Reply #10: Some logical fallacies there [View All]

[Patiod]

You feel a cold coming on and take Zicam and don't actually get sick - you're assuming Zican is why you're not getting sick.

But I haven't had a cold since I started working out - *I* feel a cold coming on and get a good night's sleep and I don't actually get sick. Is it the gym? Or my diet, hormones, environment, or immune system? I got a cat around the time I started going to the gym. Maybe the cat helps me avoid colds....

The reason doctors want to see data on new drugs is because a lot of them don't believe pharma company claims (whether from Merck/Pfizer/Wyeth or the makers of Zicam or Airborne) until they see that there are good, well-designed studies that show statistically significant differences between the groups taking the drug and the group taking placebo (either placebo or the gold standard current treatment, since sometimes you can't moraly give someone No Treatment/Placebo).

Well-designed studies on the effect of zinc on colds has not shown any benefit. Airborne doesn't offer legitimate studies either - when reporters tracked down the source of their studies, it was a private house in Florida, and there were no real records.

As for pharma companies wanting to "shut down" zinc, that's nonsense - if it actually worked, they would be more likely to co-opt it. Look how they've all incorporated vitamin D into their osteoporosis products. But if it doesn't work, the FDA won't let them incorporate it, so they haven't.

If you think the FDA is in drug-maker's pockets, you should see how many Big Pharma drug teams I've worked with that have been shot down by the FDA, God bless them. If the data doesn't show that the drug is clearly better than stuff that's currently on the market, it's not approved. You may think the FDA is on the drug-makers payrolls but it sure doesn't seem that way when you're devoted years to a drug, and the FDA comes down on them either for 1) lack of efficacy data on a new drug or 2) side effect data on an existing medication. One of our biggest accounts is going away, along with my job it looks like, because the FDA is shutting the drug down. Bad for me - good for everyone else.

The point being: personal experience is anecdotal and therefore flawed - data is more reliable.