an instructive case study, page-8

Cam,

Are you suggesting BKL runs a durable business model? and do you look at a business solely on the numbers presented?

IMHO BKL runs a fraudulent business that will eventually fail.

Just as a point of analysis:

The number 1 top seller right now according to Blackmore's websie is Echinacea plus Garlix.

What is it:
"is a combination of echinacea and garlic" - Echinacea is a variety of daisy (flower), and yes, if you are spending $22 per bottle for this product from Blackmore's you are an idiot... you will get the same effect by grabbing a little garlic and popping over to your neighbour's garden and nipping a flower (Blackmore's uses the purple daisy). You can do the math, each Blackmore's tablet contains 600mg of garlic and 1g of purple daisy.

Claims on this product by Blackmores (directly from the website):
"Helping you to relieve symptoms of colds and flu"
"May shorten the duration and decrease the severity of cold symptoms"

The Science (Ann Fam Med. 2011 Jul-Aug;9(4):312-22.):
"We wanted to determine whether the severity and duration of illness caused by the common cold..."
"719 randomized study participants". But only 715 were incorporated into the analysis.
"Mean illness duration for each group was 7.03 days for those in the no-pill group, 6.87 days for those blinded to placebo, 6.34 days for those blinded to echinacea, and 6.76 days for those in the open-label echinacea group."
"Mean global severity scores for the 4 groups were no pills, 286; blinded to placebo, 264; blinded to echinacea, 236; and open-label echinacea, 258."

CONCLUSION:
"Between-group differences were not statistically significant."

FUNDING SOURCE: "The National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) at the National Institutes of Health was primary sponsor of this research project (1-R01-AT-1428). During development of the proposal, NCCAM supported Dr Barrett with a patient-oriented career development grant (K23 AT00051). During conduct of this trial, Dr Barrett was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholars Program. When funds ran low before the trial had finished, leadership at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health provided resources to complete the project."

I was able to find another large recent trial, I'll provide the source: Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2012;2012:841315.

"Echinacea reduced the total number of cold episodes, cumulated episode days within the group, and pain-killer medicated episodes."

I'll list my protestations with this trial/article. And they are quite serious and none of these points are applicable to the abovementioned trial/article (which couldn't find an effect).

- 755 subjects were recruited to the trial. But only 717 participants were analysed, From the dropouts, 24 were from the treatment group and 14 were from the control group. A further 30 participants discontinued from the treatment group after the trial was underway, but only 14 additional participants dropped out from the control group. In effect, there is only countable data for 673 individuals. The difference in the dropout levels between the two groups is significant. This is a big issue and subsequent analysis should've factored this difference (As any Pharmaxis shareholder would tell you :)). In other words, accounting for this difference would've rendered the results insignificant.

- The incidence of colds in the treatment group was 0.46 with a duration of 4.52 days. The placebo incidence was 0.54 with a duration of 4.52 days. The duration of cold was unaffected by the treatment protocol... nowhere was this mentioned in the results. The results state the use of aspirin/paracetemol was 52% higher in placebo, but adjusting this for the fact that there were simply more participants in the placebo group, the real figure is 20% higher.

- No Confidence Intervals or standard errors are provided, hence we cannot estimate the error implicit in the results. Chi-Squared tests are not appropriate for these data sets (theoretically, the df would equal 0 and hence a p value cannot be estimated)... This is the first time I've come across the publication of trial results where no CI's/sem's are given and the use of Chi-squared tests for trial data. These are unacceptable, how the publication slipped through the peer-review process is unimaginable :/

- The above point is probably due to the trial results being published in the journal "Evidence based Complementary and Alternative Medicine". Who seem to be agenda driven, and I'd hint that they'd publish anything remotely positive about complementary/alternative health supplements.

- The trial publication does not indicate a funding source. Even if this is done through donations from private companies, this disclosure MUST be made. However, such a disclosure was not made... Conclusions and results of the trial can be disregarded on that simple basis. It's been subsequently noted that the trial was funded by a Swiss health supplements company that also provided the treatment drug for the trial... as if it wasn't obvious :)

- And yes I have now written to the Journal to demand a retractment of the publication or an explanation from the author's :)

In short, I believe Blackmore's sells products that do not function as intended :) Which is terrible news for Blackmore's because any consumer who has bought their products is fully within their rights to demand a CASH refund. The claims they make are easily shown to be "pseudo-science", and they make many with purportedly scientific backing. Hey... I guess we're still waiting for them to publish all those "scientific" studies that support their products... :)