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from the no-choking-hazzard-here,-either dept.
Ars Technica is reporting on a story where the CDC report that a Homeopathic “healing bracelet” caused lead poisoning in a infant girl
[...] during a routine health screening. Healthcare workers found that the baby was anemic and had a blood lead level of 41 micrograms per deciliter (μg/dL). While no level of lead is known to be safe, the CDC recommends health interventions when a child’s blood lead level reaches 5 μg/dL.
[...] The authorities subsequently homed in on the bracelet, a homemade “homeopathic magnetic hematite healing bracelet.” The baby’s parents said they bought it from an artisan at a local fair and gave it to the baby to wear and mouth to ease teething pain. Small spacer beads on the bracelet (shown) tested positive for lead at a level of 17,000 parts-per-million. The Consumer Product Commission in 2010 set the allowable limit of lead in products intended for children at 100 parts-per-million.
The authors of the report—Drs. Patricia Garcia and Jennifer Haile, lead treatment specialists at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center—noted that the bracelet had no warnings or branding. They added that they couldn’t get the fair’s vendor information and were unable to track down the bracelet’s maker.
Also at Live Science
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday September 04 2017, @05:52AM (3 children)
Good god, what links. Ya gotta love this:
"These are more than just bracelets, they are bracelets with meaning and will transform your life by manifesting miracles." Selling snake oil [wikipedia.org] is a long and venerable tradition.
In this specific case, likely the jeweler had read some book about crystals, soldered a bunch of them together, and voila - a healing bracelet. Idiot used cheap materials, though, including lead solder, because (goes along with the crystal thing) they don't actually have a clue what they're doing. I can imagine the surprise: "What, solder contains lead?!"
According to TFA, they haven't been able to find the idiot jeweler. I sure hope they do, if only to prevent her selling any more lead-laced teething bracelets.
That said, this isn't homeopathy. For homeopathy, I have mixed feelings. Sure, it's bullshit, but the placebo effect is very real. So homeopathy does work, in a sense. On the other hand, practicioners apply their "science" in cases where scientific medicine is really what's needed. [hpathy.com] No, homeopathy can't fix physical injuries, and at this point the practicioners should be prosecuted as the frauds they are.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @09:13AM (1 child)
Obviously, bradley11, you just need to put a drop of your feelings into about five gallons of distilled feelings, and you would feel much stronger about homopathy! That is, after all, how it works. You start with stupid, dilute the stupid to make you more stupid, and, Profit? Are you a complete moron, or just not yet? Mixed feelings? How do you feel about burning witches? Or Donald Trump?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @09:15AM
All you had to do was read one more sentence...
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday September 04 2017, @02:28PM
Did you rtfa? That bracelet doesn't look like if involved any soldering. The lead was in innocuous looking spacer beads probably purchased from a craft store.
As for homeopathy...well, my favorite "homeopathic" product is Zicam. Its active ingredient is Zinc, which preliminary research suggests really shortens or avoids cold infections. It is labeled as 1x or 2x, meaning diluted that many times. As a homeopathic product it shouldn't work at all; zinc doesn't cause ailments and it is not nearly diluted enough. But as a modern medical product it is a great way to get it on shelves without doing all the expensive follow up research that would be required.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?