Homeopathy at CVS

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Comment by Morgan Matthew on January 16, 2013 at 11:53pm: /sigh :( It's sad that it looks so "real"

Comment by Tom Hail on January 17, 2013 at 12:46am: I know. That was just the one thing I picked up. There were many other "products".

Comment by Tim on January 17, 2013 at 8:42am: What does "12C" mean?

Comment by Ray R. on January 17, 2013 at 9:56am: 12C is the highest dilution likely to contain one molecule of the substance claimed on the container . That is equivalent to a dilution of 1:1000000000000000000000000 . That's ten to the minus TWENTY FOURTH power! What an absolute crock ! It is incomprehensible to me that otherwise reasonably intelligent people buy into this idiocy .

Comment by Strega on January 17, 2013 at 1:38pm: @ Ray R You mean like a teaspoonful in a swimming pool? I can't get my head around the number of zero's in your post, so I was trying to visualise a practical example.

Comment by Strega on January 17, 2013 at 3:27pm: @Gallup's Mirror Really? That's kind of like waving an aspirin at someone and expecting their headache to disappear :)

Comment by Dale Headley on January 17, 2013 at 4:08pm: We enlightened folks of the 21st century often look smugly and condescendingly at the gullible people of the 19th century who bought into various forms of "snake oil." But the fact is, they couldn't hold a candle to the ignorance and credulity of our generation. And it's not just homeopathy; it's the majority of nostrums and supplements on the shelves of drugstores and supermarkets. Homeopathy is just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of worthless products and therapies (acupuncture, subluxation, therapeutic touch, magnets, etc.) purported to make us healthier. All they really do is lighten our wallets.

Thanks to a law passed by Republicans in 1994 to please Orrin Hatch's donors in the Utah-based dietary supplement industry, the FDA has been rendered virtually helpless in trying to make sure that pills, tonics, and sprays (That means YOU, "Airborne!") actually are safe and effective. Consequently, most of them aren't. But Americans continue to shell out billions of dollars for substances that have not even been tested, much less approved by any recognized authority. It is perfectly legal, for instance, for someone to bottle mud and sell it as a "mineral supplement," as long as they don't claim, without proof, that it cures disease. The FDA can warn people about it, but they can't prohibit its sale without first proving that it fails to deliver what it promises, which takes years. But for every product that finally gets tested, 20 others hit the market shelves, untested. And we (well, not ME!) are stupid enough to buy them.

Perhaps most discouraging of all, whenever the information put out by the FDA, EPA, CDC, NIH, etc. conflict with ads on TV, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe the ads rather than the science. It's just another example of the disdain Americans have for science. It's why half of all Americans don't believe in evolution.

Check out any of the ads for health support products on TV. Nearly all of them consist mostly of warnings of possible dire effects (to forestall lawsuits); and many of them point out in the tiniest print, that the product hasn't even been tested for efficacy. Still, people spend their hard-earned money on them, despite the fact that they are demonstrably useless, if not downright dangerous.

Comment by Kairan Nierde on January 17, 2013 at 5:00pm: This pisses me off. It's preying on the ignorant--aparantly a profitable business model. What an embarrassment to our society that we allow this to go on.

Comment by Ray R. on January 17, 2013 at 5:28pm: To give you guys an idea of the size of that number , there are approximately 3000000000000000000000000 stars in the known universe . Three followed by twenty four zeroes , which is a smaller number than the dilution of this delusion !

Comment by matt.clerke on January 17, 2013 at 5:41pm: I'm struggling with homeopathy with my wife at the moment.... I insist it's complete hokum, and she agrees, and then she buys it anyway because it makes her feel better.