A Stitch in Haste

"I like a cold because I get to do my favorite drug, which is NyQuil. I love that stuff! What do the rest of you use? Robitussin? Why do you bother? Non-narcotic sissy-pansy bullshit!"
--Lewis Black

Doctors now say over-the-counter cough syrups simply don't work:

Despite the billions of dollars spent every year in this country on over-the-counter cough syrups, most such medicines do little if anything to relieve coughs, the nation's chest physicians say.

Over-the-counter cough syrups generally contain drugs in too low a dose to be effective, or contain combinations of drugs that have never been proven to treat coughs, said Dr. Richard Irwin, chairman of a cough guidelines committee for the American College of Chest Physicians.
...
Some over-the-counter cough syrups contain two drugs that have been shown to help relieve coughs caused by colds -- codeine and dextromethorphan -- but generally the doses are too small to be effective, Irwin said. Dextromethorphan is in Robitussin, a top-selling over-the-counter cough syrup.

Always bet on Black...

The empire strikes back:

[Dextromethorphan] is among Robitussin ingredients that the Food and Drug Administration has found to be safe and effective, said Francis Sullivan, a spokesman for Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, which makes Robitussin. Sullivan said Robitussin "wouldn't be a top brand if people didn't feel it was efficacious."

Perhaps, but people also spend lots of money on weight-loss pills. And nutraceuticals. And psychics. "Feeling" that something is "efficacious" doesn't make it so. Just because I believe in capitalism doesn't mean I'm impressed with the decision-making intelligence of the median consumer, and especially not the decision-making intelligence of the median consumer afflicted with a chest cold.

In any case, anyone care to guess how long it will be before some ambitious plaintiffs attorney (or consumer advocacy group) tries to put together a class action against Wyeth and the other cough syrup makers for false advertising or fraudulent labeling, or at least tries to force a shakedown in which the companies cough up contribute to some children's health fund or UNICEF or something? That's the easy scenario. The real question is whether any grandstanding hack politicians or bureaucrats will push to ban cough syrup. Stranger things have happened.

More thoughts at Hokum-Balderdash Assay. Meanwhile, here's another fan of NyQuil.