March 7, 2008
Get In On The Airborne Settlement!
Delicious, effervescent cold remedy Airborne, it seems, exaggerated their sniffle-fighting prowess. Turns out they faked their clinical trials, and are now offering you, the customer, some cash back. According to a 2006 ABC report:
Airborne said that a double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted with “care and professionalism” by a company specializing in clinical trial management, GNG Pharmaceutical Services.GNG is actually a two-man operation started up just to do the Airborne study. There was no clinic, no scientists and no doctors. The man who ran things said he had lots of clinical trial experience. He added that he had a degree from Indiana University, but the school says he never graduated.
And after angry customers sued the company, they now have to pay up. Sigh.
Although almost every schoolteacher recommends this product to everyone they meet, "fake cold remedy" is a damaging term. Airborne is, in a word, done. If you want in on the settlement, or to find out more about the lawsuit, check out their settlement page.
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I will go double-blind on anyone who says Airbone doesn't work, because it totally does.
Fizz away, my little yellow friend, fizz away!
this is really sad. i think it works too. why didn't these fuckers just play by the rules and hire a real firm to do the study? how hard would that have been? now they have destroyed an entire company and lined the pockets with trial attorneys once again. way to go criminals!
Never worked for me, fwiw.
they didnt play by the rules and hire a real firm because IT WAS A SCAM.
and you are both idiots.
they didnt play by the rules and hire a real firm because IT WAS A SCAM. idiots.
I second that KatyG.
However, I have a friend that swears it works miracles.
Emergen-C, bitches.
From what I've read, a lot of times people's cold-like symptoms are actually due to dehydration, and Airborne and Emergen-C simply hydrate you more. Like everything else, this stuff might help relieve cold symptoms momentarily, but nothing will "cure" them.
My clinically proven method for deciding whether someone is a pussy or not is to wait for cold season, and if they get a cold and complain about it for weeks, then that person is definately a pussy. Colds are what whinney complainalots get. Drink whisky, get over it and shut the fuck up, because allergy season is right around the corner and I'm sure you've got a whole lot of whining to do about that too. Maybe if you actually ate some meat for once you wouldn't pick up every bug flying around and have to take time off from work when you really need to be at your desk doing your fucking job. Get the fuck over your pathetic "cold" and start pulling your fucking weight around here!. There, I'm done.
lots of people believe in magical sky fairies.
that doesnt mean they exist.
If I really have a cold or flu, nothing but the best for me - Vicodin!
Unfortunately my latest bout with flu wiped out my supply. Guess I'll have to have another knee operation to replenish my supply.
Try a saline nasal wash instead.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080121164118.htm
Are you really all insisting that vitamin C does not help boost immune response to the cold virus?
I mean, I know there has been debate on this over the centuries, but it's not exactly UFOs and Yetis. Some might call it traditional medicine . . . or, you know, common sense.
Airborne is supposed to prevent the onset of colds, not cure them - otherwise, it would be called "bedriddden", not "airborne".
@fizzandpop - your name suggests you enjoy things that are fizzy. Airborne is fizzy. I'm not saying you have to drink it or tolerate people who get colds and whine about it, but you might show a little loyalty to a delicious and mineral-filled beverage which comes in a handy sleeve.
lots of people believe in magical sky fairies.
that doesn't mean they don't exist.
jnice: that's exactly what i and others insist.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17636648
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16118650
"mega-doses" a la emergen-c were touted for quite a while by linus pauling back in the day. he won a nobel prize in physics once. physics. not biology. not medicine. physics.
the idea has been studied quite a bit in the last 60 years or so. no study of the subject has ever been conclusive, and no meta-reviews of previously published data support the idea that it can reliably reduce the incidence, severity, or duration of colds.
"common sense" my black ass. if it can't be verified to have a consistent effect over and above that of placebo, you may as well be taking sugar pills.
which, it seems, if you take emergen-c or airborne, is pretty much exactly what you're doing.
keep believing, and theyll keep selling it to you, but i dont have enough money to bother with that hippie bullshit, even if i wanted to.
i eat cloves of garlic when i feel a cold coming on.
that doesn't work either...
I always figured Airborne was just a rip off of Emergen-C (though compressed into a tablet).
I love Emergen-C and have taken it off and on for 20+ years. The tangerine flavor is the best.
Be careful with those chewable Vitamin C tablets. They will eat away your tooth enamel. Just ask a dentist.
emergen-c is for hangovers, not colds.
you people are doing it wrong.
emergen-c is for drunkenness, not hangovers.
desert margarita = 1 packet emergen-c + tequila to fill the packet. yum.
It worked for me as far as putting off a cold, but it never really got rid of one.
Anyone who has ever avoided getting a cold is a total moron for sure.
A placebo will work up to 40% of the time, but that doesn't mean you can make a health claim for one.
what it did for me was shorten a cold or stop it early. you had to take it as soon as you stared feeling shitty. that same night. if you waited till the next day, it was pretty much worthless.
i guess they faked it since they didn't believe it worked either.
there's a 6 box limit with no proof of purchase on the refund btw.
go get it fakers!
The problem is that Airborne is, as has been mentioned, basically little more than a mix of vitamins and various herbal compounds reputed to help with cold symptoms (Vitamin C mega-dosing and Echninacea, both elements of Airborne, have both failed to be proven effective in proper, independent, unaffiliated scientific trials). This is part of the reason behind the whole "created by a schoolteacher" nonsense because it's just a blend of various homeopathic junk that some teacher threw together and eventually started selling.
While not always effective there are a few zinc-based remedies available that do apparently reduce the length of colds. Rather than some magical method of action this one actually makes quite a lot of sense. The zinc compounds fill the binding sites on your cells where Rhinovirus would attempt to bind in order to infect that cell. Thus since you aren't binding as many those cells can't be infected and converted over to produce more virus. As a result this tends to shorten the duration of the infection by reducing your viral load. It doesn't always work because it only works with Rhinovirus-caused colds.
I haven't had a chance to test it myself, but the science seems to be there to actually back it up. I'd suggest doing more research into these sorts of things if you think you might be getting a cold. Do the same thing before purchasing any medicine to deal with symptoms as the majority contain the same three or four active ingredients in about the same quantities.
If in doubt rest and plenty of fluids helps to get you better faster. As does sneezing (it expels infected cells from the body) and keeping good hygiene.