Slashdot Mirror
FDA Confirms Toxicity of Homeopathic Baby Products; Maker Refuses To Recall (arstechnica.com)
Last year in November, the Federal Trade Commission issued an enforcement policy statement that requires over-the-counter (OTC) homeopathic drugs and product makers to disclose in their advertisement and labeling that there is no evidence that homeopathic products are effective. At around the same time the FTC issued the statement, the Food and Drug Administration was investigating homeopathic teething gels and tablets, which may have been improperly diluted, thus causing serious harm to infants. The FDA investigated 10 infant deaths and more than 400 reports of seizures, fever, and vomiting and confirmed Friday that belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, was the prime suspect. When the FDA notified the products' maker, Hyland's, the company would not agree to recall the products. Ars Technica reports: Hyland's has been defensive since the FDA first opened the investigation last September. In an October press release, the company referred to agency's warnings as a source of "confusion" and assured consumers that the products are safe and effective. Still, the company discontinued distribution in the U.S. The National Center for Homeopathy, which has ties with Hyland's, slammed the FDA, calling the agency's warnings "arbitrary and capricious." In an "action alert," the organization went on to suggest that warning was prompted by "groups interested in seeing homeopathy destroyed" and led to "fear mongering" by the media. As before, the FDA is urging parents to avoid the homeopathic teething products and toss any already purchased. The FDA does not evaluate or approve the homeopathic products, which have no proven health benefit. Belladonna is an active ingredient in those products, but is supposed to be heavily diluted. Homeopaths belief that ailments and diseases can be cured by trace amounts or "memories" of toxic substances that mimic or cause similar symptoms. Homeopathy is a pseudoscience that has been squarely debunked, offering no more than a placebo effect. In its announcement Friday, the FDA said it had found inconsistent amounts of belladonna in Hyland's products. Some of the amounts were "far exceeding" what was intended.
TIL there are at least 410 idiots stupid enough to use this shit on their children.
but from what I've heard there's been some deaths (10?). Why the hell don't we give our FDA enough power to shut this company down? They're still selling the stuff. And in packaging that makes it look like medicine.
Cutting back on bureaucracy and regulations sounds great in theory but, well, this is what it gets you.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It is a grandfathered legality from the days before the FDA. Homeopathic "drugs" have not been through clinical trials or been shown to be efficacious. They are based on a principle that somehow if you have a substance you can dilute it until perhaps only a couple of MOLECULES in your liquid will somehow cure your problem.
The FDA should shut down this sham of a company once and for all.
I am a father of 8, and I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that Hyland's teething tablets are effective, and I want to continue to use them for my baby. ...
Um, shouldn't your focus be on contraceptives?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Translation: I'm a father of 8 abused children, and I am unbelievably evil.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Is that where you start out dissolving one baby per unit of inert carrier fluid, and then perform series of repeated dilutions until you are left with a substance that statistically contains no atoms of the original baby?
Does this have anything to do with the making of baby oil? I've always been afraid to know what happens inside those factories.
That proves the only way homeopathy might have some effect is when the acting product is still present in the final pills. Which is generally not the case.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Be Happy . . . Go Lucky!
You don't see a lot of infants given Botox injections, and I've never heard of anyone getting a Botox injection against their will. If you're an adult and you want to put one of the most toxic substances known into your body, fine by me. But if you start giving your baby poison, yeah, I think I want you put in handcuffs and charged with endangering your child.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As long as North America insists on persisting their "My ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge", this problem will never go away, and people will continue to die.
Quite frankly, I'm at the point now where I don't think the FDA should do anything. These people are just so god damn willfully stupid that there's absolutely nothing that can be done short of putting them in an asylum. But since we won't... let them make their choices and suffering the consequences.
The FDA is "obviously" being paid under the table by Big Pharma(tm) to keep homeopathy down because homeopathy is such a clear threat to Big Pharma profits. So basically they're damned regardless of what they do. If they try to regulate homeopathy, that would effectively give homeopathy unwarranted legitimacy. If you try to shut it down, 10s of thousands of brazenly stupid idiots will start shouting and flailing pitchforks about with the usual battlecries of... well... the kinds of stuff already mentioned in the article/summary.
I don't think this should even fall under FDA juristiction anyway. It should be treated like the criminal matter that it is. The gov't should charge these parents with child endangerment and manslaughter for knowingly giving their kids poison, because that is exactly what they did.
We read your post. You're trying to defend giving your children a toxin, Mr. Christian Anarcho-capitalist...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There used to be this great Seattle-based comedy show called Almost Live (a sort of low-budget SNL), and they had this really hilarious skit with this tobacco company executive insisting "Smoking is completely safe. Leading chiropractors have found it in fact puts a protective lining on the lungs!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I've never heard of a child dying from teething pain. They do die from medicine occasionally.
Benadryl (diphenhydramine) works similarly to belladonna. It also has the bonus of being a regulated product, properly labeled, and with a known dosage. Iirc that's 12.5 mg for children's benadryl. How much belladonna is in the hyland product? It probably doesn't say on the box, but it seems like its enough to kill the kids, sometimes.
he HAD eight. he's down to one now. so whatever he's doing seems to be working... just a little after-the-fact.
Homeopatic meds have very highly diluted principal ingredient. Supposedly the more diluted the stronger the medicine. In this case why not just drink tap water it already contains and has interacted with every possible poison at some time. Thus it should be the most potent medicine of all !
Stop selling IS NOT the same as won't recall what is already on the market.
You could have just fed them raw potato if you felt you needed to dose them with solanine. A lot cheaper and much easier to obtain.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
If it has active ingredients at all, it's not homeopathy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
One which has been used in herbal medicine for centuries as a pain reliever, muscle relaxer, and anti-inflammatory, and to treat menstrual problems, peptic ulcer disease, histaminic reaction, and motion sickness.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
People have used all sorts of things for centuries, that doesn't make them less toxic. You're feeding your children poison. You should be rotting in a jail cell, Mr. Christian Anarcho-capitalist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Do you have any idea what the word recall actually means? That they have stopped selling the product says absolutely nothing about whether or not they have issued a recall.
The only thing misleading is your statement. I suspect you are either clueless or deliberately confusing the issue. Either way I would not trust any thing else that you say.
Er... Um... huh. This is a weird thing to respond to.
I'm not going to do a super long post here, but: "the effective ingredient in them is probably the belladonna rather than the homeopathic ingredients" is wildly off the mark. The point of homeopathic medications is that the active ingredients, including the belladonna, are present in such tiny amounts that they don't do anything. You can put poison in these things because there isn't enough to matter.
This is why the FDA doesn't regulate them: because they don't do anything. This is also why over-the-counter homeopathic remedies for infants weren't removed: because they don't do anything, so they aren't dangerous. In principle you can give your baby as much as you want, because it doesn't matter.
The problem here is a manufacturing defect, some of the pills contain too much poison. When you say that you want to know "what the current consistency of the belladonna levels in the product is" what you're asking is: "What are the odds that my baby will die if I give it some of these pills?" We don't know what the answer to that is, and you may find that frustrating but... what number is low enough for you here? If the FDA comes out and says, "0.0001%" are you going to shrug and say, "That's fine."?
Interestingly, this isn't the first time that this product has been scrutinized by the FDA over this issue. Link.
You're not planning on having your kids vaccinated against communicable diseases, are you?
My kids are vaccinated.
Giving your kids a preparation containing an unknown quantity of belladonna ?
The FDA let them back on the market a few years ago when the problem with uneven levels of ingredients was supposedly fixed. So is the FDA admitting they flubbed up, here? Did Hyland's stop meeting the quality standards that got them back on the market? What has changed, exactly?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Carry on.
..but Belladonna is intended to be one of the "homeopathic ingredients" here (along with some other nonsense). From their website:
Calcarea Phosphorica 12X HPUS: teething, dentition
Chamomilla 6X HPUS (Chamomile): for peevishness, restlesness and irritability
Coffea Cruda 6X HPUS: sleeplessness
Belladonna 6X HPUS (0.0000003% Alkaloids, calculated): redness and teething discomfort
To be clear, belladonna seems like a possible legitimate treatment (it does deaden nerves) if you got a real dose - but probably isn't effective at the intended concentration (nor is it probably a great idea in any case... I mean, opium would probably deal with teething pain too, but your pharmacist is hardly going to give it to your for teething). So if the gel is ever doing anything (via the actual effects of belladonna, rather than the backwards magic effect of removing all of the belladonna), that itself is evidence that they've screwed up their process and are getting more in than they meant to. Which isn't what you want to hear when the ingredient in question is straight-up-good-way-to-murder-someone poison.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Make sure you bleed them regularly, to keep their humors in balance and drain off toxic blood.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Darwinism doesn't stop just because we live in societies and take care of the weak, it's just changes. Now survival of the fittest means you know enough to help your offspring. People who get goods that are not FDA approved are not selected for.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The literally have the power. Only takes them a day to get a court order, come out with the sheriff, escort everyone out and lock down a building.
How much belladonna is in the hyland product? It probably doesn't say on the box, but it seems like its enough to kill the kids, sometimes.
The FDA apparently knows and isn't telling.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Science is superior because it requires compelling evidence. Not anecdotal evidence. Compelling evidence.
Okay, the FDA needs to release their evidence.
The fundamental theory behind homeopathics lacks compelling evidence.
I know that, and I don't believe in homeopathy, so I'm not sure why you're saying it.
This isn't some conspiracy to keep big pharma rich.
And I never said anything of the sort. You seem to be assuming a lot of things.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
You are confused.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm not aware of any alternative belladonna treatments. I didn't intend to sound like I was saying I'm not aware of any alternative treatments at all.
I don't expect to change your mind. Mostly I'm just venting because articles like this makes my blood boil
We all get less rational when we get like that.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Or perhaps they (Hyland) did something else to warrant FDA's attention? Just to say - I remember a perfectly effective topical antiseptic called mercurochrome, which ended up being removed from the market here in the US because of the mercury present even though there was no clinical evidence that its use could cause mercury toxicity. With that said to support your position, in this instance I suspect that ten dead babies was probably evidence enough that Hyland's belladonna-containing homeopathic remedy is dangerous.
You're in the position of claiming that a demonstrably dangerous remedy isn't dangerous because you've never personally had a bad experience with it. Demonstrably dangerous. There's a body-count associated with this preparation. Not just hand-wringing because it contains mercury or belladonna. Dead babies.
Hey, I finally found an appropriate outlet for all those old 'dead-baby' jokes! Cool!
So you just found out that the active ingredients in the product you are buying is not what the producer claims
No, I have known for two decades that homeopathy doesn't work, so I knew all along it wasn't the homeopathic ingredients they list that was doing the work.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Except the product in question contains unregulated doses. The dose makes the poison.
You are completely and utterly wrong.
Vaccines use an dead or weakened version of the virus so that your immune system can generate a response in relative safety. The doses are small but significant. Other components in the dose such as preservative are also non-zero but below harmful levels.
Homeopathy uses such incredibly dilute solutions that there is statistically zero molecules of the active component in any tablet, or even a truckload of tablets. They claim that the water contains a "memory" of the substance, but there is no known physical phenomenon or scientific basis for this claim.
So, immune system having a memory to actual virus particles = real.
Water having a memory to practically zero particles = woofuckery.
Reading the way you wrote (as opposed to what you wrote), you do not seem to be a drooling idiot, so you must be misinformed / uninformed about the definition of homeopathy. In other words, a reasonably intelligent person who got scammed. I've seen intelligent people confuse "homeopathic" with "holistic", that can certainly happen.
Here's the theory of homeopathy, how proponents claim it works:
For any ailment, you find something that will *cause* that ailment (ie a poison).
You then place a drop of the poison in a bucket of water and mix it up.
Then you take a drop from that bucket and put it into another bucket of water.
Do this several hundred times. (This is why it's labeled "300X", it's been diluted 300 times).
In the end, they'll be no poison left the last bucket, but because you had put poison in the other bucket, the water in the last bucket will do the opposite of what the poison does.
That is of course, utterly and completely ridiculous. If done correctly, there will be zero molecules of the poison in the bucket - it's 100% water. You just paid $8.99 for WATER. If it's done incorrectly, as Hyland's did, you end up with poison in the product.
Please double check to confirm my explanation is 100% correct.
It seems some people confuse "homeopathic" with "holistic". Those are of course two very different things.
A short explanation of homeopathy for those unfamiliar:
For any ailment, you find something that will *cause* that ailment (ie a poison).
You then place a drop of the poison in a bucket of water and mix it up.
Then you take a drop from that bucket and put it into another bucket of water.
Do this several hundred times. (This is why it's labeled "300X", it's been diluted 300 times).
In the end, they'll be no poison left the last bucket, but because you had put poison in the other bucket, the water in the last bucket will do the opposite of what the poison does.
That is of course, utterly and completely ridiculous. If done correctly, there will be zero molecules of the poison in the bucket - it's 100% water. You just paid $8.99 for WATER. If it's done incorrectly, as Hyland's did, you end up with poison in the product.
My problem is that tylenol is demonstrably dangerous if you don't use it as directed, and the FDA is still happy to pull certain tylenol products off of the market simply because some people are too stupid to use it as directed. So I would like the FDA to clarify if these deaths are happening from people who followed the directions, or if they are happening when people give tons of it to their kids like rats in a saccharine study.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
probably the belladonna rather than the homeopathic ingredients
But I thought that the belladonna was the homeopathic ingredient - which is to say the ingredient that's present in homeopathic quantities - which is to say not present at all. Except that it was present, because they did the dilution wrong, and hence you end up with a product with belladonna in it that you proceed to place in your child's mouth.
Also, I'm very far from convinced that teething is even really a thing. Kids get grouchy and irritable for many, many reasons, and I don't know if there's any actual evidence for any teething pain. There's certainly no evidence for any teething products being effective. I mean, some people hang amber necklaces around their kid's necks and claim that it reduces teething symptoms. If anything ever suggested 'no real problem here', then that's it.
If infant tylenol cold and flu hadn't been yanked off the market....
Your FDA is weird. They can't ban 'medicines' that actually contain poisons, but they can ban paracetamol (which is what the rest of the planet calls tylenol). I notice that it's also not possible to get Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs either. Added to which, you currently have a certifiable lunatic in charge. You should just put up a big "do not visit" sign, maybe hang it off The Statue of Liberty or something.
On one hand, I truly believe that homeopathy doesn't work. Period.
But I also support the use of the placebo effect to address minor problems. All drugs carry a risk associated with them, and if we can cure your mild headache with a pill that does nothing, that beats curing a mild headache with a molecule that may have side-effects.
The problem is that placebos only work if you believe in them. And they work better if they are expensive. And to have people make money out of ignorance makes me cringe.
So I choose to support ending the whole homeopathy deal. But I would be looking into other, ethically reasonable ways to make use of that effect by modern medicine.
it's here in case you missed it. I recommend comparing it to say, a package of neosporin. Just glance at them. Pick out the outlines. They looks about the same don't they?
/. and read the stories on Homeopathy.
Homeopath companies know what they're pushing is junk science. So they dress it up to look like real medicine. I've tried plenty of actual medicines that people swear by but that do nothing for me. I don't keep trying them, but still. There's a lot of OTC stuff out there. Now, as a nerd I'm intensely cynical (comes from the years of bullying). Take somebody who hasn't been shit on their whole life and it's not too hard to see them making the mistake. Especially if they don't frequent
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I wonder if an enterprising prosecutor will charge members of this company with murder, now that they are fully aware of how dangerous their product is, yet continue to sell it. I hope so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"From what I have read, the effective ingredient in them is probably the belladonna rather than the homeopathic ingredients..." It sounds like you might have some confusion about what a homeopathic medication actually is and perhaps how it's supposed to work. You might want to Google that... Anywho, the homeopathic meds consist of: a sugar (maybe dextrose, sucrose, or lactose), a binder to hold it together in a tablet form, and a dilution (your "effective" ingredient). I'm not going to go into the philosophy, but basically the more diluted the product the more potent it is supposed to be (makes sense right?), so you will see bottles that say x60 or x400 etc, which is the number of 10 fold dilutions the ingredient has gone under. So, a "high potency" x400 dilution would have 1x10^-400 parts of active ingredient left. Just so you know, the entire observable universe, all the billions (trillions?) of galaxies contain maybe upwards of 1x10^82 atoms total...just let that sink in a minute. The only belladonna that could get into these tablets at that level of dilution is if it randomly waft into the factory from some nightshade plants from outside. This is the FDA's issue, that the product had detectable levels of belladonna when (if hyland was following their dilution protocol) shouldn't have had any at all..
The concept here is simple:
Basically, "Teething" is when your teeth grow in. It can hurt a bit. Babies will cry when they hurt. Crying babies are annoying.
Solution: Give the baby something that will make it sicker. If your baby is having seizures or vomiting, they're probably not crying.
Problem solved!
All medicines are poisons. The difference is dosage. When the FDA yanks normal cold products for infants because parents can't get the dosage right, it's a legitimate discussion.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Done! http://www.health.harvard.edu/...
"In 2015, a study showed that giving peanut products to babies could help prevent peanut allergy. This was exciting news, given that 1-2% of children suffer from peanut allergy, an allergy that can not only be life-threatening but last a lifetime, unlike other food allergies that often improve as children get older. "
He probably is using homeopathic contraceptives...
In all seriousness though, this is not about protecting the children of careful parents. The deaths and sicknesses were probably a combination of overuse and shoddy manufacturing where just one of the two would not have cause it. In litigation-nation, you of course always have to be safe for the dumbest possible customer. In countries with a sane legal system, that problem does not exist. For example, I can still get a package of Paracetamol large enough to be lethal here. Of course the pharmacist will ask me whether I know how to use them and tell me the limit, and the instructions will too, including the warning that more can be lethal. But accidentally taking more is not the manufacturer's responsibility here, and neither is intentionally taking more. In the US, however ...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Somebody's upset they aren't getting any
That's a patent thing - utterly stupid but nothing to do with the FDA. The short story is another company got the US patent for toys inside chocolate despite such things being available for many years.
Um, shouldn't your focus be on contraceptives?
What's the point? As a homeopath he would end just up using highly diluted viagra.
Google 'Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup.'
It was a teething remedy. It killed babies. And the outcry over it was one of the primary drivers behind the creation of the FDA in the first place.
In the forest of anti-FDA and/or pro-homeopathic comments above, I was curious, so as far as I can determine, this is the FDA timeline for this...
September 30, 2016
The FDA is analyzing adverse events reported to the agency regarding homeopathic teething tablets and gels, including seizures in infants and children who were given these products, since a 2010 safety alert about homeopathic teething tablets. The FDA is currently investigating this issue, including testing product samples. The agency will continue to communicate with the public as more information is available.
Reference to adverse event reports here. Multitudes of reports reference events of seizures by infants.
January 27, 2017
Laboratory Analysis of Homeopathic Teething Tablets
FDA has completed testing of homeopathic teething tablets labeled as containing belladonna and other ingredients and marketed by CVS and Hyland’s Inc. Our testing found that the belladonna alkaloids (atropine and scopolamine) content and coffea cruda (caffeine) content is not uniform among the manufactured tablets. FDA analysis found the levels of atropine and scopolamine in some of the CVS tablets and the levels of scopolamine in some of the Hyland’s tablets far exceeded the amount stated on the products’ labels.
This is despite Standard Homeopathic Corporation (the manufacturer of Hyland brand Teething Tablets) insistent claims in voluntary reports that "Manufacture and processing occurred within established procedures to ensure product quality."
So you are the administrator of the FDA and are sitting on the pile of adverse event reports and have this completed laboratory testing report.... What would you do?
Several times since I became a father, useful medications for children and especially for infants have been pulled off the market simply because of claims that parents are using wrong dosages...If infant tylenol cold and flu hadn't been yanked off the market for these ridiculous reasons years ago
I'm not sure what this "infant tylenol cold and flu" that you speak of is. I've never heard of it, and Google can't seem to find anything about it either.
What I do know is, when my first daughter (now 6 yo) was born we bought some Tylenol Infant concentrated drops. They were great since (like many kids) she didn't want to cooperate in taking her medicine. A few years later when it expired my wife went and bought some more. When I went to give it, I realized the dosage was way different and required giving her a ton more liquid to swallow. That sucked, since she was so uncooperative. I drove to like 10 different stores trying to find that same stuff before doing a google search. I was furious to discover that it was discontinued.
Then I thought a bit more about it. My wife bought the regular stuff thinking it was the same as the concentrated stuff. What if it had gone the other way...we started with the regular and then bought the concentrated accidentally. I always check the labels and dosages on kids stuff just to be 100% certain, but I'm extremely cautious. I bet a lot of people don't. Most people memorize dosages of stuff and just go by what they know. When I need to take a tylenol or my wife needs a benedryl, we don't check the labels for the proper dose. We know what the dose is and just take it. Most people do the same. And it totally wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people carry that habit over to their kids.
Acetaminophen is dangerous if not dosed properly (which is why, amusingly enough, the bottle of Kirkland brand acetaminophen that Costco sells says something like "this product contains acetaminophen" on the cap) . And I think it's a good idea removing the ability for someone to accidentally give their kid 2.5x the intended dosage, even if that means you now have to endure the more difficult task of getting them to swallow a greater quantity of it.
Male children?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
While we're at it, let's compare the accidental overdose statistics for both drugs.
According to the report the product had very inconsistent amounts of the deadly nightshade. Most tablets had amounts that couldn't even be measured which is the safe standard, others had over a thousand nanograms of the belladonna atropine (one of it's alkaloids) and several hundreds of nanograms of the scopolamine.
Given that for adults the "prescribed" levels are like 0.05g of the leaves (which only contain ~1% of the atropine by weight) for a psychoactive effect, you could consider that these are potentially lethal to infants.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
No, the FDA didn't fuck up, they had the same problems as before - inconsistent amounts of the chemicals in the medicine. This could be due to bad QA or whatever, but that's Hyland's fault.
If you take a sample, most tablets contain what's considered "safe" - no active substance in the tablets aka sugar-pills or placebo. So Hyland is selling a placebo, however once in a while one of the tablets came back with insane levels (potentially psychoactive to adults) of the deadly nightshade chemicals. That's why it's so hard to 'catch' Hyland because most of the tablets and bottles are indeed safe, it's just once every so often, you got actual poison among your placebos.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Both can be helpful in certain amounts. Everything is poisonous to some level, even water, but you don't see the FDA banning water.
The problem with the tablets is that they are placebo's (which is acceptable levels of poison to the FDA) but some of them contained thousands of nanograms of deadly nightshade substance. Hyland repeatedly couldn't fix the issue of not having consistent levels of poison in their placebo's.
Botox injections contain some poisonous substance but that amount is very strictly controlled and the same in every syringe. If the syringes contained lethal amounts of Botox in 0.1% of the cases, but acceptable amounts of it in 99.9% of the rest, the FDA would also require a recall.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I know if I bought something that was supposed to help my child and it killed them there would be someone else dying soon afterwards.
As a rule there's two things that make a moron: lack of education and being mentally slow. In nearly all cases it's not entirely that person's fault. Sure, there's the occasional rich, lazy bum whose parents are well off. But most stupid people were either born that way or at least born into it. It's tough to escape your upbringing. It's even tougher to escape your genetics. We can celebrate the ones that do, but we shouldn't condemn the ones who don't.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Anything that actually does something can be dangerous if it's used incorrectly. People choose to use it though when they want an actual effect to occur. If your point is that you're putting on a show to pretend to your kids that you're treating them, well, that's a different thing altogether.
Finally, a chance to use my alchemy toolkit.
Everyone knows that Homeopathy uses alternative facts and so normal science just doesn't apply.
I mean, opium would probably deal with teething pain too, but your pharmacist is hardly going to give it to your for teething).
Here in North America, growing your own in your garden and giving babies "poppy water" was very common right up until the 1970's for teething.
Om, nomnomnom...
In a sane world, selling a product intended to be ingested which has been proven to be fatal when ingested would be considered murder.
No the FDA found that no one knows as each tablet can differ wildly. thus the huge danger.
No your problem is you reject science and happily endanger your children because of your own ignorance. this homeopathy remedy appears to be a random lottery as to whether you are giving your kids a fatal dose. They have clearly stated that the amount of belladonna in the tablets wildly vary and are not in accordance with what is written on the packaging. Therefore it is simply not possible to safely dose your children with this as you cannot possible know how much you are giving them unless you plan to test each tablet.
please educate yourself. It is NOT the same process in any shape or form as vaccines. Vaccines work on the principle of introducing a modified or weakened strain of a disease in order to give your immune system a chance to generate anti bodies before it encounters the disease. Homeopathy is about providing poisons that have similar symptoms in the vague hope that somehow the body will recognise that symptom from that completely different source and it will cure some ailment the patient already has. In no fucking manner are this methods similar. please use some common sense, or better yet get a fucking education.
Um, shouldn't your focus be on contraceptives?
He's feeding deadly nightshade tablets to his kids. The problem will sort itself out.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The FDA is still happy to pull certain tylenol products off of the market simply because some people are too stupid to use it as directed.
In other words, the FDA is regulating food and drugs in the world as it actually is, not some fantasy world that people wish it to be. Everybody is stupid, including you. I mean sure, maybe not today, but you know when you've got a nasty cold and can't think straight, you're in a hurry and late for something (probably because the cold impaired your judgement), sleep deprived (can't sleep well with a nasty cold) and (if you have kids), maybe a couple of screaming kids for good measure. Oh yeah and then something important broke (part of the car?) just to add to the pile.
In that state, you're not a functioning adult, you're a total fucking moron and it happens to every single one of us.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The difference is dosage. When the FDA yanks normal cold products for infants because parents can't get the dosage right, it's a legitimate discussion.
I think the FDA should simply declare how the world ought to be, rather than regulate the world how it actually is.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Actually, its not a patent thing, Kinder Surprise are banned under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which bans items which have a "non-nutritive object" where said object is non-functional - mainly for choking reasons.
If they are unlucky enough to have hemochromatosis then yes. Even for people who have high but not quite high enough iron levels and a genetic predisposition to it it is still highly recommended that they donate blood to keep their iron levels in check. If your iron levels are too high then blood banks can't use your blood. Yes I fall in the latter group and I regularly give blood and have since I was 17. At the beginning of every other month so it is easy to remember. As an added benefit I am helping to keep up the supplies of O- blood which is always in short supply.
Time to offend someone
So you are saying an effective treatment would be to just feed the kid some lemon poppy seed muffins then.
Time to offend someone
I am a father of 8, and I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that Hyland's teething tablets are effective, and I want to continue to use them for my baby. ...
Um, shouldn't your focus be on contraceptives?
He's a homeopathic father of 8, I'm sure his surviving child will turn out just fine.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Just because you can't read doesn't mean the FDA isn't telling.
They released their numbers, they aren't very useful since they varied widely within the same bottle and hence tell you next to nothing about any individual tablet.
The FDA does not evaluate or approve the homeopathic products....
To be fair, the FDA does not evaluate approved pharmaceuticals, either. In the vast majority of cases, the FDA just assumes that the pharmaceutical company is being completely honest about its research and testing, even when it is clearly lying.
Merck is a great example of such a lying company that gets blanket approval by the FDA without any outside verification required.
That being said, not everything labeled as Homeopathic is actually Homeopathic. Hyland's teething tablets, while definitely dangerous, are not Homeopathic since they contain an actual ingredient that is known to have an effect (for better or worse) on the human body.
Hyland's big problem is false advertising regarding ingredient quantity and quality.
There you go, this is a prime example of what I described earlier: someone who we should let remove himself from the genepool. And just as I predicted, when one is stupid in one domain, one is more likely to be stupid in other domains too, and stupid parents have the tendency to have more kids than intelligent parents. And lo and behold; it is thus.
It's difficult for me to say the kids should be the dupe of your behavior and attitude, but YOU certainly should. Please refrain from using ordinary medicine AT ALL, and solely use homeopathic 'medicine' exclusively, in all cases. that way, you're more prone to remove yourself from the genepool than people who aren't as stupid. The deplorable thing here is, that most of your 8 children have a high likelihood of adapting your stupidity as well.
I actually hope you ARE a troll, like the reputation indicates, because if you're not, it's really infuriating. Homeopathy DOES NOT work. You do not have more effect from it than from a placebo. At most, you endanger your kids by giving them placebo's when they would need actual medicine, and at worst you poison them when homeopathy is done wrong, like in this case. For the latter, you are right we don't have all the info. But for the former, we already know it doesn't work, and can't work, with the huge dilutions we're talking about. you have to be more lucky than winning the jackpot of the lottery to find even ONE working molecule in a homeopathic substance. what do you not understand about this?
And since you refuse to understand it, I have no problems with you taking some homeopathic cure against a deadly disease, so you remove yourself from the genepool. Idem for you children when and once they grow up to be adults, and if they also wallow in same stupidity. It will seem strange to say this, but this is not personal; it's just that I'm of the opinion people should live with the consequences of their own stupidity. I'm sure you agree to that principle, even if you're convinced that it doesn't apply to you, right?
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
All people exhibit some level of stupidity now and then too. The difference is dosage as well...
And the intelligence of homeopathy-adepts is so hugely diluted that there is almost no brain-molecule to be found anymore, alas.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I think Hyland brand paint chips with a Homeopathic amount of lead will do just fine as a substitute for your babies.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Lol - I didn't know that. Certainly makes sense that it would work. Probably would work even better mixed in with some booze. Or, hell, I don't know, uh, coca leaves and mercury.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Content is too low to be effective. The kid would have to eat a lot of poppy seed muffins for that to work. Remember that when it shows up in tests, it's registering as a trace amount.
Om, nomnomnom...
Really? Find someone over the age of 70 and they'll tell you all about it. Also using a 1/4 shot of gin(or rum whichever was cheaper) was used quite often as well, usually mixed in with their milk. That was very common in poor neighborhoods where they couldn't afford pain medicines, but alcohol could be bought cheaply or made at home. Same reason why people used to grow opium here in North America, the cost of prescription drugs for pain was outside the scope of many people to pay for. And it could also be traded for food staples when times were tough.
Om, nomnomnom...
My area (southern Alberta, Canada) and family have their own weird cultural stuff going on, so I'm sure there's lots of stuff like this that's common elsewhere, but that I haven't run into. Anywho, interesting stuff.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
You know, bullshit's good for a lot of things. I couldn't care less about any of this carp, but I despise the containment of the placebo effect.
The placebo effect is real. Every scientist believes it's real. Every scientific experiment is based on ruling out the placebo effect -- often that's the only purpose of the experiment in the first place.
So, for ailments that don't require treatment of the problem (we're not talking about transplant rejection here), like sniffles and minor pain, why not treat the person without treating the human?!
I'm fine with bottling the placebo effect. Here, take these two placebos and call me in the morning. Alternatively, you can train with the monks and learn to ignore the pain.
Can you imagine what would happen if science actually dedicated real experimental research into developing truly effective placebos? How cool would that be?
Also, I'm very far from convinced that teething is even really a thing.
Really? You don't remember when your permanent teeth grew in? Wisdom teeth? That doesn't mean there's an effective treatment (still tearing through flesh to erupt), but the pain is definitely real.
Also, fever is a scientifically measurable symptom of teething.
Well, what's the right thing to do with perfectly effective medicines that are perfectly safe at the listed dosage? I think moving them to OTC (no prescription needed) is probably best, but consumer awareness of such products is low.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I've seen homoeopathy procedures, bring back my dad to heath many times. But I would definitely not recommend it to a child, period.
Here is an article on the topic from 2014:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
From that article:
"Yowie has the only patent given by the US Food and Drug Administration for a chocolate-encased toy"
"But with the patent for Yowie's expiring in 2019, Kinder's strong brand awareness and deep marketing pockets could cause a melt-down for Yowie."
It's kind of stupid that something with so much prior art can be patented IMHO, but that's how it is at the moment.
I get what you are referring to now.
"The 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act had outlawed, "non-nutritive items" inside confections, while the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) had specified that toys must be safe for children of all ages"
That law is why the toy parts are in plastic capsules in items such as Kinder Surprise, Yowies and Candy Treasure Choco Treasure surprise eggs.
The plastic capsule I think is a sensible solution but I'm convinced that a patent on putting a toy inside chocolate is a bit ridiculous.
That I wouldn't doubt. That stuff is in my own backyard and was really common in the upper/lower Canada and maritimes.
Om, nomnomnom...
I think I've found the data here: Laboratory Analysis of Homeopathic Teething Tablets. I think the last table at the bottom of the page is the one of interest--it seems to list the levels of Belladonna in tested Hyland's teething tablets. I don't know how much is okay, from what I can tell, the table seems to indicate that while most of the tablets tested had less than 0.1 nanograms (being listed as "Below Limit of Quantification", with the lowest quantification given being 0.1 nanograms), one bottle had six tablets over 10 nanograms, including one at 53.4 nanograms. It seems to me that this is probably at least 500 times the usual amount.
Yes, although this is clarified later in the submission: "Still, the company discontinued distribution in the U.S."
Perhaps Hyland's raised their standards for a while, then let them slip again?
I hope you find something else that works for you.
It means grown without pesticides. Walmart's been caught multiple times cheating on this and forced to pull products each time
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Personally, I don't remember either. But I was assuming that you're referring to infant teething, as opposed to that whole thing where your teeth grow wiggly, and fall out, and are replaced by bigger ones, and you've suddenly got a cast-iron excuse to moan about your dinner. Funny that the moaning tends to stop if candy, or biscuits, or cake are on offer, which is why I'm disinclined to believe that actual pain is involved.
Wisdom teeth are another matter, it seems, and while I personally suffered no pain, in many cases there seems to be insufficient room to contain them. I guess I must have a big mouth. If they grow in without pushing all your other teeth around, then there is no pain.
Also, fever is a scientifically measurable symptom of teething.
Well, it would be, if teething caused a fever, which I don't believe that it does.
Well, it would be, if teething caused a fever, which I don't believe that it does.
You don't "believe" that it does. Nevermind hundreds of years of scientific evidence to the contrary. Well...that's a good enough reason to stop you right there. I'm out.
I'm pretty sure that scientific evidence doesn't exist.
The most recent attempt at finding such evidence used improper temperature measuring equipment. I would suspect it's a very mild fever. Most tissue injuries cause enough inflammation for a mild temperature rise - I've had it from sunburn.
He's a homeopathic father of 8, I'm sure his surviving child will turn out just fine.
What kind of homeopath would be satisfied with an 8X dilution?
See my comments up-thread about this being a sign of abysmal preparative laboratory standards.
Exactly this sort of concern is why (in Europe), there are strict requirements about the training of staff to work in such laboratories. Obviously, "Hyland" don't want to spend that money to protect their idiot customers from their idiot management.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"