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This snake oil market already exists. Supplements. Cupping. Ear candling. Everything sold by Goop. Essential oils. The market exists and it's already killing pe

This snake oil market already exists. Supplements. Cupping. Ear candling. Everything sold by Goop. Essential oils. The market exists and it's already killing people like the toxic baby food from a couple years ago.

tptacek 8y ago
The difference is that Goop-care, by and large, doesn't really do anything, and the iatrogenic problems are mostly second-order (like, you might get an infection by putting something they recommend --- excuse me for saying this --- up your butt). An artificial pancreas is a very serious, active medical intervention. It has to work, reliably; you can't just hope it will help and that all its bases are covered.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  > ... doesn't really do anything It allows the gullible to avoid seeking real medical care by propping up delusional notions about how to treat an illness.
  - cr0sh 8y ago
    Not just the gullible, but the desperate, too. There's another class of people that fall for this stuff, and I am not sure what label (if any) could apply, but I think of people like Steve Jobs. Arguably, his diagnoses was essentially a death sentence, because few live long from what he had. That said, I don't think he was necessarily gullible. Desperate? Maybe - who wouldn't be? But he had immense resources at hand, but squandered them on treatments known for being snake oil at best. Maybe fearful would be proper - perhaps coupled with desperation - leading to easier to take, but less effective (where "less" could equal or be very, very close to zero) treatments, vs the conventional ones? I could see that, and emphasize on that choice as well.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  This is a good point, and very true of Goop-style products. But I have to say, it's hard for me to reserve much charity for the way US medical regulation operates. Homeopathic medicine got a special exemption from FDA coverage, freeing them from basic standards like filing new-drug applications and testing finished preparations for strength and purity. Most of them are just water, but some retain enough strength and toxicity to do serious first-order harm, and many are marketed for treating serious conditions that absolutely need real treatment. It took 80 years to start making progress on that ludicrous exemption, while snake venom applied and antibiotics forgone inflicted untold harm. At the far end of the spectrum, medical devices are intensely regulated but medical procedures aren't. A mobility-assist for putting socks on has to be marketed with goofy infomercials to steer clear of FDA burdens, but a new approach to treating fibroid tumors can be deployed with no long-term studies - and then turn out to rapidly progress minor cancers to metastatic ones, and then stay in regular use with no informed consent while doctors debate. None of this means drug regulation lacks merit, or should be pared back without serious planning and study. But the current state of affairs is so absurdly arbitrary, and so covered in the scars of ancient political squabbles, that major improvements look not only possible but obvious.
jonfw 8y ago
Those are markets with much less regulation than the medical market. If we deregulate medical tech we risk our medical tech market reaching similar levels of degeneracy.
daeken 8y ago
That, to me, is a pretty solid argument in support of the parent -- that deregulating medical devices will strongly benefit the scammers you mentioned, rather than benefiting patients desperate for something to help.
droithomme 8y ago
> it's already killing people Are the products mentioned, vitamins, cupping, and ear candling, significant contributors to death anywhere in the world? How many are being killed?
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  Cupping and ear candling almost certainly aren't killing people directly. Alternative-medicine vitamin use has a significant death toll, but not an active one; high-dose vitamin regimes are commonly pushed as a cancer treatment, keeping people from effective treatments during early stages. Homeopathy mostly kills people in the same negative sense of effective treatments skipped, but every so often it does actively cause a bunch of deaths. Several different companies have sold homeopathic medicines for infants with potentially-lethal levels of belladonna in them; the sort of thing which might be prevented if homeopathic drugs didn't have a special exemption from FDA rules around testing purity and strength. More commonly, homeopathic medicines for adults like ear and eyedrops end up causing deafness and blindness. These things aren't especially common killers, and if the comment above was implying that alternative medicine's existence means the FDA doesn't serve a purpose, that's absurd. But the narrower point is a good one: in a country where there are special legal protections for people who peddle neurotoxins to cancer patients, it's not so wild to suggest that our regulations could be greatly improved by obvious changes.
  - shados 8y ago
    > homeopathic medicines for infants with potentially-lethal levels of belladonna > More commonly, homeopathic medicines for adults like ear and eyedrops end up causing deafness and blindness Homeopathic, or "natural medecines"? I'd have trouble believing that literal water was making people blind, or that literal water had lethal level of belladonna in it.
    - Bartweiss 8y ago
      Homeopathic. I was shocked too. Hyland's homeopathic teething tablets contained belladonna, and the strength of different batches varied from placebo to lethal. Most homeopathy is literal water, but there's a section of the market offering low-dilution preparations ranging from 1:10,000 to 1:100. Given the "like treats like" logic, some of the active ingredients are sufficiently nasty to do real harm at 1:100 or lower. And given the exemption from batch-strength testing, some preparations are substantially stronger than intended. (As far as the ear drops, that seems to mostly be a matter of contamination or infection. Which is a secondary harm, but again one that can occur because those companies are exempt from many standard testing practices.) https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-confirms-elevated-levels-belladonna-certain-homeopathic-teething-products https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-conf... https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-warns-homeopathic-firms-putting-patients-risk-significant-violations-manufacturing-quality https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-warn...

tptacek 8y ago

The difference is that Goop-care, by and large, doesn't really do anything, and the iatrogenic problems are mostly second-order (like, you might get an infection by putting something they recommend --- excuse me for saying this --- up your butt). An artificial pancreas is a very serious, active medical intervention. It has to work, reliably; you can't just hope it will help and that all its bases are covered.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
> ... doesn't really do anything It allows the gullible to avoid seeking real medical care by propping up delusional notions about how to treat an illness.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  Not just the gullible, but the desperate, too. There's another class of people that fall for this stuff, and I am not sure what label (if any) could apply, but I think of people like Steve Jobs. Arguably, his diagnoses was essentially a death sentence, because few live long from what he had. That said, I don't think he was necessarily gullible. Desperate? Maybe - who wouldn't be? But he had immense resources at hand, but squandered them on treatments known for being snake oil at best. Maybe fearful would be proper - perhaps coupled with desperation - leading to easier to take, but less effective (where "less" could equal or be very, very close to zero) treatments, vs the conventional ones? I could see that, and emphasize on that choice as well.
Bartweiss 8y ago
This is a good point, and very true of Goop-style products. But I have to say, it's hard for me to reserve much charity for the way US medical regulation operates. Homeopathic medicine got a special exemption from FDA coverage, freeing them from basic standards like filing new-drug applications and testing finished preparations for strength and purity. Most of them are just water, but some retain enough strength and toxicity to do serious first-order harm, and many are marketed for treating serious conditions that absolutely need real treatment. It took 80 years to start making progress on that ludicrous exemption, while snake venom applied and antibiotics forgone inflicted untold harm. At the far end of the spectrum, medical devices are intensely regulated but medical procedures aren't. A mobility-assist for putting socks on has to be marketed with goofy infomercials to steer clear of FDA burdens, but a new approach to treating fibroid tumors can be deployed with no long-term studies - and then turn out to rapidly progress minor cancers to metastatic ones, and then stay in regular use with no informed consent while doctors debate. None of this means drug regulation lacks merit, or should be pared back without serious planning and study. But the current state of affairs is so absurdly arbitrary, and so covered in the scars of ancient political squabbles, that major improvements look not only possible but obvious.

jonfw 8y ago

Those are markets with much less regulation than the medical market. If we deregulate medical tech we risk our medical tech market reaching similar levels of degeneracy.

daeken 8y ago

That, to me, is a pretty solid argument in support of the parent -- that deregulating medical devices will strongly benefit the scammers you mentioned, rather than benefiting patients desperate for something to help.

droithomme 8y ago

> it's already killing people Are the products mentioned, vitamins, cupping, and ear candling, significant contributors to death anywhere in the world? How many are being killed?

Bartweiss 8y ago
Cupping and ear candling almost certainly aren't killing people directly. Alternative-medicine vitamin use has a significant death toll, but not an active one; high-dose vitamin regimes are commonly pushed as a cancer treatment, keeping people from effective treatments during early stages. Homeopathy mostly kills people in the same negative sense of effective treatments skipped, but every so often it does actively cause a bunch of deaths. Several different companies have sold homeopathic medicines for infants with potentially-lethal levels of belladonna in them; the sort of thing which might be prevented if homeopathic drugs didn't have a special exemption from FDA rules around testing purity and strength. More commonly, homeopathic medicines for adults like ear and eyedrops end up causing deafness and blindness. These things aren't especially common killers, and if the comment above was implying that alternative medicine's existence means the FDA doesn't serve a purpose, that's absurd. But the narrower point is a good one: in a country where there are special legal protections for people who peddle neurotoxins to cancer patients, it's not so wild to suggest that our regulations could be greatly improved by obvious changes.
- shados 8y ago
  > homeopathic medicines for infants with potentially-lethal levels of belladonna > More commonly, homeopathic medicines for adults like ear and eyedrops end up causing deafness and blindness Homeopathic, or "natural medecines"? I'd have trouble believing that literal water was making people blind, or that literal water had lethal level of belladonna in it.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    Homeopathic. I was shocked too. Hyland's homeopathic teething tablets contained belladonna, and the strength of different batches varied from placebo to lethal. Most homeopathy is literal water, but there's a section of the market offering low-dilution preparations ranging from 1:10,000 to 1:100. Given the "like treats like" logic, some of the active ingredients are sufficiently nasty to do real harm at 1:100 or lower. And given the exemption from batch-strength testing, some preparations are substantially stronger than intended. (As far as the ear drops, that seems to mostly be a matter of contamination or infection. Which is a secondary harm, but again one that can occur because those companies are exempt from many standard testing practices.) https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-confirms-elevated-levels-belladonna-certain-homeopathic-teething-products https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-conf... https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-warns-homeopathic-firms-putting-patients-risk-significant-violations-manufacturing-quality https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-warn...