As someone born, raised and living in Edinburgh, I can assure everyone that Scotch Mist is much more substantial than most of these claims.

On the subject of our gullibility to healthcare chicanery, Rose Shapiro’s book ‘Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All’ is a jolly good read. It will also shame people like Trodamus (if they ever read it) from ever using the phrase ‘big pharma’ again.

That is brilliant! SUPPOSED to do! That’s really the best argument they’ve got?

“It can take three years to get these kinds of human studies together but in the meantime the claims are going to be wiped away,” Ioannis Misopoulos

Perhaps they should have undertaken the studies before publishing the claims….

[yes, naive, I know good article though, and it's great to know that EU stuff is all online]

Unfortunately, stealing money from gullible sick people is harmful in itself, even if the fake medicine isn’t directly poisonous. Peddling snake oil is not a victimless crime.

Peddling snake oil is not at all harmful in and of itself. What is harmful is misrepresenting what your product is and does, thus persuading sick people to forgo treatment proven to be effective, in favour of your ineffective alternative.

Introducing a clear bold labelling system that lets consumers know at quick glance whether the claims are backed up with science would immediately end any notion of ‘stealing money from gullible sick people’, because those people would know from the start that the product with the bright red stamp on the box wouldn’t help them, whereas the product next to it with the bright green stamp would.

Nothing is certain in life, so we should simply accept that some people are going to do stupid and self-destructive things despite our best reasonable efforts to help them. If consumers choose to buy something that essentially states on the packaging that the claims are bogus, then frankly it’s entirely their own fault if they remain sick and I won’t lose any sleep over it. They will have had fair and reasonable warning. That’s all we can, and should, give them.

What are the chances of THAT happening?!

Businesses pick up on this; drugstores such as Osco, CVS and Walgreens can literally be on every street corner due to the profit margin provided by Rx. Little is actually being done to prevent Rx abuse, as filling vicodin or oxycotin for an addict or legitimate sufferer of pain offers the same boost to the bottom line.

And then we accept trials they fund.

Those antidepressant studies show that they tend to have the greatest, non-placebo-mirrored affect on the most depressed, which basically supports what I said about them being over prescribed. The mid-range is where you’ll find them working about as well as a placebo, but all in all this isn’t the same as them having “no effect.” But, given what I’ve said above, it’s certainly in the companies’ best interests to overdiagnose and prescribe for something that’s probably best treated through other means.

And the point of “Antidepressants are largely worthless” is a loaded statement, considering the flak psychiatry gets from…certain groups. Antidepressants aren’t a miracle-cure for depression, and they are over-prescribed for an over-diagnosed condition. However, combined with other medication and careful monitoring, they can help manic-depressives get out of bed on a bad day; hardly worthless.

As long as the product is not harmful in itself, it gets a stamp, but the colour would be different depending on whether the claims are backed up.

Unfortunately, stealing money from gullible sick people is harmful in itself, even if the fake medicine isn’t directly poisonous. Peddling snake oil is not a victimless crime.

Inevitably, people will come down with the idea that these supplements should remain with their claims on the box, and that consumers can purchase them if they wish. It’s their right, after all, and who wants a nanny state?

What I think people fail to realize is that these claims are alluring, and these companies will never be forthright in the research into the claims. In the US, all they place on the label is a disclaimer that their claims have not been verified, though in many cases their claims have actually been disproven outright. That never goes on the box — “This product has been empirically proven to not do what we are claiming.” As long as it’s allowed in the first place, they’ll find the best way of packaging it so it doesn’t matter.

People in general aren’t necessarily stupid, but when you’re surrounded by products promising you a better, healthier, smarter life you can’t help but be tempted. I worked in a drug store for a few years, and while I referred to the aisle with the supplements as the “fake medicine” aisle, years of staring at products promising healthy, pain-free joints made me start to consider actually buying whatever product it was as I’d destroyed my knees some years previous. I never purchased it, but imagine the people that actually use these in leiu of seeking legitimate medical attention?

This is why harsher regulation is needed.

“It should be noted that health and nutrition claims are voluntarily put on products by producers as a marketing tool. If positive claims cannot be established, the Regulation does not oblige anyone to make negative claims about the product.”

In other words, “stop whingeing and come up with a marketing strategy other than lying through your teeth!”

www.newsbiscuit.com/2010/07/07/danone-announce-discovery-of-digestifus-flirtius-bifidus-jocularis-others/

“In a development sure to send shockwaves through both the scientific and probiotic communities, research scientists from Danone, makers of Activia yoghurt and Actimel drink, today announced the discovery of several new types of bacteria that were neither friendly nor unfriendly, but often completely indifferent.”