If you ask anyone whether they like to get sick, the obvious answer will be “no”. Because it’s a task to fight through all the cough, the cold and the fever, even though you’re able to sleep all day and slurp on soup.
However, a new startup based in Los Angeles is selling tissues that other people have sneezed into. Why? Because the founder believes that it’s safer than needles or pills, and it’ll give you the freedom to “get sick on your own terms”.
After buying one of these snot-filled tissues for around Rs. 5000 ($79.99), TIME interviewed Vaev Tissue’s founder, Oliver Niessen about this approach for fighting sickness. He said,
“The simple idea is you choose now to get sick, with the idea in mind that you won’t get sick with that same cold … later. You’d wipe your nose with a Vaev tissue a few days before leaving on vacation, for instance, and get your cold out of the way before your trip.”
He further added that,
“That kind of freedom, that kind of luxury to choose—I mean, we customize everything in our lives and we have everything the way that we want it, so why not approach sickness that way as well?”
Now, after being in an on-and-off relationship with influenza and the common cold (quite the player I am), this does sound like a ton of malarkey. But if that’s not enough to convince you, here’s Charles Gerba, proff. of microbiology and environmental sciences at the University of Arizona, explaining the same thing more scientifically:
“There’s a lot of things wrong with that. There are more than 200 types of rhinoviruses, so you’re going to have to shove about 200 tissues up your nose each time to get a different one.”
According to Gerba, the tissue in question needs to be refrigerated or treated with a preservative to keep the various. But even then the recipient has no way of knowing what they’re putting into their system. He said that someone might’ve particular allergies that they don’t know about and using one of Vaev’s tissues might trigger it and cause death.
Niessen, while refusing to discuss screening procedures says that his company has a “stable” of 10 go-to sneezers, who’ve been recruited online. He says that his company only takes in those who’ve no allergies,
“A sick person sneezes into a batch of our tissues, and then we put them in our packaging, and that’s how they work. We just send it through the mail.”
But mailing these virus-filled tissues is where the problem arises. Because according to US Postal Inspection Service, mailing infectious substance is allowed only for very specific medicinal purposes, which Vaev Tissue doesn’t adhere to. Niessen said,
“The packages we mail out are not in violation of the law. I think that products are worth what people are willing to pay for them. It’s a premium product, and it’s not something you can get from anyone anywhere else.”
Niessen acknowledges that people can just ask their friends for a snot-filled tissue and save around Rs. 5000. But he says that it won’t be “nicely packaged”, and apparently that’s the X-factor of Vaev Tissue.
However, here comes the final kicker. The founder, Oliver Niessen has no social media presence and his work history shows he has worked only as a video editor for a pharma marketing firm. He refuses to give any details about his company. And although the site shows that the tissues are “sold out”, he expects to restock in a few weeks and start selling sneezes again. So, order at your own risk.