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Comment by whoopdedo | Hacker News Reader

The customer is always right, or so they say. But it's the manufacturer who decides to package it in the same shape and color as popular FDA-approved medicines. And it's the retailer who decides to intermingle the different types of product on the same shelf. Practices which are sure to result in someone who intends to buy a familiar medicine to instead pick up the imitation and not realize they're getting something completely different.

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It's also governments who choose to allow this to be legally done. Nobody allows homeopathic gas stations that look like the real ones.

They don't look like "real" medications though because they are clearly labeled with "This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

We allow gas stations to have diesel pumps right next to gasoline ones. We just require that they be labeled appropriately and its expected that people read the label and not make assumptions based off proximity.

Yes, but is there also a pump with Purple Koolaid - that can't be used to fuel any known vehicle - right next to both of those pumps?

If they thought they could sell it, I'm sure there would be.

The packaging looks super similar to real medicine to me (see: oscillococcinum). The gas pump analogy would be a pump selling <85 octane or even water instead of gas right beside the 87+ octane people want.

There is a one way incompatibility for them. You can't put a diesel nozzle in a gas port.

https://vehq.com/are-diesel-nozzles-bigger-than-gas/

The gas station example is a bad one. Diesel nozzles are larger in diameter than gas nozzles to prevent people from putting diesel into a gas vehicle.

Attempt to prevent. As I recall, leaded had nozzles that were also larger than no lead but that didn’t stop people from using it and slaughtering their converters. People are ingenious in both good and bad ways - funnels and screwdrivers.

OTC medical matter isn’t regulated anywhere as tightly as active drugs. They’re supplements or food additives or other such things. Whole lot of that shelf space goes to stuff that’s not as useful or desirable as people think. And any ambiguity is naturally exploited to the max.

We know that homeopathic medicines are complete fraud (ie no better than placebo). This has been shown over and over again in thousands of studies. What you are saying is that your car stopping because of bad gas is worse than your asthma not being treated.

Of course not! Diluting homeopathic gas with water would make it so potent that it could rival nuclear arms.

Gasoline is immediately verifiable as being effective or not. The problem with homeopathic medicine is that people can't tell whether it works or not. Placebo is a hell of a drug.

Nearly every market where the quality or efficacy of the product isn't readily verifiable by the purchaser is a hotbed for scams and snake oil.

If people are buying a placebo drug, and the placebo effect is making them feel better… mission accomplished?

In this case you might as well put sugar in the tablets and charge a lot less

Fooling someone into believing that you've done something you haven't is fraud even if you're successful in your trickery.

> Customer is always right … unless he wants contacts or prescription glasses

That depends on the country.

Also, even in America I think you can order contacts and glasses online without a prescription; you just have to know your numbers.

Can you really? Last I tried, online sellers wanted a prescription scan before processing my order

I really don't know actually; I never tried when I was in America because it was cheaper to buy contacts through my optometrist using my vision insurance. So you're probably right. I was told that you could buy prescription glasses offshore without a real prescription (you just had to input the numbers), but that wasn't an American site obviously.

Here in Japan, you do not need a prescription to buy contacts; you can just write down your numbers on a form and buy them over-the-counter.

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