An Airborne User's Opinion of the Recent Settlement

In response to a class-action lawsuit against them, the company manufacturing the health supplement Airborne has recently agreed to settle for $23.3 million. According to CNN News, the lawsuit was filed in March 2006 after an ABC News Report disclosed that "clinical trials" proving the efficacy of Airborne in boosting immunity had been conducted by laypeople, and not doctors or scientists. Once the lawsuit was filed, Airborne changed their advertising, but the damage to their credibility was done. Unfortunately, this leaves many former consumers of Airborne wondering what - if anything - they got for their money.

I, like countless other people, have used Airborne in an attempt to ward off or at least shorten "the common cold". In retrospect, I suppose I was a poster child for their target market. I was a working mother of two between the age of 25-34 (a target market favorite). I dealt with the public all day in a crowded office, after which I picked up my kids, who persisted in bringing home every germ known to man from the science lab known as daycare.

It was peer pressure, I suppose. It was winter, and a nasty bug was making it's way around the office. I saw the girl in the back using it, then the girl in the office next to me started doing it. They both swore by it, and seemed to be fending off the current bug just fine. Not to mention the boss had started using it, and offering it to everyone in the office at the slightest cough or sniffle. If you refused his generous offer, and got sick anyway, he assumed that you had gotten sick on purpose, just to spite him.

So, finally, I went out and bought a container of the little effervescent tablets, cringing at the price tag. After returning to the office, I plopped it into a little cup of water from the cooler and waited. Bubbling and foaming, it looked gross. I downed the whole cup, and it wasn't horrendous. It tasted just bad enough to be good for you.

I avoided that particular cold, and was a firm believer after that. Whenever I thought I needed an extra immunity boost, I would get a bottle and use the maximum dosage. And it really did seem to lessen the number and duration of colds I would get. I knew from the packaging that the FDA hadn't approved any of the assertions Airborne was making, but it seemed to be working in practice. With everyone around me claiming it was working for them, we couldn't all be wrong . . . could we? My use of it sort of tapered off, mostly due to the cost. And to be honest, I don't seem to be having more colds than I was.

So, as a former user of Airborne, how do I feel about the lawsuit and settlement? Anyone using any sort of herbal remedy can tell you that studies are rarely conclusive as to whether or not they are helpful. Individuals generally understand that they have to try it for themselves and decide whether or not it works for them. In this light, I don't blame Airborne. Jumping up and down simply because an herbal remedy doesn't work for you is silly. But I am angry at Airborne. And why?

Because as a growing company making big profits, you don't have laypeople conduct your "clinical trials" unless you know your product probably won't pass the scrutiny of a professional. Not knowing if it works, but believing it does, is one thing. Hiring laypeople in lieu of professionals to get the results you want is something else entirely. It's deception in order to make a profit, otherwise known as stealing. If a company doesn't have solid evidence in support of it's product, then let the consumers decide for themselves. But if a company wants to produce solid evidence that it's product is effective, then it needs to do so in a way which doesn't insult consumers' intelligence.

Airborne will not be on any of my shopping lists in the future - I'll stick to plain old Vitamin C. At any rate, this lawsuit probably won't dissuade Airborne users who are convinced that it helps them. A class-action lawsuit such as this one is intended to convince the company that its practices were unethical. But with $1 billion paydays like those Airborne is experiencing, $23.3 million hardly makes a dent.