Eric Zorn: "When the news hit the wires last week that a prestigious medical journal had published research showing that zinc lozenges are effective in fighting the common cold, I couldn't help but think of old George Eby III and the burdensome wisdom he imparted to me 11 years ago: When you feel a cold coming on, Eby told me, suck on plain zinc gluconate tablets. The cold will fade away fast. At the time I interviewed Eby in the living room of his Austin, Texas, home, he'd already dedicated six years of his life to advancing this simple proposition. He'd abandoned his career in urban planning and conducted field tests, schooled himself in higher chemistry and become one of the few laymen ever to have a byline in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a scholarly periodical."

"But he still had a nasty problem. 'The worse it tastes', he said of the various zinc tablets with which he'd experimented, 'the better it works'."

"Zinc lozenges are bitter and metallic, pleasant only in comparison with their aftertaste. They may arrest an incipient cold--my experience matches the conclusion of the study in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM) that they 'significantly reduce the duration of symptoms--but they also foul up the taste buds for at least a day'."

"So each ominous sore throat since has saddled me with a difficult choice--minor suffering with cold symptoms for a week to 10 days, or major disgust for the seemingly endless hours that everything tastes like cat-box frappe."

"It's a tough call. My wife, frankly, prefers the cold. I prefer the zinc, if only because I like to enjoy self-pity with my little ailments and it's hard to feel sorry for myself when my symptoms serve only as a reminder that I wimped out."

"Eby despaired back in 1985 of solving the taste problem. He was still having trouble being taken seriously--he was an uncredentialed zinc zealot who had stumbled upon this cure in 1979 when he tried to give his young daughter a tablet as part of her nutritional-supplement therapy, but her tonsils were so swollen she was unable to swallow it. She let it dissolve on her tongue, and the cold that was ailing her vanished as if by magic."

"Skeptical? I was too, as I am about a lot of alternative nostrums. But Eby never stopped flogging zinc. His claims piqued a bit of medical curiosity, and several research projects over the years looked into the matter with mixed results. These recent favorable findings, based on a double-blind study of 100 people with fresh colds at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, have made the biggest media splash both because they are the most comprehensive to date (in the judgment of Dr. Ananda Prasad of Wayne State University, an internationally recognized expert in therapeutic uses of zinc) and because of the influence of AIM."

Eric Zorn was reporting on the latest study on zinc lozenges as a treatment for common colds. The study, "Zinc gluconate Lozenges for Treating the Common Cold: A Randomized, Double Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study" by S.B. Mosssad, M.L Macknin, S.V. Medendorp, and P. Mason of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, in Cleveland, Ohio, was published in the July 15, 1996 edition of Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM), volume 125, number 2, pages 81 - 88.

Eric Zorn also stated that pharmacists that he talked with in the Austin area who sell Eby's zinc acetate lozenges for colds were unrestrained in their enthusiasm for the efficacy and pleasant taste of zinc acetate lozenges.