Re: 11/8/04 - [MTXX] NY Post: Cold-eeze Squeeze
COLD-EEZE SQUEEZE
By CHRISTOPHER BYRON
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November 8, 2004 -- Remember when all of a sudden there wasn't enough flu vaccine to go around, and the subject somehow came up in one of the Presidential debates?
And remember when George Bush said, in so many words, "Look, it's simple, just don't get a flu shot this year..."?
Well, out here at Curmudgeonly Arms, where the baleful moan of the cold north wind sweeps over the moors from November to May sending the body count of its victims soaring, the Curmudgeonlies stood brave, tall and true, for we figured, No flu vaccine? No problem!
That is because we Curmudgeonlies have long known the secret to a winter free of the wheezing and sneezing that afflicts the rest of humankind when the cruel winds blow.
Our secret is, of course, Cold-eeze throat lozenges, which a person may purchase at any reputable pharmacy (or indeed 7-Eleven), for $5.00 at retail give or take — which is to say, for roughly half the price of a standup pepperoni-and-cheese pie at Ray's Famous Pizza.
So imagine our consternation upon learning, from a wanderer through the wintry gloom, that Cold-eeze — when spritzed into the nose as a nasal aerosol instead of taken orally as a lozenge — might not actually kill you but can apparently destroy your sense of smell.
What's that? Cold-eeze nasal spray, a health menace?
Yes, verily it is so — at least if one is to judge from a lawsuit that was filed last week in Bucks County, Penn.
As reported by our informant, his words broken by the staccato of his hacking and consumptive cough, eight different consumer plaintiffs in the suit say they used Cold-eeze nasal spray and now wouldn't be able to smell Osama bin Laden if he were standing right next to them.
Fortunately, the honest tradesmen at Quigley Corp., producers of Cold-eeze, had already begun heading for the nasal spray exit door when the lawsuit hit.
They had informed their distributors in mid-September that the company had decided to drop the nasal spray product line because consumer demand for it hadn't developed as expected.
THIS was followed in due course by last week's lawsuit, and quicker than you could say "Anybody got a Kleenex?" the company response had hit the PR newswires, asserting that even a "cursory look" at the suit had been enough to convince Quigley brass that the complaint was "frivolous and without merit," and that the company intends to defend itself "vigorously" because the only thing Cold-eeze destroys is germs.
Being of an odd and suspicious sort, it thus took no time at all before our shingle-wracked manservant, Igor, could be observed struggling up the twisting stairway to my writer's garret at the top of the north tower.
Presenting himself breathless at the doorway, and with his hunchback blocking further progress, he declared: "Here, sire, take a whiff of these...!" and placed upon the floor before me a folio of Quigley Corp. documents.
He had arranged them for ex-Clinton national security affairs advisor Sandy Berger to filch from the files of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Then cackling in his special way, he departed, maneuvering his hunchback down the darkened staircase and across the courtyard to his abode in the corn crib, his parting words still ringing hauntingly, and mysteriously, in my ears: "Beware the ides of evil, sire, when darkness exhalts the moor."
The documents that Igor left behind for my perusal do give one pause, for they show that lawsuits by customers claiming damages from the use of Cold-eeze nasal spray had been accumulating against Quigley since as early as February of this year, when a Connecticut woman named Paige D. Davidson claimed using Cold-eeze nasal spray destroyed her sense of smell and that she'd never gotten it back.
Then in September, a Minnesota couple — Sheryl and Howard Polski — claimed the same thing, asserting that they too used had some Cold-eeze nasal spray, in December 2003, and that their colds had gone away but so had their senses of smell and taste, never to return.
In fact, even as lawyers for the Polskis were preparing their complaint, Quigley's brass were informing the company's distributors that they were dropping the nasal spray form of Cold-eeze from Quigley's product list. A month later, on Oct. 13, the company filed a Form 8K report at the SEC, making the news public to everyone.
QUIGLEY'S strategy for waving away these claims with words like "frivolous" and "without merit" seems to rest heavily on the assertion that Cold-eeze nasal spray was exhaustively safety-tested in what last week's press release from the company described as a "double-blind, placebo-controlled study" prior to introducing it to the market in September 2003.
But Igor's documents showed that references to double- blind placebo-controlled studies have appeared nearly two dozen times in Quigley's SEC filings over the last seven years, and the references have nothing to do with the nasal spray form of the treatment.
Instead, the references all involve one or the other of two early 1990s studies that purported to test the efficacy of the key ingredient in Cold- eeze — so-called zinc gluconate — when consumed in lozenge form as a means of treating the common cold.
In fact, it would appear that Quigley would never have become involved in the marketing of a zinc-based nasal spray had it not been for the apparent success a rival company called Matrixx Initiatives Inc. had been having with its own zinc- based nasal spray, which it called Zicam, and had begun marketing in late 1999.
But by the time Quigley announced in February 2003 that it was going to be bringing its own version of a zinc-based nasal spray to market later that year, Matrixx Initiatives was already hip-deep in lawsuits from nearly 100 customers who claimed that they'd used Zicam and lost their sense of smell.
Those claimants now top 175 and are continuing to grow.
And it's not easy to take the company's claims for safety of the product at face value when the man who claims to have developed the product, one Robert S. Davidson, parts his name in the middle (as in R. Steven Davidson) and boasts a Ph.D. in "biopharmacuetical project management" from the so-called American University of Asturias, a Spanish-based diploma mill "university" that was shut down by the Spanish government after being caught issuing what purported to be advanced degrees in almost anything, to anyone whose checks didn't bounce.
Requests for an interview with Davidson were fielded at his California office by a cagey fellow who identified himself simply as "Dave," and promised to get the request to Davidson.
At press-time neither man had returned the call.
* Please send e-mail to: cbyron@nypost.com
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