The immediate side effect is that there will not be any mosquitoes.
No serious negative repercussions are known to exist for such an event beyond that the diet of certain types of insect predators would be affected (fortunately for such predators, their diet is not exclusively dependent on the species of mosquito that this concept intends to render extinct). The net effect upon mankind should be positive, other than possibly causing companies that make mosquito repellent to possibly go out of business.
But seriously.... did you *NEED* somebody to have to spell that all out for you? They're mosquitoes, for crying out loud... and not some vital part of the food chain on which we ourselves are part of.
Magnetism is a separate, but related, force to the Electric force.
Oh, so Magnetism is mediated by the magneton, and electrostatic force is mediated by the... electron? No, that term wouldn't work, because it's already defined for something else, the mediating particle of electric current.
Oh wait, reading up:
As a consequence of Einstein's theory of special relativity, electricity and magnetism are fundamentally interlinked. Both magnetism lacking electricity, and electricity without magnetism, are inconsistent with special relativity, due to such effects as length contraction, time dilation, and the fact that the magnetic force is velocity-dependent. However, when both electricity and magnetism are taken into account, the resulting theory (electromagnetism) is fully consistent with special relativity.[6][9] In particular, a phenomenon that appears purely electric to one observer may be purely magnetic to another, or more generally the relative contributions of electricity and magnetism are dependent on the frame of reference. Thus, special relativity "mixes" electricity and magnetism into a single, inseparable phenomenon called electromagnetism, analogous to how relativity "mixes" space and time into spacetime.
That's right, both forces are mediated by photons, and are fundamentally different aspects of the same force. It's like complaining that there is no such thing as centrifugal, and that everything need be redefined from the frame of centripetal force. Except, they're both the same force anyways, just from different reference frames. I mean, sure the concepts themselves are fundamentally different, and there is a distinct difference between the two, and they should not be confused... but they are still the same force, just from different reference frames.
So, no, mister "I cannot suffer a joke to live", they're not technically magnets... but then technically magnets aren't magnets, they're just electromagnetic systems aligned such that the aspect we call "magnetism" is expressed best to our frame of reference.
But in truth, unless you're going to argue that hydrogen bonding and molecular cohesion is driven by gravity, strong nuclear force, or weak nuclear force, then there is only one answer left: it's driven by electromagnetic force... and unless you're going to argue that magnetism is driven by gravity, strong nuclear force, or weak nuclear force, then there is only one answer left: it's driven by electromagnetic force.
Google didn't throw anything under the bus, they just pointed out what we/.ers have known for 15 years.
Yes, but the Slashdot editors and coders and everyone working for/on slashdot think that their comment system is the best, and any criticism of it is throwing them under the bus.... and I suppose it might be, but sometimes things/persons deserve to be thrown under the bus.
Nazism for one deserves to be thrown under the bus. As well as Godwin's Law.
Hydrogen bonds are in no fashion magnetic attraction.
Hydrogen bonds are an edge-case of van der Waal's forces, specifically due to the massive charge difference between electronegative species and hydrogen when covalently bonded to pretty much any type of atom.
If hydrogen bonds were magnetic, then regular magnets would have dramatic effects: namely, water would be sheared out of your body by MRIs (and your DNA unzipped, proteins unfolded etc.)
And what is van der Waal's forces? Momentary dipoles that attract molecules together.
I never said that they were strongly magnetic (which is why they don't get sheared out of your body during an MRI), but the attractive force is still fundamentally due to a charge difference, which is driven by magnetic force.
it's unknown whether or not his delaying the surgery lead to his death.
It's not a matter of too soon, it's a matter of we don't know what ultimately did him in. We don't know if it metastasized or if something else was going on.
Well, I believe he had expressed regret about taking time off pursuing alternative medicine. (Heard it from someone who heard it from someone, take with a grain of salt, confirm yourself. But it fits with someone going to alternative medicine and then returning to modern medicine.)
Abstracting way too far... hydrogen bonds are essentially magnetic attraction. Being that magnetism and electricity are related, it's kind of technically electrical. Reduction involves the transfer of electrons, which is itself essentially an electrical action as well.
yet the fact that modern medicine hasn't solved it somehow anoints alternative medicine--which has never empirically shown any effectiveness beyond what you'd see from placebo--as the savior?
Ahem, just to be pedantic here, acupuncture has been shown to be effective at stress relief. (Of course, it's documented therapeutic effects have also been shown to work when needles are inserted randomly, rather than "chi prescribed".) As well, massage therapy. And Chiropractics do actually do efficacious work on some forms of back injuries...
Of course, all three of these don't actually treat anything other than relaxing a patient and making them feel better. It's far too easy for a quack to make the jump from "this is relaxing" to "this is curing".
I'm interested in hearing more about the work they're doing with decapitation survival, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Yeah, in some states, decapitation and rigor mortis are the only conditions under which a paramedic can call a death on scene. Otherwise, they have to try and save the person, which increases the DOA rates, but prevents autopsy reports that indicate that the time of death occurred during the initial police investigation.
A company that made an actual cure to cancer could print their own money off of the patent.
Not to mention having humongous clout and popularity due to that revolutionary breakthrough.
c.f. the people who eradicated small pox, as well as the polio vaccine and the MMR vaccine (want deaf grandchildren? don't get your children vaccinated for MMR) and the DDP vaccine, and every other vaccine that stops diseases from ever happening in the first place, and in many cases allowing us to nearly eliminate that disease from our common environment.
"Big Pharma doesn't want to cure cancer"... pff... yeah, right.
The NIH spends ~$30 Billion a year on biology research, with the findings published in peer-reviewed journals.
Take off the tin-foil hat mr. coward.
Plus, medical science recognizes that cranberry juice helps prevent UTIs, and St. John's Wart acts as a weak SSRI. These provide a kind of ready counter-example that modern medicine is against supporting non-drug treatments. (Seriously, contract a UTI and go to the doctor for treatment. They'll give you a pill to deaden the pain (and turn your urine orange), antibiotics to clear it up, and a recommendation to drink cranberry juice on a semi-regular basis to avoid further UTIs.)
If some "wonder food" (woo-nder food?) is claimed to actually do something, then some scientist somewhere will look into it. Scientists do a lot of experiments because they're like "hey, this sounds cool," and a lost of studies start with "I wonder..." Hell, after watching an episode of Terra Nova, in which they pointed out that the moon appears larger because it is closer to the Earth, I calculated the apparent angular size of the moon 85 million years ago, and what it would be in 2149. Found that it would be only like 1% larger, and so not particularly something that would be really noticeable... especially, considering we perceive the moon to be larger on the horizon, when in fact it covers a (incredibly slightly) smaller apparent angular size due to increased refraction.
Do you remember that slacker in your CS/IT classes?
Remember them? Hell, I was one of them...
You know who I'm talking about, the one who never did any of the work in group projects but took all of the credit when it was time to present it to the class. The one who has the same degree you do, but couldn't code his way out of a cardboard box.
Oh wait, you mean those slackers. The "good" slackers were the ones that were too stupid to do the brute force work, and willingly spend 30 minutes to write something that will save themselves time later. I've often said that the best coders are the laziest people, because they make sure that when they do work, it's for a purpose.
And the best: Depending on where you live in Europe, all these streams (except for maybe the neo-fascists and extreme leftists) are represented by parties that have between 10-25% of the popular vote with actual voices in the respective parliaments -- and sometimes governments.
I think this is at least in part a reflection of the election process. Distributing seats according to percentage of voters voting in that manner means a more diverse process. When the only option is "win a seat" or "lose a seat", then it's heavily biased towards false dichotomy. I mean, you need 50%+1 of the votes cast to win, so you have to align yourself such that you can pick up that many of the votes.
In Germany, if your party receives only 10% of the votes, then you still get seats. In the US? That means you don't win any seats at all. The Green party of the US is the closest third-party candidate available, and they have gotten around 5% or so of the votes. In the US government, using German election rules, that would mean 5 senate seats, and around 21 seats in the House of Rep. That's a perfectly reasonable amount of representation!
Of course, the US will never let this happen, because our states are supposed to be independent "nationlettes" (Ländchen) and zOMG, pooling all of the election results together and selecting national representatives as a representation of the national populace, rather than individual states is far too collectivist for the US. In fact, it's a very modern system, and I think makes more sense... but then the US is based on 200-year old traditions that just don't work as well anymore. *shock* Things have really changed in the last 200-years, and we have a lot better view of how to run a government now. (That doesn't mean that all the ideas are better, it just means we have more information.)
And reading over that... somehow I doubt that analogy helped:( Maybe you can explain your reasoning - give me an idea of what it is that's confusing you.
The homeopathic community says it's homeopathic. Arguing that it's not homeopathic because it doesn't conform to your understand of what homeopathy is, doesn't change things. Homeopathy is as homeopathy does. If you're arguing that it's inconsistent with homeopathic principles, it's like saying that aqua regia isn't alchemy because it's actually chemistry. (Some of alchemy and chemistry overlap.)
Honestly, if these cold remedies are a start of a new phase of homeopathy, I would be happy with homeopathy changing that way.
Oh, I remember what I was thinking earlier: homeopathy used to be based on the principle that infinite levels of dilution were possible. But now that science knows that that doesn't work, because eventually you won't have any more of the original substance in it, they've switched to "water has memory!" I think Hahnemann would have been against the idea of water memory, because his concept was that the original substance remained, it was just very dilute.
They can always use language like "boosts the immune system" or "aligns your energy fields" or "energizes your epidermis", which is the kind of stuff you see all the time. That's without getting into issue of the FDA not having the resources to monitor the majority of these products. The law gets violated so often it;'s a joke.
These statements aren't medical claims though, and yeah, it's them using loopholes to avoid getting in trouble with the FDA, but cold remedies could not even imply that they treat cold symptoms without being a drug (listed in the USP, or HPUS), so looking at the cost requirements to get to there, they decided to go with the HPUS.
Really, these cold remedies are like the single molecule of active ingredient left in a homeopathic dilution... it's easy to assume that it is statistically not there, but it actually is. Of course, that doesn't make the solution anything more than water... (one actual scientifically validated remedy in a sea of scams is still a sea of scams.)
Aeration will also mellow the other flavors via oxidation. I have found that a lot of people who say "I only like white wine" are actually just not a fan of the tannins in red wine. Proper aeration after uncorking often results in them liking red wines, especially if I choose a fruitier varietal.
I know that I've started enjoying Red Wines a lot more since I learned that you have to let it aerate. Opening a bottle of red wine about 30 mins before I intend to drink it makes the red wine taste a lot better.
Not saying that I know definitively that you can't, but a lot of people think that they can, but actually can't. Even when they've been studying it at University.
Legally I can now advertize Pizza as "Fresh Vegetables for sale!".
Probably... but only because "vegetable" doesn't have a legal definition in advertising, but very likely not. "But congress ruled pizza is a vegetable!" No, they ruled that pizza's 2 tbsp of sauce per serving counts as a serving of vegetables, rather than the previous requirement that it has to be 8 tbsp of sauce to be a serving of vegetables.
Or I can sell pretty much anything I want under the label "organic", even if I made it by splashing together a bunch of industrial sludge.
This is actually most definitely not true. "Organic" has a controlled legal meaning. You cannot just label anything "organic", and get away with it. That distinction belongs to "natural".
A "remedy" which violates the declared principles of homeopathy is not homeopathic regardless of what the law says, or what excuses the homeopaths themselves make.
Wait... so are we playing No True Scotsman now?
As for your last question... I would suspect that Zinc acetate could be sold as a "naturopathic medicine" or a "health supplement" without having to go through the testing procedures required for new drugs.
/quote>
Yes, Zinc acetate, and zinc glucose are already sold as herb/mineral supplements. Which raises the question, if they could do THAT, then why not just do that? The kink is that a supplement they cannot be advertised as intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. So, they couldn't call it a cold remedy, or even imply that it will reduce cold symptoms, or cold duration. Even though it would.
They got them listed in the HPUS so that they could market it as an actual cold remedy, because homeopathic remedies that have scientific evidence showing that they are actually a remedy are allowed to make claims of treating, preventing, or curing self-limiting diseases.
However, IANAL, and it would depend on the laws of your nation anyway. What holds true for Canada might not be true in the US or the UK. In any event, I can accept your reasoning on that point, while maintaining that there are alternatives (more appropriate ones, at that) to the "homeopathy" label.
True, everything I'm posting here is specific to the US only. But in the case of cold remedies, the only other option that allows them to advertise as treating cold symptoms is full-blown drug trials, and certification into the US Pharmacopeia, which meant WAY more money spent to accomplish the same thing as getting it listed as a homeopathic remedy.
Any solution which depends on the medicinal effect of the active ingredient is, by definition, not homeopathic.
LEGALLY, in the US, the distinction is that it is listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States. I was under this same mistaken belief as well, but it turns out that that is not legally the case.
And Hahnemann's original formulation was yes "like heals like", but the additional "dilution makes it more powerful", was based on pre-scientific evaluations. This was mostly based on the bark that treats malaria. Using the bark itself exposed people to more toxins, and an overdose of medication. As the dilution progressed, it reduced the amount of toxins, and medication until the medication is in a better treatment range. It's almost like the alchemistry is to chemistry as homeopathy is to pharmacology.
Even today, the pills we swallow are mostly just filler. My Zyrtec generic is only 10mg active ingredient, and the rest of the pill is "dilutant". A topical antifungal? 2%, And even more diluted, my topical antibacterial that I have is 0.75%... Part of the difference is how they were "proved"... science proves them empirically with double-blind studies, while homeopathy proves them unscientifically with anecdotal events. The other big difference is the inverse dose-effect responses.
However, while homeopathy thinks that increasing the dilution makes things more potent, that doesn't mean that everything has to be as potent as possible. 200C from the Homeopathic reference point is obviously insanely powerful, and only necessary for serious conditions, not the common cold. For the common cold, a simple 1x/2x mixture is "potent enough", and from both reference points, there's the idea of not proscribing more than is necessary.
So, yes, I agree with you that homeopathy is a scam, but that does not mean that every single remedy labeled as "homeopathic" is actually a scam. Cold remedy stuff has reasonable science, even if iffy, but is marketed as a homeopathic remedy because it is the simplest set of legal loopholes for them to jump through in order to sell their product as a cold remedy. What are they going to do? Spend millions and millions of dollars establishing it as an effective drug, just to sell it OTC? Or are they going to spend a few thousand dollars once to get it into the HPUS, and then sell it OTC the same way they would sell it OTC as a drug. The only functional difference for them is instead of listing: "Active Ingredient: Zinc acetate... 10mg" (I'm just guessing a dosage here), they're listing it as "Active Ingredient: Zincum Aceticum 2x".
I don't get it. The first one is just outright incorrect. That isn't redundancy or simplification.
"I saw her with binoculars" is a well-known ambiguity that people typically ignore, because it doesn't make sense. But it is syntactically a valid interpretation that becomes clear by following the same format with a different tool: "I saw her with a hacksaw."
This is the problem, most people don't realize how much ambiguity is actually in the speech that we use every day, because we don't think about ambiguity very often.
You seem to be expressing a position that is fairly in agreement with my positions on the matter, so I'm not sure how you're playing the other side... but yeah, it's way better than snake-oil.
"Cures what ails you, and makes you feel better!"... well, sure, cocaine makes people feel quite happy, and better. It won't cure anything, but you'll be so high, you won't hardly care.
Slashdot Mirror
The immediate side effect is that there will not be any mosquitoes.
No serious negative repercussions are known to exist for such an event beyond that the diet of certain types of insect predators would be affected (fortunately for such predators, their diet is not exclusively dependent on the species of mosquito that this concept intends to render extinct). The net effect upon mankind should be positive, other than possibly causing companies that make mosquito repellent to possibly go out of business.
But seriously.... did you *NEED* somebody to have to spell that all out for you? They're mosquitoes, for crying out loud... and not some vital part of the food chain on which we ourselves are part of.
But if all the Mosquitos are dead we will lose our protected planet status.
Magnetism is a separate, but related, force to the Electric force.
Oh, so Magnetism is mediated by the magneton, and electrostatic force is mediated by the... electron? No, that term wouldn't work, because it's already defined for something else, the mediating particle of electric current.
Oh wait, reading up:
As a consequence of Einstein's theory of special relativity, electricity and magnetism are fundamentally interlinked. Both magnetism lacking electricity, and electricity without magnetism, are inconsistent with special relativity, due to such effects as length contraction, time dilation, and the fact that the magnetic force is velocity-dependent. However, when both electricity and magnetism are taken into account, the resulting theory (electromagnetism) is fully consistent with special relativity.[6][9] In particular, a phenomenon that appears purely electric to one observer may be purely magnetic to another, or more generally the relative contributions of electricity and magnetism are dependent on the frame of reference. Thus, special relativity "mixes" electricity and magnetism into a single, inseparable phenomenon called electromagnetism, analogous to how relativity "mixes" space and time into spacetime.
That's right, both forces are mediated by photons, and are fundamentally different aspects of the same force. It's like complaining that there is no such thing as centrifugal, and that everything need be redefined from the frame of centripetal force. Except, they're both the same force anyways, just from different reference frames. I mean, sure the concepts themselves are fundamentally different, and there is a distinct difference between the two, and they should not be confused... but they are still the same force, just from different reference frames.
So, no, mister "I cannot suffer a joke to live", they're not technically magnets... but then technically magnets aren't magnets, they're just electromagnetic systems aligned such that the aspect we call "magnetism" is expressed best to our frame of reference.
But in truth, unless you're going to argue that hydrogen bonding and molecular cohesion is driven by gravity, strong nuclear force, or weak nuclear force, then there is only one answer left: it's driven by electromagnetic force... and unless you're going to argue that magnetism is driven by gravity, strong nuclear force, or weak nuclear force, then there is only one answer left: it's driven by electromagnetic force.
Google didn't throw anything under the bus, they just pointed out what we /.ers have known for 15 years.
Yes, but the Slashdot editors and coders and everyone working for/on slashdot think that their comment system is the best, and any criticism of it is throwing them under the bus. ... and I suppose it might be, but sometimes things/persons deserve to be thrown under the bus.
Nazism for one deserves to be thrown under the bus. As well as Godwin's Law.
For looking up my sources, I give you 5 internets. :)
Hydrogen bonds are in no fashion magnetic attraction.
Hydrogen bonds are an edge-case of van der Waal's forces, specifically due to the massive charge difference between electronegative species and hydrogen when covalently bonded to pretty much any type of atom.
If hydrogen bonds were magnetic, then regular magnets would have dramatic effects: namely, water would be sheared out of your body by MRIs (and your DNA unzipped, proteins unfolded etc.)
And what is van der Waal's forces? Momentary dipoles that attract molecules together.
I never said that they were strongly magnetic (which is why they don't get sheared out of your body during an MRI), but the attractive force is still fundamentally due to a charge difference, which is driven by magnetic force.
it's unknown whether or not his delaying the surgery lead to his death.
It's not a matter of too soon, it's a matter of we don't know what ultimately did him in. We don't know if it metastasized or if something else was going on.
Well, I believe he had expressed regret about taking time off pursuing alternative medicine. (Heard it from someone who heard it from someone, take with a grain of salt, confirm yourself. But it fits with someone going to alternative medicine and then returning to modern medicine.)
Abstracting way too far... hydrogen bonds are essentially magnetic attraction. Being that magnetism and electricity are related, it's kind of technically electrical. Reduction involves the transfer of electrons, which is itself essentially an electrical action as well.
Salt: held together by extremely small magnets.
yet the fact that modern medicine hasn't solved it somehow anoints alternative medicine--which has never empirically shown any effectiveness beyond what you'd see from placebo--as the savior?
Ahem, just to be pedantic here, acupuncture has been shown to be effective at stress relief. (Of course, it's documented therapeutic effects have also been shown to work when needles are inserted randomly, rather than "chi prescribed".) As well, massage therapy. And Chiropractics do actually do efficacious work on some forms of back injuries...
Of course, all three of these don't actually treat anything other than relaxing a patient and making them feel better. It's far too easy for a quack to make the jump from "this is relaxing" to "this is curing".
I'm interested in hearing more about the work they're doing with decapitation survival, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Yeah, in some states, decapitation and rigor mortis are the only conditions under which a paramedic can call a death on scene. Otherwise, they have to try and save the person, which increases the DOA rates, but prevents autopsy reports that indicate that the time of death occurred during the initial police investigation.
A company that made an actual cure to cancer could print their own money off of the patent.
Not to mention having humongous clout and popularity due to that revolutionary breakthrough.
c.f. the people who eradicated small pox, as well as the polio vaccine and the MMR vaccine (want deaf grandchildren? don't get your children vaccinated for MMR) and the DDP vaccine, and every other vaccine that stops diseases from ever happening in the first place, and in many cases allowing us to nearly eliminate that disease from our common environment.
"Big Pharma doesn't want to cure cancer"... pff... yeah, right.
The NIH spends ~$30 Billion a year on biology research, with the findings published in peer-reviewed journals.
Take off the tin-foil hat mr. coward.
Plus, medical science recognizes that cranberry juice helps prevent UTIs, and St. John's Wart acts as a weak SSRI. These provide a kind of ready counter-example that modern medicine is against supporting non-drug treatments. (Seriously, contract a UTI and go to the doctor for treatment. They'll give you a pill to deaden the pain (and turn your urine orange), antibiotics to clear it up, and a recommendation to drink cranberry juice on a semi-regular basis to avoid further UTIs.)
If some "wonder food" (woo-nder food?) is claimed to actually do something, then some scientist somewhere will look into it. Scientists do a lot of experiments because they're like "hey, this sounds cool," and a lost of studies start with "I wonder..." Hell, after watching an episode of Terra Nova, in which they pointed out that the moon appears larger because it is closer to the Earth, I calculated the apparent angular size of the moon 85 million years ago, and what it would be in 2149. Found that it would be only like 1% larger, and so not particularly something that would be really noticeable... especially, considering we perceive the moon to be larger on the horizon, when in fact it covers a (incredibly slightly) smaller apparent angular size due to increased refraction.
Do you remember that slacker in your CS/IT classes?
Remember them? Hell, I was one of them...
You know who I'm talking about, the one who never did any of the work in group projects but took all of the credit when it was time to present it to the class. The one who has the same degree you do, but couldn't code his way out of a cardboard box.
Oh wait, you mean those slackers. The "good" slackers were the ones that were too stupid to do the brute force work, and willingly spend 30 minutes to write something that will save themselves time later. I've often said that the best coders are the laziest people, because they make sure that when they do work, it's for a purpose.
Zynga games just have the insane repetition.
This is crazy talk... obtw, could I friend you on Facebook, so that I could get another friend for Farmville? Oh, can you also water my crops for me?
And the best: Depending on where you live in Europe, all these streams (except for maybe the neo-fascists and extreme leftists) are represented by parties that have between 10-25% of the popular vote with actual voices in the respective parliaments -- and sometimes governments.
I think this is at least in part a reflection of the election process. Distributing seats according to percentage of voters voting in that manner means a more diverse process. When the only option is "win a seat" or "lose a seat", then it's heavily biased towards false dichotomy. I mean, you need 50%+1 of the votes cast to win, so you have to align yourself such that you can pick up that many of the votes.
In Germany, if your party receives only 10% of the votes, then you still get seats. In the US? That means you don't win any seats at all. The Green party of the US is the closest third-party candidate available, and they have gotten around 5% or so of the votes. In the US government, using German election rules, that would mean 5 senate seats, and around 21 seats in the House of Rep. That's a perfectly reasonable amount of representation!
Of course, the US will never let this happen, because our states are supposed to be independent "nationlettes" (Ländchen) and zOMG, pooling all of the election results together and selecting national representatives as a representation of the national populace, rather than individual states is far too collectivist for the US. In fact, it's a very modern system, and I think makes more sense... but then the US is based on 200-year old traditions that just don't work as well anymore. *shock* Things have really changed in the last 200-years, and we have a lot better view of how to run a government now. (That doesn't mean that all the ideas are better, it just means we have more information.)
I think the real point of the study was: noobs suck.
And reading over that ... somehow I doubt that analogy helped :( Maybe you can explain your reasoning - give me an idea of what it is that's confusing you.
The homeopathic community says it's homeopathic. Arguing that it's not homeopathic because it doesn't conform to your understand of what homeopathy is, doesn't change things. Homeopathy is as homeopathy does. If you're arguing that it's inconsistent with homeopathic principles, it's like saying that aqua regia isn't alchemy because it's actually chemistry. (Some of alchemy and chemistry overlap.)
Honestly, if these cold remedies are a start of a new phase of homeopathy, I would be happy with homeopathy changing that way.
Oh, I remember what I was thinking earlier: homeopathy used to be based on the principle that infinite levels of dilution were possible. But now that science knows that that doesn't work, because eventually you won't have any more of the original substance in it, they've switched to "water has memory!" I think Hahnemann would have been against the idea of water memory, because his concept was that the original substance remained, it was just very dilute.
They can always use language like "boosts the immune system" or "aligns your energy fields" or "energizes your epidermis", which is the kind of stuff you see all the time. That's without getting into issue of the FDA not having the resources to monitor the majority of these products. The law gets violated so often it;'s a joke.
These statements aren't medical claims though, and yeah, it's them using loopholes to avoid getting in trouble with the FDA, but cold remedies could not even imply that they treat cold symptoms without being a drug (listed in the USP, or HPUS), so looking at the cost requirements to get to there, they decided to go with the HPUS.
Really, these cold remedies are like the single molecule of active ingredient left in a homeopathic dilution... it's easy to assume that it is statistically not there, but it actually is. Of course, that doesn't make the solution anything more than water... (one actual scientifically validated remedy in a sea of scams is still a sea of scams.)
Aeration will also mellow the other flavors via oxidation. I have found that a lot of people who say "I only like white wine" are actually just not a fan of the tannins in red wine. Proper aeration after uncorking often results in them liking red wines, especially if I choose a fruitier varietal.
I know that I've started enjoying Red Wines a lot more since I learned that you have to let it aerate. Opening a bottle of red wine about 30 mins before I intend to drink it makes the red wine taste a lot better.
'You Are Not So Smart': Why We Can't Tell Good Wine From Bad
Not saying that I know definitively that you can't, but a lot of people think that they can, but actually can't. Even when they've been studying it at University.
Legally I can now advertize Pizza as "Fresh Vegetables for sale!".
Probably... but only because "vegetable" doesn't have a legal definition in advertising, but very likely not. "But congress ruled pizza is a vegetable!" No, they ruled that pizza's 2 tbsp of sauce per serving counts as a serving of vegetables, rather than the previous requirement that it has to be 8 tbsp of sauce to be a serving of vegetables.
Or I can sell pretty much anything I want under the label "organic", even if I made it by splashing together a bunch of industrial sludge.
This is actually most definitely not true. "Organic" has a controlled legal meaning. You cannot just label anything "organic", and get away with it. That distinction belongs to "natural".
A "remedy" which violates the declared principles of homeopathy is not homeopathic regardless of what the law says, or what excuses the homeopaths themselves make.
Wait... so are we playing No True Scotsman now?
As for your last question ... I would suspect that Zinc acetate could be sold as a "naturopathic medicine" or a "health supplement" without having to go through the testing procedures required for new drugs.
/quote>
Yes, Zinc acetate, and zinc glucose are already sold as herb/mineral supplements. Which raises the question, if they could do THAT, then why not just do that? The kink is that a supplement they cannot be advertised as intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. So, they couldn't call it a cold remedy, or even imply that it will reduce cold symptoms, or cold duration. Even though it would.
They got them listed in the HPUS so that they could market it as an actual cold remedy, because homeopathic remedies that have scientific evidence showing that they are actually a remedy are allowed to make claims of treating, preventing, or curing self-limiting diseases.
However, IANAL, and it would depend on the laws of your nation anyway. What holds true for Canada might not be true in the US or the UK. In any event, I can accept your reasoning on that point, while maintaining that there are alternatives (more appropriate ones, at that) to the "homeopathy" label.
True, everything I'm posting here is specific to the US only. But in the case of cold remedies, the only other option that allows them to advertise as treating cold symptoms is full-blown drug trials, and certification into the US Pharmacopeia, which meant WAY more money spent to accomplish the same thing as getting it listed as a homeopathic remedy.
Any solution which depends on the medicinal effect of the active ingredient is, by definition, not homeopathic.
LEGALLY, in the US, the distinction is that it is listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States. I was under this same mistaken belief as well, but it turns out that that is not legally the case.
And Hahnemann's original formulation was yes "like heals like", but the additional "dilution makes it more powerful", was based on pre-scientific evaluations. This was mostly based on the bark that treats malaria. Using the bark itself exposed people to more toxins, and an overdose of medication. As the dilution progressed, it reduced the amount of toxins, and medication until the medication is in a better treatment range. It's almost like the alchemistry is to chemistry as homeopathy is to pharmacology.
Even today, the pills we swallow are mostly just filler. My Zyrtec generic is only 10mg active ingredient, and the rest of the pill is "dilutant". A topical antifungal? 2%, And even more diluted, my topical antibacterial that I have is 0.75%... Part of the difference is how they were "proved"... science proves them empirically with double-blind studies, while homeopathy proves them unscientifically with anecdotal events. The other big difference is the inverse dose-effect responses.
However, while homeopathy thinks that increasing the dilution makes things more potent, that doesn't mean that everything has to be as potent as possible. 200C from the Homeopathic reference point is obviously insanely powerful, and only necessary for serious conditions, not the common cold. For the common cold, a simple 1x/2x mixture is "potent enough", and from both reference points, there's the idea of not proscribing more than is necessary.
So, yes, I agree with you that homeopathy is a scam, but that does not mean that every single remedy labeled as "homeopathic" is actually a scam. Cold remedy stuff has reasonable science, even if iffy, but is marketed as a homeopathic remedy because it is the simplest set of legal loopholes for them to jump through in order to sell their product as a cold remedy. What are they going to do? Spend millions and millions of dollars establishing it as an effective drug, just to sell it OTC? Or are they going to spend a few thousand dollars once to get it into the HPUS, and then sell it OTC the same way they would sell it OTC as a drug. The only functional difference for them is instead of listing: "Active Ingredient: Zinc acetate... 10mg" (I'm just guessing a dosage here), they're listing it as "Active Ingredient: Zincum Aceticum 2x".
My fat American ass shoving honey coated whole wheat pretzels into my gaping maw while surfing the internet?
This imagery reminds me of the humor style of the guy who does The Oatmeal.
*oh my god, a girl is trying to talk to me on Slashdot, quick, reply with something that will impress her!*
I also snort.
I just snorted milk out my nose!
My fat American ass shoving honey coated whole wheat pretzels into my gaping maw while surfing the internet?
This imagery reminds me of the humor style of the guy who does The Oatmeal.
I don't get it. The first one is just outright incorrect. That isn't redundancy or simplification.
"I saw her with binoculars" is a well-known ambiguity that people typically ignore, because it doesn't make sense. But it is syntactically a valid interpretation that becomes clear by following the same format with a different tool: "I saw her with a hacksaw."
This is the problem, most people don't realize how much ambiguity is actually in the speech that we use every day, because we don't think about ambiguity very often.
just to play the other side...
You seem to be expressing a position that is fairly in agreement with my positions on the matter, so I'm not sure how you're playing the other side... but yeah, it's way better than snake-oil.
"Cures what ails you, and makes you feel better!" ... well, sure, cocaine makes people feel quite happy, and better. It won't cure anything, but you'll be so high, you won't hardly care.
By your logic then we can't claim lemons cure scurvy either.
Yep. They haven't gone through all the hoops necessary to list lemons as a drug, and therefore cannot make a claims that are restricted to drugs.