Disgusting scams that prey on your fears

Rights, Scams and Politics

Neil Faulkner
Updated on 13 July 2010 | 49 Comments

The worst scams often target the most desperate people. Read more to help you make better buying decisions.

Earlier this month, there was a story on the BBC about a South Korean professor who's been charged with fraud. He claimed he could digitise the healing properties of Lourdes' holy water and radiate it onto regular water to cure such things as diabetes and cancer.

Your first reaction might be to laugh, but this is a disgusting scam targeting desperate people who'll try anything to get better. This scam not only costs money but it gives false hope. Even worse, it can stop people seeking effective treatments and even lead to death.

Peddling cures with no sound evidence they work is not new. Here are some more.

Homeopathy

Homeopathic remedies are sold as treatment for such things as malaria, cancer and asthma. Sense About Science neatly summarises the vast quantity of research into homeopathy here, showing that it works no better than a placebo.

Sense About Science writes that in most homeopathic remedies there isn't a single molecule left of the ingredient that is supposed to cure the patient, because they're watered down so much. It says that, at a standard homeopathic concentration of 30C, the chances of the preparation containing even a single molecule of the original active ingredient is lower than winning the national lottery five weeks in a row.

The homeopathy industry has now come up with a new argument. It claims water has a memory of the active ingredient. Extraordinary.

Ben Goldacre writes in his book, Bad Science: 'There have been over a hundred randomised placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy, and the time has come to stop.'

'Magic' pendants

Goldacre is a medical doctor with three degrees who's made a name for himself writing for the Guardian and his blog, Bad Science. He uses bad science to show the good science, showing time and again the need for quality evidence. He was sued by one of his targets recently, but the claimant dropped his case and must pay back £500,000 in defence costs.

Goldacre criticises alternative medicine and the pharmaceutical industry alike, but he also tears apart much shoddy health journalism, castigating a well-known health journalist who claimed water has calories, and writing whole chapters targeting individuals. So I better be especially careful what I write in this article.

Slimming pills

Another interesting piece on the BBC Health website yesterday was about the growing market in counterfeit slimming pills, with developed countries (we count as one of those, even if it doesn't always feel like it) being the main market, because so many of us have access to the internet and all the varied scams that can be easily sold through it.

According to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the problem is that these counterfeit pills have typically been greatly watered down, they're made with substandard equipment and contain impurities, and sometimes they use ingredients that are now banned due to health risks. What's more, many of the ingredients should be available on prescription only. There's more on this with some advice on how to buy safe medicines through the internet in the BBC article.

Rachel Robson reveals five of the worst scams around...

It pays to look into cures before you buy them. You could visit the Sense About Science website for some more information. If you want to take it to the next level, learn your way around the Cochrane Collaboration website. You can get a feel for the quality of the research they do if you look through just a few of the 25 or so papers they've done on the different uses of acupuncture.

I highly recommend the humorous and informative book Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, which looks critically at everything from big pharma, moisturising creams and nutritional supplements to individuals like Patrick Holford and Gillian McKeith.

lovemoney.com supports good science

More from us on bad science in Don't fall for these rip-off fads.

Don't let your bank peddle you its second-rate savings account. Compare here and you'll probably get a much better deal.

Most Recent

Comments

drmorgan0
23 July 2010
I cannot believe how much nonsense is being spouted in response to this article. Firstly, medical schools are not funded (at least in the UK) by pharmaceutical companies. Secondly, the gold standard for assessing the effectiveness or otherwise of a therapy, whether drugs, surgery or otherwise, is the randomised controlled trial, thereby eliminating the placebo effect from deciding how effective a treatment is or not. Trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies are - rightly - treated with massive scepticism by the medical profession as we are all aware of the disasters resulting from distorted and badly-run trials (thalidomide, anyone?). This is why the best trials are run by independent organisations such as the Medical Research Council. Conventional medicine cannot cure all - everyone dies eventually. In many cases, a disease simply runs its natural course irrespective of whatever treatment is given or if the patient takes water (homeopathic "remedies").
REPORT This comment has been reported.
0
ticktock
17 July 2010
This article is about 'Scams' (paying for something that doesn't work) and one of the biggest is health (fitness etc) I have taken homeopathic tablets over the years but, I read what each tablet is for and treat, before taking them. For me, they work. If it's in the mind or not, I don't care. I seem not to have any side effects, they worked and the cost is/was worth it. The same for acupuncture, I've had that and felt that it worked. And yes, I still go to my GP if I'm really ill including my family.
REPORT This comment has been reported.
0
shepherdess
16 July 2010
If thats not enough to read, look up Audrey Blumsohn and sheffield uni.... Heres a tit-bit: A few years ago, Sheffield University in the U.K. offered over $250,000 to one of its senior medical professors if he would agree to stop criticizing the drug company that was giving research money to the university’s medical school. For several years, bone metabolism specialist [b]Dr. Aubrey Blumsohn [/b]had been complaining to his university about scientific misconduct around a contract between Sheffield and the U.S.-based drug company, Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals. Blumsohn claimed that the company had denied him access to his own key research data on the P&G drug [b]A[/b][b]ctonel[/b], and then tried to ghostwrite his analysis of it for publication. Universities with medical schools have long accepted funding from pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical drug trials. But in the past, professors ran those trials independently of the sponsor. Dr. Blumsohn argues that this arm’s-length relationship appears to be breaking down. Universities have now become increasingly dependent on drug companies for an ever-larger share of their research budgets (some sources estimate that up to 80% of clinical research is now privately funded). On top of this, drug companies (as in the Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals Actonel case) have pressed for greater control over the research process, making it easier for them to obscure or delete negative results from published academic papers.
REPORT This comment has been reported.
0

Do you want to comment on this article? You need to be signed in for this feature