Over on Sciblogs, Siouxsie Wiles has been writing about the spread of an Ebola virus outbreak in west Africa (here & here, for example). It's alarming stuff: a virus with a high mortality rate, in combination with the potential for infected people to travel more widely than in the past before succumbing.
Sadly, it didn't take long for the pedlars of pseudoscientific nonsense to get on the bandwagon. First it was homeopathy (apparently homeopathic concentrations of rattlesnake venom and other 'remedies' will do the trick – I wonder how they found that out?) In his blog post on this, Orac has commented
You know what they call an Ebola victim foolish enough to use these five homeopathic remedies in the hope of curing their disease? Almost certainly dead, that's what!
And then there's this. I should really give that page to my first-year bio students & see what they make of it: they'd certainly pick up on the author's statement that our cells have walls! What's more:
It's impossible for a virus to live in the presence of pure, unadulterated cinnamon oil, so getting that oil into our bloodstreams to create an environment hostile to the virus is important.
Viruses are only active within living cells, and I'm fairly confident in saying that our own cells can't live in "pure, unadulterated cinnamon oil" either. (I do want to know, though, why the author feels that one must anoint one's feet with the stuff!)
However, the page does have references, and we're urged to read them, so let's look at those sources to see if they back up the claims being made for cinnamon oil. There are "13 studies on cinnamon oil and viruses" from PubMed, for example, as well as a couple of in vitro studies.
Well yes, yes, there are – but I doubt the page's author actually read them, despite asking their readers to check the links. For several references of that PubMed list are for various studies that used LEC (Long-Evans Cinnamon) rats, while others are discussing avian flu in a range of waterfowl that includes cinnamon teal – nothing to do with using an essential oil against viruses! Of the remainder, one is a study of herbal medicines that include cinnamon bark (not oil); one looks at the efficacy of a range of traditional medicines (again, including cinnamon bark) on baculovirus in silkworms; two others look at using flavonoids (hint: not oils) from cinnamon as a potential drug in fighting HIV.
I will confess to being underwhelmed. And concerned that anyone might take this stuff seriously.