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"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates,

"who said, 'I drank what?'"

I have come across claims before that all-natural products, at worst, cannot be bad for you. My favourite version of this was on an infomercial, where the host prefaced his pitch for some dietary supplement with the disclaimer, "Now I'm no doctor, but...". At least he was honest about that much.

Recently, I've been seeing articles pushing respberry ketones (complete with clickable ads for the stuff) written or backed by popular doctors, like the man behind the curtain, Dr. Oz. Should it surprise anyone that their argument for the absolute harmlessness of something for which they have conducted no serious human trials or long term studies might as easily justify drinking cyanide or hemlock?

Every version of the Hippocratic Oath I have read, one of which most doctors and med schools will at least pay lip service to, says something like, "Do no harm." But what about when you have no idea whether or not your advice might ultimately harm people? Apparently, that means you should profiteer to the best of your ability until real scientists say otherwise.

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