for cancer, and sell it for $9.99, there isn't a lot of incentive to keep it up. So basically, we all end up free to choose blindly among a whole lot of quackery to see if we can find something that works.
I suppose the whole thing would be a boon to pharmacists as we'd have to go and consult them for everything to figure out which medicines are likely to work and which ones are downright dangerous, but that doesn't seem like a major win. As flawed as the system we currently have is, at least the signal to noise ratio on the pharmacy shelves is high. Getting new cures to market fast doesn't help a lot if consumers can't figure out which ones actually work.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
What a shame that nobody else got the Scrubs reference. Awesome btw, it was the first thing I remembered too
Putting out real medicine is expensive,
It's a lot more expensive than it needs to be, and you can thank the costs of FDA red tape for that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So why do you think that drug companies would reduce their prices if it was cheaper, instead of making more profit? After all, making as much profit as possible for their owners is why they exist in the first place.
One of my business partners took this stuff about two years ago and completely lost her sense of smell within 30 minutes. Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, it needs to be off the market. Yes, the manufacturer has known of the dangers for years, having been sued numerous times. Yes, they should be held accountable.
Naw...that is too much like old time Chicago politics!
What some people call "red tape" other people call "testing the product." What percentage of the FDA costs are going to filling out paperwork and what percentage are going to mandated clinical trials?
You make it sound like removing FDA certification will reduce costs because you're saving on a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense. The reality is that most of the "savings" would come from not having to pay to do large scale testing with expensive labs, scientists, and medical personnel. That's where the real money goes, and that's probably the last place we want our drug savings to come from.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
And in a real-world scenario, any savings on development and testing would go to profits and lawsuits rather than reducing the price of the drug while it's still covered by patents.
The reality is that most of the "savings" would come from not having to pay to do large scale testing with expensive labs, scientists, and medical personnel.
Want to explain how you spend $800 million on clinical tests?
It doesn't cost anything like that to go through the approval process in France, Germany, Japan, etc.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I would, but the link you posted pretty much already has. You do several phases of clinical trials for efficacy and short and long term side effects over the course of 7.5 years. You then perform your estimate of the cost by rolling the cost failed drugs into that $800M total (not sure what percentage of them fail, but if it's a lot, that skews the number pretty heavily) and then you assume a 9% cost of capital, which results in a final number about twice what the actual dollar outlay is.
So the short answer is, you don't actually spend $800M on clinical tests. You spend less than half that (probably significantly less, given the number of drugs that fail partway through).
My question to you is, how do you think they'd piss away $800M doing anything but expensive clinical tests? Paperwork? I find it much easier to explain an $800M hole in a budget if I can point to doctors, hospitals, insurance, and lab facilities than if the only thing I can appeal to is, "I have *so much* paperwork to do. It's crazy!"
Really? How much does it cost? Do those estimates also include the cost of failed drugs and assume a 9% cost of capital?
Further, don't those countries also have rigorous drug approval standards? How does that support your contention that we're better off without any government body approving drugs? If true, it sounds more like an argument to figure out what we're doing wrong with our regulatory system than an argument to scrap it.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
So the short answer is, you don't actually spend $800M on clinical tests.
My point exactly. I've seen a photograph once of a forklift palette of papers which was the entirety of one drug company's submissions to the FDA to get a drug approved.
My own experience with the FDA was many years ago when I was working on a karyotyping system. It could have cost $25K or so, including the computer, the microscope, and the camera, but with the cost of obtaining FDA approval, we just couldn't make the numbers work and bring it to market.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That still doesn't explain your bogus interpretation of the $800M figure.
And it's kind of ironic seeing someone argue a libertarian point of view using the labor theory of value - "just reduce the production cost and the price for the product will go down". It doesn't work that way, if you reduce the production cost, the price will stay pretty much the same and profits will go up. Unless you assume that drug companies work for the greater good instead of their bottom line ... which they don't, unless forced by people with guns.
I'm really not sure how you get that from my response or from the document you linked. Do you know what is meant by "cost of capital"? Let me clarify: If I spend $100 on something that should cost $100, but I then claim that it "cost me" $200 because I could have spent that money on another $100 item that would have yielded me a $100 return, is the question of how I "spent" $200 on a $100 item a sensible one? What if I said that I spent $400 on it because I got scammed a few times when I tried to buy the $100 item, so I rolled those failures into the total cost as well?
Think of it this way: Can any rational efficient firm actually manage to spend (as in, pay money out of pocket) $800M filling out a palette of paperwork? Unless you define actually doing the research as part of "paperwork" the value is way overblown.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
"It drastically reduces, to the extent of almost eliminating, the duration and severity of the cold."
Interesting. I get those same results from the NyQuil mixture of drugs.
It isn't sensible to buy NyQuil, because there are many manufacturers of the same mixture that charge much less.
Since it is no longer possible to buy Zicam in the U.S., there may be times when you would be interested in trying an alternative.