Posted on 10/20/2005 6:53:23 PM PDT by blam
Website quacks try to cash in on bird flu
By David Sapsted
(Filed: 21/10/2005)
An array of odd and invariably useless products are being marketed by people exploiting fears over bird flu.
Aside from an assortment of masks, air filtration systems, rubber gloves and sterilising hand washes, websites are offering everything from herbal teas to a DIY house for bats as answers to the predicted pandemic.
The idea behind the bat house, advertised on an internet auction site, is that it will "attract mosquito-eating bats to eat the parasites that may be carrying the disease".
Or may not be: avian flu is not malaria, dengue fever or the West Nile virus and mosquitoes have yet to be linked to it. And both bats and mosquitoes hibernate for at least half the year in Britain.
If bats do not do it for you, a diet and acne pill called Alpha Vexin is the "health product big brother does not want you to know about".
It will not only cure your acne and avian flu, apparently, but most other ailments known to mankind.
Then there are anti-bird flu 'teabags' from Peru and Dead Sea salts being advertised.
Teas containing star anise - the Chinese spice that provides the essential ingredient of the drug Tamiflu - are gaining in popularity.
This is despite US Food and Drug Administration warnings that some drinkers suffer serious neurological effects, including seizures, vomiting, jitteriness and rapid eye movement.
Should all the quacks be tar and feathered?
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