This morning, I read an article about how AirborneHealth is offering refunds to users of its products given the fact that it may or may not affect whatsoever the health of those who take it. According to the article all of the scientific evidence establishing Airborne as profilactic in fighting infections constitutes simply the word of a man who under questioning cited no studies whatsoever, let alone scientific, and lacks credentials of a degree to back up his assertions.
Airborne constitutes simply the latest in a long line of non-scientific products that explain why so many products contain the disclaimer "Products [and information] have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not meant to diagnose, cure, mitigate or prevent any disease. If you have a health condition see your physician." For many of these products, the makers simply lack expertise or desire to embark on the long and arduous process of verifying the validity of their claims when bringing a product to market.
What of the people who claim that Airborne works for them? I believe Airborne, like so many other things we take, acts in bipartate fashion. First, consumption of a profilactic serves a psychosematic role in abbrogating disease. A recent article mentioned on talk radio (I forget where unfortunately), referenced how in terms of erectile disfunction medication placebo seemed in many instances to run close heel to the actual drug, bringing into question why anyone "needed" an ED drug.
Psychosematic drug effects are not a new concept. In the OLD movie "Captain Blood", the Governor of Jamaica, suffering from gout, suggests that Dr. Peter Blood bleed him again. Bleeding does absolutely nothing to help gout, but for the governor, the doctor was doing something, so it tends to have a psychological effect on the patient. If you get something, it tends to help, even if that something is a sweet-tart.
Airborne, secondly, may contain ingredients which, if consumed as part of a healthy diet, act in concert with the body's innate immune response and magnify its effects. For many years, I have hemmed and hawed over echinacea, despite having seen it work. I do not think echinacea, or Airborne for that matter, in and of themselves work. After all, a doctor once told me he was proscribing an antibiotic to "prevent viral infection". When I reminded him that they are not at all efficacious against viruses, he admitted it was a "preventative measure in general". Doubtless, the antibiotic may help, particularly if an opportunistic pathogen rears its ugly head. However, its effects I suspect serve an auxiliary role.
We all know about those old wives-tales, things that make you feel better but you don't know why. I've been given chicken soup, chamomille tea, and some Phillipino leaves I couldn't pronounce, all of which seem to help. I think they work, we just don't know why.
The big problem is that scientists don't really seem to care. I particularly love titles like these:
New Study Proves Viagra Effective For Male Impotence
Science doesn't PROVE anything. Not particularly leveled against these particular researchers or the fine fabricators of Viagra, et al., but I have seen for purposes of aggrandizing a career, all sorts of scientific malfeasance in the course of my scientific career, orchestrated to advance a name without regard whatsoever for truly advancing society as a whole.
I have personally witnessed: falsification of results, omission of results, withholding of results, as well as a lot of other things in science. Scientists don't much seem to care about the scientific method.Most scientists, despite what they tell you, know little of how the scientific method actually works. Science doesn’t prove anything. Science disproves all other possibilities until only the truth presumably remains. In a hypothesis-driven endeavor, one collects data and tries to refute the null hypothesis, which is the opposite of your hypothesis. Evidence either satisfies conditions to reject the null hypothesis or proves insufficient to disprove the null hypothesis. In this way, no matter how overwhelming the data, the truth is never really proved, we are merely unable to disprove it. This phenomenon is easily illustrated by physics, which is highly content-specific: all that we know about resistance, gravity and acceleration forces and “constants” applies only in the context of the earth. Although the principles remain the same, all the parameters change when we leave the planet, and some forces change depending on our latitude on this one. Non-scientists refuse to accept this fundamental truth of science- that we cannot “prove” much by experimentation. Data at best provides evidence that A and B are related or that A and B may be causative agents of C. Alec Guinness had a good line in “The Empire Strikes Back”, when he said that much of what we hold to be true depends on our point of view. This is especially important to consider in light of rogue scientists who will obscure or fabricate data, ignore variables, or withhold information to prevent others from subverting their personal agendas. They cannot prove what they believe, so they fit the data to their preconceived notions.
As for holistics and home remedies...more on that later.
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