Eye drops for cataract?

[Rolfe]

Today I noticed a photocopy of a page of a newspaper (Daily Mail?) pinned up on the noticeboard of our local shop. It was all about some revolutionary eye dops which could cure cataracts without surgery. L-carnosine???

The claim was that a few months of these drops and cataracts would disappear completely. Some people were even said to have halved the time taken for cure quite safely, by doubling the dose. There was a web site address given, but I didn't have a pen.

My woo-woo detector is going off full blast, but on the other hand disappearance of a cataract is a pretty definite end-poiint unlikely to be achievable by placebo.

Anybody know anything about this?

Rolfe.

 

[richardm]

I've had a flick around the internet for this, and from what I can gather from this discussion, l-carnosine is apparently another "Secret of the Russians" now revealed to us after the cold war - like the hangover cure stuff.

It rather makes me think that all these Sooper Sekrit medicines are scams, and the Cold War stuff is just lies. There is a good chunk of the population who believes that their governments are permanently concealing evidence for UFOs and suchlike, and that corporations are engaged in mass conspiracies to poison them with allopathic chemicals, so it is attractive to them to think that another govenment has been hiding brilliant, safe, world-changing drugs from them. That's IMHO of course

 

[Rolfe]

I thought this one was odd because you can hardly imagine the disappearance of a cataract, and it's not the sort of thing that happens spontaneously either. A lot less obviously scammable than hangover cures. I suppose it could be outright lying, just in the hope of selling enough before word gets around.

If it was for real, and cost less than about £100 a drop, the NHS would be all over it. The waiting lists for cataract surgery, and the costs, are one of the major clog-up things in the entire system. And I know the consultant who did my mother's cataracts goes to India for a month every year or two to do nothing but cataracts for a charity. He'd fall on something like this like a starving Russian peasant on caviare.

Who was it who said, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is?

Rolfe.

 

[richardm]

Yeah, if it worked the NHS would be squirting it into people's eyes right now, or at least clamouring for it to be properly evaluated so that they could use it. I don't hear any clamour, so can only assume that the people who know about these things took one look and then reacted like you - "No way that can work"!

These scammers aren't afraid to simply lie about their product. If challenged, they can simply say that your cataracts were too far gone and you should have started using it earlier. If you take it as a prophylactic and still get cataracts, then no doubt your body has built up a resistance - you were using it too soon!

And it's not even a case of selling it until word gets around - there are always new people desperate enough to try anything, and they will discount any stories of "It didn't work for me" in their desperation.

I'd be happy to be wrong, but I fear the worst.

 

[Rolfe]

And it's not even a case of selling it until word gets around - there are always new people desperate enough to try anything, and they will discount any stories of "It didn't work for me" in their desperation.

They'll get to the top of the waiting list eventually, but it's not nice to think about elderly people going blind and just being told to get in the queue. It's these people being targeted, and I suppose the hope is that about the time they realise it isn't working their names will come up on the list.

Nasty, cynical scam I'm afraid.

Rolfe.