Posted by Cam W. on June 12, 2002, at 10:18:13
In reply to Re: Profit Driven Industries » JonW, posted by IsoM on June 12, 2002, at 0:45:49
IsoM - Yeah, it's the same in pharmacy. People think that OTC cold medications will "cure" a cold, but they only treat the symptoms. Very often people will come in and say that they are starting to get a cold and need to get better by the weekend because they have a wedding, party, function, etc. I always say that I can cover up the cold, but I can't cure it, and since the cold is only starting (ie. with very few symptoms) there really isn't much I can recommend.
The only way to really get rid of a cold is to let is run it's course (on average, 5 to 10 days, depending on the bug). A lot of non-dehydrating liquids can help you pee off the bug, but outside of that the body has to fight it. Sometimes a cold will disappear before it really starts (hurray immune system) but this is not because of the medication a person has taken for it.
(Yeah, yeah .... echinecea is sorta active, but not active enough to pay the price that they are asking for it)
The same is true for weight loss schemes. Last week I had a lady come in and ask me about apple cider vinegar. She had read on the Web about how great it was and wanted my advise. I had done a search on it a couple of years ago for a pdoc (efficacy, drug interactions, mechanism if action, etc.) and could really only find testimonials, no hard science (maybe it works minimally by slightly acidifying the urine).
I told the lady the lady that if she wanted to lose weight that output had to be greaer than input (not entirely true, but a good start) and she looked at me like I was stoopid. She shook her head and took the bottle of pills to checkout anyway. Why did she bother coming to me in the first place if she had all the answers.
Marketing is powerful (and scary). The more convincing the advertisement, the better something sells. People will buy products they don't need, just because the ads tell them to. I am sure that I am guilty of this, too (example - I bought an IMac as my first computer, as I was ... er, am ... fairly computer illiterate, and I was told that Macs are idiot proof - not for this idiot they aren't; and I cannot do some of the things that an IBM or such does).
No wonder third world countries hate us Westerners ... they've been sold on the hype that is inaccessible to them. - Cam
P.S. BTW - That DDT that I made in first-year Inorganic Chem. really did stop ants from coming into the basement suite I was living in at the time (couldn't tell you about the birds or cats, though).
poster:Cam W.
thread:109267
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020609/msgs/109579.html