Why are people drawn to such absurdly wrong medical cures? This says something really interesting about human psychology IMHO.
Like at least chiropractic and ineffective herbal remedies have a somewhat plausible (but wrong) mechanism of action.
Because the "official" cure/treatment prescribed by their doctor isn't working or has unwanted side effects.
I have an uncurable disease with medication that creates unpleasant side effects. You bet your ass I've spent a considerable amount of time researching "alternative" treatments.
IMO, most people don't know what "homeopathic" means. It sounds vaguely like "naturopathic", which would at least contain something other than water.
They see the claims on the label, compare the price to actual medication, and buy the fake product because it's cheaper, probably has more fantastical claims about what it will do, and doesn't mention any side effects.
There are definitely folks who are so irrational that they know how homeopathic products supposedly "work" and still believe in it, but IMO they are a tiny minority. Most of the people buying them are honest folks being scammed.
This lawsuit was long overdue. I hope after this they go after retailers doing things like putting "Cinnsulin" next to actual diabetes treatments.
A lot of it seems to be innate trust of (false) authority figures: the MDs, naturopaths, and authors who shill this stuff.
And whatever education or tests naturopaths do are not comparable to what MDs have to do.
Even if I told patients I think thought the treatment would work but it's not FDA approved.
how does that work? the DEA controls the ability to prescribe, and they're federal.
https://centerforinquiry.org/news/washington-bill-would-expa...
Besides emergency room doctors, I don't think they have to think fast.
You are right that the industry is highly untrustworthy, but that's exactly why the FDA process is so highly regulated to control for conflicts of interest.
https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-conflicts-pha...
https://www.milbank.org/quarterly/articles/revisiting-financ...
Regulation without oversight and action is meaningless.
You can pay Costco $10 for a 5lb bag of turmeric in the spice aisle, or pay Costco $30 for 1lb of turmeric tablets near the pharmacy.
Perhaps I should not complain, as people wasting money on these tablets subsidizes lower prices on other products at Costco for me.
https://www.costco.com/feel-good-usda-organic-turmeric-powde...
Yeah if it were me I'd just suffer through a few seconds of a flavor I don't love, if I really wanted to take turmeric as a supplement, given the extreme cost difference. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if the sold-as-spice version is fresher and higher-quality. But I can see why some folks might want the capsule.
I don't think that's true in any way. If anything, they are crowding out products you might be more interested in.
And so the sum total of all things sold is equal to all the costs. And so if they are getting a high margin on some items, such as fake medicine which typically have huge markups, then this would allow them to have near zero or even negative margin on other items (which I presume are popular staples like milk/eggs/etc).
With the cash back rewards for executive membership, I do not even end up paying for my membership, so I assume items with higher markup are subsidizing that also.
I don't know why those would be what is subsidized. Why wouldn't Costco just cut the prices on the homeopathic medicines to make their target 3% or whatever.
I think the thing we need to change is that all of these homeopathic "medicines" and vitamins need to go through some clinical rigor. They should have to show the actual benefit of taking Vitamin XXX. We also need testing of these items at random. There are lots of these items that don't even contain the thing they claim they do. It is $40 Billion industry that has marginal benefit and is an outright scam in some cases.
Some herbal remedies work, but a ton don't and are almost completely untested.
“Homeopathic preparations are termed remedies and are made using homeopathic dilution. In this process, the selected substance is repeatedly diluted until the final product is chemically indistinguishable from the diluent. Often not even a single molecule of the original substance can be expected to remain in the product.”
I mean, the classic example would be willow bark as a pain reliever. I doubt anybody who understood that it appeared to be an effect pain reliever knew much about COX1 and COX2 inhibitors.
People dont need science to explain everything. Positive experience is more important.
You could make a billion dollars by offering a kiosk that sells a bottle of sugar pills with a custom label printed on it. Let people enter whatever symptom they have that’s bothering them and get a placebo bottle of sugar pills for it.
Nope, there’s no pharmaceutical in them. Yes, sugar is an “active ingredient” in placebo pills.
This pair of statements is deeply hostile to a pharmaceutical mindset — but we’re human beings, and human beings like to be fooled and like to pretend and like meaningless gestures that still make us feel better, and our bodies sometimes play along.
Homeopathy uses a lot of pseudoscience to sell their placebos because they’ve figured out how to market placebos to human beings. Find a better way to market placebos to human beings, as placebos and with the express purpose of having the placebo effect, and you’ll displace homeopathy altogether.
Arguing that humans shouldn’t seek the placebo effect is hopeless, though. We are human beings, and if there’s one thing you can guarantee with people as a whole, it’s that they’ll seek as wide a variety of altered states as possible by all means available — including both pharmaceuticals and placebos.
For anti-depressants, "a 2009 meta-analysis of anti-depressant trials concluded: The placebo effect accounted for 68% of the effect in the drug groups. Whereas clinical trials need to control the placebo effect, clinical practice should attempt to use its full power."
https://theconversation.com/are-over-the-counter-painkillers....
Bandler and Grinder wanted to try that back in the 70's or 80's, but the FDA wouldn't go for it.
They were going to include a booklet that listed how effective placebos were for various ailments, all based on scientific studies. If the placebo was only ~%50 effective you just take twice as many...
The point here is that no one is trying to replace homeopathy along these lines, and that’s why homeopathy thrives.
One of them a good doctor would never prescribe as it is bunk; the other a doctor might recommend as a course of action sometimes, depending on the ailment and its severity.