There's a new product on the market designed to treat colds at their outset. Airborne is a mix of Echinacea along with an ungodly dosage of vitamin C, zinc, and others that would make the patron of health-food stores smile with smugness. This is put into a horse pill laced with baking soda. Put this concoction in a cup of water and it fizzes until dissolved. The instructions say to drink it either at the start of a cold, or before entering a potentially germ-filled area like airline flights. Airborne will supposedly assist our bodies to fight off sickness better with a tangy-orange flavor.
I saw the cartoony package about a year ago and scoffed. Yes, a full-fledged scoff. Its tagline is “Created by a classroom teacher.” Oh, so it must be good.
Two weeks ago, I sat at a particularly dull table at a back-to-school potluck listening to other teachers praise Airborne’s merits. Each one had a Touched-by-an-Airborne-Angel story. One the true believers prefaced his account by telling me that Airborne was created by a classroom teacher. He recounted the same story I read on the package itself. Some elementary school teacher was tired of getting sick in school, so she spent five years making the perfect mixture of herbs and spices, Colonel Sanders style, I guess. As I excused myself to get another helping of emaciated chicken wings, I wondered when the teacher-scientist-herbalist found time to write lesson plans. I don’t have time to take my dog Aslan for a walk during the school year, let alone conduct Linus Pauling research in my basement.
After this conversation, I got sick. I was at school talking to a friend about my coming cold, and another teacher told me about Airborne. “It was created by a teacher, you know.” A few days late, another teacher heard my husky, flemmy voice and suggested Airborne. “It was created by a teacher who was tired of getting sick.” She searched her bag to get me a magic pill, but her cup runneth empty.
I decided to try it for myself. I bought a roll of ten for almost $6.00, and plopped my first into a cup of cold fountain water that hinted of iced tea. It was fun to watch the fizz, and it tasted pretty good. That was last week. I’m still sniffling.
Since when is “created by a teacher” an endorsement for the success of a drug? Does the FDA have a series of tests that it uses based on careers? This new pill for glaucoma is created by a freelance graphic artist who was tired of being blind. This is putting teachers on the same medical prowess as those 4 out of 5 dentists who choose Trident.
On the homepage for the product’s website, Kevin Costner gives a glowing report on how he “never goes on a movie set without it.” My first thought is that the statement is a bit misleading, since he hasn’t been on too many movie sets lately. The web site also has a litany of publications where the product was mentioned. One of those magazines is The National Enquirer. Go see for yourself. www.airbornehealth.com. Using a magazine that cries Bigfoot and Batboy in alternating issues makes your product suspect.
It must work, though. After all, it fizzes.
