You might raise issue with the idea of a corporation outlawing something. I say look at the way the justice system currently works and tell me they couldnt buy the result they wanted.
Also, that allicin kills MRSA is not news by any measure. Here's an article from 2008:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/article127...
Years later I researched and found out about allicin and its presence in freshly crushed garlic.
In fact there are now theories that many of the cooking practices of "marinating in crushed garlic" was just as much to do about anti-bacterial effects as culinary.
While not applicable to your specific use, I'll point out for general knowledge that garlic + olive oil can lead to the growth of Clostridium botulinum, aka the Botulism causing bacteria. This more commonly occurs when making garlic infused olive oil, since the botulinum needs time to grow. Hence why it probably didn't matter for your grandmother's usage; not enough time for the concoction to become dangerous. But this is one of those strange facts that it's good know, in case someone decides to make homemade infused olive oil for their meals.
One easy options seems to be to opt for garlic vinegar instead, as the vinegar is acidic, and doesn't allow the bacteria to thrive?
http://food-hacks.wonderhowto.com/how-to/make-garlic-infused...
edit, see also: http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uc_davis/uc_davis_garlic.p...
See eg http://www.uhs.nhs.uk/ourservices/ear,noseandthroat/audiolog... (for a non-woo, non-commercial reference).
In fact this used to be pretty much the only use for olive oil in the UK - before the mid-1950s, 'continental' cookery was unusual and olive oil was generally unavailable except through a pharmacist as an ear cleaner. http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Food-in-Britain-in-the-...
I don't think that's strong enough to be useful. This might be interesting if they can figure out the mechanism and use it to create a stronger antibiotic, but for the stage this is actually at, they're really overselling it.
What exactly is it you think they're "selling?" I thought the article was focusing more on the historical significance of this, in particular how good medical knowledge was 1,000 years ago.
You seem to be under the impression that they're suggesting this as a possible cure for MRSA. But the article never stated that. They might be able to look at the mechanism and develop something which could help us fight MRSA, but I highly doubt they would use this exact 1K year old recipe 1:1 in a modern hospital (and, again, the article never stated otherwise).
Seems like your criticism is largely based on things they never said nor claimed. Essentially you're critical of a strawman.
Survivor bias.
And the antibiotic properties of garlic are wildly known.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/15/fish-now-by-prescriptio...
Fish oil you get at Walgreens isn't regulated by the FDA and can be dramatically different than what the label claims (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25604397). Moreover, the $30/bottle fish oil is very low concentration, often 20% - 30% PUFAs, and typically very highly oxidized.
Lovaza is 90% ethyl ester PUFAs and has been thoroughly tested to demonstrate safety and efficacy (http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2009/021...).
Will the $30/bottle Walgreen's Omega-3s be pretty close in effect to Lovaza? Probably.. If you take 3x as many to match dosage and if you don't mind the fishy smell and biproducts due to the AV/PV levels being off the charts.. but there's still no guarantee.
It's of further interest because it seems to have come out of a tradition of medicine that was based on something similar to the scientific method.
Fact is that MRSA and others just adapt too quickly to our antibiotics to the point where there are strains in the wild without any antibiotic agents that affect them. That's usually a death sentence.
If there's something else out there that can be turned into a drug that's safe for humans, that's another tool doctors have to save lives.
Bald's Leechbook is fascinating for many reasons. One in particular they refer to in the article - the local Anglo-Saxon remedies are in general lacking in theory and so more or less evidence based. Later medieval medicine was possibly in many ways worse - Roman and Greek ideas of the four humours were imported and applied as received truth. Later medicine was much more likely to take the approach of "Who are ya going to believe? Aristotle or your lyin' eyes?"
Anglo-Saxon medicine had no overarching theory to apply. So their salves and potions and magic incantations tended to be adhoc, complicated, and, occasionally, actually worked.
Not all S. aureus is MRSA; wondering if this is just poor phrasing or if I'm misunderstanding something.
What popularization? The article merely and briefly reports what the researchers said.'Experts from the university's microbiology team recreated the remedy and then tested it on large cultures of MRSA'.
Where's the lack of understanding on the part of the BBC team? The effect of the mixture may be found to be of no significant account (90% is not much) but that's another story that's down to the researchers.
They do not mix until you slice, chew, cut or press the garlic and rupture the barriers between them. They key is to wait 10 minutes after this process has occurred until you cook it, or you will remove most of the benefit of allicin. For example, putting freshly chopped garlic in the microwave for 30 seconds will take away 90% of the potential allicin content due to the heat destroying alliinase.
I think the news here is historical (hey this crazy recipe works), not medical (hey this stuff might be better than anything we already know how to do).
I wouldn't be comfortable buying a pesticide based on that research, however.
Can you inject this into the bloodstream to clear an MRSA infection?
If not, then it's only useful as a topical antiseptic, which isn't newsworthy, since bleach, Lysol and various alcohols also kill MRSA.
Very difficult to take a lot of western medicine seriously when a huge amount of the research is funded by organisations with vested interested.
The problem is that when this is used frequently, the superbugs will evolve to survive to this treatment. If this result is confirmed, it will be good to have another alternative, but the new alternative will not last forever. (Perhaps 1000 years ago, there was a garlic-and-onion-resistant-superbug, and with the years they lost the mutation to survive this treatment.)
> They found the remedy killed up to 90% of MRSA bacteria and believe it is the effect of the recipe rather than one single ingredient.
Perhaps it a combination of a few drugs present in the ingredients, that can be produced artificially
1. "Superbug" is just a modern construct of something that's been happening (albeit at a slower pace) since bacteria - and human pathogens in general - have existed. Garlic (and relatives) have faced this for just as long.
2. Similar to the adaption of bacterium in #1, the biological victims have adapted. That is, after all, while garlic has large amounts of allicin - a wide-spectrum antibiotic - in the first place.
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1217/
Believe? Don't you want to like, um, test that? You know, science.
This whole thing stinks of research grant bait.
"In each case, they tested the individual ingredients against the bacteria, as well as the remedy and a control solution."
