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The recent swine flu outbreak has prompted a spate of Internet-circulated advice for avoiding the malady, ranging from basic medical advice to all sorts of folk remedies. The list of tips reproduced below has been attributed to a number of different names, primarily that of Dr. Vinay Goyal of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), as well as that of Dr. Mehmet Oz (host of the syndicated TV program The Dr. Oz Show) and a Dr. Subhash Mehta of Bangalore, India. It's unlikely that any of these men was the actual creator of this swine flu prevention tip list, as the earliest versions carried no attribution, and both Dr. Goyal and Dr. Oz have disclaimed authorship. We suspect that this list wasn't written by a doctor at all, but some of the people whose inboxes it passed through added various doctors' names to it in order to lend it an air of authority and credibility. Regardless of who issued them, are these tips valid? Example: [Collected via e-mail, October 2009] Points #1 and #2 given above for avoiding the swine flu are standard advice offered by many health care professionals. The flu.gov web site operated by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, for example, offers these everyday steps to protect your health against the H1N1 flu virus: (We note that some skepticism has been expressed about how effective hand-washing with soap and water is in stopping the spread of influenza.) The efficacy of the remaining points is questionable, however. Relatively few medical professionals advocate them, and none of the last four tips (i.e., gargling, nasal irrigation, vitamin C intake, or drinking warm liquids) is offered as a method of flu avoidance by health organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO), or even by Dr. Oz (although he does recommend vitamin D supplements). And when San Diego television station KFMB put the question of these last four tips to the clinical director of infectious diseases at UCSD Medical Center, he told them:
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