Posted on 09/17/2023 10:35:38 AM PDT by lightman
Commentary
“Experts have long doubted the effectiveness of phenylephrine,” which is a common ingredient in DayQuil, NyQuil, Sudafed, Mucinex, and others. This was National Public Radio on Wednesday morning, Sept. 13. It reminds me of Orwell: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
They are telling us this 16 years after the FDA forced the ingredient as the substitute for a product that actually works, which is pseudoephedrine.
To get the product with pseudoephedrine requires that you ask for it. It is kept behind the counter. Then you have to use your drivers’ license and there are restrictions on how many you can buy. If you go to multiple drug stores, you will be caught and possibly brought up on criminal charges. This has been going on for years now.
No exaggeration. Here is a headline from 2007. They really did attempt to criminalize buying effective cold remedies.
This time, it is incredibly obvious that the FDA is right: Phenylephrine is a useless product. That much has been obvious to consumers for a very long time, though it took alertness to know the difference. Plenty of people bought NyQuil thinking that it was the same old NyQuil. This is entirely the fault of the FDA itself, which together with the Bush administration deprecated pseudoephedrine in the name of the war on drugs.
Pseudoephedrine is supposedly used to make meth. So it had to become a heavily controlled product under the guise of the war on terror. See the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005. Yep, another epidemic. As a result of the action two years later, many people have lived for 16 years with easily curable stuffy noses. How many people actually made and marketed meth using Sudafed? I’ve sought the answer for years but never run across any evidence that the practice is widespread. For all I know, it is entirely made up. What is the real reason that the Bush administration made the change? Back in 2007, I got curious and looked it up. The old ingredient was out of patent and manufactured for pennies each. The new product was produced by Boehringer Ingelheim Corp., a German company that back then gave mostly to Republicans.
In other words, this was likely a payoff to a political donor. There was a flurry of patents granted for the new product, one of which came as late as 2015 for “Phenylephrine formulations with improved stability.” It’s very likely that this product and its manufacturing became the cow that the existing ruling party could no longer milk. At this point, the FDA decided to say what everyone in the know has known for 16 years. It doesn’t work.
What’s next? Are we going back to the product that actually works? Maybe. But more likely, there will be a period in which there is a scramble for a new drug, with new filing fees, new patents, new political donations, and new royalties for companies and the bureaucrats that grant them access.
It’s all quite brazen and absurd. It’s especially rotten that the FDA seems to be placing the blame for a decade and a half of stuffy noses on the manufacturers of cold products—even though it was the government itself that forced them to use inferior ingredients in the first place.
There is something especially absurd about the FDA right now. They rubber stamp vaccines without proper testing. They recommend them for everyone, even those at zero medical risk for suffering from that which the vaccine is supposed to mitigate, even though the potion is for a variant that is already gone from the scene. Then they block and trash repurposed drugs that actually do work.
And now in the name of fixing the common cold, they have blasted out the news that DayQuil is no good, even though the drug regulators themselves are responsible for ruining what was once a perfectly respectable product.
Some people speculate that this is, once again, a matter of directing all attention to the vaccine industry, so that even the common cold can be cited as a reason to get, for example, the new RSV vaccine, which is helpfully promoted in the New York Times just below its piece on the above news.
The entire scene has become part of what is now called Clown World.
What’s the solution? Probably all of us are going to be driven back to prewar cold remedies like the Neti Pot (for as low as $5) and saline solution. In some ways, that’s probably a better remedy in any case. The American addiction to pills and shots for every minor malady has only empowered bullying bureaucrats and crony capitalists, while our health has otherwise suffered blow after blow.
At least now the racket is out in the open.
Chances are, there is something about Phenylephrine that cancels the new vaxx or works just as good as the new vaxx.
Think Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectine.
Pseudoephedrine can definitely be used to manufacture meth. And at one time meth cooks could and would buy up every pill a drugstore had on the shelves. I don’t know why this author had any difficulty learning that. Maybe it didn’t fit his story line.
I share your concerns.
I have been “up close and personal” with the medical profession as well as numerous family members and friends.
The goal is quite obviously not to cure or act in the patents best interest. But, to extract the maximum revenue from the individuals assets and/or insurance possible.
The Walgreens would not accept a U.S. Passport as identification, because it doesn’t have an address on it.
The same Walgreens would not let me pick up one for me, and one children’s dose for my minor child. Meth operators would NOT be getting children’s doses.
My wife and I had to shop separately, too.
If someone needs pseudoephedrine, they can get it; they just need to sign for it. What’s the big deal? Apparently the author is unaware of the huge meth problem.
We are treated like criminals trying to get OTC medicine. This country is insane. We have drugs pouring across the border, but the govt harasses innocent sick people.
Lifelong allergic rhinitis. Phenylepherine works for me
The lesson of Covid is that the BPC owns and controls most national politicians, the FDA, the CDC, the Mainstream Media, et al.
>>What’s the solution? Probably all of us are going to be driven back to prewar cold remedies like the Neti Pot (for as low as $5) and saline solution.
I bought a powered irrigator a long time ago, maybe 15 years. Love it. The Neti pot is 3rd World technology, powered nasal irrigators are the ticket. Saline made with xylitol plus salt is the ticket post-Covid.
I would rather we just hanged meth heads.
Meth is so last decade....the druggies have moved on the fentanyl.
Ask George Floyd.
FTA: The old ingredient was out of patent and manufactured for pennies each
The same was done for your a/c refrigerant in the car when the patent for R-12 ran out.
Now you use R-22, R-134A or the newer R-1234YF and R410A
I guess everytime a patent runs out a new refrigerant is needed and a politician gets bribed.
Looks like you inadvertently stated their actual goal: To sell product according to the patents they own, not according to the patients' needs. Big Pharma Commandment #1: Patents, not Patients!
Thoughts?
Xylitol is poison.
Xylitol is poison.
???
According to Don.
Here’s this...
Xylitol is a well-tolerated agent for sinonasal irrigation, which can improve symptoms of chronic rhinosinusitis compared to saline irrigation.2 Xylitol can be used as a daily nasal wash with neti pots or sinus rinse bottles to reduce swelling and reduce swollen tissue.4 Xylitol can also stimulate the body’s natural cleansing process to clear away contaminants and irritants in the nasal passages, which can prevent sinus issues and upper respiratory discomfort.0 In vitro, 5% and 10% xylitol in saline significantly reduced S. epidermidis and S. aureus biofilm formation after 1 h, and after 24 h also of P. aeruginosa compared to saline...
What brand of irrigator do you have, FP?
Let your dog have a piece of gum that has xylitol in it and tell me how that goes.
Another illustration of one of the principles of modern government: Every time some SOB abuses something the government takes it out on me.
A couple of decades ago, you could grab a bottle of 250 Sudafeds and check out of the store with no questions asked. That may seem like a lot, but remember the recommended dose for adults is two of the small pills every six hours or so. One good cold afflicting a family of six teens and adults, or a couple of cases of seasonal allergy could use up most of the bottle. (By the way, they also sold the herb ephedra. Now, that stuff is dangerous: it gives little decongestant relief, but makes your heart race.)
Some years ago were the ones who forced the drug companies to switch to it from Pseudoephedrine Hydrochloride when they decided that people were using it to make methamphetimine, and banned it from unregulated purchase.
Now admittedly the phenylepherine doesn’t work as well as pseudoephedrine... takes three or four times as much do achieve the same results, BUT IT DOES WORK. And of course they aren’t going to de-regulate pseudoephedrine so that people can get some over the counter relief for colds, hay fever flu or whatever Fauci and Gates are cooking up in their labs.
I think this mew ban is all a scam to force people to go to a doctor and get a prescription for relief from common minor maladies. I wonder if Phizer, or Maderna, or Johnson & Johnson have a new and expensive decongestant drug fixing to come out and are paying the FDA to do this for more profiteering, and to take away the ability for us peasants to treat ourselves with something cheap and easily purchased.
(Although I have also noticed that the stuff like Nyquil, Sudaphed-D etc. costs four times as much as it did a couple years ago, so they are making plenty of profit in them already.)
The goal of the Biomedical Pharmaceutical complex is to force everyone into some type of “maintenance” meds for some “PRE” disorder if not the disorder itself.
IOW, to ensure a steady income stream of blood work and six month appointments.
IOOW, the “subscription” model.
Or the Gillete razor.
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