DeMarrais: Acne-cure apps unproven - NorthJersey.com
Smart phone applications seem capable of doing almost everything. But curing acne is not one of them, the Federal Trade Commission says in shutting down what appears to be the newest high-tech version of snake oil salesmen.
Last week the FTC announced that two marketers who advertised that their apps could treat acne agreed to stop making baseless and unsubstantiated claims to settle charges brought by the agency.
The mobile apps — AcneApp and Acne Pwner — were sold in Apple's iTunes Store and Google's Android Marketplace. Both companies are based in Houston.
The settlements bar the marketers from making health-related claims without scientific evidence.
"Smart phones make our lives easier in countless ways, but unfortunately when it comes to curing acne, there's no app for that," FTC Chairman, Jon Leibowitz said in announcing the settlement.
The cases are the first the FTC has filed targeting health claims in the mobile app marketplace.
The FTC alleged that the marketers claimed that their apps could treat acne with colored lights emitted from smart phones or mobile devices. Consumers were advised to hold the display screen next to the area of skin to be treated for few minutes daily while the app was activated.
According to the FTC complaint, AcnePwner, which sold for 99 cents in the Android Marketplace, generated 3,300 downloads.
Ads for AcneApp claimed that the app was developed by a dermatologist and cited a study in the British Journal of Dermatology that purportedly showed that blue and red light treatments eliminated the bacteria that is a major cause of acne, and reduces skin blemishes by 76 percent."
AcneApp, which got 11,600 downloads from the iTunes store, was sold for $1.99.
I guess it's back to the Clearasil.
Learn to cook
Do students emerge from college with solid educations but limited knowledge of living?
That's a question raised by Hollis Ledbetter in her book, "OMG! I'm in College and I Never Learned to Cook."
"How can you consider yourself educated and sophisticated if you don't know how to cook a decent meal?" she writes.
"Don't get me wrong. I'm all for higher education for the purposes of being able to earn a living and contribute to the world around them, but I've never seen a college course titled 'How to buy groceries, cook dinner and do your own laundry!' "
I never got the laundry part down — why can't I do it all in one giant load? — but I did learn to buy groceries and cook. And that was a big plus in stretching a tight budget while in college.
Today, being married to a super-cook, most of my cooking is on the grill, but I could still manage if needed.
Ledbetter, a mother of four, sensed the irony of colleges teaching students to become engineers, lawyers and doctors who — without mom's help — are still likely to burn down the kitchen while trying to boil water.
Her tips for parents include:
14 Sep, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGAX4CEUz7DNqqSBuK44qlWpPTjow&url=http://www.northjersey.com/news/129781628_Phone_apps_claiming_to_cure_acne_are_shut_down.html
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