Ars TechnicaThe spectacular downfall of a common, useless cold medicine
This week's unanimous vote on phenylephrine's ineffectiveness was decades in the making.
Gregory Vanderlaan@arstechnica but doesn't it make you FEEL GOOFY? Isn't that the point? To get that "Medicine Head" High... That's an Instant Cure for feeling sick...
Ben Aveling@arstechnica @Gregvan that doesn’t happen with the PE form. Which was the reason the government preferred it, even though they knew it didn’t work.
Berk@Gregvan @arstechnica that’s pseudoephedrine
Ryan2one3@arstechnica now do homeopathic "medicine." LOL
Dave Diamond@arstechnica PE stands for "placebo effect," so what is the problem?
MĂ©lani (Melanie) Bjornsdottir (she, Ĺťi)@dldnh @arstechnica It stands for PhenylEphrine
Sven Geggus@arstechnica Und hierzulande schluckt man weiter ZuckerkĂĽgelchen aka #Meditonsin.
Sons of Liberty@arstechnica This was complete crap.
Astra@arstechnica Breaking Bad?
Ugh (“ugh”)@arstechnica @emilygorcenski Can we do dextromethorphan next?
Texty the Bard
George Liquor, American@textualdeviance @migriverat @arstechnica @emilygorcenski Have you tried sugar pills to see if they do anything
@liquor_american Yeah, I get it. But it does knock me out when few other things do.
A Shiny Blue Thing@migriverat That suff is dangerous for huge swaths of the population (dangerous interactions with lots of widely prescribed antidepressant meds) , and it's in virtually EVERY multi-medicine cold formula. I have a family member who cannot take anything for colds except sudafed and ibuprofen, because every other med has dextromethorphan in it.
MrC@arstechnica anyone who tried the crap once knew it was beyond useless
Mike Smale@arstechnica But will it affect the meth? The Heisenberg crew wants to know!
Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱@arstechnica That particular product name, I believe, came from pseudoephedrine, which does in fact work, but that got classified as 'pharmacist-only' because home chemists were using it to cook meth. So they switched to phenylephrine (hence the 'PE' suffix), which seems to be basically a placebo.
If I'm wrong on any of that, of course I'd welcome a correction!
knit.sew.sing@arstechnica I used to work for a company that made generic versions of OTC drugs and I always badmouthed the phenylephrine because it did NOTHING for my sinus pain. Gimme that good old Sudafed every time. (We used to have a cabinet with free samples for employees of all the products we made, but the FDA made us stop putting the pseudo out there. Had to find a contact in the back that would get it for me.)
@arstechnica I KNEW that shit was bogus
@arstechnica Alt text: a box of Sudafed PE in a store shelf.
justin ferguson@arstechnica I love it when science confirms what I've been saying since it came on the market.
Madison@arstechnica Anyone who has used the stuff already knew it didn't work. Surprised it took so long.
Katie F@arstechnica I've seen so many terrible headlines for this decision that don't differentiate between pseudoephedrine-Sudafed and Sudafed PE or Benadryl vs.Benadryl + Sinus Congestion.
Still, phenylephrine hasn't been effective for me, ever. And I just keep a 6 months supply of pseudoephedrine around for when I need to stop a cold before the (otherwise inevitable for me) ear infection sets in.
Kellic Tiger 
@arstechnica
pseudoephedrine or GTFO. phenylephrine is a joke and has never worked for me.
pseudoephedrine or GTFO. phenylephrine is a joke and has never worked for me.
@arstechnica I know ONE (1) person that it works on. It works on maybe 10% of the population. That's not enough people for it to be the dominant available decongestant.
Number6 
BTW, benadryl actually works. But it's the exact same formula and dosage as Sominex.
Sir John Falstaff@number6
That depends on your country's position on OTC diphenhydramine.
That depends on your country's position on OTC diphenhydramine.
Michael Baudis@arstechnica @JamesGleick Well, if you snort it … </sarcasm> (Really; don’t swallow, don’t snort.)
RowinSpeez*It was found to be ineffective in tablet form, taken orally. Phenylepherine nasal spray was found to be effective still.
The tablets, when ingested, were found to be not effective enough to provide a decongestant effect in the sinuses.
Tricot Feelya@arstechnica perhaps now they’ll bring back phenylpropanolamine
Katie@arstechnica When sudafed moved behind the pharmacy counter, I tried these other options. It only took once for me to determine they didn't work for me, and I've been getting the real stuff ever since.
Bradford 
@arstechnica bring back pseudoephedrine?
GuyDudeman@arstechnica I'd like to know what they plan on doing as an alternative. Do we have to just go over the counter for sudafed now, instead of just picking up cold medicine from the rack? Is that it?