The swine flu panic makes me angry.

Uh-oh, maybe I have mad commenter flu. Watch out, it's catching.

Or maybe it's just common-sense flu.

Fortunately that one's not even communicable.

"...a permanent bluish discoloration..."
I admit that would be a side effect that would get my attention in a perky drug commercial.

You mean trust what the FDA tells us?

Another reason the FDA needs to be put in charge of overseeing dietary suppliments such as these IMMEDIATELY before hundeds of Americans die from a scam.

I hear chicken noodle soup, DayQuil, and Sprite can cure Swine Flu. Or SARS.

This poor bastard has been in the news for years:
a href=http://a.abcnews.com/Health/MedicalMysteries/Story?id=5489997&page=1>Paul Karason

He's a real world Papa Smurf!

And then there's this poor lady: Rosemary.
She was basically sanded down to have new skin.

Silver: keep it outside your body!

okay, wtf is going on with the comment box?
Paul Karason

@Crystal Wojcinski:
But it's happened, click pict for more info:

If I had a MRSA infection, I would sure as hell put colloidal silver on it. And tea tree oil. And oil of oregano. And take a swarm of vitamins.

Swine flu though? Vitamin C and D and maybe switch to coconut oil for all my cooking needs. (The monoglyceride from coconut oil has been shown to have antiviral properties.)

Just because stuff's not FDA approved doesn't mean there's no scientific evidence for its effectiveness...and when stuff like the above is benign and easy to get, it's hard to argue against it.

Don't take silver orally though. It does turn you blue, I hear. :p Plus heavy metals in your system tend to do it a bit of no good.

And finally, if you do this INSTEAD of taking your antibiotics or Tamiflu for a life-threatening illness, you're dumb.

@PLATTWORX: I agree that there are a lot of medical scams that will take advantage of hysteria such as Pig Flu. However, my opinion of the FDA is that they are so deep into the pockets of the American pharmaceutical industry that they would never approve of anything that wasn't made by Merck, Pfizer, et al. I mean, if someone discovered that a commonly available, non-patentable material would solve the Pig Flu problem, can you imagine the money that Big Pharma would lose? It would never be approved.

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): What kind of Sprite?

You can abuse anything purchased over the counter . Meth heads have been doing it with sinus medicine for years .

And if you read and research supplements you find out things like you need them in your system 24/7 or by the time you have the cold/flu it won't make it go away . In other words supplements are not like a magic pill they are exactly that SUPPLEMENT : they are in addition to your regular diet . Abuse of supplements is just another symptom of the instant gratification society .

I've always heard to get the benefit out of most supplement especailly vitamins you need around 30 days to really start noticing the effects . Take vitamins in combination with working out all the better . And that's another problem alot of these supplements are design for a person working out or using up more of their nutrients .

There is no need to make these supplements prescription . The only thing the government should be doing is stopping these companies from marketing these things with false claims . If the actual bottle says something like loose weight immediately or get rid of your cold that's stuff that needs to be regulated and not the substance itself .

I stand by what I usually say to people who celebrate/enjoy "woo" medicine, b/c the "Big Pharma" want to keep us sick, and start telling me berries/herbs/twigs will cure HIV/MRSA/Etc...:

I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Fun fact: Oscillococcinum is made from a diluted puree of duck livers and hearts (helpfully listed in Latin on the box).

@PLATTWORX: most herbal supplements are just veggies in capsules. USDA not FDA

@GropedByChuckECheese_GitEmSteveDave:

"Are you blue?"
"Only in color, Michael, only in color."

"I'm afraid I just blue myself..."

@Chumas: keep it in your pockets!

u1itn0w2day: Yeah, it takes a long time for supplements to kick in, and once they do, the effects aren't huge and flashy. I take specific nutrients in conjunction with prescription medication for a chronic condition, and they do help, but it wasn't like I woke up one morning and went "wow, I'm cured!"

The only thing I want regulators to do is to ensure that supplement makers use quality ingredients and list everything accurately on their labels. None of this "let's sneak in some drugs that actually work" business. A prescription-only designation isn't necessary for that.

@GropedByChuckECheese_GitEmSteveDave: He only smelt of elderberries because he thought the all-elderberry diet would cure his cancer.

@PLATTWORX: There is a problem with that. The pharma companies have way too much influence on the FDA right now, herbals that do work would be banned simply because they might cut into the sales of some $400 a dose franken-drug that has worse side effects than anything cured.

So until we get the FDA purged and actually working for the people it will only make things worse.

The safer way to buy supplements is to buy the individual supplements themselves. Anything is a fancy box that makes all sorts of claims that it will treat this or that while downplaying the actual ingredients is a scam. It either does not do what it claims or your paying far more than the cost of the individual supplements.

There are a number of research hospitals, universities and medical journals that have investigated to some extent various supplements. Use that information to determine if you want to try something. Not the ads on the internet and late night TV.

@CumaeanSibyl: "Yeah, it takes a long time for supplements to kick in"

I hadn't really thought about this, but my ob/gyn wanted me to start on prenatal vitamins 6 to 18 months before actually getting pregnant (so when you start trying, or a little while before you start trying). Some of the vitamins/minerals can build up very quickly; others they want you to have some time to build up reserves, especially in the minerals that baby is going to suck out of your bones if you fail to provide adequate quantities.

So, yeah, I guess now that I think about it, it would be odd to think some of these supplements could be a one-week wonder.

@bohemian: Yeah, all that stuff the Buildabear group planned in Bohemian Grove, right?

@PLATTWORX: So drugs are perfectly safe once they're FDA approved? Wow, what good news for all those people who took Avandia, Celebrex, Fen/Phen, Redux, Thalidomide, Rezulin, Relenza, Ketek, Bextra, Raxar,etc, etc, etc.

They're way better off swallowing a capsule full of twigs.

The trouble is that people assume "FDA-approved" equates to "safe and effective", and it just ain't so!

@opsomath: and when stuff like the above is benign and easy to get, it's hard to argue against it.
If it's benign, then why would it have an effect? Is it like homeopathic stuff, it retains the vibration/energy of the healing properties?

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): Bring out your dead!

@Dansc29625: Veggies are FDA anyway (remember the F?), but the claims of medical efficacy make it a drug matter. People aren't using the pills because they're hungry.

Most of these "herbal supplements" seem like 19th Century patent medicine, so it isn't really a shock.

@u1itn0w2day: Most vitamin use offers no longterm advantage, and some results in a higher disease risk. I think it would be worth differentiating between those that shorten your life and those that might lengthen it.

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): I actually have a friend on the "elderberry tea will fight off all your viruses" bandwagon. Perhaps she's just Python-sympathetic.

@bohemian: Problem is, a lot of people don't have access to peer-reviewed medical research. You really have to have either university library privileges or paid accounts for that. The popular news coverage of such research is generally too misleading to work as a guide.

@floraposte: "You really have to have either university library privileges"

It's a little off to the side of the topic, but if you live in a state, you probably have university library privileges. :) Most state universities have citizen programs for state citizens to access the university library -- which is, after all, a public institution.

Many private schools also have community programs where for a small fee you can access the university's library (both for borrowing books and for database access). And more and more public library systems can ILL things from university systems.

Typically as a non-college-affiliated borrower, you get a shorter checkout time than student/faculty borrowers, but you can still get free or very low cost access to huuuuuuuuuge research libraries!

Cumeansbyil - I see what you mean about quality ingredients . I think one bad batch of the amino acid tryptophan caused that to be pulled off the market which was one of the first major supplement recalls/bans . I was already using it for a couple of years no problem .

Poor ingredients is a quality problem but poor quality ingredients should be treated as a bad business practice .

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle):
The most important thing in them is folic acid. It prevents a lot of neurological development issues. Anencephaly is a horrible thing and it develops around 25 days gestation. So most women need a head start on folic acid to make sure they're getting plenty in time.

@Beki: Folic Acid doesn't take nearly 6 months to build up. B vitamins can build up very quickly and safely because they're water soluble, so you pee out the extra. The very early start is more for things like calcium and iron.

@GropedByChuckECheese_GitEmSteveDave: Spare me the paranoid conspiracy theories. There is a well known conflict of interest going on with the FDA and the drug companies. Just go look at all the drugs that have gone to market because drug companies had too much say in both research and the ability to hide negative findings from the FDA. There are way too many people who work for these pharma companies, still have ties to them and go to work at the FDA. The agency needs to clean up their act and get rid of these conflicts of interest. No silly conspiracy theories needed.

@GropedByChuckECheese_GitEmSteveDave:
Singulair, Advair and Vioxx. Vioxx and Advair both gave me life threatening side effects that were not disclosed at the time. Singulair caused aggression issues that they didn't disclose for years.

The drug companies KNEW about these side effects but hid this information from the FDA for sometimes years. This information was only disclosed after many people had these horrible side effects. These drug companies were HIDING SIDE EFFECTS that almost killed me, twice.
Thinking some tree bark is going to save you from a major illness is stupid. So is thinking the FDA and drug companies are being totally honest and looking out for your best interest.

The condition brought on by excessive doses of colloidal silver is called argyria:

[en.wikipedia.org]

Back in 2002, there was a Libertarian candidate for the US Senate who had that condition:

[news.bbc.co.uk]

@ opsomath :

And if you feel the need to do this in ADDITION to Tamiflu or other drugs, you should let your doctor or pharmacist know, since things you wouldn't realize can interact in ways to either make drugs less effective or even bad for you (even OTC stuff like antacids + Cipro make a very potent antibiotic not very potent because they change your body chemistry and you can't take up the drug). Of course, they have no idea how some of this stuff interacts, which is another problem altogether. Whose problem y'all can argue...

Colloidal silver? The stuff that turns you into a member of the Blue Man Group? The FDA needs to close the "herbal remedy" loophole immediately!

FDA=Fucking Dumb Assholes

@GitEmSteveDave: Um, "Benign" doesn't mean "does nothing." At least, that's not how I meant it. Surprised it sounded that way.

Sorry, reply button not working.

"...a permanent bluish discoloration of the skin, nails and whites of the eyes..."

SPICE! Finally! A reliable, non-life-threatening source for worm poop... er, spice! Oh, interwebz, is there nothing you can't do?

@GropedByChuckECheese_GitEmSteveDave:
Papa smurf! It's you!

I would rather have H1N1 (Swine flu is a misleading and incorrect name) than turn my skin permanently blue taking silver 'supplements.'

In addition to turning into a Smurf, it doesn't do ANYTHING for your health.

[www.quackwatch.com]

@veg-o-matic: Ponder this: Oscillococcinum is a 200C dillution of duck liver. Since each "C" is a 1:100 dilution, a 200C dilution is a 1:10^400 dilution.

Assuming (all calculations are within +/- order of magnitude for convenience) a duck liver weighs 1 kg, and was made entirely out of hydrogen molecules, we know from chemistry that we would only have (Avogadro's Number) * 1000g / (molecular weight of 2) of molecules of duck liver to go around. That works out to 3.01 * 10^27 molecules. In practice, we have far fewer molecules, since the average molecular weight of the contents of liver cells is much higher than 2 (thousands to hundreds of thousands of times).

But assuming we even had 3.01 * 10^27 molecules to work with, at a dilution of 1:10^400, there is only a ~1:10^363 probability of there being even one molecule of duck liver in a given pill of Oscillococcinum.

Oscillococcinum is something like a ~$20,000,000 industry. It costs around a dollar a pill, so that's about 20M pills manufactured per year. Lets assume a single duck liver makes 100 1:1 doses, meaning it can make 10^402 doses of Oscilloccocinum. To put that into perspective consider this:

It is estimated that the universe contains about 10^80 atoms, and is about 14,000,000 years old. That works out of about 5.11 trillion days, or 441 quadrillion seconds, or 4.41 * 10^17 seconds

With 10^402 doses, you could provide EVERY ATOM of the universe a dose of Oscillococcinum for every second since the Big Bang, and still have enough left over for 10^300 more universes as big as ours from a SINGLE duck liver. So its not unreasonable that there was only ever a single duck liver and heart to begin with.

@GropedByChuckECheese_GitEmSteveDave: Wait? He is still taking the supplements? Are you kidding me? They turned him blue, there is no proof they aided his condition at all, and his new condition is permanent?
This guy is like an infomercial dream! You can sell him anything! Kinoki footpads! Slap Chops! Green Tea Weight Loss Supplements!

On a side note, a ton of the sites promoting collodial silver have doctors names attached to them with gradiose claims. I always wondered, where in the heck do these sham products find doctors to endorse them? Are there that many doctors with no scruples or is the sham the title doctor for this individual spokesperson?

@Crystal Wojcinski:

Yes, there are: [www.msnbc.msn.com]