I'm a bit confused by this last PR on the allergy relief. If you read the PR (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000331/az_gum_tec_1.html), you'll notice that the only alleged "clinicals" are for the common cold. In fact, the majority of the PR refers to the common cold and not allergies. In the PR there isn't even a mention of scientific data backing up the allergy relief claim.
Now, I'm no scientist, but I fail to see why zinc (assuming that is what is even in the "new" Zicam for allergies) would have any effect on allergies. At least zinc for colds has some theoretical basis in blocking the virus from replicating. In my "home trials" of Zicam, many of non-efficacious usage was due to the symptoms being for allergies and not colds. While some of my family may have experienced some effect for colds (although that is entirely debatable), there was a noticable lack of any effect whatsoever for allergies. Myself, my two daughters, and my mother-in-law, all suffer from seasonal pollen allergies for many years, so we know if a treatment is working.
Well, I don't have high hopes for 2000 sales based on 1999 performance. I don't know a single person out of about the 20 people I suggested Zicam to, that would use it for next cold season. I honestly believe any effects of the treatment are purely illusory.
On another note...I just happened to be talking to a local newspaper reporter on an entirely different issue, and I was curious what she thought about Zicam after running a nice story on it earlier in the year. She said.."oh yeah, the cold-cure story. It was just this year's fad. Next year someone will have some other thing to squirt up your nose and we'll run a story on that." So I asked her if she had tried it, or if she had gotten positive reader response. She said she got a bottle, her family used it, they didn't really see much benefit. As for readers, they got a lot of letters asking where they could buy it, but not a single letter praising it's virtues. She found this interesting since they had gotten many such letters praising coldeze a few years back. So then she said..."Well, if this really was some kind of miracle cure, we would of seen more stories on it. Everyone would know about it by now."
FWIW...
SM |
