"The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Fell Off"

[onager]

Ah, the good old days! When rugged individualist 'Muricans could self-medicate all they wanted, with everything from cocaine to radioactivity!

The Subject line is the actual title of a 1932 Wall Street Journal article. You can read the whole original article at the link below.

It tells the gruesome story of industrialist Eben Byers, who fell and hurt his arm. On a doctor's advice, he started guzzling bottles of "Radithor," water mixed with radium and other good stuff. Unlike many quack cures claiming radioactive ingredients, that stuff really contained radium. A LOT of it.

Byers drank about 1400 bottles in a couple of years. The result...well, you can read it in the article.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,743525,00.html

(I ran across this because I'm reading the book Charlatan right now - the incredible story of "Dr." John R. Brinkley. He came up with an early version of Viagra that implanted goat glands into male testicles (or female ovaries). The body just absorbed the glands, usually. The bigger problem was Brinkley's lack of hygiene. And his habit of operating on patients while extremely drunk.)

[Warpy]

1. Any new technology is immediately exploited by quacks

and sometimes by medical people who should know a hell of a lot better. Case in point was a woman I cared for many years ago who'd had radiation treatments for acne. It cleared up her acne, but she ended up with mandibular cancer. She's had her mandible out and a titanium prosthetic jaw put in but the cancer had already spread.

There wasn't much of a face left when I took care of her. She was kept doped to the rafters, it was the kindest thing at that point.

[onager]

7. That was common.

Thanks for the personal experience.

I've read about how radiation was used to treat acne and many other non-life threatening illnesses, usually with the results you described.

The "Radium Girls" were an especially horrible example. But their job was to blame, not self-medication:

The Radium Girls were a group of female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey around 1917.

The women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to sharpen them...

Five of the women challenged their employer in a court case that established the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

[charlie]

2. "There is usually something of the proselytizer in people who stimulate themselves with tonics."

Yep, and that's the bigger part of the problem. Like Byers, hardheads who won't be told otherwise doom a lot more than just themselves. We have a devotee of colloidal silver here who's smart enough to not post in Health.

One funny bunch are the guys who use a cleanser that rubberizes stool and removes "impacted meat" and other poisons from your gut. They trade pictures of their ropey turds, sometimes lifted out of the toilet like a prize catch.

[Occulus]

9. OMG, I just did a DU search for colloidal silver

The stupid.... it buurrrrns.....

One person posted about how they had found an "independent" testing lab, and gave a link...

....to colloidal-silver.com.

:banghead:

[realisticphish]

10. "independent"

is code for "agrees with me"

[Heddi]

11. There's a dude that comes into my Er all the time that's as blue as a smurf from collodial silver

he has far more problems than blue skin, though. Generally, if the minerals are deposited in the skin, they're deposited elswhere as well...like the kidneys...liver...brain.....

[Occulus]

14. Could his problems possibly have been CAUSED by the colloidal silver?

I think this just might give me nightmares, or at least some fairly disturbing dreams....

[Heddi]

18. Well yeah, that's what I was trying to say (I was at work in the last 1/3 of a 12 hour shift

when I wrote that so it probably wasn't clear)

Yeah, his problems were caused by the colloidal silver. The silver isn't *just* depositing in his skin---it's depositing in his liver, kidneys, lungs, brain....all those important organs where blood filters through. Lungs, heart...he's all fucked up. I would be very interested to see his inevetable autopsy to see if his organs are stained just as blue (my theory is that they are).



Do a google search on "paul karason"

[TZ]

12. Some people wear their stupidity with pride

:crazy:

[Occulus]

13. Oh. My. GOD.

That is seriously terrifying.

Google has more images. How can people use this crap, have that happen to them, and claim it's good for them???

Google even shows products. Why haven't these been banned outright? All salves, all creams, all drops, all pills?

How can these compounds and concoctions possibly still be legal?

[TZ]

15. You'd be surprised how many people think they are at worst harmless

I work with someone here (biopharma research) who thinks colloidal silver (or at least her husband does) is helpful in healing. I find it ironic the same people who screech about the FDA not doing enough to regulate biopharmas have stokes when ANY type of regulation is attempted on this shit...Its always "the gov't is trying to take away your vitamins". No, they are trying to makesure you get what you are supposed to get. Oy. Double standard much?

[charlie]

16. Because most of them are smart, as snake oil salemen have to be

Tout silver's antimicrobial efficacy (as a TOPICAL agent, which they won't mention), list the downsides to medical antibiotics, and leave it to you to make the connection. Also, note its historical use, since "ancient wisdom" is an irresistable hook.

It's a non-nutritive "nutritional supplement", not medicine... wink-wink. It has to be, since the FDA banned over the counter medicinal sales a decade ago.

One thing they don't mention in their "sciencey" pitches is that the mechanism that turns you blue is one everybody's familiar with. It's same principle that imprints images onto photographic emulsions. Sunlight will darken you like an old-school Kodak pic.

[charlie]

17. Blue man, pink

[TZ]

3. Have you ever read the history/founding of the FDA?

Its fascinating. And here's the highly ironic part, Congress felt like they needed to strengthen the FDA in the 70's and 80's because they felt the HOMOPATHIC/SUPPLEMENT industry was in too much control..In fact, the first head of the FDA was I believe some sort of homeopath. But of course we know that industry was never a greedy influential lobby oh no..thats why Congress in the 80's made rules to attempt to lessen their influence.

[realisticphish]

4. and of course

that fact that supplements have massive loopholes and exceptions provided to them by the FDA means nothing, either...

[TZ]

5. Most of those loopholes are because of the history

of heavy influence by supplement over the years by the FDA. The fact is that the supplement industry has actually been MORE effective in keeping out from regulatory influence than the Pharmaceutical industry.
As I have pointed out there are far far more places to buy homeopathic crap/supplements than there are pharmaceutical manufacturers.

[Warpy]

8. That's because the stuff doesn't do anything at all

I doubt they'd be able to escape regulation if their junk actually worked.

The only harm it does is when the faithful delay treatment too long, thinking magic water is going to work. By the time they go in, it's too late to do much of anything, and their families use their amputations or deaths as proof that standard medicine doesn't work.

[HuckleB]

6. Hmm. Maybe the corruption scandal that ended Jimmy Walker's career as Mayor saved his life.

He had to escape to Europe to avoid prosecution. I wonder if the stuff was already banned there.

[onager]

19. You guys would love this book...

So here's the full title, author, Amazon link...

Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock.

http://www.amazon.com/Charlatan-Americas-Dangerous-Huckster-Flimflam/dp/0307339882

The book often sounds like a bad day at DU, with alt-med enthusiasts, astrologers, and quacks attacking science. Especially the A.M.A., affectionately referred to as "American Meatcutter's Association." Though describing events of 80 years ago, the basic arguments have not changed one bit, including the one about some sort of Constitutional right to be fleeced by medical frauds.

Most of the book covers the decades-long battle between "goat gland" implanter John Brinkley and Dr. Morris Fishbein, an A.M.A. employee who declared an absolute jihad against all quacks, foreign and domestic.

At one point Brinkley was raking in $1 million a year in real 1920's money. Fishbein's only weapons were the fairly obscure J.A.M.A. and its lay equivalent, Hygeia magazine. But Fishbein also had a few powerful allies like Clarence Darrow, Sinclair Lewis and the one writer with whom no fraud ever wanted to tangle - H.L. Mencken.

There are also some great sidebars. To better spread his quacking, Brinkley built the 1-million watt "border-blaster" radio station, XERA. Since he couldn't rant 24 hours a day, Brinkley hired musical acts like the original Carter Family. So thanks to Brinkley - when a 10-yr-old June Carter sang on XERA, its signal carried hundreds of miles to rural Arkansas and entertained her future husband, Johnny Cash.