Just kidding. Honestly I wish I hadn't even had to think about this much less write about it but I think it makes certain things very clear. I was minding my business trying to think of light topics and not how evil I think the natropathists are when I heard the following commercial.
"No one used to believe things like something you could get in a pill could enhance P-word size." (sorry I had to drop the P bomb, it had to be done).
This statement is the only one that actually introduces the issue of penis size, the rest of the following statements nor any other claim or testimonial refer to it again EVER. Tricky little devils. Because it is true that probably at one point or another depending on how educated a public we are talking about there was likely not this belief nor desperate hope at least that it could be true.
Obviously they have tricked a lot of people because....
"But now (certain kind of pill, I won't give it publicity) has sold over X million bottles."
Using the fact that a bunch of consumers have stampeded like sheep to buy it as some kind of reason that there should be one more lemming off the cliff.
"And the main ingredient in (whatever kind of pill) has been SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN [those words are always double emphasized in the con-mercials] to enhance a certain part of the male anatomy."[They are only relying on the fact that however millions of sheep they are trying to sell their wares to don't notice that 'enhance' is not a medical claim, nor do they even specify which part of the anatomy they are talking about.]
Laugh it up, I do, the sad thing is that these same people sell their stuff to people who are genuinely sick and dying. I think it should be criminal. It is the main problem that I have with Orin Hatch and his conservative ilk that think these people shouldn't have to be regulated. They should be strapped with at LEAST as much restriction and regulation as the genuine medicines that we can actually use to save our lives such as antibiotics and BP meds.
And I would add that any such words that you think I am using as a dirty pun in any of the previous sentences, shame on you.
I am just kidding, I thought I would try to get people to look for something dirty in what I said. But I felt obliged considering the subject to augment it with a bit of lighthearted humor.
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6 comments:
I would have to disagree with you about the regulation. If it actually causes physical harm it should be regulated. However, I don't believe in regulating stuff simply to help out the gullible. I can't stand these type of products, but I don't believe it is government's job to save people from their own stupidity. Besides, as soon as you slap on those regulations, they will find a way around them. I'll admit I've been gullible enough to purchase certain things in the past, but I'm not mad at anyone else, just myself.
I think that you happened to find one of my minor points. Like less thean five percent of my venom is directed toward regulatory agencies. About eighty percent is directed toward the public itself, which is where I come in. There has since Rousseau and then of course the sixties been the unanalyzed natural or homeopathic is 1. Preferable, 2. Safe.
So I think that these should be unregulated if there is equal access between real drugs and infomercial drugs.
The current disparity makes it so that not only is there the cultural bias toward naturopathy but there is greater access, making it so that there is double disincentive for people to use real medicine that could have a chance to not be just something that someone slaps in a jar to make 19.95.
Probably my job to be more clear, but I have put up pages and pages and pages of my main point and only happened to mention it in passing.
In fact I really in addition to not feeling at all strongly about whether government should get involved (other than being discouraged that they dont equate disgguised and manipulativve ads that make health claims as the same thing) with the actual problems in critical thinking that cause people to fall for it.
Saving people from their own stupidity is of course an interesting discussiion, and it is probably the reason behind regulation of prescription drugs. If anticancer drugs or real male hormones or whatever are available only by prescription, why are these things available by mail order?
Is it because the government agrees that they are completely inert substances?
Perhaps. People should probably be able to buy a whole bunch of concentrated weeds that they could grow in their back yard that would do absolutely nothing for them one way or the other. I agree.
Again, EXTREMELY minnor point, and I would be willing to concede it.
But one more possible question. These snake oil people tend to get a pass for doing what the big pharmeceuticals do that actually save lives, like manufacture antibiotics. These companies actually have chances to develop the avian flu vaccine or a real cure for cancer, and they are treated punitively. I would just as soon that in adition to encouraging people to think critically about all kinds of the crazy pills have the regulations eased on them.
And I would again be a little bit concerned that there be a distinction in the case of companies being able to market and make claims about megadoses of vitamin E, for example. Not only is vitamin E by whisper and media campaigns able to market what most doctors will say is absolutely one of the most unsafe things that people can put in their bodies, they are allowed to do it with none of the restrictions on things that were actually regulated and tested.
I think there is a problem there. If we pass laws at all protecting public safety and not just let every consumer for himself and then I would throw all drugs in the mix, then I think it should be at least considered.
Again, minor point.
Here's another tack.
I think that one of the reasons that these things are available without a prescription is that very few actual medical doctors would prescribe for them because they believe that they are at best ineffective and at worst harmful. If they were found to be medically beneficial they would start to be actually called medicine, perhaps over the counter, which the line is drawn in different places for different reasons.
These products are very firmly entrenced in the consumer marketplace and if they were regulated by the FDA and required by prescription only like medicines that are given for the same thing, there would probably be outrage in certain sectors because there would be no access.
It would actually be interesting to see whether the nature guys think that they should be prescribed, because if they were not available in the all those stores that smell like some sort of witch's brew their status as being the only ones willing to prescribe them would skyrocket.
And incidentally, how do you come down on the narcotics legalization angle, or at least people being able to buy their own antibiotics or whatever.
Most doctors will tell you that heroine, if taken only as indicated and not abused, is infinitely more safe than vitamin E. Heroine unless it is abused to fatal doses without the guidance of a physician can't hurt you. The only thing that it does is slow the bowels, and that can be treated.
Megadoses of vitamins, however, are even as indicated correlated with higher rates of death from all causes.
So should people be able to just look up te FDA;s reccommendation of how to use heroine and speed (these two are good drugs that have had many good uses and when taken as indicated, few actual harms. And then any other incidental or stupid or gullible use is up to them and not something we should worry about?
Is it just that people use these things for pleasure and would take to much if NOT following rec's? But isn't that the same thing as vitamin megadoses and silver, that people are not taking them as directed by physicians and are harming themselves?
And I just saw the 'if it causes physical harm'. How exactly is it that you are defining that?
Most actual metastudies of vitamin E reveal it to be a substance that never should have been marketed for any therapeutic use. It was thought up based on some theorized antioxidant benefit that has not only not materialized in vivo, but has been determined in vivo to have the quite opposite effect. Most actual doctors pharmacists and scientists think that it is causing many heart attacks and strokes and other problems.
And there is another problem. If these things are marketed as alternatives to things that actually have a chance of working, like things that actually treat infections or cancer, for instance, isn't that pretty harmful? What about all of the old people who aren't really in a position to make any critical thinking decisions and can be preyed upon because of vulnerability? Should they not be protected in the way you and I are protected by the FDA when or doctor (who doesn't even PROFIT from the things he thinks we should take) actually tries to save our lives with the best available science?
Now I know that there will be smirks etc. with 'best available science.' But what are these people to use instead? The problem is that people are targeted because they don't understand statistics and the psychological factors in being directly marketed for these products without a third party person with medical training. I have had many courses in statistics and psychology, and I understand how many of them work, and it is still very complicated. People are presented pseudoscience as though it can pass for the variety that is actually somewhat of a filter on random chance rumor superstition and basically the equivalent of modern day witchcraft or just chucking the whole thing to find one's own ideopathic remedy. Which some people think is acceptible, I just happen to think that modern medicine and pharmeceuticals who have brought us sterile and pain free surgery and have eliminated polio the plague and can put thirty years on the life of someone with CAD has a lesser chance of marketing something harmful to me than 'Nature's best remedy,' which has a terrible track record,
It is very possible, though, that all of these points aside that you and I (not sure if you are J or S, ) don't entirely disagree.
I tend to be a free market conservative and believe that there should be some strides toward pharmeceutical deregulation, so really I think the problem is in the other direction - medicine that is doing more than just sapping the gullible should not be disincentivized while those who would peddle ineffective alternatives are allowed a pass.
And I think in this particular blog post I DO say what you suggest, that in cases where the issue is only people wasting money on things that won't do anything one way or the other doesn't bother me, it is when desperate people are through deception peddled a QUICKER death by cancer. Because of the nature of cancer cells, most things that are not specifically designed to kill it actually make it stronger and basically allow people to die quicker.
Does that qualify as harmful?
I probably didn't make myself clear enough, that while these things are actually a joke and I guess it is sad that people are for whatever reason suceptible, the same exact ploys are allowed to actually peddle a quicker death to desperate people.
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