Next time, just shave your head...at least you'll live through it...

I have said for years that the Food and Drug Administration is, for the most part, worthless, a wind-sock in a land devoid of breeze. For every report of tainted Chinese crap hitting the mainstream media last year, I swear I could count three or four commercials touting some cockamamie (no pun intended) erectile dysfunction treatment or psuedo-trendy diet pill, carrying that world-famous disclaimer. You know the one, about how none of the statements in the ads have been "verified" by the Food and Drug Administration." Never have recieved an answer as to what it is the FDA is doing where they don't have any timne left to raid the late-night medicine cabinet.

To be fair, when the FDA more or less, sort of kind of gets one right, they deserve a little notice, more or less. Sort of kind of. In a letter the FDA issued in December, concerns were stated over the information Morton Grove Pharmaceuticals was using in web and print advertising of its head lice treatments containing lindane, an agricultural insecticide banned for use as such by the EPA in 2006. Morton Grove is the only manufacturer of lindane in the United States. I'm far beyond the point in my digestion of 21st century life where I question how a banned insecticide is useful as a scalp treatment, but there for the grace of blind consumerism, go I.

Despite the fact that hospitalization, seizures, and even death have been reported from the use of Lindane Shampoo and Lindane Lotion, nearly ten percent of the prescriptions for head lice treatments written in 2007 were for lindane-based treatment, over 166,000. To clarify, the hospitalization, seizures, and death are listed on the warning label, by the FDA's own requirements. Ask your family doctor, just out of sheer morbid curiousity, what he or she would prescribe, and see what they answer. Be cure you have a Yellow Pages handy, just in case.

While Morton Grove Pharmaceuticals has suspended promotion of their Lindane products, at the request of the FDA, to allow the company time to develop new marketing materials, I find it a half-bubble past the center of sanity the products are even still allowed on the market. One of the statements the FDA, miraculously, took issue with was one by Morton Grove that the effective treatment requires two treatments. When the FDA calls something "extremely alarming," you know they have actually been paying attention, or at least we should hope...

Morton Grove president/CEO Kurt Orlofski ventured beyond what I normally consider yes-holing, stating "the FDA has had a number of occasions to review the safety and efficacy of product and keep it or pull it: they have kept it on the market, it's an important second-line therapy." As I have mentioned in the past, the fact I have "Dr." infront of my name is irrelevant. I bought that honorary degree online for $40, fair and square, but I'm still willing to argue the importance of lindane as a treatment, and regardless of how many FDA yes-holes bleat in the background over how benefits outweigh risks, yeah, yes, hell yes I am willing to argue against rubbing a banned agricultural insecticide on some kid's scalp, anybody's scalp once, let alone a second time.

When a government agency's standard operating procedure seems to land somehwere in the grey area between "what you don't know won't hurt you," and "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," then it seems even more so that arguments like mine are made for me.