I had that happen to me and I went to my dentist to have them cleaned. Since I had gone only a month after my last cleaning (1 free per 6 months) I had to pay. I emailed Crest about it and they said they would pay for it.

Crest Pro-Health Mouthwash turned my teeth brown! And on top of that, I can't taste anything! I can't believe this stuff is even on the market. My wisdom teeth are coming in painfully, and I am prepping to get them removed next week. So while at Rite Aid last night, I picked up a bottle of Crest Pro-Health mouthwash. I typically use Listerine, but as I said my wisdom teeth are killing me and this Crest CRAP advertises "No Alcohol". Cool.

Except that after using it for ONE day (in the am and then before bed) I woke up today with brown spots on and in between my teeth and I cannot taste anything at all. After being scared almost to the point of tears, I started googling these symptoms. You wouldn't believe how many website there are that are dedicated to this nonsense. Crest should be sued for this!

More people need to be informed about this. On top of that, if you read the comments on the site I am linking, Crest wont even reimburse you for the lousy 4 dollars you spend on this poison. Never mind the expensive dental bills I am going to face whitening and repairing my teeth. Spread the word Consumerist.

Here are some highlights from Amazon.com:

David Case from Flint, MI says:

At the beginning mouthwash was fine. Nice not having the alcohol burn and the breath, that my girlfriend hated. So that was nice.

But after extended use for a month it stained in between my teeth brown. It looked terrible and it cost me a one hundred dollar trip to the dentist to scrape that junk off. The dentist advised that it was my mouthwash after hearing it was this Crest mouthwash that I was using. I was surprised that a mouthwash that is suppose to help clean your teeth actually does the opposite.

This garbage put dingy yellow and brown stains on my teeth, especially near the gums. A dental cleaning failed to get them off. If I had known this mouthwash could cause stains, I would never have used it in the first place. If my next dental cleaning fails to remove the yellow on my teeth, P&G may have a lawsuit on their hands. It's to the point where I don't want to even talk or smile. These Pro Health products should be illegal.

The first thing I noticed was a buildup of white gunk on my tongue. I had just brushed my tongue until it was a nice pink before using the mouthwash, which annoyed me. But it wasn't just gunk — this stuff was solid. It was annoying, but I could live with gunk. I can't live with what else it did, though.

Let me put this as simply as possible: This mouthwash destroys your sense of taste. Not just immediately after you spit it out, (it ruins it then too, since water tasted strange when I had a drink before bed) but the next morning as well. I COVERED my eggs in ketchup, yet the normally puckering taste of a mouthful of ketchup was missing. I ate kiwis, pineapple, apple, tea, and nothing. It was like a mouthful of sawdust, or water, or watery sawdust.

About 12 hours after the rinsing, I finally started to regain some taste. I looked up the "active" ingredient in Crest Pro-Health online, called cetylpyridinium chloride. This is what the Materials Safety and Data Sheet has to say about this ingredient: "Toxic if swallowed. Very toxic by inhalation. May cause severe eye irritation. Respiratory and skin irritant," with a large TOXIC warning at the top of the page. I'm sure the concentration in this product is low enough to be harmless in a single dose, but imagine years of using this? Hopefully this won't be on the market long enough for that to be possible.

This is easily the most disturbing thing I've ever had happen to me. I've never had side-effects like this from ANY over the counter medicine, much less an oral product. My bottom teeth now have visible brown spots between them and I'm worried that they won't come off (or that it'll cost me a lot of money to remove them). I don't think I've ever felt so screwed over like this before... this is simply inexcusable. Crest should not be allowed to have a product like this on the market without a huge sticker warning you about its side-effects.

Sadly I don't think people will see this, and they too will get brown garbage in between their teeth. No one googles or looks up mouth wash on Amazon, though I sure wish I did now...

Crest Pro-Health Rinse [Amazon]
Healthy, Beautiful Smiles for Life [Ask Metafilter]
Top Oral Health Products Under $20: Crest Pro-Health Rinse (Read the comments) [Associated Content)

As if it weren't enough that they swelled up horribly, tore at their flesh, and had to have their toes amputated, recent tests show they have no detectable T-cells.

Without toes, you can't walk. Without T-cells, the victims are susceptible to a variety of auto-immune diseases where the body attacks itself.

This is the very condition that the drug was designed to treat.

Having paid a nominal sum to the victims, Parexel denies further liability. Some of the patients are suing, but they may not live to see their legal effort's fruition.

Renewed ordeal of the Elephant Men The Sunday Times. (Thanks to Francis!)

Some more details are coming out about the clinical trial, which has put six men into the hospital, two of whom are not expected to recover. Raste Khan, one of the men who received the placebo, has described the experience of watching his peers drop like flies as "like Russian Roulette".

"This one man was yelling 'doctor, my head hurts, my back hurts. I need help, I can't breathe.' He was just shouting and rambling to himself," said Khan, one of two men given a placebo.

"Everyone was continuously vomiting," Khan said in an interview broadcast Thursday on Sky News.

"It was like Russian Roulette — two of us got away and were lucky."

Another person who applied for the clinical trial but did not decide to participate had this to say:

"I went through and read ... the consent form they got me to sign while rushing me. It didn't really explain it fully in there, so when I tried to contact them, there was no answer and no return of my message so I just left it at that and decided not to pursue it."

When we reported on this story yesterday, some of you seemed to think we were insinuating that TeGenero meant for this to happen. Of course they didn't. That doesn't change the fact that this sort of thing should not happen in properly conducted and researched clinical trials. Quotes like the above make it extremely obvious that this was neither. You don't get fucking sloppy with people's lives.

Drug test 'like Russian Roulette' [CNN]
Related: Drug Trial Goes Horribly Wrong

BBC reports, "But relatives are said to be unhappy with the information given from the firm behind the anti-inflammatory drug."

"Ms Marshall [pictured], 35, whose boyfriend is critically ill, said the normally healthy 28-year-old's face was so puffed, he "looks like the Elephant Man".

Soooo, it's an anti-inflammatory drug and his body is badly swollen... that would strike us as humorously ironic if we weren't so busy crying.

"Lawyer Ann Alexander, representing one of the critically ill men, told the BBC the companies had been asked whether any of the animals used to test the drug had died.

"I understand that yesterday, they were told a dog had died during the testing. Today that was denied," she said."

Right, so if a pooch dies during testing, that's usually a pretty good sign that the drug isn't ready for human use.

"A day ago I was talking to him and he was fine and now they are saying he could die at any moment," said Ms. Marshall.

From The Independent:

"One victim was named as trainee plumber Ryan Flanagan, 21, of Highbury, north London. His family were told he could not breathe unaided, and his head and neck had swollen to three times their normal size."

"Raste Khan, one of two men taking a placebo who was unharmed, said his co-subjects "went down like dominoes". He told The Sun: "First they began tearing their shirts off complaining of fever, then some screamed out that their heads felt like they were about to explode. After that they started fainting, vomiting and writhing."

A former student described yesterday how he nearly took part in the Parexel trial but dropped out of it.

But he felt rushed. ''Something told me to be suspicious about it even though I did not know why I should,'' he said. ''It seemed a bit haphazard.'"

Two Drug Trial Men Critically Ill [via Digg]