4 ms·

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;

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...
  - shados 8y ago
    k, makes sense! There's so many people who think homeopathy and naturopathy is one and the same that I thought its what was happening here. Fascinating (and horrifying!) situation you describe, though!

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...
- shados 8y ago
  k, makes sense! There's so many people who think homeopathy and naturopathy is one and the same that I thought its what was happening here. Fascinating (and horrifying!) situation you describe, though!