Chemical lies?

[oldrider]

To question is not condemnation of a practice but failure to question may well be condemnation of a child!

The last people on earth that I would take at face value are vaccination and pharmaceutical conglomerates of the world!

Include those (the real ones) who control the finances of the world (they care not who make the laws types) with the above group!

Politicians are but puppets of these organisations and most of us don't trust "them" and yet they (the politicians) are but servants of the shady groups above!

God help us if we don't ask questions of their seemingly less than honest practices and intentions for "our" collective well being!

[slowpoke]

I was watchin telly last night, well, kinda... and that Menevit and Elevit ad came on... blah blah take before having a baby etc... it reduces neural tube defects by 92%... Now that's a pretty bold claim and one that I would have thought was utterly unproveable. Yes, unproveable. That in itself is a pretty bold statement

etc

etc

Rant off...

Duuuuuude, in the time it's taken to write your rant you could have read the scientific paper and answered your own question.

[mashman]

Duuuuuude, in the time it's taken to write your rant you could have read the scientific paper and answered your own question.

if I coulda found it I would have read it... although in this case you'd have to be insane to just swallow it just for the elevit ... how can you redo the experiment? It's a pregnancy... you'd need to time travel to prove it.

[ellipsis]

...there seems to be a serious lack of 'believers' knocking the shit out of us 'conspiracy theorists' on here at the moment...odd...

[Mully]

I was watchin telly last night, well, kinda... and that Menevit and Elevit ad came on... blah blah take before having a baby etc... it reduces neural tube defects by 92%... Now that's a pretty bold claim and one that I would have thought was utterly unproveable. Yes, unproveable. That in itself is a pretty bold statement
considering it flies in the face of research produced and validated by the Medical profession. Where the fuck do I get off questioning wether it works or not. Obviously you'll want to tune out around about now.

Snip. Because Holy Sweet Baby Jesus Christ on a Cracker..

Don't they have to prove these claims?

Damm Giggity & at-least with the likes of good old soap your immune system gets a chance to grow, that would be my biggest concern with products like detol hand sanitizer will kids just end up "boy in bubbles" through 'over-protection'

There's a lot of data floating around that the plethora of anti-bacterial products is bad for health - if you're not exposed to some shit, one day it'll take you out.

Mrs Mully is a believer in that - she wont buy anti-bacterial stuff (which is actually pretty hard to do these days)

[Milts]

I'm trying to break the OP's "rant" down into key points (arguments), and I'm having trouble.

So you're claiming that a company is selling a product using misrepresentative statistics or selecting partial information to advertise to the consumer? Wow, big news. Huge conspiracy right there.
I wonder what the average horsepower of a new motorcycle is compared to that in the brochure. I wonder how many advertisements for vehicles which will do 350 km/h point out that at those speeds you'll run out of gas in twenty minutes?

Yes, claims made by marketers are usually out of proportion, misinformation, or partial information. I for one would never use alcohol hand sanitiser because it's been clinically proven to be relatively pointless (as OP pointed out). THIS IS NOTHING NEW. You can find examples of this in nearly everything. The advertisers will tell you one fact (it kills germs) while ignoring the wealth of professional research and evidence (alluded to by Mully) that it's generally harmful to use in a domestic setting.

However, there is usually some relation between the marketing line and reality. A bike advertised as 180 horsepower will probably put out more power than one advertised as having 170 horsepower. Antibacterial sprays will kill a lot of bacteria on a dry surface. Whether this is desirable or not isn't mentioned, but it doesn't make it any less true.

As to "Think about it for 1 second. How do they know? How can they claim a 92% reduction?" This has to be either one of the most uninformed statements or one of the most retarded statements I've read this week. Of course a drug company is going to emphasise some aspects of their drug while skimming over others, and use whichever test data suits them, but if a drug has been around for a while, and has been through a number of randomised controlled trials, you have a pretty fucking good idea whether it works or not. Some examples include the fact that viagra will cause an errection in men, loritadine will reduce alergic reactions in a large percentage of the population, and morphine will reduce subjective pain in a patient.

Now how the fuck else are you going to measure the response if not by numbers (percentages)? "A few" more patients felt less pain on morphine? "A roomfull" of patients felt less pain on morphine? Or "98% of tested" patients felt less pain on morphine?

What you have to watch out for is that a marketing company will give you the aspects of the stats which suit them and ignore the rest. A RCT will examine several effects of a drug and not others. Of course the ads don't mention this, but it doesn't neccessarily make the success of a drug any less real.

I don't know if you're aware, but Menevit at least has been tested for years. Several aspects of it's effects have been measured, and (you think your 92% was high) it improves successful pregnancy rates by 240% (38.4% successful pregnancy rate vs 16% - 16*2.4=38). Of course, the ad won't tell you that this was in a sample of men who had existing fertility problems, but it doesn't change the fact that if you are a man with fertility problems then you are more than twice as likely to concieve if you use menevit. (Source)
If you really want to know how they can prove it has an impact, this is how:

METHODS: Sixty couples with severe male factor infertility were enrolled in a prospective randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Male participants were randomly assigned to take either one capsule per day of the Menevit antioxidant or an identical in appearance placebo for three months prior to their partner's IVF cycle. The primary outcome was cleavage stage embryo quality and the secondary outcomes were oocyte fertilisation rate, pregnancy rates and treatment side-effects. Approval by the local Human Research Ethics Committee was obtained prior to the commencement of this study.

RESULTS: The antioxidant group recorded a statistically significant improvement in viable pregnancy rate (38.5% of transferred embryos resulting in a viable fetus at 13 weeks gestation) compared to the control group (16% viable pregnancy). No significant changes in oocyte fertilisation rate or embryo quality were detected between the antioxidant and the placebo groups. Side-effects on the Menevit antioxidant were rare (8%) and mild in nature.

Quit hatin' on people who study for ten years and carry out obscenely elaborate experiments before having their words twisted by marketing staff.

[slowpoke]

if I coulda found it I would have read it... although in this case you'd have to be insane to just swallow it just for the elevit ... how can you redo the experiment? It's a pregnancy... you'd need to time travel to prove it.

Who "swallows" anything they see on TV? Please don't tell me you watch it and expect serious, informed, unbiased reporting? Good god, excuse the pun, even the gospel on sunday mornings isn't actually "gospel".

But it's pretty simple stuff: take 10,000 (for example) women and give them nothing, sit back and monitor whatever you are interested in. Take another 10,000 women with similar lifestyle/habits give them Elevit or Stoli or whatever, sit back and monitor the same criteria. You simply compare the two and note the difference, if any. It's not that hard is it?

NZ and Australia have combined resources (lots of good info here http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/) and standards when it comes to importing food, health claims associated with food etc. With advertisng and labelling in Aust/NZ: if you can't prove it, you can't say it.

Edit: Milts was sooooo much better, soooo much faster, and sooo much more effective and in typical scientific fashion typed, printed, bound and published a nicely prepared thesis while I hunted and pecked a coupla lousy sentences.

[Milts]

...there seems to be a serious lack of 'believers' knocking the shit out of us 'conspiracy theorists' on here at the moment...odd...

Maybe they were working during the afternoon and had to wait until evening to engage in pointless discussions with uninformed individuals about topics which should be so clear cut as to be undebatable.

[scissorhands]

Maybe they were working during the afternoon and had to wait until evening to engage in pointless discussions with uninformed individuals about topics which should be so clear cut as to be undebatable.

If your not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

I grew up around many groups and cliques and many are good white folks who work hard, watch the news and believe what they are told and obey. They are house nigger inner circle party members and enjoy privilege, wealth and position relative to

Fringe dwelling malcontented anarchist's, renegades and hippies.

One thing I have noticed about the good white folks who are compliant and obey the overlords, is that the far right rogering they receive tends to make them more group conscious, and any wavering of belief from the collective consciousness of society tends to be like a wind over a house of cards. So, rather than the whole thing come tumbling down, any challenge to the status quo is poo pooed without thought out of fear of disintegration of the collective self.

Holistically and acceptingly, without these consumers I would not have cheap second hand goods to buy and use, or enjoy the fruits of their hard labour....

But overall, following the leader and marching to the same drum creates a mono culture and like mono culture farming techniques, the lack of natural balance creates illness within the eco system that requires science and allopathic medicine to step up and maintain profitable function for commercial interests.

But yeah, I really hate those medical stories on the TV news just before sports. They are an advertisement!! on the news!!

[Smifffy]

I once told Mrs H that I needed a course of Propecia because the fine print said it would make me important. She advised me to get better reading glasses or a spell checker.

I wager that improved reading glasses would be more illuminating than a spell checker.

I may even enter a side bet that a spell checker would return a result of no spelling error found.

[ellipsis]

Maybe they were working during the afternoon and had to wait until evening to engage in pointless discussions with uninformed individuals about topics which should be so clear cut as to be undebatable.

...maybe some of us are clever enough to not have to cart ourselves off to somebody elses place of work...if its so pointless, whats yer point... who wants to debate with overly informed zealots...

[mashman]

blah...

Quit hatin' on people who study for ten years and carry out obscenely elaborate experiments before having their words twisted by marketing staff.

Perhaps you didn't read this bit: "Now i'm not saying that it doesn't work, but taking that 92% on blind faith is utterly rediculous. I'm as guilty as the next person"

The elevit + menevit were just an example. I've seen the ad 10's of times and never really thought about it, as some probably wouldn't (obviously you all have )... and as I said before, i'm not saying it doesn't work, but measuring sperm "potency" v's measuring birth defects, for fucksake please, apples and oranges?

Anyhoo, my rant is more about what we take on blind faith and throw into ourselves and our environment to aid our existence... a correlation that doesn't always happen, especially when there's $$$ involved... but how does the layman find this out? We can't all study for 10 years to find out what 1 drug does. It's a huge abuse of trust. And it is abused. The science may well be spot on and the debate over the greater good always comes down to the omlettes and broken eggs argument, which to a point i'm happy with... but it's abused and how can the layman decipher which is which? I'm just utterly fed up with seeing people having the wool pulled over their eyes, then summarilly stapled to their forehead and chin for good measure, being told to suck it up and then asked where their thank you is... just so some cunt can collect some $$$.

This is not science for the benefit of mankind, and trying to excuse it as anything other than that is ignorance (yes i realise the irony, but i'm not claiming i can save people... just the world )... as is being told, oh so you believe everything you read or see on TV, oh you didn't know, these guys are real scientists who have studied for years, it's the fault of the marketing department, it's the few unscrupulous ones that give us all a bad name blah blah blah... i have an excellent selection of rugs you can brush that shit under if you're running out.

Yes marketing and advertising are gonna cherry pick, but come on, that's just about the generation of sales and revenue, why would people expect to be told the truth . You're supposed to be offering something that has been prepared with the best of intentions, created by experts, something that "helps" you with your problem... it ain't the marketing departments fault that it fucks people up or kills people and has been killing people for years... and when the bottom falls out and new research finds that it's causing more damage than good!!! eh, hang on, wait, what, new research says what??? so the science is flawed? ahhh but it was so young and we needed to validate the $$$ it took to create the drug in the first place... worry not, omlettes and eggs, bit of spin, hide the dishonesty, blame the marketing department... i've still got them rugs.

My point... I believe that people deserve more than excuses, stats that can be dismissed at the touch of a keyboard, and trust in those who claim to be experts. Is that so much to ask for?

Tell you what, let's blame it all on smoking and we'll call it quits...

[Milts]

who wants to debate with overly informed zealots...

Me. I'd probably learn more than if I were debating with an uninformed zealot.

[ellipsis]

Me. I'd probably learn more than if I were debating with an uninformed zealot.

...touche'...

[Milts]

Perhaps you didn't read this bit: "Now i'm not saying that it doesn't work, but taking that 92% on blind faith is utterly rediculous. I'm as guilty as the next person"

The elevit + menevit were just an example. I've seen the ad 10's of times and never really thought about it, as some probably wouldn't (obviously you all have )... and as I said before, i'm not saying it doesn't work, but measuring sperm "potency" v's measuring birth defects, for fucksake please, apples and oranges?

If you read the research into the drugs you'll notice they measure them as two seperate outcomes of the same drug.

Anyhoo, my rant is more about what we take on blind faith and throw into ourselves and our environment to aid our existence... a correlation that doesn't always happen, especially when there's $$$ involved... but how does the layman find this out? We can't all study for 10 years to find out what 1 drug does. It's a huge abuse of trust. And it is abused. The science may well be spot on and the debate over the greater good always comes down to the omlettes and broken eggs argument, which to a point i'm happy with... but it's abused and how can the layman decipher which is which? I'm just utterly fed up with seeing people having the wool pulled over their eyes, then summarilly stapled to their forehead and chin for good measure, being told to suck it up and then asked where their thank you is... just so some cunt can collect some $$$.

My experience with the new zealand public is that they take very little advertising on blind faith, because they are too cynical. They do however love their 'conventional wisdom' be it wisdom or no.

Trust is abused in every single professional relationship (real estate agent, car salesman, IT contractor, telephone provider, you name it). This is not a medical issue this is a societal issue. Not all medicine comes down to the omlette argument (although you're right, a lot does) - I'd say it often comes down to the 'no better alternative' argument. Most cynics/conspiracy theorists who become very very sick/injured either end up converts, hypocrites or dead. While the 'just so some cunt can collect some $$$' is again a product of the society not the industry. Don't forget that money also goes towards employing a significant proportion of the population (as well as funding the odd genuine life saving drug).

This is not science for the benefit of mankind, and trying to excuse it as anything other than that is ignorance (yes i realise the irony, but i'm not claiming i can save people... just the world )... as is being told, oh so you believe everything you read or see on TV, oh you didn't know, these guys are real scientists who have studied for years, it's the fault of the marketing department, it's the few unscrupulous ones that give us all a bad name blah blah blah... i have an excellent selection of rugs you can brush that shit under if you're running out.

Yes marketing and advertising are gonna cherry pick, but come on, that's just about the generation of sales and revenue, why would people expect to be told the truth . You're supposed to be offering something that has been prepared with the best of intentions, created by experts, something that "helps" you with your problem... it ain't the marketing departments fault that it fucks people up or kills people and has been killing people for years... and when the bottom falls out and new research finds that it's causing more damage than good!!! eh, hang on, wait, what, new research says what??? so the science is flawed? ahhh but it was so young and we needed to validate the $$$ it took to create the drug in the first place... worry not, omlettes and eggs, bit of spin, hide the dishonesty, blame the marketing department... i've still got them rugs.

My point... I believe that people deserve more than excuses, stats that can be dismissed at the touch of a keyboard, and trust in those who claim to be experts. Is that so much to ask for?

The vast majority of this shit does work well, the areas in which it does not work (adverse reactions etc) are well documented and people who go through the proper channels rather than buying off the net are well informed of these risks. Most of this has been prepared with the best of intentions and the best testing possible. Of course there are exceptions, as there are in any industry, which are examples of unscrupulous individuals or organisations. However the total deaths due to things which were supposed to help but didn't (where the patient hadn't been informed of the risks they CHOSE to accept) are absolutely minimal. And harshly punished. And repayed with the betterment or saving of the lives of the other members of society.


Also, still trying to discern your core argument here beyond 'fuck the professionals I hate them and everything they do