A lot of people are convinced that zinc is good for colds - I'm agnostic, having not seen much convincing evidence - so if that's the case, why not snort zinc up your nose? That, at any rate, seems to be the condensed version of the Zicam pitch, although I don't believe that they used that exact wording in their ads. (A gift for advertising copy might not be one of my more robust talents. . .) At any rate, snorting zinc salts has actually been known, for some time now, to injure the sense of smell in some people. So it's proved with Zicam, with several hundred victims.
The moral? If you're going to sell homeopathic medicine - and boy, is it a lucrative business - make sure that you don't put anything in there except sterile water. That'll cut down on your expenses, too, since most ingredients cost more than water, anyway. Stick with that strategy, and you can be absolutely sure that nothing bad will happen to your customers. Nothing good will happen to them either, but they won't know that. When their cold/headache/whatever goes away of its own accord, they'll ascribe it to your miracle product. Sit back and profit! Be sure to thank Senator Hatch while you count your money, though - it's only proper.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Apply directly to the forehead
Sterile saline solution, not just sterile water.
Glad you're noticing alternative medicines.
Only person I know who's business is growing in town right now is the herbalist. Folks are drinking a lot of tea these days.
It was sold as a homeopathic medicine to avoid having to do the FDA studies, however the theory has been tested in rats and humans. Most studies showed that it reduces the duration of symptoms by about 1/2 (ex. Effect of zincum gluconicum nasal gel on the duration and symptom severity of the common cold in otherwise healthy adults. J Fam Pract. 2003 May;52(5):352-3.) but there have been countervailing studies (ex. Clin Infect Dis. 2002 Jun 15;34(12):1657.
Ineffectiveness of intranasal zinc gluconate for prevention of experimental rhinovirus colds). The jury is still out but basically the FDA said that they had to pull it and do the studies because it's a "real" drug.
What does this have to do with Michael? Just another sign that the MSM and BloggoSphere are ignoring the fan press, and the issues that really matter.
First it was the Iranian Twitter Bugs, now this (Zicam)?
Have fun "blogging" - the "people" will be dancing in the streets, and remembering Michael.
Uh, dude, CNN has been running Michael Jackson stories at the double-width "major news" format and running additional "breaking news" banners across the entire top of the page pretty much continuously since late yesterday afternoon. This for a guy whose greatest contributions to music are 20+ years old and who gave cosmetic surgery a worse name than exploding breast implants.
I'll happily accept blogging about anying else whatsoever, and you might feel free to go hang out with the "news" media and their wacky pandering.
I'm going out on a limb, here, but I think Borton's being sarcastic.
Maybe.
Nuts, really? In that case, very well played on the "BloggoSphere" thing, and the multiple earnest scare quotes. Gives it that authentic, home-baked touch.
"Snorting zinc salts has actually been known, for some time now, to injure the sense of smell in some people. So it's proved with Zicam, with several hundred victims."
I'm not sure where you're getting this information. In 1937, a very concentrated form of Zinc Sulfate was used in a Polio study with children. A very long suringe was pushed up through the nasal cavity to the olfactory in a painful process where children were strapped down and inverted on a surgical table. The olfactory was drowned in this concentration until kids said they couldn't smell any more. And if it were me, I'd be screaming right away! There were no follow-on studies as to whether or not these poor kids actually lost their sense of smell or if their potential loss of smell was temporary.
The Zicam products have had independent studies completed that were published on their website that show they can't reach the olfactory. Even if misused, they can't reach the olfactory. The FDA has not looked at this study.
There is also independent research stating that the #1 cause of anosmia is the common cold - which Zicam is used to treat. How can one tell if Zicam is the cause or their cold? THey can't
The incidence rate of total Zicam users to Zicam users complaining they have anosmia brought on by the product is .003%. That's right, less than 1%. This incidence rate is LOWER than the total population of cold sufferers not using Zicam that get anosmia.
Zicam is a proven cold remedy that can shorten the duration and severity of a cold. It's a great product - A great homeopathic product. I hope justice prevails and it's allowed back on market.
According to David Oshinsky's Polio: An American Story, in 1937 children were sprayed with zinc sulphate during a polio outbreak in Toronto. The chemical proved useless in stopping the epidemic and several children suffered "a complete and evidently permanent loss of the sense of smell." He doesn't mention the "long syringe" and does say the loss of sense of smell was permanent.
Do you have any actual references?
Jim
Hey! Derek Lowe has made over $50,000,000 pitching, & is 7-6 for the Braves right now. What more do you need?
ZnSO4 (zinc sulfate) has been used by olfaction researchers to destroy the main olfactory epithelium (MOE) in mice for ages. Just use a pubmed search for the two terms and you'll find plenty of evidence.
In fact, I know second-hand of a paper in submission describing this very effect. They were in effect "scooped" by consumer complaints to the FDA.
One of my favorite futurama lines.
"I've got a degree in homeopathy"
"No, you've got a degree in garbage."
Seriously, homeopathy is the biggest pure scam in America. The regulatory quirk that allows homeopathic products to be marketed in pharmacies disguised as actual drugs is absurd. When they talk about wasted health care dollars, I'm not sure why this is never mentioned. I have long thought it would be nice to get a piece of this pie; in medical school I went as far as registering homeopathy.com type website domains. I was going to come up with fake certifications ("Hahnemann's American Homeopathic Natural Council Certified") and rake it in. Then I remembered quackery isn't so hot for your professional reputation......
WAIT! I don't expect to convince anyone here, but I've used zinc for colds for two decades and found the zicam gel even more effective than lozenges.
So why can't I assume the risk and take it? Put it behind the pharmacy counter, like Sudafed. Have the pharmacist give me a lecture about the dangers, like they do with some OTC's in Canada (hydrocortisone creme for insect bites apparently thins the skin and they advise you to watch out for too much sun).
Darn nannystaters!
While we're at it, why not put chemotherapeutic agents, oral steroids (corticosteroids and the anabolic varieties), antibiotics, and ion channel inhibitors behind the counter and available without a prescription, then permit companies to tout their imagined health benefits in the public sphere with no regulation.
Nice to see some people doing their tiny part to counter to madness of Oprah and Larry King.
What do you mean? Nothing screams good science like the homeopathic addage that an imperceptibly tiny amount of something that causes an effect can cure the effect. Makes perfect sense!
And that water memory theory? Who cares if it violates conventional physics, it sounds good! Great science all around!
Which leads the really strange part of the whole Zicam thing - that the zinc glutonate which is the active ingredient isn't even the homeopathic part (in fact, using zinc to cure cold is kind of anti-homeopathic.) The homeopathic part is the sulfur and galphimia glauca which are reduced to such a small quantity that they can't even be detected.
Homeopathy is snake oil. Nothing more, nothing less.
So why can't I assume the risk and take it? Put it behind the pharmacy counter, like Sudafed.
The basic function of the FDA is to make sure that the labeling on the medicine is accurate. There has been and still is a major problem of false advertising in remedies/medicine. The FDA was created originally so that labeling on medicine is correct. Even if we reduce it to this function, Zicam seems to fail at providing the correct labeling. If Zicam wants to market their drug as a cold remedy then they must do clinical trials for their drug to prove its efficacy and safety.
The "zinc fixes colds" things comes from a (legit) study done around zinc gluconate, the ingredient in Cold-Eeeze. That molecule presented in that medium is not a quack rememdy. Zicam... hard to say.
And Derek Lowe doesn't understand squat about homeopathy, and apparently couldn't be troubled to do any sort of research before writing.
...Huh?
This has been one of his bugbears as long as I've been reading him. He's also an medicinal chemist, so I'm willing to take his word on whether or not a study clears the bar for proving efficacy.
I, for one, would sincerely like to hear what John has to say about homeopathy. Please, sir, enlighten us, especially as to Derek Lowe's mistakes.
I'd need to see a better study on this. I'm always skeptical of these lawsuits, ever since the AHP fen-phen case in which the higher rate of heart defects in the obese was claimed to be evidence of damage.
Ah, here we go. That's pretty convincing.
Hey, who needs medical studies?
We should just let The Market figure it out. If all homeopathic treatments did was nothing (at best), it wouldn't be around anymore, because people wouldn't be willing to pay for it. Placebo effect? Positive prognostic for many diseases? Nonsense. In a free market, people would eventually notice that the outcomes of homeopathic treatments aren't any different from alternative ineffective treatments, or just plain absence of treatment. So who's to say that sterile water doesn't cure colds for some people? We already know it does, because that's what The Market tells us. If medical studies can't find an effect, they just haven't looked hard enough. Because homeopathy has been around for a very long time (since 1796 and counting), it just has to do something. And if the medical sciences can't find what that something is, and instead choose to deny what we already know it's true... Well, that should just tells us something about medical sciences.
Medicine is about selling people cures. Homeopathy is about selling people false hope. While both of those do make money, only one is a legitimate business - even hard libertarians are opposed to fraud.
1 - Why is selling false hope wrong if people are willing to buy it?
2 - It's only false hope if it doesn't work. But if it didn't work, markets would have weed it out. But it's still around, so it must work. I don't know why you assume it doesn't.
Actually, free market economics would dictate the market for homeopathics would be much smaller than for medicines that actually worked -- and of course it is.
Markets have winners and losers.
It's not like the opposite approach produces continual miracles. Anymore when I buy an ordinary 6' extention cord, I can't tell whether I am purchasing the desired product or a carnival flag banner -- there are that many little appropriate use and random warning stickers hanging from it, printed in a suitable array of colors. I haven't found "Do not insert prongs into either or both nostrils" yet, but maybe next year. Somebody out there will surely try to pick both sides of their nose at once with sanguine results, and voila, another cautionary sticker.
Maybe instead of extremes, we could balance free market principles with an effective, but ultimately limited, regulatory state. Would you be in favor of that?
OMG, warning labels on things that can hurt you! Dear lord, when will this horrible facism end?
You know how you're all like "don't buy them if you don't like them" cause you're a libertarian hack? Well, don't read the damn labels, bud. Or lady, or whatever.
"Contents: One utility-grade hemp rope. DANGER: Not what it sounds like; this product will produce serious respiratory irritants if burned. For topical use only, do not ingest. In case of accidental ingestion, expect 20-foot long feces. Do not shove up nose. Do not shove up your little sister's nose, not even if she was a really aggravating pill today. Strangulation hazard: Keep out of reach of children, the senile elderly, and the clinically depressed. Product may limit circulation when misapplied to limbs. Product may produce aggressive behavior in housecats; keep in mind that some people are allergic to cats. May produce blistering when used for tug-of-war events. Product makes for a lousy whip, consider using rubber-based materials with a tighter weave. Not for life support applications. Manufacturer does not endorse applications involving animal cruelty. Six or seven trees may have been harmed in order to print this warning notice."
While I suspect you're playing Devil's Advocate I agree that people should be able to buy and sell what they like. You should be able to sell people motor oil, as long as you don't tell them that it will cure colds if they spray it up their nose. I'm fine with the FDA restricting certain therapeutic promises, forcing warning labels onto packages, as long as they don't actually restrict trade.
Exceptions would be things that might lead to the harm of a third party; date rape drugs, for instance, or LSD.
The glory days of homeopathy were actually in the 19th century, when we had a much freer market than today. It was mostly government funded research that discredited homeopathic treatments. Just another tragic story of government science, really. But still homeopathy resists the unfair interference by nannystaters, and about 1.5% of Americans use homeopathic treatments. So I would not call homeopathy a loser.
The horror. The needless suffering. I wonder why hasn't somebody made a movie on this. The needless warning stickers story remains to be told.
Why the exceptions? Must we always treat people like children? This is about freedom and personal responsibility. You should be able to buy cyanide capsules if you want to. I agree that it may require some kind of warning label. But the FDA shouldn't overdo it. That's how we got ourselves into the carnival-like cable extension cords disaster.
Regarding harm to third parties, if guns don't kill people, people kill people, then I suppose you also have to agree that gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid doesn't rape people, people rape people. I agree that it isn't quite as catchy, but still.
In the 19th century medicine sucked badly enough that homeopathy was as good or even better than "conventional" medicine. You were more likely to survive homeopathic treatment than conventional. Unfortunately for homeopathy conventional medicine improved.
Right. So The Market tells us doing nothing should have won, right? Same effectiveness as homeopathy, much cheaper. But doing nothing didn't win out. Therefore, homeopathy must work.
Awesome concern trolling, dude.
Actually, Homeopathy is better than doing absolutely nothing. But it doesn't work better than any other placebo, and promoting homeopathy as an alternative to real medicine does lead to some people shunning the care they need and dying from a treatable condition.
Great point Phlinn. Homeopathy should be compared to something with a placebo effect but much less expensive. Praying, for instance. The thing is, praying and homeopathic treatments aren't mutually exclusive.
Damn it.
I notice you latched on to my admittedly semi-frivolous example, but ignored the thoughtful question in the conclusion. Can I take this as evidence of your unconditional surrender?
Eh eh. You seem to have used the semi-frivolous example as support to the thoughtful question, so I don't think you deserve the unconditional surrender. Not just yet.
The question has a plausible element of objective universality to it; the semi-frivolous example was merely icing. So do you like cake, or don't you?
I do like cake.
Bloody hell, you won.
Oh, please. Like FDA oversight would have made it all better? We live in a country where Vioxx was sold, and sold again, and Merck was able to successfully fend off any come-uppance despite truckloads of evidence. Just because a remedy is made and sold by Big Pharma and approved by our in-the-bag excuse for a consumer protection agency doesn't mean it's any better than anything you can get off the shelf at Whole Foods.
So let's say a guy has ulcers and arthritis. What should he take? Aspirin, Motrin, Alleve? Those would do just wonders for the ulcers. Maybe they could use steroids because everybody knows how good they are for your overall health.
What percentage of Vioxx users actually suffered heart attacks? 1/1000 of all users? 1/10,000? 1/100,000? Of those who did, what percentage had another underlying risk for heart attack?
And, Merck pulled the product themselves, not as the result of any gov't. action.
I assume another "in-the-bag excuse for a consumer protection agency" also helps kill us by allowing us to drive cars. After all, about 40,000 are killed every year in accidents, and many more are injured. Just think of all the lives that would be saved, and grievous injury averted, if some "in-the-bag excuse for a consumer protection agency" would only outlaw the use of cars.
Michael? Michael WHO??
So let's say a guy has ulcers and arthritis.
For the ulcers; test for H. pylori. If positive, treat with antibiotics and possibly serrapeptase which improves response to antibiotics. If negative take fresh cabbage juice regularly which contains vitamin Q and possibly some ascorbate salts and lysine. Ascorbate will help with both the pain and also the production of collagen to heal the ulcers.
For arthritis, it depends on the type of arthritis. Black cherries for gout, and cut down on one's proline and fat intake. Hyalauronic acid or Glucosamine + Chondroitin can help with cartilage. Antibiotics, calcium and vitamin K2 (menaquinone) would help if the problem was degenerating bones. (The current trend is to say D3, but that's problematic for several reasons. The medical establishment seems to have seriously misread much of the data on 'Vitamin D.')
He wasn't talking about curing arthritis. He was talking about help with the inflammation, which is what Vioxx, Alleve, aspirin, Advil etc. are (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents). For those with serious GI tract issues, Cox-2 inhibitors were godsends, as they reduced the risk of bleeding out, at the competing risk for (as we know now) some possibly serious exacerbation of pre-existing heart conditions.
How would antibiotics help with degenerating bones? I'm not trying to challenge you, just to understand. Which antibiotic, and what does it do? This sounds interesting.