Orac is the nom de blog of a (not so) humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will. (Continued 
On Friday, I noted an e-mail circulating around the Internet in which disgraced University of Kentucky chemist and card-carrying general in the mercury militia, Boyd Haley, announced that he was suspending sales of his industrial chelator turned "antioxidant dietary supplement" OSR#1. Now, true to form, Trine Tsouderos at the Chicago Tribune has noticed and published a story on Haley's decision, Controversial supplement to come off shelves:
Pharmacies are halting sales of OSR#1, a compound marketed as a dietary supplement to parents of children with autism, six weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration called the product an unapproved new drug.Several pharmacists told the Tribune they received an e-mail last week from Boyd Haley, president of the company that makes the product, informing them that OSR#1 would not be available after Thursday.
One online pharmacy, Forrest Health, posted this message: "CTI Science has voluntarily agreed to remove OSR#1® from the market effective Thursday, 29 July 2010."
What's truly depressing is that pharmacists would sell this stuff or that they'd be disappointed that it's going off the market. Truly, money matters more than health to some of them.
In the meantime, the silence over at the chief cheerleader website for OSR#1, Age of Autism, remains deafening. It's been over four days since the e-mail from Haley started circulating and bloggers noticed and started writing about it. Yet thus far...nothing. Maybe Kim Stagliano and company are hoping the story will go away if they ignore it long enough. Or maybe there'll finally be a post there in the morning.
I'm not holding my breath, though.
Medicine & Health
Comments
Contrast this silence with previous coverage:
======== ======Posted by: lizditz
| July 27, 2010 12:37 AM
FDA may not be fast but they seem to have been effective here. Hope they'll keep their eye on the Halester.
Posted by: isles | July 27, 2010 12:58 AM
Oh yes, pharmacists are in it for the money. I know one who told me that he knows homeopathy does nothing, but he sells it anyway because it pays for his ski vacation.
Posted by: Mario | July 27, 2010 3:00 AM
@Mario,
At least homeopathic crap just makes the marks poorer, not (of itself) less healthy. OSR1 can hurt.
Of course taking the magic sugar pills may be in lieu of real medicine so none of the greed is doing patients any good but the pharmacist selling homeopathy is responding to demand, not drumming it up typically.
Posted by: MikeMa | July 27, 2010 6:33 AM
Perhaps Ms. Tsouderos' article will prompt them to finally
spinaddress it.Posted by: Todd W. | July 27, 2010 6:51 AM
What I don't understand is that parents using this new drug apparently bought Haley's non-sensical, non-chemical explanation of why OSR#1 really is a natural supplement. So, how do they rationalize him offering to withdraw it from sale? If he's right, he's right, and he should be able to convince the FDA.
Posted by: Broken Link | July 27, 2010 7:35 AM
No doubt Mr H can go find some profitable Quantum Reflex Tomato juice or something to sell.
Posted by: DLC
| July 27, 2010 7:52 AM
@Broken Link
Many of those individuals already view FDA as just a tool of Big PharmaTM, so they see this as FDA pressuring a brave maverickTM to pull his, in their opinion, very useful product, all in some bizarre attempt to line the pockets of Big PharmaTM. Their a priori assumption is probably going to be something along the lines of this: "Even if our saviour, Haley, is able to show that OSR#1 is safe and effective, just like all of us were saying all along, the FDA will still work to quash it because it threatens the medical industrial complex."
That's my speculation, anyway. Keep in mind that many of these people are parents who are frustrated with their lot, frustrated with the failures of science-based medicine to address their needs and who are looking for anything that will help them improve their situation...or at least make them feel like they are in control of the hand nature dealt them.
Posted by: Todd W. | July 27, 2010 8:08 AM
I wouldn't have time for writing about it either if I was driving cross-country, hoarding every dose I could get my hands on in order to save a child I feel "lost" to autism... Of course, this is speculation on my part, and I don't mean to say that any of AoA bloggers are doing this. However, and this is the sad part, I feel the need to clarify that I am speculating, as a couple of my replies here have been echoed, out of context, over there.
Posted by: Rene Najera | July 27, 2010 8:22 AM
No AoA articles thus far -- and unlikely to ever appear as "Controversial supplement to come off shelves" doesn't make for much of an infomercial.
Posted by: Margaret Toigo | July 27, 2010 8:23 AM
Nope no articles yet. But they did have a tribute to National Autism Association co-founder JoAnne Pike, who died of cancer, followed by a post about Fran Drescher, actress/oncologist/author/womman's health advocate/webfounder (of Cancer Schmancer)and her taking an anti-vaccine line(big surprise) It seems almost deliberately ironic except I don't think AofA does irony...deliberately.
Posted by: Tezcatlipoca | July 27, 2010 1:17 PM
Rene, cherry-picking and quote-mining are staples of AoA discourse, as I'm sure you are all too aware. Does it really surprise you that your own comments are subject to their particular treatment?
Posted by: Composer99 | July 27, 2010 2:07 PM
No, it doesn't surprise me. Nothing from them surprises me anymore... I just hope to not be surprised by their endgame.
Posted by: Rene Najera | July 27, 2010 3:36 PM
What's Staggs going to sprinkle on her kids' cereal? This is heartless.
Posted by: Otto | July 27, 2010 9:06 PM
Wake up folks, the FDA is taking your viamtins one at a time. First, DSMa, THEN OSR1, NEXT P5P.
This is a smear campaign for anybody who is truely in the know.
It all about profit and deception.
Posted by: jumping | August 19, 2010 8:07 AM
Wow, clueless. Vitamins are required nutrients; how can OSR#1 be required by the human body when it didn't even exist until a few decades ago? And did you completely miss the part where no one including Boyd Haley has tested his industrial mining chemical to even see if it's safe for the human body?
Posted by: Antaeus Feldspar | August 19, 2010 8:30 AM