> From: Keith Benson
>
> Do this:  Call 10 hospitals.  Ask them when the last time was that they
> slathered a burn victim in honey.  Please use standard hospitals in a
> developed nation, do not weight the sample by asking shaman/faith
> healers/voodoo preists.

While India, Pakistan, Thailand, New Zealand and Australia might not all be
what you consider "standard hospitals in developed nations", I doubt they
quite fall to the level of faith healers or voodoo priests.  All have
published recent research in this area (some sponsored by EU hospitals).  I
doubt you'll see any in the US soon, for two reasons: 1) no research money
and 2) lawsuit happy americans -- if you died after begin treated with
honey, your heirs would sue "somebody" -- even if you would have died anyway
and you set yourself on fire in the first place (and probably win).

Pehaps instead of name calling, we could go back to discussing bees and/or
honey or even honey for healing?

> One might wonder over the puzzle of why some folks insist on the need to
> "spin" honey to the consumer, as if it is not simply wonderful all on
> its own.

Anyone who thinks consumers buy things that are "simply wonderful on their
own" lives in a backwater state that has no marketing dollars spent in it
(sorry Keith).  Honey must compete in a marketplace where ketchup now comes
in designer colors and where sugar or corn syrup is the main ingredient in
any commercial product with "honey" on the label (even honey mustard from
sue bee is mostly corn syrup).  The sugar industry spent many dollars over
many years to convince the public that all sweeteners were the same (and it
seves them right that HFCS now beats them out, although it does make soft
drinks taste pretty awful).  If all sweeteners are the same in teh
consumer's eye, they buy on price (and honey loses big time here).

> do I think the standard medical community would open itself up to
liability
> by accessing these materials simply by slathering patients in honey?

that is where the main problem in using this will lie.  Even if honey were a
better solution, no hospital would allow it, unless their insurance company
first OK'd it and guaranteed coverage for the lawsuits that followed (and
who would pay for the extra ant treatments or keeping flies away from the
wound dressings?).

More ilkely, the resarch will be used to create an artificial, proprietary,
patented product that also delivers peroxide to wounds under the dressing.
One of my personal favorite patents in this area: they guy who patented
mixtures containing beeswax for use in treating any type of skin burn (human
or animal, from sunburn to life threatening).

Karen

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