Quacks on increase

Health quackery flourishes in New Zealand because we are less critical of fraud, less critical of what, in the United States' would be labelled as criminal deception.

Professor Victor Herbert, a recent visitor to New Zealand, pursues such cranks with the help of fraud squads financed by US Federal and State governments.

Herbert is a member of the Board of the National Council against Health Fraud, chief of haematology and nutrition at the Bronx Veterans Administration Centre and professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Author of 500 peer reviewed papers, five international editorial boards and consultant to the World Health Organisation and the US government, he described to a packed Christchurch audience the gigantic frauds in the US. Iridology, colour therapy, homeopathy, reflexology, orthomolecular and naturopathic medicine all make claims that are not proven by scientific studies.

"These are frauds by deception and the laws should be written in such a way as to prosecute those who take money for worthless remedies," he said.

"Proper and proven health remedies are written up in peer reviewed journals where the evidence is available for all to see.

"Experimental diets, treatments or remedies should be the subject of trials. But volunteers in such trials should never pay and the proper ethical and statistical considerations must be present," he said.

Other claims for health cures are fraudulent and in the US can be pursued by appropriate bodies which are not always available to us in New Zealand.

Fetus deformities and damage in childhood is now occurring in the US with increasing frequency due to the toxicity effects of taking massive doses of vitamins.

So do we need legislation to prevent an increase of health quackery in this country?

Yes we do. Health quacks harm people's health, often by deceit and omission. While people, especially older people are attending fraudulent so-called health practitioners or those giving quack nutritional advice their disease progresses untreated.

A worse problem in the US is that of quack MD doctors.

Legislation is gradually being introduced state by state to prosecute qualified medical practitioners who slip into quackery offering unscientific iridology or homeopathy as treatment or where they practice nutritional quackery with natural: remedies or advise massive doses of vitamins.

In some other cases they are being imprisoned for working with unqualified quacks.

'The prosecution of Milan Brych was associated with the prosecution of his associate — a Californian medical -practitioner who has since died.

Because New Zealand is an isolated small country and because we have had so little funding for good nutritional research, citizens are now being subjected to fraudulent practices. Health fraud by deceit and omission is here.in New Zealand and appears to be increasing.

Don Beaven is Professor of Medicine at the Christchurch Clinical School of Medicine.