Snake Bites vs. Snake Oil

"Ephedra isn't snake oil, it's snake venom," declared Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-PA). Which brings up the question--how many people does each substance kill per year? According to my colleague Jacob Sullum, the FDA found that ephedra was implicated in just 2 deaths in 2002. Meanwhile snake bites kill between 9 and 14 people annually. Of course, millions of dieters take millions of ephedra tablets annually, while only 45,000 people get bitten by snakes each year. Banning ephedra isn't organic fertilizer, it's just bullshit.

Comments

[rst]

nicotine prohibition or its functional equivalent will be effectively achieved.

Yeah, but backwards, i.e., for second hand smoke vs. the actual smokers who die rampantly of every respiratory and circulatory disease under the sun as a result of cigs. If the govt is going to adopt some kind of silly public health position based on a risk-benefit assessment and the number of people that the product kills -- by varying accounts between 2 and 155 -- then ignoring cigarettes and alcohol, neither of which have any productive use but together kill more in a day than ephedra will in a hundred years, is hypocrisy.

Some 60-year old post-bypass grandpa could go drink himself silly, smoke a pack of cigarettes, take three Xenadrine, and then die of a massive heart attack. In the end, only the ephedra would get the blame. Not the smokes, not the liquor, and certainly not the jackass who decided to drink, smoke, and pop ephedra all at once. We are indeed a backwards people.

[Lonewacko]

"One case was reported of a snakebite on the glans penis"

One of these days I'd like to see a Mojave Rattler. Envenomation is very rare, but usually fatal. There's one at a zoo in Tucson, but it cost $12 or $15 to get in.

[Doc]

"cigarettes and alcohol, neither of which have any productive use "

There is no scientific basis for that statement either, rst. Especially in the case of alcohol which has proven medicinal effects.

[rst]

alcohol which has proven medicinal effects.

About as much as ephedra.

[Russ D]

Ephedra, pseudophedrine... which one is legal?

Why, the patented one, of course!

[Mr. Nice Guy]

What if a snake somehow consumes ephedra and bites someone? This can be extremely dangerous, especially to small children and old people.

I think there should be an outright ban on snakes. According to the Book, they brought about the fall of man. Maybe we should herd them into the town square and beat them with sticks. Hmmmm.. sounds like a great idea for a TV show..

[Mick]

Why don't we just find one guy who can play a little song and get the snakes to all follow him and he'll lead them into the water and they'll drown. The rest of us can go out drinking.

[rst]

Ephedra is not good for you when taken in the kinds of quantities and under the conditions that it is taken in the U.S. I'm heartily against the ban, but if you have bought ephedra products in light of this ballyhoo and you want to take it, then go by the label, drink twice as much water as before, and avoid coffee and cigarettes like the plague.

Speaking of which, given how ephedra (according to Mr Durbin) caused a whopping 155 deaths and 16,500 heart attacks, strokes, and seizures, I expect that there will soon be a ban on automobiles, cigarettes, and alcohol, whose fatal tendencies taken individually make the ephedra argument truly pointless. I wonder how quickly Congress will move to get those far more harmful products "off the shelves immediately".

[Jacob Sullum]

Just to clarify, the FDA-commissioned study to which Ron alludes looked at EVERY ephedra reaction reported in the FDA's files and the medical literature through 2002 and found only two deaths where there had been an attempt to rule out other factors. It covered a period of nearly a decade. See http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/ephedra/summary.html.

[Mona]

rst -- I think it entirely likely that the quasi-prohibition of cigarettes in NYC and the State of CA will spread, and that nicotine prohibition or its functional equivalent will be effectively achieved. I further expect that when the health nazis are done with cigs and fast food, they will turn their attention to driving. (The enviro-freaks will make a happy marriage with them.) It will be argued that one should have a good reason -- a more or less emergency -- to drive an automobile, given the risk to oneself and others that obtains in every road trip.

Farfetched? Whoever thought cigs would be banned in BARS, and that Mickey Ds would come under the gun?

[chthus]

There was an interesting take on the staying power of smoking by neurologist Richard Restak in this past Sunday's Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50984-2004Jan2.html

One point he offers, "For centuries, smoking has persisted despite unbelievably harsh efforts to eliminate it. A case in point: In 17th-century Russia, the punishments included slitting the smoker's lips, flogging, castration and (for the lucky ones) exile. And yet, as anyone who's been to Moscow lately knows, Russians did not forsake tobacco."

[dhex]

yeah, there is that. funny how it always seems to work out that way.

[Dave S.]

Ephedra - taken for health, implicated in two deaths. Illegal.

Alcohol - taken for recreation, implicated in thousands of deaths. Legal.

Marijuana - taken for recreation, implicated in few deaths. Illegal.

Yeah, that makes sense.