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Two pharmacists figured out that oral phenylephrine doesn't work
- spicybbq 3y agohttps://archive.is/wLY8e https://archive.is/wLY8e
- dist-epoch 3y agoWhat's the consensus on eucalyptus oil sucking pills? Seems to work for me.
- vidanay 3y agoThat's the strangest name for "cough drop" I've ever heard.
- christkv 3y agoI remember using Vicks® VapoRub as a kid for congestion and it seemed to work.
- DHPersonal 3y agoAn Atlantic article recently suggested that this is due to the feeling of coolness on the throat and not actually the opening of nasal passages. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/10/humans-have-two-noses-really/675823/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/10/humans-ha...
- justinator 3y agoLucky. It was boiled onions for me.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoEucalyptus oil is an effective decongestant. You can put it in an oil burner or a humidifier as well.
- rybosworld 3y agoI was surprised when I heard they are taking phenylephrine off the market. In my anecdotal experience, it was extremely effective at drying out my sinuses, which did reduce congestion. So I asked some family and friends and their responses were mixed. Some said it did nothing and others swore it was effective. I'm not claiming that phenylephrine is in fact generally effective, just wondering out loud if there could be more to the story. I.e., it works for some people and not others. Anecdotes are not science. But if enough people share an experience, sometimes there is more to the story.
- JHonaker 3y ago> Anecdotes are not science. But if enough people share an experience, sometimes there is more to the story. Solely relying on anecdotes as evidence is not science, but they’re absolutely a critical part of it!
- corethree 3y agoScience is expensive and moves slow. Sometimes anecdotes are all you have. Just because the science doesn't exist doesn't mean anecdotes are completely invalid.
- JHonaker 3y agoThat's what I was trying to say. Anecdotes are the seeds of hypotheses, and enough anecdotes with well-understood conditions make a study population. > Science is expensive and moves slow. I don't know if I agree that science is slow. Certainly scientific consensus is slow though. The churn of ideas at the forefronts of fields is rapid. In my field (machine learning/statistics) I'd say too rapid/short term incentive focused. I really take umbrage at the idea that science is some purely objective, ideal process. It's messy, and scientists are opinionated and stubborn. Some of the most obstinate people I've met are tenured professors... They kind of have to be. It takes time for good ideas to weather the initial criticisms, persist through replication and testing, and to take hold.
- 3y ago
- christkv 3y agoI've only ever had Xylometazoline spray for the nose and pseudoephedrine tablets work and both can only be really taken for a short period of time. Overuse of Xylometazoline will have the opposite effect.
- mattmaroon 3y agoI feel like anyone who has tried a PE drug knew they didn’t work. I’ve wondered for a solid decade why they existed. I’ll happily wait in the tweaker line for my pseudo.
- prmph 3y agoThey hitched a profitable ride on the placebo effect bandwagon
- Scubabear68 3y agoIt literally did nothing at all. Before I started using Flonase for my congestion, real Sudafed was the only thing that would work when I had to fly. If I forgot, take off and landing would be miserable because my ears wouldn’t pop.
- hunter2_ 3y agoYou probably know given your username, but Sudafed is also great for diving to avoid barotrauma (MEBT). Just need to ensure it's not less than the 12 hour formulation, lest it wear off at depth.
- mattmaroon 3y agoA year ago I had an eardrum suddenly and randomly rupture (probably due to an infection I never felt before it happened) and after it healed a bit, my ENT told me that I should take it before a flight just to be sure to open the eustachian tubes. Oddly a few days later I overheard pilots in the airport lounge talking about times their eardrum ruptured due to a cold or something. It’s an injury that’s not uncommon for them. Now I pop one before a fight every time just to be safe. If you’ve never had an eardrum rupture let’s just say it isn’t fun.
- Nursie 3y agoMy eardrum rupture was amazing. Would recommend :) Not so much “fun” as “blessed relief”. I picked up some sort of nasty flu in Mexico in about 2005, and my eustachian tubes got blocked for a few weeks, resulting in an ear infection with pressure building up behind the eardrum in one of my ears. When that drum finally burst I felt so much better. It was a sharp pain, and it was a bit gross, but so much better… Pseudoephedrine did nothing for me (it usually works great) and it took a a course of co-amoxiclav to finally clear up the infection.
- datasink 3y agoI briefly worked as a retail pharmacy technician 12 years ago. There were a few pharmacists that I worked with during this time and all of them were aware that phenylephrine essentially did nothing. I hadn't really thought about it until now, but these pharmacists did not directly work with each other, so it must have been obvious that phenylephrine was ineffective.
- naijaboiler 3y agoAll professionals knew it did nothing. But the problem is by law FDA only needs to certify that OTC medications are safe not that they are effective. So drug companies go to town making billions off those old safe but useless medications The real change is to add the mandate of efficacy to FDA for OTC medications.
- kridsdale1 3y agoIndeed. My Walgreens has a whole section of clearly and not-clearly labeled homeopathics for these symptoms. People want to buy them and they won’t get hurt, let em, I guess.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> People want to buy them and they won’t get hurt, let em, I guess. I would qualify that as, if people know what they're buying and want to buy them.
- kstrauser 3y agoAnd if they know what homeopathy is, they wouldn’t be buying it.
- lazide 3y agoOh man, good luck with that one. I’ve never had someone super into horoscopes that would stop being super into them, no matter how much you proved they were bullshit. They will try to shiv you though if you keep trying.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y agoThe US is so weird. Elsewhere, like Canada, pseudoephedrine is readily available without needing to present any ID. I always bring some with me when I travel just in case. Everyone knows phenylephrine is useless.
- paulcole 3y ago> Everyone knows phenylephrine is useless. Easy to say now once it’s proved.
- CamperBob2 3y agoIf it took that long for regulators and the drug industry to figure out that phenylephrine is worthless, I certainly don't hold out much hope for more advanced cures. The same is true if corruption rather than incompetence is the explanation.
- jtbayly 3y agoExcept anyone could have known it did nothing for them. My sister and I confirmed this many years ago.
- DHPersonal 3y agoI recall it being the year it came out when I heard it was useless.
- technothrasher 3y agoIt's been pretty common knowledge for years that it doesn't work. That doesn't mean that common knowledge was right, but it certainly isn't a case of everybody only now claiming they knew it.
- Runways 3y agoActually, it's funny. My parents aren't Libertarian, but they kinda lean that way in terms of not trusting the government - etc. When they restricted pseudoephedrine, they immediately were suspicious about phenylephrine and eventually came to the conclusion that it doesn't do anything. They'd demand pseudoephedrine and claim that phenylephrine was just a way to restrict pseudoephedrine while allowing pharma to rip us off, yada yada. That's where my strong disdain for phenylephrine came from. Once I was in college buying my own medicine, I came to the same conclusion that one worked and one didn't. Pseudoephedrine was just a miracle drug to me, I remember stopping taking it too early and feeling blegh within hours.
- danielbln 3y agoNot technically a decongestant, but I swear by Ectoine nasal spray, personally. As far as I understand, Ectoine is extracted from bacteria that live in harsh conditions like in the extremely salty dead sea. It does so by building a water barrier around itself, or something like that. It's sold as an anti allergic nasal spray (it definitely helps with my light dust allergy at night) but it also works very well when suffering from Rhinitis. Also doesn't build dependence, which is a big plus.
- denton-scratch 3y agoHa! As far as I'm aware, every drug promoted as "doesn't build dependence" turns out to build dependence. Even cocaine and diazepam used to be pitched as not dependence-forming.
- danielbln 3y agoTrue, though at least I can say from myself that after prolonged use not using it for a few weeks has no adverse effects (unlike classical decongestant sprays).
- rincebrain 3y agoSomething to keep in mind is that how fast dependence builds can vary very largely between people. I have a few times taken opioids for weeks on end because I had very invasive surgery with quite extraordinary amounts of pain during recovery, and have never felt the desire to take more after the pain stopped being above a very high threshold. I've known others who have taken opioids for a couple days for something that healed much more rapidly, being very afraid to take them, and had to be sure they disposed of any left because they definitely felt the urge to take more beyond relieving immediate pain.
- danielbln 3y agoOk, but this is not an opioid, and it has no known rebound effect. The compound had been on the market and in use in consumer products for more than 20 years.
- corethree 3y agoSeems like the entire food regulatory body the USDA and the FDA are just in the pocket of the industry. Lack of funding is the least of it. Paid off and corrupt is likely the better characterisation. Seems like Literally nothing you eat is regulated at all. Unless it kills you. Then if it kills people the FDA acts only after they see a good amount of people dying. Almost all of this is universal knowledge now. I wonder why there's no outrage or pressure to change.
- corethree 3y agoI hope a lawyer jumps on this and sues on behalf of the American public. Refund all instances of the sold chemical, put the company out of business. Is it possible? If it can't be refunded funnel the money into actually creating an effective regulatory body. One can dream.
- VikingCoder 3y agoI need more caffeine. My brain read, "Two Hot Pharmacists Figured Out That Decongestants Don't Work"
- kridsdale1 3y agoMaybe you’ve been browsing too many alternative websites.
- magicmicah85 3y agoI’ve known this for a long time. Put me on a watchlist and give me my meth, my sinuses are clogged.
- burkaman 3y agoI feel like I'm living under a rock, how is everyone in these comments so intimately familiar with this subject? I've never heard the word "phenylephrine" in my life.
- booleandilemma 3y agoIt's the internet. I have a feeling a lot of people are not. One tab for HN, another tab for wikipedia.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoThat might define you, but not the rest of us. Think about it, most people likely to reply on this subject probably know something about it.
- jannyfer 3y agoI strongly agree that non-experts in HN comments write as if they are experts. Without some sort of upvote counter, it becomes hard to distinguish confident bullshit from expertise. Certain individuals are prolific bullshitters too. I’d read a questionable comment and notice it’s the same person. (My observation is general, not specific to this topic)
- BobaFloutist 3y agoAs someone who also browses Reddit, I assure you that an upvote counter does little to prevent confident bullshit.
- singleshot_ 3y agoIt’s pretty handy to know the names of all these drugs because frequently there is a nineteen dollar package of Advil and a nine dollar package of Walgreens Ibuprofen. It’s pretty easy to figure out all the names of these drugs because all the generics say things like “compare with Claratin.” And it’s smart to use the generic because the active ingredients are molecule for molecule the same. I guess the generics could be using cheap corn starch…
- flybrand 3y agoHow dare they do their own research.
- seattle_spring 3y agoSadly "do your own research" usually means saving a few Facebook political memes and panning through Infowars headlines.
- user3939382 3y agoSnorting salt water works for me though it's very unpleasant. Very spicy food/capsaicin as well.
- msluyter 3y agoTakeaway: when faking data, make sure your numbers are randomly distributed. ;) Seriously, this was fascinating and disturbing that it took so long.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoSo many folks saying "phenylephrine is useless". The oral formulation, yes, precisely because not enough of the drug actually makes it to your nasal passages. So just take a nasal spray. I get it, all the pills that include it should have it removed, but I don't understand why people just wouldn't use the nasal spray. Personally I don't like decongestant drugs at all because I always feel like I get a stronger "rebound", and a netty pot makes me feel considerably better in any case.
- sp332 3y agoThe effect from the nasal spray is fast and quite strong. Sometimes it even hurts, but there are days when having a very dry nose is the better option.
- mrkeen 3y ago> but I don't understand why people just wouldn't use the nasal spray. I heard it didn't work! But I haven't exactly gone looking for studies. Also I know I'm doing it wrong. I read instructions somewhere that say if you spray it in your nose and it dribbles back out again, you didn't get it into your sinuses, where it needs to be. Every. Damn. Time.
- smeagull 3y agoBecause if you're using a spray then you may as well use Xylometazoline.
- beej71 3y agoThe trade-off was worth it, though, since there's no longer a meth problem.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoWe just need someone to figure out how to make fentanyl out of phenylephrine
- Hitton 3y ago>The most cited study found that an oral dose of phenylephrine had an absorption rate of 38 percent of an oral dose of phenylephrine, ... That's not very much.
- dreamcompiler 3y agoMisleading title (par for the course for what Scientific American has become). Decongestants work. Oral phenylephrine does not. Pseudoephedrine works just fine but it was moved behind the counter long ago and now you have to ask the pharmacist for it, because besides the fact that it's a great decongestant it can also be used for making meth. TIWWCHNT (this is why we cannot have nice things). The over-the-counter replacement for pseudoephedrine is phenylephrine and it's basically a placebo when ingested orally. (It works well in nose drops and nasal spray.)
- kazinator 3y ago> TIWWCHNT Because of asshole governments that wage beyond-insane wars on drugs?
- wenebego 3y agoYes
- vintermann 3y agoThere's much insanity and cruelty that's done in the name of fighting drug use. I don't think restricting sale of medicine that is often used to make methamphetamine is one of them. Back when it was over the counter, how much of the profit from selling pseudoephedrine decongestants was really profit from selling a meth precursor? Private profits from legal meth seems like a problem any society has to deal with.
- euniceee3 3y agoLol they did not buy the precursor, they stole it. Had this same conversation with someone missing a number of teeth, they reported that chicken feed contains pseudoephedrine and is able to be collected by using a piece of wood as a capillary sieve.
- kazinator 3y agoI had a conversation in around 1992 with someone missing a number of teeth who claimed that AIDS probably came from mutated molecules of latex rubber in "those damned condoms".
- ike2792 3y agoI remember DayQuil being a lifesaver when I was in college in the early 00's and I needed to power through a day of classes with a bad cold. Then I remember at some point in the later 00's it just didn't work anymore (turns out they switched normal decongestant meds to phenylephrine in 2006). Once I found that out I started buying the behind-the-counter stuff with pseudoephedrine and it suddenly worked again. Not sure you need to be a pharmacist to figure this stuff out.
- HackeNewsFan234 3y agoSomething with Dayquil - it has other medicines that do work for pain and cough suppression. Depending on your symptoms, those two can work and make you feel better even though you're not getting any real decongestion benefits. That makes it harder to detect that the decongestion part isn't working. That is, of course, until you're introduced to the stuff that really does work and then wonder how you went so long without it.
- stronglikedan 3y agoPhenylephrine gives me food poisoning like symptoms, so I have to avoid it. Apparently common cold stuff used something different than Phenylephrine when I was a kid, because they did used to work before they started making me ill. Thank goodness for Dextromethorphan!
- kayson 3y agoThe article suggests that dextromethorphan (which is a cough suppressant, not a decongestant) might be ineffective as well.
- victor106 3y ago> So, we took the political route, contacting then-congressman Henry Waxman, whose committee at the time had FDA oversight. Waxman’s office wrote four letters imploring the agency to reconsider oral phenylephrine’s effectiveness. For all the hate that politicians get on public forums like hn, this is one of the few cases where they actually made a difference.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoThe only thing that can stop a bad guy with a politician is a good guy with a politician.
- skywhopper 3y agoI mean, anyone with sinus allergies who has tried all the medications knows that phenylephrine doesn't work. While it's been nice to have "official" confirmation, it was incredibly obvious to those of us who really benefited from the old pseudoephedrine version of Sudafed. Rather than put my name on a state government watchlist that tracked whether or not I bought "too much" Sudafed, I figured out that Zyrtec (cetirizine) worked well enough for me, and could be had cheaply at discount warehouse stores.
- StopHammoTime 3y agoI actually have HN to thank for knowing this. About a year ago someone pointed out how useless the non-pseudo alternatives are. Colds are nowhere near as bad anymore.
- rain_iwakura 3y agosame here, I remember reading a random reply on here about it and then getting Claritin-D or whatever at a CVS near me when I had a cold and then covid. Both times I experienced huge relief.
- duffpkg 3y agoAs someone who has worked in healthcare for 20+ years now, at least in those circles it was widely known that phenylephrine was a placebo at best, when it was mandated as the on the shelf replacement for psuedoephedrine (Sudafed) nasal decongestant. Again in healthcare circles there was a clear understanding of this being a DEA driven policy to replace an effective medicine that could be abused to create methamphetamine with a different medicine that was ineffective but could not be turned into street drugs. As best as I can tell the policy resulted in harm to millions of people while not reducing the spread and availability of methamphetime one bit and ancillary costs to the healthcare system in the billions of dollars. Off the top of my head, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19230461 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19230461 from 2009 but there are many earlier studies as I recall.
- tobinfricke 3y agoI often wondered why German pharmacies continue to stock homeopathic remedies. Maybe phenylephrine was our equivalent? As someone who suffered chronic congestion, and had experienced the effectiveness of pseudoephederine, it was immediately obvious that phenylephrine did nothing. It's just surprising that this "open secret" has taken 20+ years to be publicly confronted.
- bitwize 3y agoZinc gluconate is often promoted as "homeopathic", but the formulations sold e.g. as Zicam do contain the active ingredient in significant amounts and, apparently, are effective at shortening or mitigating colds if taken early enough.
- tobinfricke 3y agoZinc is literally the only pharmaceutical intervention that has been shown to possibly have efficacy in reducing the length of the common cold. But it's not homeopathic -- the defining property of "homeopathic" remedies is that they have been progressively diluted until they consist of only pure water.
- 3y ago
- quickthrower2 3y agopseudopseudoephedrine?
- 0x500x79 3y agoAnother thing -- if you are ever need Sudafed (the real stuff) and they are out ask for one of the allergy medicines, the -d version. Claritin-D, Zertec-D all have the primary active ingredient as Sudafed bundled with the Allergy medicine.
- dools 3y agoYeah no shit! EDIT: in Australia you can still buy pseudo you just have to show ID. Everyone knows PE doesn’t work.
- jeffparsons 3y agoYeah, it's pretty weird here. Pharmacies stock both: the placebo on the shelves, and the real one behind the counter, usually called "such-and-such ORIGINAL" or something. So if you don't want a placebo, you have to know that the real one exists, ask for it, and then present ID so they can track how much you're buying. I've only bought the real one a couple of times. One was to help with a long-lasting post-viral cough in advance of an important meeting. I can't for the life of me recall how I already knew about the distinction.
- siliconc0w 3y agoI think we need like three or four different certifications escalating in terms of difficulty to get: 0) generally recognized as safe and free of containments - it won't kill you and you get what is on the label. This should be applied and enforced through some kind of mandatory batch testing. Supplements desperately need this because you really have no idea about what you're getting. 1) Plausible Efficacy - this is 0 plus a plausible efficacy for the marketing claim. I.e there is some mechanism of action or reasonable amount of evidence this could work. Marketing would have to make this clear. Most OTC medications should be under this standard. 2) FDA proven efficacy - this is the highest standard of proof, basically the current standard. Prescription medications should be held to this standard. maybe 3) YOLO/Emergency/Terminal illness authorization - can't be marketed, only listed in a government index and you need a DR co-sign and acknowledge that it may kill you, is unproven and the outcome is recorded for the purposes of later study.
- junofan 3y agoThe FDA doesn’t prove anything. They evaluate claims.
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y agoI'd take "FDA proven" to be shorthand for "proven to FDA's satisfaction".
- jalapenos 3y agoOr we could just dissolve it and go back to being responsible for our own outcomes.
- p1mrx 3y agoHow can an individual without a laboratory be responsible for the contents of a pill they purchased?
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoNice to be vindicated. To this day people look at me like some kinda maniac when I talk about the difference in effect before and after they took pseudo out. The only reason I know is because someone's mother hoarded pseudo tablets and had probably 30 years supply. One year as a teenager I got such bad hayfever that my nose was literally just running constantly and I was losing 2 litres of water an hour in just watery eyes, I could barely see, my skin was inflamed, and I was having trouble breathing. All the hayfever medicine I took was totally ineffective. She gave me a single pill, and the effect was actually incredible. I've never seen such an enourmous effect in such a short time from any medicine except maybe morphine. In the space of 15 minutes I was almost completely back to normal. My nose not only stopped running, but became completely unclogged. My eyes stopped watering and subsequently completely lost any irritation, my skin cleared up and my breathing was completely normal. Not only that, but after suffering like that for days, I was completely normal for the rest of the season. The drug just completely broke some kind of inflammation cycle and the hayfever never returned. I really think that the gaslighting around this was a kind of crime perpetrated on people. Rarely has there ever been a drug that can improve quality of life so effectively. Hayfever for those who suffer it significantly is truly hell. It's not a scratchy throat or itchy eyes, it's a full body experience. Imagine having a bad flu,but it can last months, and nobody has any sympathy for you whatsoever. And then society takes away a completely effective treatment, substitutes with one that has essentially zero impact, and gaslights you incessantly that you're wrong and it works at least almost as well. End rant I guess.
- aidenn0 3y agoNo article touching on pseudoephedrine is complete without a link to A Simple and Convenient Syntheses of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine[1] 1: https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pseudoephedrine.pdf https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pse...
- emaciatedslug 3y agoI'm dead! "While N-methylamphetamine itself is a powerful decongestant, it is less desirable in a medical setting because of its severe side effects and addictive properties. Such side effects may include insomnia, agitation, irritability, dry mouth, sweating, and heart palpitations. Other side effects may include violent urges or, similarly, the urge to be successful in business or finance."
- qup 3y agoI will agree they're undesirable side effects, but I bet they'll get some takers.
- WalterBright 3y ago> the urge to be successful in business or finance. That does appear to be frowned on today.
- blindriver 3y agoThe thing no one will investigate is the obvious test data the pharma companies produced to show that phenylephrine supposedly worked. Any data that showed it worked was obviously fraud and yet companies made billions over 20 years from it. This is the real crime and I doubt this fraud started and ended with phenylephrine. How many other drugs are useless sold to us because no one bothered to doublecheck the data?
- ern 3y agoMost serious nasal congestion sufferers would have been wary of phenylephrine for some years. I feel uncomfortable asking for pseudoephedrine by name, but I do so anyway, because my doctor told me that phenylephrine was hopeless 15 years ago.
- refurb 3y agoThere was no trial to prove phenylephrine was effective, thus there was no fraud. Phenylephrine has been available for over a century. It was an unapproved drug. The FDA grandfathered it in (as it did many drugs) by just making sure it wasn't harmful.
- sparrc 3y agoAm I the only person who never takes oral decongestants anyways? Afrin or other nasal sprays work much better for me and have no side effects if used for just a couple days.
- wslh 3y agoBTW, Diego Armando Maradona [1] was suspended for doping in the 1994 FIFA World Cup because of phenylephrine which is now not considered doping. [1] https://youtu.be/Da_CDPRG2j0 https://youtu.be/Da_CDPRG2j0
- mise_en_place 3y agoCan’t speak to the effectiveness of OTC decongestants but an ENT once gave me topical cocaine inside of my nostrils. That really opened me up and I could breathe for what seemed like the first time in a long time. The permanent solution is septioplasty with turbinate reduction in my case.
- toasterlovin 3y agoSounds like we have similar issues (ENT also recommended septioplasty & turbinate reduction for me). Benadryl and Flonase work very well for me. Guessing you've tried those, but just in case you haven't...
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoThis has been apparent to anyone who has taken both. Phenylephrine is garbage. I haven't taken a decongestant since pseudoephedrine went behind the counter.
- mynameisnoone 3y agoAmerican pharmacies aren't just pharmacies, they're hypermarts. Combined with lax FDA regulations on supplements, beauty, and wellness products, totally useless crap like "wrinkle vanishing" creams, copper bands, Kino tapes, and CBD "pain relief" creams are heavily marketed to customers. Following that, it should come as no surprise that herbal remedies and marginally-useless OTC medications, tantamount to vitamin B12 shots, sell an apparent power to defy science and the appearance of agency in instances where only palliative care is possible. Emptor nimium pecuniam habet.
- phyzome 3y agoWait wait hold up: > Other nonprescription drugs like guaifenesin (sold in Mucinex and Robitussin), dextromethorphan (sold in Robitussin DM), and antihistamines for a cold like chlorpheniramine likely don't help with coughs and colds. I knew about phenylephrine, but is there specifically evidence against these other drugs?
- notfed 3y agoYou really can't fault stores for selling a placebo if people keep buying it. The real question is why do people keep buying it? This is a problem of knowledge, and a problem of trust. People have been generally ignorant about the ineffectiveness of phenylephrine, because most people have enough trust in their pharmacy that they would not expect the entire "decongestants" section at the store to be 100% snake oil. But our pharmacies sold us snake oil, did it for decades, and FDA backed them up on it. And we ate it up like innocent puppies. I don't think this means capitalism is broken, and I don't think it means people are so stupid that we're doomed, and I don't think it means we need government intervention at every step. But we shouldn't let this one slide by. We shouldn't let the pharmacies the ignorance card: they knew they were selling us a placebo. How many other products fall into this pattern? We should all think about taking a take a step back and performing a trust audit on our pharmacies. Personally, I suspect we won't always have to keep facing this problem of never knowing which suppliers are trustworthy. I suspect there's something missing. I don't know what it is: an app, like a peer review app? A website? A law? A non-profit research group? A revolution? A man can have hope.
- TomMasz 3y agoAnyone who took it instead of pseudoephedrine knew this. If not for the crystal meth panic it would never have seen the market.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoI figured it out myself