I’ve seen a pattern over the years where products are already on the market, and sometimes even being marketed online especially on social media, and the only evidence anyone points to is some preliminary study that’s inconclusive but “promising”. (They always seem to use the word promising in these marketing pitches.) The studies of course list the conflicts of interest, and they’re usually studies that are being done by the people already selling the product, or with financial ties to some company already selling the product. Then they pretty much use fraudulent appeal to authority to claim that the study says more than it does, or just that hey, it’s promising so “why not” as the reason to convince you to pay money and buy it to use. Except “why not” is not good enough, because if it’s not proven, you could be wasting your money at a minimum, or trusting something to be efficacious when you could be using something else, or worse, perhaps safety isn’t really proven and you’re taking risks for nothing.
The most recent example of this now circulating is a product that I’d heard was “promising” as a covid prophylactic back in 2021, because doctors were prescribing it for covid congestion, because it’s an effective decongestant without a lot of side-effects. I had a prescription for it, and back in December 2021, I had to wait a couple months to get it filled because it was out of stock because of shortages, because of the covid surge. The conflicts of interest section is an extravaganza of payments and financial interest in companies marketing and selling similar health products already. One has to ask oneself, if it was used as a covid symptom treatment in 2021, and they said it was “promising” as a potential prophylactic back in 2021, why is it still being studied with preliminary small trials in 2025? And you just have to wonder why there are so many similar products also being marketed online with a lot of hype, personal testimonials and hope, and or pointing to years old preliminary studies.
And I just want to point out that the US is probably now considered a quack’s paradise, with Americans seen as unprotected vulnerable marks just waiting to have our money parted from us, because of the situation with our federal government leadership being stacked with pseudoscience kooks and anti-vaxxers and the corporate industry interest cronies appointed in key positions have been dismantling the regulations that protected us from a lot of the bullshit and danger. It’s not a coincidence that a lot of the unproven covid products circulating online now got their start with right-wing Qanon cronies back in the first Trump administration in 2020.
Now is the time to be even more cautious about any health claims.
BUYER BEWARE.