At a local Target store…

A buck a dose – for sugar, and not much of that. The profit margin must be amazing!
No side effects or interactions but, according to their web site keep away from children and ask for advice if preganant or breast feeding. And, if your symptoms persist see MD. The woo Miranda. Such BS.
How can these products be ethically sold by the pharmacists?

Surely 50% less would be a better promotion. Three for the price of six! Double the power!

Not too long ago, a friend went to the local store to get something for a rash, and 2 days later she still was having problems.

I took a look at what she was using and when I told her what it was (literally nothing) I took her too back to the store (Walgreens) that sold it to her. I asked for the manager and started in on him, but he cut me off almost immediately with an apology, followed by a full refund (even though the tube of cream was obvious opened and used).

I got the impression that they have a policy of never refusing to refund customers whenever they inadvertently purchase the fake medicine they’re selling.

But the worst part (which seems worse than for you) was that instead of having an entire section of the fake medicine, it was all mixed together… with the name-brand stuff mixed with the generic stuff and the fake stuff.

Fun facts about Oscillococcinum:

1) It was based on a vibrating bacteria which doesn’t actually exist.

2) It’s (supposedly) based on bacteria, but the flu is caused by viruses.

Combined with the fact that it’s homeopathic, and it sends the quackery-o-meter off the scale.

At least the woo in this case makes money without hurting anyone’s health. HuffPo reports that McDonalds, Pepsi and other similar interested parties will helping write health policy in Britain. Not really looking to shed the title of fattest EU country any time soon are they?

Shoppers Drug Mart, the largest pharmacy chain in Canada, has been selling this for a long time. They also sell copper bracelets for arthritis and echinacea. On top of that, they sell a whole slew of vitamins and supplements – evidence-based ones (vitamin D) mixed right in with the woo (coenzyme Q10 for people without mitochondrial disorders).

What dismays me is that Shoppers is a franchise with each branch run by a pharmacist. A pharmacist is selling woo… they should know better.

When a spokesperson for the manufacturer (Boiron) was questioned about the safety of Oscillococcinum, they replied:

“Of course it is safe. There’s nothing in it.”

I’ve posted about this kid of thing may times; I’m glad you’ve seen this for yourself now. I harp at the pharmacist at Walgreen’s every time I pick up an rx–(s)he usually says something like, “I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it”.

There’s a similar problem at libraries (and it helps to spread the woo): The CAM books are on the same shelf with actual medical books. Suzanne Sommers would be right there with, say, Susan Orac, MD, PhD; breast cancer surgeon and researcher.

The same is true, of course, at bookstores, but it gripes me even more at a PUBLIC library, where you could, at one time, count on the reference librarian to help you find facts. Last time I submitted a medical question, I got three legitimate medical references and TWO homeopathic references (for a serious medical condition). When I asked about why the woo books were on the same shelf with the medical books, I was told that “readers can make up their own minds about what kind of treatment they choose”. Never mind that they need factual information in order to do that.

A few years ago I had bronchitis and the flu at the same time and, wanting to die, I dragged myself to a Walgreen’s Take Care clinic. The Nurse Practioner prescribed me a bunch of real medication (including oral steroids and an inhaler that OH MY GOD helped SO MUCH) as well as Oscilloccinum, which I’d never heard of at the time. “It’s really big in France,” she reassured me. We checked it out on the shelves and it was incredibly expensive which made me frown and then I saw the homeopathic label and walked away. It really bothered me that this medical person prescribed it, though. I mean, it’s WATER. And if I didn’t know what “homeopathy” meant, I would have dropped a lot of money on WATER. It felt like she’d tried to rob me. Ok, not literally, but still.

Amusingly, despite living in France, I can’t say I’d ever heard of this scam until now. However, the Pffft! of All Knowledge confirms it’s big here; guess I don’t read/watch the right garbage,

“The only problem is, it’s without effects, too, because, being homeopathy, it’s water.”

Unless it’s like Zicam or those recalled belladonna teething tablets, in which case, it has the wrong effects. Trouble is, with alternative medicine as poorly regulated as it is, there’s no guarantee that any of it is harmless, even the homeopathic stuff.

@Anthro: You can always make sure you visit the library with a large indelible marker and write “this book is dangerous bullshit” inside the woo-woo books. Just don’t get caught; I think the libraries can still fine you for defacing a book. That sort of stuff was appearing in a certain university library as well and I would make these books disappear whenever I had the opportunity (destroyed, disposed of – not merely returned to the wrong shelf).

@Chuckles

I’ve wondered about this. If it’s purely a placebo (beyond question), but people derive genuine benefit from it, should it still be on sale?

There are a number of troubling dimensions to this, though, aren’t there?

(.) That this Boiron outfit – with a turnover in the hundreds of millions – is selling 9 tablets of nothing for $9.99 (“nothing” by their own spokesperson’s admission)… perhaps they’re trying to cover the R&D costs associated with the 1925 discovery of a bacteria that (as commented above) doesn’t exist and that overcomes the serious handicap of not existing to cause a viral infection? [though maybe the price argument simply boils down to caveat emptor: branded analgesics, etc., are often absurdly priced with respect to the generics]

(.) That retailers are treating them interchangeably with real drugs that have real effects (and side effects).

(.) How do you establish a regulatory framework for drugs that are indisputably snake oil? Presumably if they are sold alongside drugs they should be regulated by a body like the FDA, but I can’t see how you define a framework for the regulation and marketing of drugs that you know to have no intrinsic therapeutic effect without making a mockery of basic logic. Perhaps in the spirit of advertising standards it would not be deceptive to sell them if the manufacturer followed up the claims on the packet (“Reduces Duration and Severity of Flu Symptoms” is the normal claim for Oscillococcinum) with a clear warning that the product contained no active ingredients and had not been shown to be any more effective than sugar tablets!

(.) And lending any credibility to rubbish like this (even with the well-meaning notion that people should be able to benefit from the placebo effect) is not helpful to the cause of evidence-based medicine, where it’s nice to from time-to-time observe studies where the treatment groups outperform the controls.

Anyway, what’s the current legal position in the US? I thought that the authorities have long been able to clamp down on snake oil sales, so is an institutional blind eye being turned?

@Jack, I was at Shoppers recently and saw they sold thier own brand of magnetic braclets as well. It also had the typical warning on the back about researching not backing up the claims made about them.

But they will sell them anyway.

@MadScientist

Not a bad idea, but defacing anything goes against my nature, although I may resort to this vigilante method if common sense continues to fail. My complaint to the library isn’t so much that they should not have woo books at all (that might be censorship), but that they should have a separate Dewey decimal section for them that is clearly labeled “Pseudoscience”. People should read this stuff to know how dumb it is, but if it’s on the same shelf with the medical literature, how are they to know, especially when the woo author has an MD after his or her name.
———

On the matter of selling placeboes, maybe if they were some nominal price, but Oscico-whatever costs more than anything else on the shelf. I’ve seen it for up to $30!
——

@Jen

Not an MD, but had four kids and the rule-of-thumb for calling the doctor for a fever was anything over 102 degrees.

The homeopathic remedies always make me roll my eyes. That combined with the fact meth heads have made it impossible for me to get more than one pack of Sudafed sinus headache formula when they are on sale.

@Chuckles

True, that a lot of the symptoms of a cold or flu are the result of the immune system fighting off the infection. There are times, though, that I think it would be advisable to tone down those responses: for example, when sore throat or coughing significantly interfere with sleep. Getting proper rest is rather important for health.

Anyway, what’s the current legal position in the US? I thought that the authorities have long been able to clamp down on snake oil sales, so is an institutional blind eye being turned?

Homeopathy was grandfathered into the drug regulations back when the laws were first formulated. There is a Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States (HPUS – listing homeopathic substances and their uses) right alongside the United State Pharmacopeia (listing drug substances and their uses). Part of the homeopathy laws provide exemptions from full drug regulation, such as allowing homeopathic products on the market without purity or potency testing, as well as exempting them from alcohol content limits that apply to other drugs.

Other fake medicines, like many dietary supplements, are protected from full regulation by the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act.

Both homeopathy and dietary supplements need to follow Good Manufacturing Practices regulations, but they don’t need to actually prove efficacy before they’re marketed. Further, as long as a substance has been recognized as safe or been in use prior to DSHEA (or are listed in the HPUS), there is no need for safety testing. Recently, IIRC, thanks to new legislation, makers of CAM “medicines” have been required to report adverse events to the FDA, which they were not required to do before.

You can probably find a bit more information on this over at Quackwatch or one of its subsidiary sites.

“Not an MD, but had four kids and the rule-of-thumb for calling the doctor for a fever was anything over 102 degrees.”

So, fevers are dangerous at 102 and not at 99.5?

Who decided that 102 is the magic number, and on what evidence was that decision made?

In all fairness Orac, your preferred medication may have been missing because it contained antihistamines, which don’t work for infectious congestion and Phenylpropanolamine which was determined by the FDA to be both useless AND dangerous. My advice to patients with cold symptoms is to suffer. For myself, I abuse the hell out of Afrin, but I know better than to tell my patients to do it .

-RR-

@Jen in Tx

http://www.aafp.org/afp/2001/1001/p1219.html

Check out figure 4, which refers to protocols for pediatric populations with temperatures of those over 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit; why so much literature continues to post things in Fahrenheit I’ll never understand). As you can see, the treatment protocols are vastly different, with those with a temperature under 39 getting a “watch and wait” approach, and those above 39 getting more extensive workup, meriting a hospital visit.

And to cut off your next question, the protocols are evidence based (check out the links in the article)

Looks like it’s advertising 50% more flu symptoms. Which makes sense for a placebo.

Oscillococcinum

Is that detectable by an oscilloscope?

@29 Charles Hixson

Scientific American reported on an experiment (on rats) when Co-Enzyme Q10 + Alpha Lipoic Acid prevented the loss of hair cells in the cochlea. Since those never grow back, and loss of hearing is common with age in my family, I’ve been taking them. Don’t know if there are any side effects, or what the dose should be, however. But though it’s grossly unscientific (in the absence of evidence), to me it seems a reasonable precaution.

I’m very happy for the rats. However, since there is precious little evidence in healthy humans I don’t think it’s appropriate for a pharmacist to sell it for a profit. You may feel this is a “reasonable precaution” for you to take, and that’s fair. But the people whose careers are based on knowing the evidence should, you know, know the evidence.

Chris, 🙂

I think you’re being unfair. It only claims to treat “flu-like” symtoms, not actual flu.
It is only “medicine like” after all.
And it’s definitely, like, a waste of money.

MS3 – no, it DOESN’T WORK. That is the entire point of this post. People pay their hard earned money on crap like this that doesn’t work, and it ought to be treated as fraud.

It also represents a sad commentary on the state of our nation’s educational system that people are willing to pay for crap like this that does nothing.

RRains – I use the old kind of Sudafed, the one you have to sign for at the pharmacist’s counter and it helps my congestion but I can’t take it after 2 pm or I won’t sleep at night.

Have you heard of this trick to avoid rebound problems with Afrin? Spray it in only one nostril. Alternate nostrils. That way you can get air flow through your nose and actually sleep, but less likely to get rebound congestion.

Orac and others protesting about “oscillococcinum” being a quack remedy: you’re missing the point.

“”Somewhere near Lyon, France, sometime this year, officials from the French pharmaceutical firm Boiron will slaughter a solitary duck and extract its heart and liver–not to appease the gods but to fight the flu.”

Of course it’s a quack remedy – it’s made from a freaking duck!

These people have a sense of humor, anyway.

The best part, as mentioned above, is that CVS carries a “generic” version of Oscillococcinum!

I collapsed into fits of laughter when I spied the label “compare with active ingredients of Oscilloccinum” on the CVS-branded box.

WHAT ACTIVE INGREDIENTS?!

There are certainly ethical issues with selling placebos when the only effect is the very real placebo effect. Nevertheless, there are medicines that we’d all agree are real medicines where statistically the majority of the benefit is due to placebo effect.

To those of you who complain that Walgreen’s selling homeopathic remedies while also selling real medicine, I’m also able to buy cigarettes, a well known carcinogen, at the same time I’m buying medicine. They aren’t in it for your health; they are in it to make money.

You’re right, Orange Lantern. I had been writing about that study from memory but now you’ve forced me to go over it again (hooray for skeptics! 🙂

I now remember that there was no placebo-placebo arm and that was a major drawback to the study. However, I believe that the numbers for the “discomfort at 48 hours” outcome was similar to numbers seen in other studies evaluating the natural history of fever in children. The power to evaluate that outcome though was really poor. Also, one could argue that a more relevant outcome would be “discomfort at 1 hour” since parents usually expect (or hope for) symptoms to resolve faster than 48 hours when they’re giving antipyretics.

JimB:

One rather significant difference, though:

The cigarette packaging are printed with large warnings indicating that they are hazardous to consume (and where I live, with graphics ranging from the disturbing – children mimicking their smoking parents – to the gross – cancerous lung tissue – to the amusing – a bent-over cigarette as a stand-in for impotence).

The quackery does not have a similar large, clear, easily-read, not-to-be-missed label stating something to the effect of “You Are Wasting Your Money Buying This Product”.

@Anthro, #30

“On the matter of selling placeboes, maybe if they were some nominal price, but Oscico-whatever costs more than anything else on the shelf. I’ve seen it for up to $30!”

This probably won’t surprise you given the placebo effect hinges on the power of suggestion, but really expensive placebos have been show to be much more potent than cheap ones. No joke. Think this is discussed in Ben Goldacre’s book “Bad Science”.

@Todd W., #34

Thanks for your answer on homeopathic drug regulation.

So the FDA is legislated to oversee real drugs which are required to work, and also a specially-exempted category of “drugs that we know don’t work and so shouldn’t be subjected to potency testing which will only tell us things we don’t want to hear”? The legal mind is an amazing thing!

Still, in the UK you wouldn’t be able to make the claims about reducing symptoms if these were unverifiable. This would violate Advertising Standards and be seen as deceptive marketing. Although would you be able to argue that your woo *does* reduce symptoms, even if no more than any other placebo? Don’t know.

You’re right, also… there is quite a lot on this at Quackwatch. Should have checked there first.

@Dangerous Bacon, #56

🙂

Jen in TX and Jack:

The reason a fever over a certain point (102-103F) is dangerous, especially in small children, is that it causes brain damage. If the body is heated past a certain point, organs are affected, sometimes catastrophically. It goes way beyond “discomfort”.

“The reason a fever over a certain point (102-103F) is dangerous, especially in small children, is that it causes brain damage.”

Citation, please.

Jen in TX @ 53:

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that fevers shouldn’t be taken seriously, especially in young infants. What I’m looking for is evidence that they are dangerous; as in the febrile response itself reaching a “level” of being so “dangerous” that it needs suppressing, as “Chuckles” @15 suggested.

Does a toddler running a 102.2F temperature, but up and playing, eating, drinking, peeing, etc. need to have his fever suppressed?

At 102, I don’t think the fever is imminently dangerous in and of itself, but it’s not healthy. It is definitely outside the body’s normal operating temperature, and you wouldn’t want to run that temperature for very long. (Fortunately, most fevers don’t last more than a day or so.) Also, I’ve never met a toddler who was comfortable with a 102.2 F temperature. Heck, I’m never comfortable with that temperature. My inclination is to control the fever in order to keep the child comfortable. After all, if you’re comfortable, you’ll eat, you’ll drink, you’ll keep moving, and those things are generally good for your recovery.

Of course, what you’d really worry about is a fever which keeps climbing. 104 is the cutoff for high fever, and it’s definitely dangerous. 105 is the definition of heatstroke, and it’s around there that you start to see hallucinations, seizures, and, if it goes on long enough, brain damage.

Jack @ 59:

The group found that ibuprofen was more effective at lowering a fever than paracetamol (tylenol) alone and was equal to ibuprofen and paracetamol together. What I found the most interesting though was that none of the interventions actually reduced discomfort. I have to wonder why we are so gung-ho to bring down temperatures if it’s not going to reduce discomfort.

I have to agree with the other commenters who pointed out that the study did not adequately study whether the interventions reduced discomfort. In my anecdotal experience (both with my own fevers and my daughters’), the symptom relief is so dramatic that I have a very hard time believing it’s purely a placebo effect. Ibuprofen lasts six hours; that’s how long it would be before I was shivering and miserable again. The “discomfort at 48 hours” endpoint is stupid, frankly; most fevers are gone in 48 hours, so you would expect similar results regardless of what was done.

I am not terribly surprised about ibuprofen being more effective, though one must temper that with the knowledge that ibuprofen is harder on the stomach than acetominophen. As a lifelong sufferer of acid reflux disease, I have to wonder whether I’m doing myself harm by relying on ibuprofen so much. But for the kinds of pain I get, Tylenol just doesn’t cut it.

How would you determine outright fraud in homeopathy? How can you determine if something really was prepared as claimed since the end product is indistinguishable from water? What stops the maker of a homeopathic “remedy” from just bottling plain water and calling it a homeopathic preparation?

It’s not really possible to have a genuine 200C dilution. That would be 1 part per 1E400 parts, and there are only about 1E80 fundamental particles in the entire observable universe.

-Karl Withakay

Re: fever in kids

I guess I don’t understand, because I don’t actually take a temp unless I see signs that my 2 yo son is uncomfortable. Or more likely, miserable, which is how he responds when he has something that gives him a fever. So we give him something to help with his discomfort. Yes, ibuprofen usually brings his temperature down, but more importantly, it gets him back on his feet and moving again. With ibuprofin, it will wear off in about 6 hours, and he gets miserable again (and his temp comes back up), at which point we usually give some tylenol, which works for about 4 hours.

In the meantime, when that happens, we get him checked out. It’s typically just been an ear infection, and about 2 doses of amoxi is enough to get him going again (he still takes it for the full 10 days, of course). It has been viral once, and we feared it was Hand, Foot, and Mouth, but it turned out to just be herpangina (sp?), and passed in about 24 hrs again.

The reason I take a temp is because the Gurg is showing signs of sickness, because it can be indicative of some parisitic cause if he has one. But that isn’t why we give medication – if he has discomfort that can be addressed with ibuprofin, we’ll give it to him, fever or not (usually it comes as a result of a big bump on his head that gives him a headache – he is a two year old)

With babies, of course, it is very different, and the doctor wants to see the Monkey Boy (2 mos) if his (rectal) temp passes 100.5.

Well, late to the conversation again.

Hi, Jen in Tx. I know there is a fever phobia. And, fever seizures, which occur most often in young children, usually scare the bejeezus out of parents.

You are right; a child (over a year or so) with a 102 fever who is playing normally, eating, drinking probably can be watched, with MD knowledge of the situation in case it changes suddenly. A younger child needs to be seen, at least by his/her doctor. ANY child with a fever over 102 who is not acting fairly normal (listless, refusing to drink, extremely cranky) should be seen immediately.

However, medically, as Orange Lantern pointed out, fevers over about 107 degrees can be deadly (generally, core body temperatures are higher if an external temperature is that high) and core body temperatures at this level will lead to organ failure (brain, liver – which REALLY doesn’t like high temperatures) and death. One reason people die from heat stroke.

Anectdote: Being a crazy, medical type person, one time when I had the flu I decided to watch and see how high my fever got. I was drinking fluids, just no meds to keep the fever down. However, when I hit 104.7 (I’ll never forget that number!) I got very anxious, decided that was high enough to freak me out and took some antipyretics!

MI Dawn

It’s not really possible to have a genuine 200C dilution. That would be 1 part per 1E400 parts, and there are only about 1E80 fundamental particles in the entire observable universe.

Since they discard 99% of the solution at each step, the amount of diluent required goes linearly with the number of dilutions, not exponentially. So this particular objection is inaccurate.

RE: cold-eeze

I saw my parents had some and noted that it claimed to be homeopathic and also made the contradictory claim that it was zinc-based. Checking the ingredients a tablet has 13.6 mg of a 2E dilution of something. So that’s 0.00136 mg of whatever is in there, not a lot but not the magic 0 quantity in the big homeopathic dilutions.

Sadly I can’t access from home the two citations it lists on the back for clinical evidence.

Calli,
I was able to track down the original study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951171/

And just so we’re clear, I do not advocate letting a sick child suffer. If fever causes pain, and that pain is interfering with sleep and fluid intake, then by all means medicate! Otherwise, watchful waiting. My kids mostly just want to sleep when they are febrile, so I usually just let them. As long as they are taking in fluids and peeing, and easily arousable, I don’t get too concerned. But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t keep a bottle of dye-free generic ibuprofen around, just in case. 🙂

And praise be to whoever finally decided that making a dye-free medicine was a good idea! 😉 I’ve never had the “fun” of a kid barfing the stuff back up, but it gets spilled pretty easily, and the stains don’t always come out. Now, if only they could come up with flavorings that don’t taste as bad as the actual medicine….

I’ll read that study later on. It does sound interesting.

“Jen in TX” (our anti-pyretic Jeremiah) comments (#77):

“Yes, but what price do we pay for that temporary comfort?”

She later gives the original citation (highest marks!).

Eyers S et al. The effect on mortality of antipyretics in the treatment of influenza infection: systematic review and meta-analyis. J. R. Soc. Med. 2010 October 1; 103(10): 403–411.

Reading this paper, you come across a couple of salient points: first, their meta-analysis was based on only three studies. Second, the odds ratios included 1.0 in the 95% confidence interval – except for the Sunden et al (2003) study, which had the smallest number of animals.

Finally, the experimental animals were mice (except the Sunden et al study, which had an arm with 30 newborn chickens). This is important because mice (and chickens) are not “natural” hosts for influenza. As a result, they have to have the virus solution instilled into the noses and tend to have a much more severe reaction (similar to avian influenza in humans).

All of the currently used anti-pyretics decrease interferon levels (also in mice – as per Crocker et al (1998) – one of the three studies in the meta-analysis). Interferon is an important part of the anti-viral response and also causes muscle aches and fever. Interferons have a number of important functions, but some of their primary effects are to shut down protein synthesis in the cells and to promote cell death.

Laboratory influenza infections in mice (and chickens) are much more serious than the typical influenza caused by person-to-person spread among humans – the virus “load” is higher and the “host” has a much more dramatic response. By reducing interferon production, those animals that would have “barely survived” the laboratory influenza infection are edged into the “didn’t quite survive” category.

This may be important information for human infections with avian influenza, but it has less relevance for “run-of-the-mill” influenza and probably even less relevance for the much more common causes of childhood febrile illness – rhinovirus, adenovirus, coxsackievirus, etc…

One final note – the evolutionary utility of fever is unclear except for some possible advantage with a few parasitic infections. The organisms that infect us are generally less sensitive to elevated temperature than we are. Most bacteria can tolerate prolonged temperatures of 45 deg C (~113 deg F) – we cannot. Viruses, since they are taking over our cells, have exactly the same temperature tolerance we do. It may be that fever is simply an unintended consequence of other responses to infection that has no advantage (and can cause real harm).

Prometheus

@Prometheus

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought there was a theory that some of the heat-shock proteins which are activated at high temperatures also have antimicrobial activity. Am I just blowing smoke here?

Prometheus

Thanks for the clarification. I remember hearing something about that in an Immunology course I took a year back, but my (admittedly also brief) search of the literature also yielded nothing. Must have been misremembering it.

Okay, Lars, you tell us how duck liver and heart is “herbal”, and how a 1 in 10⁴⁰⁰ solution works. Since it is obvious we know nothing about chemistry, this should be interesting.

Let me clarify it for you: Oscillococcinum is one part duck bit to 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 parts of the solvent (yes that is a 1 followed by 400 zeros).

Now remember there are only 10⁸⁰ atoms in the known universe. Here is an article on homeopathy to help you:
http://www.skepdic.com/homeo.html

On the preview, the zeros stretched off the edge of the page. I believe that Lars does not know much about homeopathy.

I hope that Lars doesn’t forget that the average lifespan before modern medicine was around 30 years and now, at least in the developed world, is around 70 years.

(oooh, I loved Robert Merle’s Malevil. I found it in my brother’s room after he went to college. It was the first of many post-apocalyptic novels I have read. I should check out the ones you mentioned if I can find them in English.)

For no good reason at all, this post left me wondering how exactly you give a children’s dose of a homeopathic remedy. Do you give twice the number of tablets, maybe?

@Lars

You’re stunned by the post and the comments.

But did you really read them, because none of your subsequent arguments are relevant.

There are no ‘traditional uses’ for Oscillococcinum… it’s 20th century quackery.

And it’s not herbal. Killing a duck by decapitation and extracting its heart and liver (and then diluting until not a molecule of the original remains) seems more like witchcraft to me.

Tight security has so far prevented me from getting any video of the Boiron staff standing round a cauldron in their white coats chanting as the dilution proceeds.

And yup, thanks for the lesson, many medicines have natural origins. I don’t think any of the commenters are unaware of this, unless they are somehow ignorant of, say, aspirin and penicillin. So what was your point? You’re upset we’re ridiculing Oscillocoocinum. If you had taken the time to read its history and ingredients (as you instructed us) before your post, I doubt you would be defending it!

A follow-up: a Google search shows multiple pro-homeopathy pages which claim that it’s impossible to overdose on homeopathic remedies, so I guess “you don’t have to worry about measuring out a child’s/baby’s dose” isn’t a rare idea.

None of you seem to understand the basics of chemistry nor biology.

Some of us have very good backgrounds in chemistry and biology.

Indeed, as my handle suggests, I am a chemist. You can test me with chemistry questions if you like. My PhD is in medicinal chemistry, which means I have a very good background in biology, biochemistry, and most especially enzymology too.

As a chemist, here’s my take on homeopathy : complete and uter bullshit – ref.: Avogadro’s constant.

And herbalism : impure compounds with shity pharmacokinetics and unnecessary side-effects.

Dude, is argument by authority easy, or what ?

Lars–

The answer to how our ancestors survived is that most of them didn’t. I don’t just mean the tautology that in the long run, most of us are dead: my great-grandmother had 13 children. She buried nine infants. That’s what you get with poverty and lack of medical care.

Darwinian evolution, real basics: organisms tend to have more offspring than the environment contains resources to support. In any given context, the ones that are fittest for that time, place, and set of conditions are most likely to survive. So, if there’s a plague, people with more resistance to that plague organism are more likely to live. In many cases, that means those who are better fed, or who haven’t been weakened by other problems (including previous diseases, or accidents).

A species can continue that way, for a long time (though most species are extinct, over the very long times of geology). That doesn’t make it optimal: even people who want to have 13 children want to have 13 children, not bear 13 so they can have four.

I am young enough that nobody I knew ever died of polio, and the only polio survivor I know is a generation or more older than I am. Nobody I know has ever had smallpox. You don’t get results like that with herbs from the back garden, assuming you’re lucky enough to have a back garden.

Seb30, thanks for the information. I actually have a couple Ellis Peters books in the house (I saw the television program “Cadfael” when several years ago).

The books on that time in France would be interesting. Several years ago I did read an alternate history science fiction book that took place in Louis XIV’s court by Vonda McIntire, The Moon and the Sun.

Also, when my daughter was younger I picked up some children’s books by Karen Cushman, which take place in medieval times (Matilda Bone and The Midwife’s Apprentice). Possibly because one of my interests was the old herbal healing methods. I believe that was sparked by reading The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton when I was twelve years old (in among the colonial politics, religion, fighting the natives and adultery, the title character was an herbal healer).

So I have several herb books, including some with herbal remedies. Plus I have taken a class in herbal medicine many long years ago. I also live near a university where volunteers maintain its old pharmaceutical gardens (except what they have labeled as a Laurus nobilis is actually a plain English Laurel, sigh).

I have backed away from reading historical fiction lately, and read mostly non-fiction science/math books. One of the recent ones was The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum. Though I might seek out the Robert Merle series (I enjoyed how he described getting civilization back together, and I was intrigued by the cave community… which I saw a real estate listing for one recently — they are very nice homes!).

Lars, in his parody of “natural medicine”, argues:

“Are you at all aware of how many new bacterial infections and diseases never known in mankind’s history have been caused by manipulations of natural formulas [?] by drug companies hoping to make millions out of quick fix medications?” [emphasis added]

And this was just a part of the parody – strong work, there, Lars!

As a microbial ecologist, I’d certainly be interested in knowing how many “…bacterial infections and diseases never known in mankind’s history…” were caused by “…manipulations of natural formulas…”.

For that matter, I’d be interested in knowing what Lars meant by “manipulations of natural formulas”. It somehow reminded me of “purity of our bodily fluids” (Jack Ripper, Dr. Strangelove).

Antibiotic resistance may be what Lars is groping for in this phrase, but most (if not all) genes for antibiotic resistance pre-date modern pharmacology. Almost all antibiotic resistance genes originated in environmental bacteria, where they are needed to compete against antibiotic-producing fungi and bacteria.

In other words, antibiotic resistance is “natural”.

Prometheus

The kennel tried to sell us a homeopathic “medicine” for making dogs less anxious during thunderstorms and such. She said it really worked, but she had learned to ignore the documented dosage and just give the dog a good squirt.

I didn’t think placebo worked on dogs, and initially thought some sort of confirmation bias. But, a few minutes later I had an epiphany, and I’m sure it would really work. The “inactive” ingredient? 20% alcohol. I’ll just give my dog some beer, never mind this expensive crap.

Oh, wow. MM, you are very stupid stupid man.

Again, how am I am supposed to be a “stalker” when I am a regular commenter here, and you just show up once in a while to drop a reeking load of unmitigated ignorance?

@MM

Your mom was a smurf and your father smells of elderberries.

Silver seems to be effective as an antimicrobial, but I think I will wait for proper research to determine safe doses and buy it from someone legally bound to standards of quality. Using a form of silver active on bacteria may be a good start. Apparently, colloidal silver is not.

@sqlrob

Actually, placebos have a good chance of working on animals. If they are aware that your are taking care of them, it’s reasonable to expect them to react positively to whatever you are giving them.
There was a fascinating discussion about this on Science-based medecine here.
But adding a muscular relaxant to your homeopathic drug would certainly help 🙂

@121

Using the “Stalking” troll excuse to make a case for your poor arguements isn’t going to work.

Besides, show us some peer-reviewed evidence that colloidal silver works in humans when ingested.

I think I’ll be waiting for a long time for a proper response….

Yes it is. So stop stalking.

Peer reviewed?

have you learned nothing of this little game? The “peers” who do the reviewing would not dare do any report that made big pharma look bad and make old remedies and natural remedies look good. There is no money for big pharma, politicians, universities, and lawyers for that. There will never be a “peer reveiwed” anything on natural remedies becuase the peer who do the reviewing are scared of losing their positions. Big pharma, washington, and a host of greedy lawyers has them scared out of their wits.

Is that proper enough for you?

As far as your evidence goes, why don;t you try it for yourself. If it works, then there is your proof. What better evidence do you need than a first hand account? Can’t get much more evident than that.

Oh, and just so you all know. You can ban colloidal silver all day long. Many people know how to make it anyway. All you need is a silver coin, a battery or power supply, a transformer, and … well. better not let you in on all out secrets.

Elderberry works great for cold. If you haven’t tried it, don’t knock it.

Matthew Cline:

Well, obviously he has an Internet restraining order on you, so whenever he comments on a post, you have to stop commenting.

Probably because I embarrass him and his sorry excuse for “facts.” My favorite is him claiming the H1N1 vaccine paralyzed lots of people. His “evidence” was the story of Desiree Jennings, who did not receive the H1N1 vaccine and was not paralyzed. He also seems to think that web sites selling the stuff he buys have actual evidence that they work (what he linked to when asked what cures there were for the conditions I challenged him to treat — it seems he does not know the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes).

Oh, and he is here so “often” that he forgets that I lack a Y-chromosome. I have even mentioned that fact to him several times, but he does not understand what that means. And I am not going to tell him!

I sometimes wonder how he manages to log on to the internet. Much less drive to the library to use their computers.

Silver seems to be effective as an antimicrobial, but I think I will wait for proper research to determine safe doses and buy it from someone legally bound to standards of quality. Using a form of silver active on bacteria may be a good start. Apparently, colloidal silver is not.

Like many antimicrobials, it’s active in topical use, not so good in systemic use. In fact silver ointment is already prescribed for topical use, especially on burns.

Colloidal silver, upon absorption in blood circulation in order to reach the proper site of action – the site of an internal infection – wouldn’t be colloidal anymore. A colloid is a suspension of very small particules, particules that are nevertheless unable to be absorbed in the bloodstream in such a form – to be absorbed, it has to be properly dissolved.

The active species would be a simple solvated silver ion. I’m quite sure that to reach effective blood concentrations, you would have to ingest a considerable quantity of the stuff – more than enough to turn blue.

Hey, Seb30, since we are going all off topic around here (and MM annoys me) I need to make a comment on an article I saw in the online Washington Post: UNESCO adds French food to cultural heritage list. Which is something I love to eat, either by cooking it myself or at a certain neighborhood restaurant.

Though it took a while for a good French bistro to replace the one we used to go to a long time ago. At that tiny place the two sisters were often heard arguing in French in the kitchen. But, alas! The city kind of blew it up. They were doing work under the street, and damaged a gas line… which blew under the building. According to a city employee I knew said there were candlesticks embedded in the ceiling. It was not open at that time, but one of the sisters was in the building and her leg was injured. They never opened another restaurant in the area. Sigh.

Though I sometimes make a dessert inspired from their menu. It is a crepe with pears cooked in Poire Williams eau de vie with very good chocolate ganache and ice cream. Yum.

(Yes, I have been to France… I did not like Paris but I love the smaller towns like Dijon, Strasbourg, Epernay and Beaune)

Hey, MM: commercial web sites are not scientific evidence. As you have been told several times, and… guess what? I even mentioned that failing this evening.

Oh, wow… you are dumber than a rock! Either you are a deliberate Poe, or someone who operates intellectually more than two standard deviations below the mean. Still can’t figure out how you log in. Is your password “12345678”?

Okay, its obvious that Medicine Man is just trolling, given how he introduced global warming and evolution as “human delusions”. Let’s just move on…

@Seb30

I do believe we French came with a good idea or two about food

Agreed. I particularly like the culinary innovations of french fries and french toast! (I jest.)

I also worry about the risk of freezing into stone an idealized view of the French cuisine

I can just imagine a food-oriented version of the French Academy, doing to food what they once did to language.

Bah. You have to go southeast from France to get REALLY good food.

Callie Arcale (#125) states:

“Fluoridated water, meanwhile, is intended to encourage recalcification of tooth enamel, not kill anything.”

I’ve read this a lot, but I haven’t been able to find a detailed explanation of how it works. At a chemical level, the fluoride ion substitutes for the hydroxide in the hydroxyapatite (a calcium phosphate mineral) of the enamel. Along with fluoroapatite being harder than hydroxyapatite, it also isn’t nearly as susceptible to dissolution in acid.

Prometheus

Well, there are these chairs you can buy that use oscillating rollers to massage your back. Makes the sore muscles from flu feel better.

On the topic of strange things seen on store shelves…. I was at the grocery store this morning, in the pharmacy section. They had a surprising selection of unusual remedies, evidently aimed at the rather large Hispanic immigrant population of that particular suburb. It included turpentine, for instance. Also . . . Merthiolate!!! Oddly enough, the Merthiolate declared itself mercury free. In hindsight, I wish I’d taken a picture. Maybe I’ll go back when I’ve got more time; some of the stuff looked very interesting.

You really don’t know what lacking a Y-chromosome means? Do you? Wow, this is fun. You are mocked because of your limited vocabulary and basic lack of science literacy.

Also, silver works on surfaces not in vivo. Silver is not a nutrient.

Oh, and commercial supplement sites are not scientific evidence.

@145

It took you a day to come up with that bad of a response?

And you still haven’t answered my question.

Medicien man @ 145:

Collidal silver is used to kill bacteria that cuase odor. The company Primos uses collidal silver in their spray that you use one yourself when you go deer hunting. it helps eliminate human odor by killing bacteria.

Well, it’ll eliminate the bacteria, but it won’t do much for the odor already produced, or for the actual human odor underlying it. Then again, all a hunter has to do for that is to bathe before going out. It’s not like deer hunting is terribly aerobic, until you make your kill and need to a) track it, b) dress it, and c) haul it back to the vehicle.

(I’ve not gone deer hunting myself, but have lots of relatives who do. I’m more of a pheasant person myself.)

Colloidal silver ingested will not harm you. I have yet to see someone be fatally wounded by colloidal silver.

Like I said, I have no doubt of that whatsoever. It would be very hard to ingest enough to kill you. Also, very hard to ingest enough to do anything useful. It’s mostly just a waste of money.

It has been used in military hospitals and labs in recent years and it works as a mild anti-biotic.

“Antiseptic” would be a more accurate term. Yes, it does work, and has been used topically in more than just military hospitals for many years — not just recently. It’s established medicine. That’s not colloidal silver being ingested, though. It’s topical.

So much for your “natural cures don’t work” theories.

Oh, I don’t have any such theories. Natural cures most certainly can work. But not everything that people say works actually does, and I like proof. “It won’t kill you” is not sufficient reason for me to take something, and so far, that’s all I’ve ever seen for colloidal silver.

There are plenty of natural cures in use, ranging from self-medication with caffeine (probably the most widely used natural pharmaceutical, considering the gigantic size of its industry and humanity’s remarkable talent for finding and exploiting the plants that contain it) to more serious stuff. Ethanol for both pain and antiseptic. Atropine (the first anesthetic, used at least as far back as the ancient Greeks and obtained from several plants including mandrake and belladonna) has a number of interesting uses today. Digitalis (foxglove) was considered a poison pretty universally, but today is an important treatment for heart disease. We’ve discussed Taxol (from Pacific Yew) on this blog before. Botulinum, once greatly feared for its astonishing lethality, is now used as a treatment for a number of otherwise impossible-to-treat conditions. The highly popular decongestant pseudephedrine (and its close relative ephedrine) occurs naturally in plants of the ephedra genus, though owing to the difficulty of growing enough to meet demand, it’s manufactured commercially by feeding the right things to some yeast.

Natural remedies can most certainly work. And they can most certainly fail. They’re like anything else, in that regard.

Collidal silver is like water. The silver binds with the water molecules, hence the term “colloidal”.

That’s not exactly true. It’s not actually bound to the water molecules. (If it were, it would be a completely different compound.) There doesn’t actually have to be any special relationship between the substances involved, except that the one substance must be evenly dispersed in the other. They can occur in any of the normal phases (solid/liquid/gas). There’s usually a way to make a colloid out of anything; as you note, silver is hardly unusual for being able to exist in a colloidal preparation.

Colloids are used in medicine; the easiest examples would be topical lotions or creams or gels. Pretty much any lotion, cream, or gel is a colloid. Milk is a colloid. Clouds are colloids. Sunscreen is a colloid. Foam is a colloid (of air mixed into some sort of polymer).

When another elemnet is combined with that water moelcule out odies must use it or destroy it.

Our bodies aren’t quite that discriminating. They’ll use what they’ll use; the rest may be destroyed, eliminated, and/or sequestered in tissues. Silver isn’t easy to excrete, unfortunately, so it tends to get sequestered (hence the “papa smurf” effect).

Never heard of an allergic reaction to colloidal silver before. I am sure it is quite possible. Some people are allergic to gold. Silver should not be so different.

I’ve never heard of a gold allergy, but nickel allergy (which isn’t a true allergy, and thus is unfortunately untreatable except by avoidance) is relatively common. My mom has it; she’s so sensitive to nickel that even 14 karat gold is a problem. She can handle 18 karat or better just fine; it’s not the gold that’s the problem. What shocks me is that nobody screens for nickel sensitivity before implanting anything. They just ask, which is a problem because not everybody knows.

As of today you can get colloidal silver, colloidal gold, colloidal iodine, colloidal zinc, and other such items for sale. The colloidal way is the best way to take these nutrients – especially iodine and zinc.

Iodine can be taken many ways; my preferred form is fish. 😉 Gold and silver are not nutrients; the body cannot make any use of these heavy metals, and will either secrete or sequester them. Gold is pretty harmless, due to its unusually low reactivity. But it really doesn’t do any good either, except to the bank account of the person selling it. Given the rising price of gold, I’d really think carefully about the motivations of people selling it as food or medicine. It has been used in food for centuries, as a form of conspicuous consumerism. (Goldschlager is a good modern example, though it is not colloidal — they want you to be able to see the gold leaf glittering, since that’s really the point with that drink — to make it pretty.)

Recently I had some x rays and an MRI done. I was scared of the radiation, but hopefully I took enough zinc, gamma E, iodine, and selenium to counter the effects of the dangerous radiation.

Actually, supplements (especially the iodine) are mostly helpful in combating exposure to radioactive particles, IIRC, not ionizing electromagnetic radiation such as you get in an x-ray. You’re probably okay as long as you don’t get too many x-rays a year, but I think your caution is sensible — especially if you travel, since the ionizing radiation exposure will just go up with TSA’s new screening requirements.

MRIs actually do not use ionizing radiation, so you don’t need to worry about those. They’re actually pretty benign, unless you have metal implants, in which case they can be extremely dangerous. Every now and again, you hear a story about some metal object unwisely left in the MRI room when the device was switched on, causing the objects to be slammed violently against the machine. Sometimes there are injuries, though usually it’s a tech and not a patient who suffers. I’ve heard more than one story where a patient on oxygen was taken in for an MRI and nobody considered how dangerous a steel cylinder can be in that sort of a field. (Hospitals really need to have more of a safety mindset, but that’s a rant for another day.)

Maybe we should have drug stores and pharmacies just sell that: drugs. Drugs that have passed rigorous double-blind studies.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen Walgreens carry copper bracelets, magnetic shoe inserts, and other such crap. A few years ago, I saw homeopathic OTCs on store shelves next to OTCs that actually had active ingredients. The ‘homeopathic’ label was in such small print, I had to look for it.

I once ironically asked a pharmacist at a party if the copper bracelets worked. She told me “a lot of people swear by them.” At that point, why even go to pharmacy school? All you need is an apron and the ability to make change.

Regarding homeopathy and Whole Foods – that’s the one reason I don’t shop there (as well as I don’t like to be robbed blind). I much prefer Trader Joes.

Isn’t it amazing how many people just disregard the scientific method and say “a lot of people swear by it.”? As no one ever heard of coincidence or false causality?