Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 275 posts

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#221

Post by jrockway »

nkozyra wrote: post #217
heavyset_go wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have two people who take it everyday for allergies, you've already hit your limit with 60 pills.

At a decongestant dosage this will last two people two months. And of course if the second person is 18+ they can also buy that. I'm not advocating that the limits are good, just that a single person is very unlikely to hit them for allergies, periodic illness or asthma (it's also available as a prescription for allergies)

The legal limit is 9g per 30 days, and the recommended dose is 7.2g per 30 days (=240mg/day). So if both parents take the maximum dose, there is none for the kids. (3 people would need 21.6g; both parents together could buy 18g.)

Personally, I don't take it at night, so I wouldn't run into this problem, but the existence of 240mg "24 hour extended release" tablets leads me to believe that someone else must. (I'm a little jealous that they can sleep with it in their system. It would be nice!)

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#222

Post by paulmd »

qeternity wrote: post #201
goodluckchuck wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously retail pseudoephedrine was never a substantial contributor to methamphetamine production (tell me again why that’s illegal?). Which raises the question, what what the real goal in preventing people from buying functional medicines? Frankly I think the specific intent was exactly this. The main effect was to cause human suffering and Occams razor tells me the main effect was probably the intended effect.

> Occams razor I think Hanlon's razor is more appropriate. Somewhere there was a team of people in the government who worked untold hours studying this, proposing solutions and ultimately having change enacted. This would have been good for career progression for all involved, not because it was actually good, but simply because they did something. And therein lies government.

Hanlon’s razor is a thought-terminating cliche in most circumstances. Malice exists very frequently, as does profit-seeking or other motives that are indistinguishable from malice, and it's not at all the same thing as occam's "don't say god did it when there's a perfectly good mortal explanation" razor.

It's essentially "memetic mimicry", where a second meme rides on the coattails of the first one, simply by obeying the overall form of the first meme so that its credibility "transfers over" to the second one. Like a common snake imitating a dangerous venomous one.

In the DEAs case it was literally confirmed to be operating on malice since at least the Nixon and Reagan years, when it was overtly and publicly wielded as a weapon to disrupt hippies and black communities, specifically. There is absolutely no reason to assume good-faith when law enforcement is involved, and it is in fact a waste of the openness of your mind to do so. Go be open-minded about something else, literally anyone deserves that more than actual literal drug cops.

> “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#223

Post by heavyset_go »

nkozyra wrote: post #218
heavyset_go wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is where all the complaints that it's too restrictive fall apart. When you do the math, there is room to stockpile and STILL take it daily... And yet innocent people still get arrested and have their lives upended and/or ruined because they accidentally violated pseudoephedrine regulations. When that's happening, it's because the regulations are too restrictive.

> And yet innocent people still get arrested and have their lives upended and/or ruined because they accidentally violated pseudoephedrine regulations. I'm curious to know if you have any examples of this because I can't find one.

This was posted on this submission: https://reason.com/2009/09/30/put-down-the-cold-pills-grandm...

More: https://reason.com/2009/09/28/hoosier-grandmother-arrested-f...

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#224

Post by jrockway »

nkozyra wrote: post #218
heavyset_go wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is where all the complaints that it's too restrictive fall apart. When you do the math, there is room to stockpile and STILL take it daily... And yet innocent people still get arrested and have their lives upended and/or ruined because they accidentally violated pseudoephedrine regulations. When that's happening, it's because the regulations are too restrictive.

> And yet innocent people still get arrested and have their lives upended and/or ruined because they accidentally violated pseudoephedrine regulations. I'm curious to know if you have any examples of this because I can't find one.

It seems that the major pharmacy chains keep records and will refuse to sell it to you before you reach the limit that would trigger a misdemeanor.

But, if a law is never enforced, it should be deleted. Otherwise, one day you decide you don't like someone's political views, and suddenly they are the first case of purchasing 9.1g of Sudafed in a single 30 day period. Dead code is just waiting to be a security incident.

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#225

Post by jameshart »

siegecraft wrote: post #110
jameshart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know placebos work? You can’t do a randomized placebo controlled trial to test them.

Why not? Give a bunch of people actual placebos, half are told it won't work, half are told it will, see what happens?

Which half is the placebo?

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#226

Post by jameshart »

ars wrote: post #185
jameshart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know placebos work? You can’t do a randomized placebo controlled trial to test them.

The literature on the effectiveness of placebo's is extensive and not in doubt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Effects

Considering that link points directly to a paragraph the says

> A 2001 Cochrane Collaboration meta-analysis of the placebo effect looked at trials in 40 different medical conditions, and concluded the only one where it had been shown to have a significant effect was for pain.[14] That's because placebos do not appear to affect the actual diseases, or outcomes that are not dependent on a patient's perception

I'd consider that a somewhat misleading citation for your assertion.

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#227

Post by flashback2199 »

goodluckchuck wrote: post #196
phpisthebest wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>go to the pharmacy counter and get Pseudoephedrine Thanks DEA, you used to just be able to get that in Nyquil and all the others, but the DEA in their moronic idea that drug dealers are going and buying precursors from the local CVS (not stealing them in bulk) has to abuse millions of law abiding sick people forcing them to sign the "papers please" log book treating them like criminals for wanting to feel better.

Obviously retail pseudoephedrine was never a substantial contributor to methamphetamine production (tell me again why that’s illegal?). Which raises the question, what what the real goal in preventing people from buying functional medicines? Frankly I think the specific intent was exactly this. The main effect was to cause human suffering and Occams razor tells me the main effect was probably the intended effect.

> methamphetamine production (tell me again why that’s illegal?

Because it ruins people's lives, that's why.

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#228

Post by nkozyra »

jrockway wrote: post #221
nkozyra wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a decongestant dosage this will last two people two months. And of course if the second person is 18+ they can also buy that. I'm not advocating that the limits are good, just that a single person is very unlikely to hit them for allergies, periodic illness or asthma (it's also available as a prescription for allergies)

The legal limit is 9g per 30 days, and the recommended dose is 7.2g per 30 days (=240mg/day). So if both parents take the maximum dose, there is none for the kids. (3 people would need 21.6g; both parents together could buy 18g.) Personally, I don't take it at night, so I wouldn't run into this problem, but the existence of 240mg "24 hour extended release" tablets leads me to believe that someone else must. (I'm a li…

> the recommended dose is 7.2g per 30 days (=240mg/day)

30-60mg, and this is not recommended for more than 7 days for sinuses

It's actually a fairly significant dose already.

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#229

Post by nkozyra »

jrockway wrote: post #224
nkozyra wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet innocent people still get arrested and have their lives upended and/or ruined because they accidentally violated pseudoephedrine regulations. I'm curious to know if you have any examples of this because I can't find one.

It seems that the major pharmacy chains keep records and will refuse to sell it to you before you reach the limit that would trigger a misdemeanor. But, if a law is never enforced, it should be deleted. Otherwise, one day you decide you don't like someone's political views, and suddenly they are the first case of purchasing 9.1g of Sudafed in a single 30 day period. Dead code is just waiting to be a security incident…

Again, I'm not advocating for the limits. I'm saying it would be very hard to exceed the limits as they exist now.

Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

#230

Post by titanomachy »

The_Blade wrote: post #195
titanomachy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you usually take decongestants for 12+ days? I usually just take them a couple of times on the worst days of a cold, maybe 5 pills every time I get sick. And pharmacies in my city don’t usually have more than 1 or 2 people ahead of me in line.

i was going to say, what planet are you on where you have to wait 60 minutes at the pharmacy, and what you need more than 24 pills for? you're either Jesse Pinkman or sicker than a vintage Jimi Hendrix lick

Love that, I’m going to steal it
Post reply on HN