Germ Hysteria

By James J. Gormley

If you ever were in a hospital awaiting surgery, have you had a nurse or doctor shake your hand while wearing rubber gloves?

I have. It’s one of the least comforting, while most impersonal and sterile, human exchanges that I have experienced.

Are germs today that much more rampant than when I worked on medical-surgical units in a New York City hospital between 1984 and 1988? In those days, latex gloves were only routinely worn when unconscious, geriatric or injured patients were being changed and when actual medical or surgical procedures were being performed.

America’s obsession with germs has certainly grown since then, however, as we have seen with how popular culture has been gripped by microbial madness.

In 1995, two major killer germ movies were released, Twelve Monkeys (a sci-fi thriller in which 99 percent of the Earth’s population has been wiped out by an unknown and deadly virus) and Outbreak, a modern-day fright flick about the Ebola virus.

Following the anthrax scare and the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001, at least two books came out the next year capitalizing on our fears: Killer Germs: Microbial Disease that Threaten Humanity and Secret Agent: The Menace of Emerging Infections.

If you add these dark visions to the real rise of antibiotic-resistant bugs, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria, surely there are reasons for concern: real and imagined.

Now while I would not want to dispute the critical importance of the development of the Germ Theory of Disease that was discovered and developed by such scientists as Semmelweiss, Pasteur, Lister and Koch, I am greatly concerned that modern society has apparently transformed our view of germs—those we have always lived with and newer varieties to which we have inadvertently given rise—into an “us vs. them” paradigm, a War on Germs version of the War on Terror (not to even mention those cases in which these wars overlap).

With today’s ubiquitous latex gloves and viral spread of potent hand sanitizers, our evolutionary relationship with germs has been, it seems, left behind … or sanitized away. So has common sense, apparently, along with it the simple virtue of the type of vigorous hand-washing (with good old soap and water) that was always encouraged by our parents and grandparents.

Mark Morford once wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that our nation’s desire to create a sterile world is fraught with larger health and social risks.

He quoted Slate’s Kent Sepkowitz as arguing that, “far from not cleaning, cooking and irradiating our food well enough and far from not ensuring we have the correct FDA precautions, we as an over-pampered culture are probably not getting enough nasty buggy, immune-system-boosting microbes in our diet, in our meats, in our mouths.”

Morford spoke of the true dangers behind an “alarmist, germophobic mindset that insists on sanitized, overcooked ultra-safe bleached-out everything then grows and mutates and extends well beyond the toilet and the kitchen and the backyard and the human gut, straight into human experience as a whole, resulting in one horribly bland, edge-free, prefab life.”

He has a point.

Perhaps a better approach would be to seek germ balance, or bacterial balance, acknowledging that all of life operates with, and within, a series of processes that are constantly in flux — whether we are talking about probiotics and pathogenic bacteria, proper immune response and excessive immune response (which we call allergy, asthma, etc.) or good germs on our skin and the germs that we would much prefer be transient visitors.

What is clear is that almost every global effort to sanitize ourselves and our world has created real and potential health consequences: whether antibiotic resistance and probiotics’ destruction through over-prescription of antibiotics, unwanted byproducts through food irradiation or toxins through the breakdown of certain hand-sanitizer ingredients.

As an arguably enlightened society, we have a unique opportunity to offer solutions which are informed by a more balanced view of health and ecological (including microbial) balance and not feed into the various hysterias that currently plague us.

One flu over the cuckoo’s nest? Phony Swine Flu products are dangerous

By James J. Gormley

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
---“The Crisis” by Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

As of May 17, 2009, 39 countries had officially reported 8,480 cases of “swine flu” (influenza A (H1N1) infection. Most confirmed cases were identified in Mexico (2,895 cases, 66 deaths) and the U.S. (4,714 cases, 4 deaths). The following states were hardest hit: Illinois (638 cases), Wisconsin (613), Texas (506), California (504), Arizona (435), Washington (246) and New York (242).

Although times of crisis, such as national health emergencies and global pandemics, bring out the best in most Americans, there have unfortunately always been some marketeers and hucksters who take advantage of the panic resulting from these tragic, and trying, times.

The current swine flu epidemic is no exception. On April 27th, 2009, within days of the first confirmed flu cases in the U.S., I received a press release announcing a nano-silver swine flu kit that was already being packed for shipment in “pre-paid overnight FEDEX boxes.”

I also received a “Swine Flu Alert” about a liquid silver supplement that allegedly “destroys MRSA, SARS, malaria, anthrax […] hepatitis C, HIV […] and bird flu.”

A day later, I stumbled upon an article posted on a Bulgarian news agency site with the following lead: “Bulgaria expects a huge increase in orders for two anti-flu dietary supplements in light of the current swine flu epidemic.” One of these products had already been the subject of a new dietary ingredient (NDI) rejection by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early 2000.

On April 28th, I alerted Gary Coody to these scams; Gary is the national health fraud coordinator in the FDA’s Office of Enforcement. I also reached out to officials from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Meanwhile, others in the natural products industry, including leading organizations, were quick to respond to these opportunistic peddlers. Industry responders included the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) and the Natural Products Association (NPA) --- which issued a joint press release, on May 1st, that included the following call-to-action:

“Marketers and retailers of dietary supplements are urged to refuse to stock or sell any supplements that are presented as treating or curing swine flu.”

According to Michael Chappell, FDA’s acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, “In conjunction with the [FTC], the FDA has developed an aggressive strategy to identify, investigate and take regulatory or criminal action against individuals or businesses that wrongfully promote purported 2009 H1N1 influenza products in an attempt to take advantage of the current flu public health emergency.”

“Scam artists follow the headlines, trying to make a fast buck with products that play off the news --- and prey on concerned people,” said Eileen Harrington, acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “We’re online and telling e-marketers their sites must comply with the law.”

The FTC has developed a new consumer alert, “Rx for Products That Claim to Prevent H1N1? A Healthy Dose of Skepticism” (http://ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt083.shtm). It warns the public to be skeptical of claims that products like pills, air filtration devices and cleaning agents can supposedly kill or eliminate the virus.

This is, of course, not the first time that Internet peddlers have tried to take advantage of consumers during scares and epidemics.

By March 2002, the FTC had sent warning letters to 121 web sites selling products to “protect against, detect or treat illnesses caused by biological or chemical agents, including anthrax.” The products, most of them bogus or ineffective, included herbal remedies, air filters, gas masks and “do-it-yourself kits to test mail for anthrax.”

In 2005, the FDA issued warning letters to nine companies marketing phony avian flu products. The use of these fake products “increases the risk of catching and spreading the flu rather than lessening it because people assume they are protected and safe and they aren’t,” said the acting FDA commissioner on December 13th, 2005.

Gormley Take-Away: We should steer clear of any dietary supplements which claim to prevent, treat or cure swine flu --- and, for that matter, any virus or outbreak of any kind. Legitimate supplements, including herbals, are great for promoting health and helping us cope with the common, everyday nasties that come our way. But let’s leave the gas masks in the fallout shelters, okay?