Quack Miranda Warning
I stumbled onto this today and it made me smile. Do you know what you call a home remedy that is scientifically proven to work?
Medicine!
“These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”
This “Quack Miranda Warning” is on every just about every woo-meister’s website. I see dozens of patients every day, and I never Mirandize them, so whats the deal?
There are three ways to look at this: the truthful way, the sinister way, and the bat-shit insane way.
1) Truth: Anyone who wants to sell you something that’s a load of crap must use this statement to cover themselves legally.
2) Sinister: Variation of above–someone wants to sell you something that you are supposed to believe is medically useful, but at the same time they tell you in fine print that it is not medically useful. When it doesn’t work, they don’t get sued. I wonder why anyone would buy something with that disclaimer attatched to it? When I treat someone for a medical problem, I pretty much say that I intend to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent a disease. Why would I say otherwise? It would be a lie. Also, who would go to see a doctor that told you that they didn’t intend to diagnose or treat disease. The whole thing is bizarre.
3) Bat-shit insane: The FDA and Big Pharma are in cahoots with the AMA to keep you from learning all the simple ways to treat diseases. They want your money, and they’ll do anything they can to get it from you, including suppressing the knowledge than anyone can learn to heal cancer.
I can’t really help the people who believe #3, but people who are willing to suspend their paranoia should read #’s 1 and 2 a few times. Unless you’re being arrested, no one should be reading you your rights. The Quack Miranda Statement is the red flag that should send you running.
Source:
October 9, 2014
I did have a hell of a laugh at the expense of “natural” pet pain meds. The two I bought for my elderly dog both state clearly on the label “Does not contain aspirin”.
First ingredient on both of the lists: willow bark extract.
I snorted. And almost peed myself laughing. It makes you really wonder sometimes.
October 9, 2014
Rugger Ducky …and because it’s a plant-based extract, the actual amount of salicin in the preparation may vary wildly from batch to batch… smh
October 10, 2014
What the doctor failed to mention is that when the FDA runs clinical trials on medicine; as long as it is more effective than the placebo in the double blind trial and they don’t find any adverse side effects right away the medicine gets FDA approval. In some cases medicines get approved that are only marginally better than a placebo. So, if you can’t afford your medicine you can always buy a placebo !
October 10, 2014
Mark Bell do you have a citation?
October 10, 2014
I’m sure I can find one give me a little while.
October 10, 2014
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/pre/5/1/23a/ is the best I can do for now. I read a great article about this a few years back. I believe it was in a major and respected magazine. I sure wish I could find it. I know it sounds strange but I swear it is true.
October 10, 2014
Mark Bell I do cancer research and have friends that work in drug discovery. I also have friends at the FDA. I get a lot of conspiracy theorists on my posts. The cancer related clinical trials that I’m familiar with don’t have placebos and have well defined end points.
October 10, 2014
I can understand the confusion. It would be unethical to use placebo’s in a cancer study as far as I am concerned. The main focus of the article I read was mainly on anti-depressants and such. My comment was not meant to be conspiratorial. It was a poor attempt at humor. Give me some more time and I will find a good citation that is not behind a paywall.
October 10, 2014
Mark Bell
Feel free to search PubMed, certainly if there’s a peer reviewed article about the efficacy of FDA approved drugs being little more than placebos, it would be there. And you need only find the abstract, Chad Haney can access the full document.
October 10, 2014
Rugger Ducky right now I am finding this interesting. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic205128.files/NEJM_–_The_Continuing_Unethical_Use_of_Placebo_Controls.pdf The small placebo-controlled studies fostered by the FDA benefit drug companies, which can more easily obtain
approval of an inferior drug by comparing it with placebo than they can by testing it against a serious competitor.
Smaller studies are also cheaper.
October 10, 2014
Mark Bell that doesn’t remotely support your earlier assertion.
What they are saying is that it is unethical to continue to use placebos in cases where there are already standardized drug treatments available.
Because you don’t want sick people getting sicker because they aren’t getting appropriate treatment for their condition.
It has nothing to do with this cockamamie story you created.
October 10, 2014
Placebo effect in antidepressant clinical trials is not something to make a general statement about all clinical trials. Keep in mind that they are in the very early stages of developing a blood test for depression. As I said earlier, in cancer drug trials the endpoints are more clearly defined.
October 10, 2014
http://books.google.com/books?id=8UMDAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false This quote is from page 252 : In addition to the ethical and legal difficulties posed by the fda approach (and discussed above) an obvious practical deficiency arises;that is, it allows for approval of new drugs that are inferior in every way to current accepted treatment, provided that only those new drugs are reliably shown superior to placebos. When a new drug with no demonstrable advantage over existing treatment is proposed,current practice invests enormous sums of money toward the clinically uninteresting proof that the drug is better than nothing, an exercise that helps nobody except the applicant drug company.
October 10, 2014
Chad Haney Sorry for the generalization.
October 10, 2014
provided that only those new drugs are reliably shown superior to placebos
Which is a huge difference from “marginally better”.
I’m not saying there are ethical issues related to sleaziness of those trying to make a buck. But there are also a lot of cases where an alternate drug is needed due to reactions amongst enough of those who need that type of medication to whatever is the standard treatment.
An example. I can’t take metformin without a terrible side effect I won’t talk about. Except hurriedly. But if I wind up diabetic (as is likely given my family history and other predisposing factors), I will need a different medication other than the standard one given for a very long time. Yes, it’s the most reliable medication we have for the disease, no, I can’t take it.
And thanks for recognizing you overgeneralized.
October 10, 2014
Rugger Ducky reliable = able to be trusted, superior = greater in amount, Whether the amount can be “marginal” and also “greater in amount” is no longer worth arguing. Read the book. BTW, I am not against medicine or science. I just have problems with small sample sizes in placebo trials and the ethical issues you alluded to in your post. A greater amount of effective drugs is better for everyone. However, psychotropic drugs are notorious for not working in a “huge” amount of people who are prescribed these medications. Ever hear of “abilify”? It is a drug that is marketed to make the drug that some folks are already taking “effective” ! Also if you can quantify marginal the way you choose, I guess I have the right to quantify “huge” in my own way. We can agree to disagree for now. And yes generalizations are bad. I have always loved the word cockamamie though. It is a sad fact that marketers and sales people sometimes have more influence than scientists when it comes to certain newer drugs and why they get manufactured or prescribed.
October 10, 2014
:-)))
October 10, 2014
Mark Bell, my sister used to be a sales rep for a small-ish drug company. I totally agree about their influence (at least in the past) on what a patient is prescribed. She told me about one physician in particular that would say he wants X, Y, and Z and he’ll write prescriptions only for the drugs that company makes. I’m glad that that behavior is much harder to get away with now.