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Tuesday, October 22,2002
Oregon Daily Emerald
Commentary
Editor in Chief:
Michael J. Kleckner
Managing Editor:
Jessica Richelderfer
Editorial Editors:
Salena De La Cruz, Pat Payne
Editorial
FDA must be
popping pills:
Yellow Jacket
ban nonsensical
Sometimes, you can’t win. Xoch Linnebank, a pro
moter of herbal supplements based in the Nether
lands, was sent a “cease and desist” e-mail Oet. 4 by
the Food and Drug Administration, requesting that he
halt selling the popular “Yellow Jacket” or “Herbal
XTC” herbal pep pills.
These pills use a variety of herbs, including the
stimulant ephedra, or ma huang, and caffeine. The
FDA ordered the halt due to Linnebank’s assertion
that the herbs were alternatives to illegal street drugs.
From now on, the letter states, any shipments of
Yellow Jacket pills can be stopped, seized and de
stroyed at the border by U.S. Customs agents.
The logic worries us. The crackdown has been
initiated for the way that the supplements are being
marketed, not for their contents.
Ephedra, although there have been concerns about
its effect on the heart, is legal to purchase or consume
in the United States. Yellow Jackets are even sold at
convenience stores.
Instead, the concern is that the supplement is mar
keted as an alternative to street drugs. It is mystifying
that the FDA would be opposed to people being
steered away from cocaine or marijuana or ecstasy,
and onto pills that are legal.
Do they want club kids to prefer the real MDMA, an
illegal “designer drug,” to a collection of herbs and
caffeinated kola nut — which is similar to what’s in
cluded in a can of Coca-Cola?
Further, what of retailers who sell other ephedra
based products that are not marketed “as alternatives
to drugs”? Are these supplements OK simply because
four magic words are not used in the marketing pitch?
This restriction on an otherwise legal product is il
logical and unwise. We see daily that demonization of
drugs doesn’t work to stop people from using them.
If the FDA has proof that ephedra is dangerous,
then they should be telling Americans and stopping
sales of all ephedra-based supplements. But this is a
ridiculous battle to pick just over words.
Editorial policy
This editorial represents the opinion of the
Emerald editorial board. Responses can be
sent to letters <8>dailyemerald.com. Letters
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The Emerald reserves the right to edit for
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Editorial board members
Michael J. Kleckner
Editor in chief
Salena De La Cruz
Editorial editor
Jessica Richelderfer
Managing editor
Pat Payne
Editorial editor
Jenna Cunningham
Student representative
The paralyzing truth
about beauty
In a culture obsessed with retaining
beauty indefinitely, a new craze has swept
the country. As seen on television com
mercials or in adver
tisements run in
such publications as
People and InStyle
magazines, Botox is
touted as the new
miracle wrinkle
eraser. The adver
tisements, targeting
28- to 65-year-old
females, sell the idea
of wrinkles disap
pearing before your
very eyes.
Recently, the Food and Drug Admin
istration has required Allergen, the
company that manufactures Botox, to
pull their ads. The FDA says that the
advertisements are misleading because
they fail to mention the fact that the
treatments are temporary.
People using Botox are going to great i
lengths to improve the way they look. Is 1
potentially harming your body worth I
the temporary benefit of something as I
drastic as injecting poisons into your ■
face? Botox is said to be the beauty
treatment of the future. What happens if
the approximately 1.6 million people who
were injected with Botox last year find out
that it was detrimental to their health?
The FDA approved Botox in April for
the temporary relief of wrinkles. Produced
from the same toxins that cause the food
poisoning known as botulism, Botox
works by freezing the muscles in which
the drug is injected. The theory behind
Botox is a muscle that cannot move, can
not wrinkle. So, rather than actually get
ting rid of the wrinkle, the treatment ren
ders the facial muscles immobile.
According to the American Society for
Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Botox injec
tions are the fastest-growing cosmetic
procedure in the industry. More than 1.6
million people received injections in
2001. This number is 46 percent higher
than the previous year.
A new, more controversial, way to ad
minister the Botox treatments is in the
form of “Botox parties.” These parties
entail a group of people in a home, appe
tizers, maybe some wine, and most im
portantly, a doctor willing to perform the
surgical procedure in a non-sterile envi
ronment. Social surgery? Seems quite in
appropriate and dangerous to me.
It seems as though history has estab
lished that “miracle drugs” are not really
Kate
Petersen
In other words
as miraculous as they
seem. Once thought of as
a miracle weight loss
drug, ephedra (ma
huang), the active
ingredient in many
weight loss
products,
may be
unsafe.
The FDA
reported
that prod
ucts con
t a i n i n g
ephedra have
caused several ill
nesses including heart at
tacks, seizures, strokes
and even death.
Botox treatments,
DonI't X LOOK.
_Sq yoarvl^?
among other cosmetic surgical proce
dures, show that American society is se
verely, and maybe even dangerously, nar
cissistic. Aging is a natural process, and
every human being will eventually get old
er. Along with the aging process comes
certain elements, one of them being wrin
kles. Deal with it.
The treatments range anywhere from
$300 to 1,000 per session. Instead of
paying such an exorbitant amount of
mone for a temporary solution to a
lifelong problem, why not pay the
money for some worthwhile coun
seling sessions? Self-esteem is price
less, and when a person has
enough, I would bet
that the need for
Botox diminishes.
Rather than get a
poison injected into your
body, I propose that college-age
people, as the next generation to deal
with wrinkles, age gracefully without the
aid of cosmetic treatments. Instead of
having a frozen face, have one laden with
wrinkles and feel fine with that.
If the norm does become Botox injec
tions, and American civilization walks
the streets with paralyzed faces, then I
will be far more wrinkled than the rest.
Refuse to go to great lengths to retain
your youth, especially if those lengths
could potentially jeopardize your health
in the end.
Contact the columnist
atkathrynpetersen@dailyemerald.com.
Her opinions do not necessarily represent
those of the Emerald.
Letters to the editor
Incomplete war debate
Conspicuously absent from both the
agenda for Tuesday night’s teach-in titled
“Is War Necessary?” and from the subse
quent Emerald coverage thereof is a dis
cussion of the effects of a weapon of mass
destruction on a large population center,
and of the further consequences for the
local, national and global economies of
the use of such a weapon.
A discussion of whether war with
Iraq is necessary seems highly incom
plete without thorough consideration of
this crucial aspect, for it is the fear of
Saddam Hussein developing a nuclear
weapon, and the prospect of his using
his existing chemical and biological
weapons that is the core of the case for
going to war.
To ask the question, “Is war with Iraq
necessary?”, then ignore this issue and
finally conclude war isn’t necessary
seems like backwards reasoning: Start
with the conclusion you want, and then
select the facts you’ll look at.
Brian Stubbs
graduate teaching fellow
physics
Economic injustice
prompted a ‘panic’
The United States faces a moral cri
sis created by the gap in living stan
dards between the industrialized North
and the global South. I think that at
some level of their consciousness, peo
ple in the North are aware that their rel
ative economic privilege is completely
unjust. They face a moral crisis similar
to that of the southern United States at
the time of the Civil War.
Slave owners in the southern states
lived in fear that their slaves might rise
up and slaughter them. They could not
consider abolishing slavery, because
their privilege outweighed their fear.
Some sort of disturbance might cause
whites in part or all of the southern states
to fly into what Kenneth M. Stampp, in
his book, “The Peculiar Institution,” calls
an “insurrection panic.”
I think that what we saw in the Unit
ed States after Sept. 11, 2001, was an
insurrection panic. People in the Unit
ed States saw the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon as the
Global South, racialized as people of
color, rising up against them. Personal
ly, I did not see the Sept. 11 attacks as a
threat to myself — I guess I'm one of
the slaves.
Milton Takei
Class of '92