Secret remedies: 100 years on -- A BMJ Editorial

[HuckleB]

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.b5432?ijkey=9VXdYFuowyTRRd6&keytype=ref

"In the linked feature (doi:10.1136/bmj.b5415), Jeffrey Aronson describes how the BMA, BMJ, and politicians tried a century ago to end the marketing of secret remedies.1 They didn’t have much success. Forty years after their endeavours, A J Clark (professor of pharmacology at University College London and later at Edinburgh) could still write, "the quack medicine vendor can pursue his advertising campaigns in the happy assurance that, whatever lies he tells, he need fear nothing from the interference of British law. The law does much to protect the quack medicine vendor because the laws of slander and libel are so severe."2 Clark himself was sued by a peddler of a quack cure for tuberculosis for writing that: "‘Cures’ for consumption, cancer, and diabetes may fairly be classed as murderous." Although he fought the libel case, impending destitution eventually forced him to apologise.3

Clark’s claim in 1927 that: "some travesty of physical science appears to be the most popular form of incantation"4 is even truer today. Homoeopaths regularly talk nonsense about quantum theory, and "nutritional therapists" claim to cure AIDS with vitamin pills. Some of their writing is plain delusional, but much is a parody of scientific writing, in a style that Ben Goldacre calls "sciencey."5 It reads quite plausibly until you check the references.

One hundred years on from the abortive efforts to crack down on patent remedies, we need to look again at the efficacy of remedies. Indeed the effort is well under way, but this time it takes a different form. The initiative has come largely from an "intrepid, ragged band of bloggers" and several journalists, helped by scientific societies. It hasn’t been helped by the silence of the BMA, the royal colleges, the Department of Health, and a few vice chancellors.. Even the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MRHA) could be helping more.

The response of the royal colleges to the resurgence in magic medicine that started in the 1970s looks to me like embarrassment. They avoided the hard questions by setting up committees (often populated with known sympathisers) so as to avoid having to say "baloney." The Department of Health, equally embarrassed, refers the hard questions to the Prince of Wales’ Foundation for Integrated Health. It was asked to draft "national occupational standards" for make believe subjects like "naturopathy"6).

..."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


For further commentary, see this piece at Neurologica blog: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1365


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Indeed, the health care profession has capitulated far too much to popular mores. It needs to push science to forefront again.

[MineralMan]

1. I have a collection of quack medical devices, all electrical in

nature. The most interesting ones use glass tubes of various shapes and a high-frequency, high voltage circuit to create lovely violet light inside those tubes. Very popular in the 20s and 30s, but still available today. Violet Ray machines are the general name.

Along with the violet light, they produce painless sparks and electrical stimulation, plus ozone.

Among the attachments for these devices are ozone generators, the literature for which promises absolute cures for lung cancer. One intriguingly-shaped glass electrode, with full violet lighting, is guaranteed to cure cervical and uterine cancer. The literature advises women to "insert the electrode before turning on the device, to avoid unpleasant sensations."

My ex-wife, ever adventurous in such matters, experimented with this attachment, and discovered that the sensations were far from unpleasant. While it may not have cured uterine and cervical cancers, it was most efficacious in other ways. One wonders to what uses it might have been put in those old days.

Quackery lives on. It may always live on. Sadly, it deceives many people with grave illnesses into avoiding unpleasant medical treatments that may, in the end, save their lives. Instead, they get potions, herbs, and other things that do not have the ugly side effects, but do nothing to cure.

I will always, until I die, point out the lies in quackery, of whatever type.

[trotsky]

2. MM, you live here in Minnesota...

Have you seen the Questionable Medical Devices collection at the Science Museum? Used to be its own museum run by Bob McCoy (http://www.museumofquackery.com) Hilarious stuff.

[MineralMan]

3. Oh, yah. That's a heckuva collection, you betcha. Mine is paltry

in comparison, and reduced somewhat now, due to selling some of the more valuable devices off to pay some bills a couple of years ago.

The museum has some really, really rare stuff, along with some items that are readily available on eBay for reasonable sums. Violet Ray machines are really affordable, and are terrific party toys. Do not do as my ex-wife did, though.

[HuckleB]

4. Now there's a reason to visit Minnesota!