Heavy Metal Poisoning, Sure; But What a Deal!

So, recently, I had yet another visit from a spambot to the blog. (Actually, they're not 'bots, but humans who have been hired to place advertisements on personal blogs. Kind of like phone solicitors, but you can eliminate them. Doing that to phone solicitors is apparently illegal. Go fig.)

In any case, said spambot lauded the blog (gee, thanks) and advertised a few web sites where you can buy various and sundry drugs.

Joy.

It was really quite nice timing, as a coroners report has recently noted that a woman who died on December 27th probably died of heavy metal poisoning. You see, she was a big fan of homeopathic medicines, and was very skeptical of white coats. So instead, she decided to buy her medicines from an on-line company, and ended up with several bags of unlabelled drugs; one contained acetaminophen, another a sedative; and, as filler, enough selenium, lead, strontium, barium, boron, and uranium to kill her, too.

Needless to say, ordering on-line may not have been her best idea ever.

The main reason for this is that anyone can make up a web site (or an email) with lively big graphics and inaccurate quotes, close it down after a couple days, then start up another one at a different address selling the same stuff with different promises.

But another reason for not ordering on-line is that your local pharmacist (in B.C. at least) has to register with the College of Pharmacists of B.C. This means that they have to know about everything they dispense. This doesn't just mean what the drugs do when they enter your blood stream, but what the exact composition of the drugs is and how much of exactly what is contained in each pill.

The problem for Marcia Bergeron was that the pharmacists are all a part of Big Pharma. Hence they were all evil and Western Science oriented, and shouldn't be trusted over homeopaths.

The down side of that, of course, is that the biggest bragging point for homeopaths is that they are not allopaths. That is all the advertising they need to bring in suck- uh, cust- er, patients: the more mystical and difficult to prove, the better.

This means she didn't know who to buy from, or how to find a reliable source for any pharmaceuticals. Or what, indeed, those pharmaceuticals were.

In this case, ignorance was bliss. Right up until her hair started falling out; her eyesight worsened; and when she felt groggy.

But then, the pills were all-natural, so it couldn't have been them, right?