POSTED: 3:42 am PST December 5, 2005
CHICAGO -- It turns out an experimental head lice treatment that cost $285 really was just a skin cleanser that sells in drugstores for $10.
Dr. Dale Pearlman of Menlo Park, Calif., got a lot of publicity last year when the journal Pediatrics published his study of a treatment for lice that he called Nuvo lotion.
But in a letter to the editor for release Monday in December's Pediatrics, Pearlman said the treatment "was actually Cetaphil cleanser."
Pearlman said he was hoping to get rich. When that didn't happen, he said, he decided to come clean.
A spokesman for the maker of Cetaphil, Galderma Laboratories, says the company didn't know the skin cleanser was being used for the treatment of lice. He said there's no data to indicate whether it works.
Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.