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Comment by adt2bt | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I see an article like this, I lose another bit of faith in all of the products in these supermarkets, fair or not. I get the sense that all of our modern 'health products' are nothing more than shams that induce the placebo effect in people. Unless a doctor prescribes it, [edit] or it's an OTC drug [/edit], I tend to think it's bologna.

Does anyone else feel that way or am I being unreasonable?

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If it isn't in the "Drug Facts" or "Nutrition Facts" label, it's probably bogus.

Also if it includes "These statements have not been evaulated by the Food and Drug Administration" it's probably bogus.

Your own research and reason can override these rules of thumb, but only if you really trust yourself to read and interpret scientific literature which isn't something most people can truly do.

Well the problem specifically in this case, is that the ingredients stated they included aloe vera while they chemical analysis says that they don't. So you can't even trust the "Drug Facts"

It isn't clear that any of those products have an actual Drug Facts label.(an example label [1]) The CVS product listed in the article definitely does not[2]. If it doesn't have a label like this, it is likely not regulated by the FDA and therefor quite a bit more likely to be nonsense. Having ingredient lists not on the Drug Facts label doesn't count.

1. http://flexapro.com/images/flexapro_drug_facts.jpg

2. http://www.cvs.com/bizcontent/merchandising/productimages/la...

Not just health products. Some time ago I saw one of those consumer advocate TV shows where they were testing chicken salad. They found that many products had laughably little chicken inside, and that the manufacturers were lying on the labels.

That was when I realized that the people who prepare our food have an incentive to decieve us. It's a tug of war between consumers' and producers' interests. They want to make it as cheap as possible with as little real ingredients as possible. It reminded me of something I read by Karl Marx (!) - how in his time the bakers in London would adulterate their bread with all kinds of nasty things.

Supermarket aloe vera is a product that changed my life. Seriously.

With my cheap Irish skin, I'm sure to get a severe sunburn once a year. I've had one so bad it started to bleed; that one almost stopped me from going to highschool prom.

I had tried Noxzema moisturizing gel, cold shower, hot tub, and several other anecdotal remedies for sunburns, but nothing worked - for about five days following a sunburn I was basically handicapped.

A year or two after the big one I tried the [fake] aloe vera and it finally seemed like something worked. Ever since then, I'll use roughly a bottle a day of the stuff following an intense burn. This has reduced the discomfort to the level that the average Joe expresses as in "Ahh, extra sensitive right now" not "Can't put on clothes right now"

Sunblock?

Sure! That's why I don't get brunt everyday I'm outside between April and September.

There's some tricky failure modes to sunscreen though, and inevitably you'll find one of those failures if you expose yourself to dozen of chances for it to happen.

The absolute best sunblock is physical long sleeves, wide brim hat, tree covering.

Did it have any actual Aloe Vera in it?

Does it matter if it works? (i mean, legally, of course... and morally... ) ... but as a solution, if it works, it works, right?

Uhh, if I bought a bottle of Aloe and was smearing it all over myself, and then I was told "That's not actually aloe", I'd want to know what I was applying to my skin before I applied any more. Sure, it works, but maybe it's carcinogenic, or has a side effect that I don't want to risk, or I have an allergy to whatever mock-aloe-substitute they used.

Im in agreement... im saying if someone has been using it for years... and it works for them, they might not care whats in it...

I buy the cheapest CVS or Walgreens bottles that say "Aloe Vera [After Sun Moisturizer] ". Sometimes they're clear, sometimes green, sometimes blue. If this article is correct they probably don't have actual AV. But I'm not sure that matters, the key seems to be how quickly you get a first layer on, and how consistently throughout the next three days you baste the area affected with whatever it is I'm buying.

Please just wear sunblock though. Compared to the USA I'm shocked how prevalent on these isles it is for people to just accept a big burn is obligatory on a sunny day. If you need aloe your exposure means your greatly increasing your risk of melanoma.

About cosmetics/supplements? Sure. I think there's basically a 0% chance that I'm not buying Ibuprofen when I try to, though.

Good point, I should have been more clear. I do trust OTC drugs to be labelled correctly.

There have been occasions where manufacturers of generics turned out be making hmm... crap (best wording I can think of) instead of the medications in question. :(

Do you have evidence that defective drugs made it to customers?

Do you have evidence that defective drugs made it to customers?

I've ranted about this before on HN. The global pharmaceutical supply chain in a Cluster Fuck race to the bottom. Here are a few articles that Bloomberg wrote a few years ago:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/flies-foun...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-03/indian-lab...

IMO you're being deliberately naïve if you don't think that those sorts of manufacturing practices don't result in "defective drugs" reaching consumers.

Edit: here's a link to a Pfizer website. They make the claim that "VIAGRA is one of the most counterfeited drugs in the world." Do you expect us to believe that none of that counterfeit drug ever gets to consumers? https://www.viagra.com/getting/avoid-counterfeits

Counterfeit != defective

I agree though that those bloomberg stories indicate that defective drugs are in fact reaching consumers :(

Look at what Pfizer claims they found in counterfeit Viagra:

    Blue printer ink

    Amphetamines, also known as “speed”

    Metronidazole, a powerful antibiotic that could
    cause an allergic reaction, diarrhea, or vomiting

    Too much active ingredient (or not enough),
    which may cause you harm

    Binding agents, such as drywall, that prevent
    the tablet from breaking down in your system

And look what Pfizer claims they found in other counterfeit medications:

    Toxic ingredients, such as boric acid, floor wax,
    brick dust, rat poison, and road paint

    Ingredients that can have dangerous interactions
    with other medications you may be taking

    A completely different medication with
    potentially harmful side effects

Yes I know that Pfizer is hardly a disinterested party. But I still get the impression that there's a lot of defective product out there.

Not just counterfeit, but indisputably defective!

There are a few instances of generics manufacturers being shut down expressly due to this. eg the fake drugs were being sold to consumers

It's very easy to find specific instances via standard Googling/DuckDuckGo/etc.

Note - that's not me being hand wavy, I'm actually saying "Google it" because in-depth results DO show up.

> Does anyone else feel that way or am I being unreasonable?

Not at all. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the current situation with lack of dietary/cosmetics product regulation in the United States is the result of a Mormon conspiracy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/us/politics/21hatch.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/opinion/the-politics-of-fr...

I have enough libertarian sympathies that I'd be ok with people selling dietary supplements for human consumption, no clinical trials necessary, as long as it's all correctly labeled. Like, I really doubt that taking dried garlic capsules is going to affect your LDL cholesterol, but I'm fine with people trying that as long as all the sellers clearly and correctly label the product. But if some company is filling those capsules with dried onion instead of garlic, and trying to excuse it with "the real thing doesn't behave any differently," then I want the regulator-hammer to drop on them.

The same goes for fraudulently labeled seafood, pet treats, honey, etc. These frauds should be policed better. It boggles the mind that some libertarians want the individual to make smart choices for themselves instead of the government pre-empting those choices (which I support in many cases - drug consumption and other risky behaviors) but also want to let fraud run rampant by gutting inspections and labeling requirements.

Is there a reason you used the term "Mormon conspiracy"?

It detracts from the rest of your point. You hopefully wouldn't call Bernie Madoff's scheme a "Jewish conspiracy" just because the principal in that scheme was Jewish. If you had called something a Jewish conspiracy people would most likely have reacted very negatively - mostly out of the prosecution Jews have and do undergo, but also because it was very immaterial to his actions and seems bigoted prima facie.

Unless you are describing a literal conspiracy by a religion it generally sounds terrible to describe an event by members of that religion by the title of the religion.

Hatch is a morally bankrupt person, obviously. But that's on him.

> Is there a reason you used the term "Mormon conspiracy"?

The vast majority of supplement scam companies (and their closely related scam cousins, multi-level marketing) in Utah are run by Mormons and have their origins in traditional Mormon herbal healing: http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/sltrib/news/5117547...

It is important to note that Judaism is different from Mormonism, and most other religions, in that being a Jew is an ethnicity as well as a religion - you can be Jewish and be an atheist. Religion is a choice, and I consider all religions to be morally wrong and an impediment to rational thought and human freedom. The fact that most supplement scams in Utah are run by Mormons but most Utah Mormons are not scammers is correct and I hope apparent to everyone, and I did not mean to use hyperbole to imply otherwise.

Anything that's marketed as a health or dietary supplement (basically, anything that falls under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_... ) is unregulated by the FDA--no efficacy studies, not even safety studies are required for marketing.

They are required to list active ingredients, but unlike drug manufacturers, there is no regular inspection to make sure that they're actually producing the things they say they're making. And judging from the several reports I've seen, the manufacturers are so lazy that they can't be bothered to actually acquire the active ingredient.

Whatever you think about Big Pharma, they are saints compared to the supplement industry.

I agree, yet I don't like the doctor perspective either. So much of what they prescribe is fueled by economics. In addition, the fact that most doctors aren't deeply trained in nutrition completely destroys my faith in that aspect entirely.

Drs. Cifu and Prasad have done research on what they call medical reversal (when a particular therapy is found to be worse than the previous therapy or does nothing at all) and have concluded that the rate of reversal is 35-40%. So your doctor isn't doing fantastically in actual medical therapies either.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/02/adam_cifu_on_en.htm...

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