It is high time that an organisation, private or public, takes aim at alternative medicine and other pseudoscientific woo. Let’s start with applying the Consumer Protection Act.
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting a local market, offering a wonderful variety of farm produce, ready-made foods, books, clothing, arts and crafts.
As I meandered between the stands, full of admiration for the small-scale entrepreneurs exercising their free market rights, I encountered a seller of liquid concoctions. I must confess, my bullshit radar was on high alert, merely on the basis of the seller’s hippie attire, as she launched into her schpiel.
This stuff, she swore, would correct the vibrational energy of my chakras. Presumably sensing my skepticism, she sprayed some odiferous compound at my chest, where my heart chakra would be if I had a heart.
The vinyl-scratch moment came when she explained that she is also an expert in nanotechnology, which gave her potions extra vavoom because they could sort out quantum disturbances in my qi, or something.
Not wanting to cause a scene, I bit my tongue and sidled over to someone more honest who sold cutting boards.
Nanotechnology
What chakra lady really knows about nanotechnology you could probably write in big block letters on a grain of rice. She likely couldn’t define a nanometre. (It’s 10-9 metres, or 10 angstrom, if you care.) She wouldn’t know what a wave function was if it swept her off her feet and drowned her.
At nanoscale, quantum mechanics does become important, but my guess is she used the words merely because they sounded sciencey and impressive to ignorant marks.
Consider the definition of ‘quantum physics’ on this Quantum Healing website: ‘At its core, quantum physics is the study of how a subject (you) and an object and/or event interact with one another. And the link between the two that is being studied is referred to as “consciousness.”’
Yeah, no, I studied quantum mechanics at university, and that is not what it is. How you interact with objects or events can be adequately explained by a combination of psychology and Newtonian physics, unless you’re almost infinitely heavy or travelling near the speed of light, in which case you’d need Einsteinian physics and a psychiatrist.
The study of consciousness is a psychology subject, not a physics subject.
Quantum physics is the study of matter and energy at a molecular, atomic or subatomic scale. It is named for the discrete ‘quanta’ of matter or energy, such as photons, involved in interactions at this microscopic scale. It differs from (and conflicts with) classical mechanics that operate at larger scales (such as the scale of you and the objects you interact with).
No, your local health shop cannot conduct ‘quantum testing’ to diagnose and treat your diseases, because (a) they don’t possess particle accelerators and (b) quantum testing is complete nonsense, even if you did have a particle accelerator. ‘Quantum healing’ was invented out of thin air by the king of hocus-pocus, Deepak Chopra. (Yeah, the one Oprah worships, alongside various quack doctors.)
If our market-stall hippie had a scanning tunnelling microscope stashed in her garage, which she would have needed to manipulate her potions at a nano-scale, molecule by molecule, she wouldn’t need to sell second-rate concoctions at markets. Instead, she’d be raking in cash on imaging or lithography contracts for pharmaceutical companies, microchip fabrication plants, precision engineering firms or universities.
Deception
Vendors of pseudoscientific crack-pottery are often dismissed as harmless; their products mere placebos to satisfy gullible customers. It is a libertarian principle that everyone ought to be free to waste their money however they wish.
But this notion of the harmless hippie indulging metaphysical malarkey is problematic. Many of these products, directly or indirectly, cause their unwitting buyers harm. In addition, one could argue that they constitute fraud and false advertising.
It is not a libertarian principle to permit deception in marketing.
I think we can all agree, in the words of Tim Minchin, that ‘alternative medicine’ has either not been proven to work, or been proven not to work; alternative medicine that has been proven to work is called ‘medicine’.
That goes for any adjective. Traditional medicine that has been proven to work is called medicine. Complementary medicine that has been proven to work is called medicine. Alternative therapy that has been proven to work is called therapy. And so on.
There’s a vast variety of ‘alternative’ and ‘complementary’ and ‘traditional’ medicine out there, plus an equally vast array of products that cannot be called medicine, but are sold with the understanding that they will, by some hokum, benefit the hapless buyer.
As much as I like minimal government, and think many functions of the state, including consumer protection, are better left to private bodies, the fact is that South Africa does have a Consumer Protection Act and it does prohibit false advertising:
Even if a snake-oil seller is careful not to print false claims on their product packaging, they routinely make false claims in their sales patter. Approach any of them – homeopaths, chiropractors, weed oil vendors, crystal sellers, aromatherapists, witchdoctors, market hippies – with any complaint – fatigue, stress, joint pain, jaundice, anxiety, or even cancer – and they’ll sell you their wares as a palliative or even cure.
Those sales pitches, surely, constitute ‘commercial communication’ and is certainly misleading.
Sleeping on the job
One might have hoped that the South African Health Products Regulatory Agency (SAHPRA) could be called upon to restrict the sale of bogus concoctions and therapies. However, in a country where major universities offer degree courses in quackery, it is perhaps not surprising to discover that SAHPRA actually intends to legitimise them by registering these dubious remedies and licensing their sellers.
To the extent that this imposes some sort of quality control and weeds out actual toxic substances, this might avert some of the worst harms associated with random potions made in someone’s back yard, but it certainly will not eliminate all harms.
An in-depth study conducted in Canada last year created a taxonomy of harms associated with alternative health practices (which includes most of the ‘disciplines’ whose products SAHPRA recognises as Category D Medicines).
They include harm resulting from prescribed or self-prescribed substances; harm resulting from procedures; harm resulting from reducing the effectiveness of, or causing detrimental effects from, existing medical therapies; economic harm with financial loss through payment for ineffective interventions; harm resulting from replacing established effective care; harm resulting from delay of treatment or failure to diagnose a medical problem and disease progression; harm resulting from accepting detrimental health advice beyond the scope of the practitioner’s abilities, educational preparation or training and clinical experience; and the social impact of lost work productivity.
Justification
A lot of people justify preferring alternative treatments because conventional treatments (especially for something serious like cancer) can be highly unpleasant and disabling.
A lot of people justify them because they distrust conventional medicine.
It is true that many doctors, private and public, do not have the time to make patients feel heard and comforted.
It is true that some doctors over-prescribe antibiotics or painkillers, though they usually do so either because their patient demands it, or because they throw the kitchen sink at minor illnesses to avoid later lawsuits over inappropriate treatment.
It is true that some doctors buy into some of the unproven woo that is out there, and others legitimise woo by prescribing it as a placebo for patients who just need fluids and bed rest.
It is true that pharmaceutical companies have a lot to answer for regarding dubious trials or suppressing negative data, in their efforts to get drugs approved.
It is true that the cost of conventional medical care, for reasons including both corporate greed and government regulation, can be very high.
All these things are true, but none of that proves that unproven remedies actually work. None of that nullifies the harms the can cause. And none of that makes the claims of grifters and mountebanks true.
False advertising
If SAHPRA won’t stop them, then perhaps the National Consumer Commission should, on the grounds of false advertising amounting to fraud.
It might even be possible to establish an independent private body that certifies medicines, staffed by doctors committed to evidence-based medicine. If what you’re buying doesn’t have their imprint, you might want to engage your bullshit detector, or, if you lack such a tool, steer clear entirely.
Whatever we do, let’s not continue to indulge people who spout false information and make outlandish claims about the action or effectiveness of the elixirs they sell.
They are not harmless. They do defraud people. And they do cause actual harm, up to and including killing people.
And don’t, ever, tell me you’re a ‘nanotechnology expert’ when you’re a hippie selling chakra energy healing brews. Next time, my self-control might fail me.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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