Report: Passing the buck (page 20 of 28)
As well as passing the buck firmly towards GPs, the Best Treatments site doesn’t recommend any particular form of treatment in over 30 pages of printed information. Amongst its key points are:
- Chemical treatments for head lice are likely to work, but there isn’t enough good research to say for certain.
- There isn’t much research on combing your hair with a louse detection comb (also known as ‘bug busting’), so we don’t know if it works.
- We don’t know yet if herbal treatments work.
This is typical of much of the information found on the Internet. It can be frustratingly vague, contradictory – and in many cases, just plain wrong.
There are also a number of websites which are little more than shop windows disguised as information centres.
For instance, Pfizer, the manufacturers of Lyclear, use their website at www.headliceadvice.net to play down the effectiveness of non-toxic treatments such as wet combing: “Many experts do not advocate this method as an effective treatment.”
They also promote the use of chemicals: “The insecticides used in modern head louse preparations have an excellent safety over decades and are effective when used correctly.”
