There are a few people selling quack stuff I kinda end up reading just because. One of them is pretty vocal about how the cure to all that ails us is colonics.
Daily colonics and a raw food diet or at least a whole food diet. But, besides the colonics here's a whole host of stuff to spend your money on! But also he comes up with ideas that he read in a really old book somewhere so it must be true! Like - there were monks (or some old dudes living a long time ago) who went into caves and slept in caves and they regrew their hair! and Teeth! And it was in this really old book so it must be true!
Because clearly people were healthier in Olden Tymes?
Buh. I just checked my mail, and in it was another thing I bought for my sister. She really profited from my overwork and lack of satisfying ideas of what to buy her. She scored a lot, because I forgot I bought her stuff each time I bought it.
NOW. If only these files would copy to my tablet. I want to finish up watching Misfits, dammit.
Well they had all the ancient wisdom that Big Pharma stole from us. Or the scientist conspired to hideaway. Or something.
This same person believes that eating raw food and doing colonics (and other stuff) makes you "clean" down to a cellular level. As you get cleaner your start to undo all the damage you did in the past and get younger. Not physically regress, but your body goes to a younger and younger point. So anything bad that happens while you are doing colonics, raw food, and taking the magic supplements, is just your body reliving stuff from the past. It's nothing to do with what's going on now.
The problem with buying into the "BIG PHARMA IS EVIL" myth is that the alternative to "big pharma" is a supplement/alt-med industry that is equally as large and corrupt as Big Pharma only without any regulation at all.
In order to put a drug on the market, a pharmaceutical company spends millions (billions?) of dollars and decades on research and development. They have to prove that the drug is safe and effective and they are legally barred from claiming that a drug does anything except what it has been explicitly tested and proven to do. (Legitimate off-label uses have to be tested and marketed separately - this is what got Neurontin in trouble. Not that they were making false claims, but the off-label uses they were promoting had not been through clinical trials.) When FDA-approved drugs turn out to have harmful side effects, they are pulled from the market immediately with huge legal and financial consequences for the company who was selling them.
In order to put a homeopathic remedy or a new herbal supplement on the market, a company has to hire a graphic designer to draw a smiling baby surrounded by flowers on the outside of the box. Because there is no requirement to prove that the products are either safe or effective, profit margins in alt-med are astronomical, and if you're weaselly enough in your language, you can claim to treat pretty much anything.
(There was a bill slowly making it's way through Congress to bring the supplement industry under the umbrella of the FDA instead of the FTC, but as far as I know it hasn't gone anywhere. It's understandable, I mean why should we be worried about babies getting belladonna poisoning from homeopathic teething tablets when there are people illegally downloading movies on the internet??)
There's a colon cleansing place down the street from me. I can't imagine there's actually that much demand for colon cleansing, but they've been in business for years!
And you know, there are supposed to be regulatory agencies policing the shit out of them. I think mostly it does work, which is why it can frustratingly slow to get some great new drug out on the market. But also, less likely to have babies with flippers.
Yup. Full disclosure - I am one of the people in our company responsible for dealing with the FDA. FDA gets a really bad rap but in my experience they are actually very good and do their best to make sure that what a company claims is actually the verified truth. FDA has come a LONG way in 20 years, largely a result of the Prescription Drug Act.
And THANK YOU, Jess, for your entire post.
And thank you Allyson for pre-empting Gavura's Law with the pro-science thalidomide reference!
::whew:: I think I'm all packed. With everything. Absolutely everything imaginable. Shuttle is due in 14 minutes. I should go downstairs. I'm going downstairs.
See you from somewhere that's not West Lost Angeles, hey.
(Exchange with co-worker today: "ita, can I call you back? I'm on another line?" "But I'm on vacaaaaaation!" He called back pretty quickly.)
