The Occasional Joke


Nurse: Patient's name?

Centurion: Marcus Licinius Crassus

Nurse: And his date of birth?

Centurion: 115 BC.

Nurse: All right. And what is he here for?

Centurion: Cataphract surgery.


Monday, October 14, 2013

Have a look in your medicine cabinet

Consider this: the FDA says that "...only products intended solely for self-limiting disease conditions amenable to self-diagnosis (of symptoms) and treatment may be marketed over the counter (OTC)."

So unless a condition is a) going to go away of its own accord (is self-limiting) and is something you can diagnose and treat successfully yourself, companies can't sell their nostrums over the counter. Or to put it another way, while it's conceivable that a homeopathic treatment might make something go away or get better more quickly, whatever disease or condition it's marketed for has to be one that will just kill itself off anyway.

The FDA also says "The labeling for those products offered for OTC retail sale must bear at least one major OTC indication for use ...", meaning that "You'll feel better!" or "Increase your quality of life!" don't cut it. The labeling has to tell you why you might actually want to participate in a large collective hallucination take the product.

Recently, the FDA has had to send warning letters to at least six homeopathic marketers, reminding them of this.

1 comment:

  1. So you've basically said that the pantheon of health care products at your local drugstore are on an even-footing with sugar pills.

    ReplyDelete