What, of this, is false? He is giving an opinion, stating facts as he knows them, and using litigation history as a benchmark. This may end up with a Stella Award.
RUSH: I'm getting so much e-mail about this, let me address this I saw it earlier today. The FDA has issued an official warning against Zicam Nasal Mist. Now, I didn't see it relate to the swabs. But I saw it related to the nasal spray, the Zicam nasal spray. They warn you not to use it because it can destroy your sense of smell. Let me tell you my history with this. Zicam is an official sponsor of the EIB Network -- and I think two or three years but whatever the first year with them, they told us about all of the lawsuits they have, and they beat every one of them. I think what's happening here, I use Zicam all the time. I know hundreds of people who use Zicam and they've never lost their sense of smell. We have a litigious society.
There are people and lawyers who will team up to sue a company for damages for any reason at all. The coffee is too hot. They don't have Chicken McNuggets at the drive-through window, or what have you. Now, I don't know about the nasal spray stuff. I didn't see the whole report. All I saw was she said the nasal spray can cause loss of sense of smell permanently. My experience with this has been these are professionally concocted suits. The Zicam people have spent you would not believe how much money with science refuting all this. I don't know what happened here with the FDA report.
But I'll tell you: the FDA to me is no different than any other government agency. They are not God, and when they say something, I don't snap to. A lot of people do, and the FDA... I have too much personal experience with this. My sense of smell is fine and everybody that I know who I've recommended use Zicam has never said one thing to me about it. These are nattering nabobs, lazy people running around. I've gotten e-mail. I've gotten e-mail from listeners I don't know, "Rush, Rush, Rush! I'm hearing it can destroy your sense of smell!" All right? We've got a couple. "It destroyed my sense of smell, Limbaugh!" I think they were just agitators. But I don't know anybody. And the science I've seen on it, it's bogus.
All it is is zinc, for crying out loud, in the swabs! And I still don't know if the swabs are included in this, which swabs are what we advertise. The nasal spray from Zicam came on the market a little bit after the swabs did, but they really haven't been part of the advertising program here as much as the cotton swabs are. But the thing we were told about when we met with the Zicam people was that they were being sued, and they won every case, or had them dismissed or what have you, over the course of a number of years about this whole notion of the loss of sense of smell. I know these people. There's no way these people are going to put a product on the market that's going to destroy people's sense of smell! So, this is just I think a classic example of the litigious society that we have and the anti-corporate existence in much of the left today. They don't have a job. They just seek getting rich this way.
