Articles tagged with "product"

Jonathan Milne's Powder Keg podcast about AG1 and its founder, Chris Ashenden, is equal parts frustrating and fascinating. Fascinating with regards to the depth and breadth of his investigation, and frustrating to hear about how he was allegedly scooped by Scott Carney in May 2024. Carney re-broke the story about Ashenden's criminal charges, information Milne says that Carney would not have possessed if Milne hadn't shared that information first. But them's the breaks when you're a professional journalist in a lawsuit-phobic country, and maybe the October 2024 release of Powder Keg ultimately worked in its favour as it would be Carney who would bear the brunt of AG1's initial legal posturing, while Milne's work down under continued to be underestimated. Audio clips are played throughout the podcast in which Ashenden downplays the seriousness of the charges he faced. As Milne notes, Ashenden allegedly misleads his audiences about the extent to which reparations were and were not paid, and frames the whole real estate debacle as something he persevered without any remorse about the victims. Milne, for his part, interviewed Ashenden's former employees, investors, and ex-tenants with minimal interference.

Sara, one of our ex-committee members, messaged me last week, sending me a picture of a product she found in a shop in Wellington and saying “saw this and thought of you”. The picture was of a product called Pu$$y Power, by a company named MOOYAM. It's hard to read the label in the image, but the bottle describes the contents as “a crystal infused yoni and vaginal wash”, that contains “Rose quartz for the energy of love. Herbal & flower powered. Chemical free.” Underneath that it states: “Repeat after me: “My pussy is powderful”” (which I assume is a typo rather than a pun, as this is a liquid and not a powder):

Nearly a decade ago, I was in a local pharmacy and noticed that they had a flyer for a Weleda product that was making some pretty strong claims.

While trawling alt-med websites for nonsense recently, I noticed a particularly egregious claim made by Ben Warren's BePure company for their multivitamin product, BePure One. The advertisement claimed that it was essential, and that people need to take it every day. Now it strikes me as surprising that any product would need to be taken by everyone, no matter their situation - especially as alternative medicines are not only unproven, but they're often also pretty expensive. BePure One, for example, is $69 for a month's supply - not nice, especially as most people who eat a balanced diet don't actually need a multivitamin, as they're getting everything they need from their food.

The Go Green Expo is an annual weekend-long event that has been running for just over a decade. Starting in Wellington, the organisers have since spread to other cities in New Zealand, currently running events in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and the Hawke's Bay. Although the event is slated to be a “sustainable lifestyle” expo, there's very little that's sustainable or eco-friendly being promoted at the event.

I've been watching LifeWave for a while. Along with the Olive Tree People, LightWave has been one of the MLMs many ex-consultants of Monat, a hair and skincare MLM, have been joining since several key leaders and consultants were expunged from that company a few months back. It's hard to beat talking Olive Trees when it comes to MLM concepts, but this one really takes the cake.

I went to the Go Green Expo in Wellington on the 2nd of November, along with Mark, Bronwyn and my two tiny sidekicks. Mia had a great time having her own little disco on the power company's display, and they both enjoyed all the free samples. However I had to steer them clear of the booze, and there was a surprising amount of that. That and mushrooms. I think I must have missed a memo somewhere – when did mushrooms become a thing?

I stated on the podcast a few weeks ago that I think I could cover a different horse pseudoscience in each issue, and keep going for an entire year. That was before I looked into it…

A recent paper on the overuse of spinal imaging (usually X-rays), titled “_An investigation into the chiropractic practice and communication of routine repetitive radiographic imaging for the location of postural misalignments_” and led by New Zealand researcher Brogan Williams (in collaboration with others from Australia and the US), has criticised the distributor of a chiropractic product called Denneroll. Denneroll is a US company, but their products are distributed in New Zealand and the contact given for distribution here is a Hawke's Bay Chiropractor – Rosina Walker.

Recently two different mobile AI devices have been released, and given all the overhyping of AI these days they've fared about as well as you'd expect them to - which is not very well at all.

Let me preface this article by stating, mustering my best Dr McCoy impression, that I'm a midwife and am certainly not a sports nutritionist, dietician, food scientist, government bureaucrat, etc. I profess total ignorance on this topic, and welcome any of our readers who do have the appropriate expertise to write in or join us on this week's podcast to share their knowledge.

The MLM Olive Tree People came to my attention a year ago, and I've been keeping my ears open for any news of expansion because the conceit of the entire MLM at present is something to behold. At the time, I was more interested in following a different MLM called Elomir. Elomir sold oral film strips that can apparently assist in mental clarity and weight management, but operations quickly flamed out due to poor stock management and poor stock in general. Some Elomir reps landed in The Olive Tree People MLM, just as some Monat reps are attracted to it now.

Last week I went to Australia for a holiday. Although tourist traps are not my idea of a good holiday destination, I have a family, and when you're a parent, holidays tend to be more about the kids than your own preferences. And so off we went to the Gold Coast - a place that was both warm and had lots of theme parks.

We recently had a member decide not to renew their membership, because of concerns about our submission to the Therapeutic Products Bill. They told us:

I have a feeling we've written about Ārepa before, but as a refresher, it's a kiwi brand that produces “health drink” products that claims to make brains work better.

This week I'm taking a look at the recent controversy surrounding Ārepa - the brain drink product that's been pulled up by the Ministry of Primary Industries for making unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits of its product.

There are plenty of scam wellness products on the market, but the latest one to catch my attention is a fancy water bottle called LumiVitae CellPower. You can pre-order your very own in either Anthracite Gray or Champagne Gold for the bargain price of $845.

The Therapeutic Products Act is the most significant shift in the regulation of medicines, medical devices and natural health products in almost 40 years. It will replace the Medicines Act 1981 and Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985 with a new regulatory regime.

I've got a broad collection of items this week. I start off looking at the recent spat between a couple of prominent alleged psychic mediums and their tours around New Zealand.

Country of Origin: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; now headquartered in Utah.

This week I've looked at what might be behind a funny story about combat-ready mermaids, and found out that it's not the answer I thought I was going to find. I also did a silly thing, and joined a Multi Level Marketing scheme - but don't worry, it's all above board. Just email me if you'd like to join my downline or buy some of my scrapbooking products, and I can give you my affiliate link.

Dear Mark, > > I was so pleased to hear on your latest podcast that you are interested in becoming a scrapbooker and/or card maker! It's a great way to preserve your memories rather than have them languish on your phone, to be lost at Google or Apple's whim. > > You've picked a great time to sign up to be a Maker as for a limited time you can join for just $45- and get $45- in CTMH Cash to spend on the things that you will love immediately. > > -=-=-=- > > For a limited time, you can sign up to become a Maker for just $45 and instantly get $45 back in CTMH Cash! > > In addition to your CTMH Cash sign-up bonus, which you can use to purchase a variety of products of your choice, you'll also enjoy these great perks when you become a Maker: > > 25–45% commission on all orders, based on performance > > Sneak peeks and previews for new specials and products > > Performance-based product and cash bonuses > > E-commerce website for collecting customer orders > > Annual incentive trip opportunities > > Flexibility to work your own schedule > > -=-=-=- > > All sounds great right!!! When you are ready to sign up I'm happy to walk you through it! 🙂 Or take a look here (https://susanshearer.closetomyheart.co.nz/ctmh/join.aspx) for more details and I'll contact you again in a few weeks to discuss any questions you may have. Next time you are in Auckland I am happy to have you come along to one of my events, or I can hook you up with a group close to your home. > > Although Craig commented that men are not at my group, there are plenty of male scrapbookers and card makers. > > Cheers, happy to talk anytime, > > Susan...

This week I've an update on the NZ Skeptics $100K challenge, and take a look at a scam product I've seen advertised via an app I use.

Of late I've been seeing some very scammy advertising online for a product that makes astounding weight loss claims. Yes, I know, there are a ton of them out there!

In this week's newsletter I've taken a deep dive into a spam email trying to flog me snake oil, and found a funny coincidence at the end of the rainbow. I've also written about some of the more sneaky tactics I've seen the church of the Eastern Lightning use to try to attract new members, and keep them in the church. And finally Bronwyn has returned to Multi Level Marketing schemes (MLMs), detailing Prüvit and their health food products - I'm very tempted to make a joke about the food pyramid!

It has been a while since I wrote about an MLM properly and, in some ways, Prüvit is both the best and worst MLM to dip into. The health and wellness claims it makes are of great interest to Skeptics, but despite the social media and YouTube furor that the organisation and its distributors create, Prüvit doesn't have a Wikipedia page. It can take a bit of work to get a sense of its history.

It's only been a couple of weeks since the closing of the Health Committee accepting submissions on their Therapeutic Products Bill consultation, but the committee have already been running follow-up oral submissions. We know that there were 16,549 submissions to the bill, as with the help of a work colleague I've been able to scrape all of the submissions. This is a pretty high number for a bill, but still dwarfed by the number of submissions for the Conversion Therapy Bill a couple of years ago - over 107,000 of them! I'm currently in the middle of trying to run an analysis of all the Therapeutic Products Bill submissions, and if there's anything interesting in there I may write an article soon about what I find.

I've been thrown into the editorial breach this weekend due to being the contributor who made the most…well…contributions. Fortunately, it is a job that for me has all the glory and none of the work, as the only thing that is required from me is to write up this introduction.

We've been promoting making submissions to the Therapeutic Products Bill. The NZ Skeptics committee has met and put together its official submission, and I've put in a personal submission.

This week's newsletter starts off (relatively) lightly, with an article from Katrina about p-hacking. Katrina's been writing some great articles for us recently, and it was a pleasure to have her on our podcast a couple of weeks ago. We're hoping to have her join us again to talk about her new article this week, and if you're both a listener and a reader you can get a sneak preview of what she'll be talking about.

The proposed Therapeutic Products Bill is currently at the Select Committee stage in parliament, and the committee is looking for feedback via its submissions process. For the first time maybe since the repealed Quackery Prevention Act of 1908, this legislation will attempt to police “alternative medicine”. Almost everything about regulating Natural Health Products (abbreviated to NHPs in this legislation) is new territory. The main issue with this bill, at least from our reading of it, seems to be that the government considers evidence of historical use of an NHP treatment for a condition to be “substantiation” of any health claims about it. So, basically, if a natural health product has been used in the past for treating a medical condition, whether it actually helps or not, the government will just assume that it is effective. This, to my mind, is reckless and dangerous.

The NZ Skeptic's committee has been busy working on our submission for the new Therapeutic Products Bill introduced last year. This new bill aims to regulate therapeutic products in New Zealand, including medicines, medical devices, natural health products, and active pharmaceutical ingredients, to ensure their safety, quality, and efficacy. The Bill will replace the current Medicines Act 1981, Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985, and other minor acts like the Sunscreen Act 2022. The purpose of the Bill is to protect and improve the health of all New Zealanders by regulating therapeutic products across their lifecycle. The Bill will require therapeutic products to receive market authorisation before they can be imported, exported, or supplied in New Zealand. The Bill also regulates controlled activities related to therapeutic products, including manufacturing, supply, exporting, clinical trials, and advertising restrictions. A Therapeutic Products Regulator will be established to oversee these regulatory matters.

Today I satisfied one of my pleasures - watching horror movies - and viewed M3GAN (obviously pronounced Megan) which opened late last week. I'd categorise the movie as science-fiction horror with a lot of camp and comedy (mostly intentional, but some unintentional), and social commentary thrown in.

There's a new bill being introduced to parliament that is intended to replace our Medicines Act 1981 and the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985. The bill is the Therapeutic Products Bill (TPB) and it's currently at Select Committee stage, meaning that the public is able to provide submissions on it (currently 30 days left as this is published). This presents a rare opportunity to provide input on legislation directly linked to our interests as a society, and we are unlikely to be involved in a legislative change of this magnitude encompassing therapeutic products again for quite some time.

This past weekend I visited the Go Green Expo, which is a show with the general theme of “green” or being ecologically mindful. Such things are usually a magnet for companies promoting bogus products in addition to those with genuine solutions to becoming “greener”.

We've covered Alex Jones many times in the past. Alex Jones is a fairly well-known far-right radio show host and conspiracy theorist. Most skeptics will be aware of his InfoWars website, which promotes conspiracy theories and certified-real fake news.

I'm encouraged by news from the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a skeptical organisation in the US. They are suing the CVS and Walmart pharmacies for their placement of homeopathic products alongside real efficacious medical products.CFI refers to Homeopathy as “Fake Medicine”, which it surely is.

In 2016, I made an Advertising Standards Authority(ASA) complaint against Weleda Arnica Cream and other arnica products about their misleading health claims on HealthPost's website.

There's something about bracelets that seems to attract pseudoscience.

In my last newsletter, I put a call out for people to help with a project investigating pharmacies and the pseudoscientific products they had on their shelves. We got a good response, with several people coming on board to help with the project.

I got into a conversation with some people on Twitter over this past weekend, after commenting on an article about people overdosing on vitamin D.

Country of Origin: Doral, Florida, United States

Founded by: Bjørn Nicolaisen

Country of Origin: Gilbert, Arizona, United States

Country of Origin: Michigan, United States

Country of Origin: Orem, Utah, United States

Trigger warnings: Mentions of Suicide and infant death

What do Avon, Tupperware, Doterra, and Arbonne have in common? They are all businesses in New Zealand that utilise multi-level marketing (MLM) strategies. If you aren't familiar with the names or the products, ranging from hair care and makeup to herbal supplements, you might at least have come across the sales and recruitment gimmicks they employ. Maybe your Mom was a frequent invitee or hostess for a friend's sex toy party (Pure Romance) or cooking utensil business (Pampered Chef); maybe your favourite Uncle loved to talk about the conventions and seminars he was attending (Amway). Regardless, the fact remains that they are a controversial marketing model that exploits millions of people worldwide with promises of financial freedom that are only available to those who are placed at the tippy top of the MLMs' pyramid-like structures.

I'm sitting here writing this week's newsletter with music playing in the background - I've just listened to tracks by (and I'm name-dropping here) Malcolm Middleton, the Flashbulb, Madvillain, PJ Harvey, Mogwai and 65daysofstatic. I'm enjoying this music being played from Plex on my Chromecast, through my TV, via a Sony home theatre amp, to my in-wall 7.1 surround sound speakers. The entire setup might have cost me $1,200, if we exclude the cost of the TV (another $1,500). But could I be enjoying my music more if I'd spent more money buying reference equipment from high-end specialist companies?

But what is it, who's behind it, and does it work? Well, it turns out the answers to the first two questions will help us to figure out the third one.

If you're a regular reader of our weekly newsletter you'll know by now that we're running a conference in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics. Because of COVID-19 restrictions we made the decision to run it entirely online.

Dr Samantha Murton, president of the Royal NZ College of GPs, has spoken out about the problems of social media "influencers" who spread wellness misinformation online. Although many influential people on social media are followed because they have celebrity status - sports stats, TV celebrities, etc - many influencers have built their following purely based on their social media work, posting on topics that people want to read about, and pushing for people to "like and subscribe" using a variety of often dubious tactics.

I enjoy playing computer games, and own both a gaming PC (RTX 3060 Ti, i5-10400) and a VR headset (Quest). So when I heard about an ambitious new game for PCs, VR and phones, it piqued my interest. The game is called Earth2, and is pipped to be a 1:1 copy of earth, with a faithful reproduction of the entire planet in software. Their website makes comparisons to the movies The Matrix and Ready Player One, both of which feature VR environments that are indistinguishable from reality. This sounds pretty ambitious... maybe too ambitious.

From the hard to believe it's real category, we found out about a revolutionary product being offered in New Zealand - Vortex Water!

A recent major report into herbs and supplements for weight loss has concluded that they don't work, and that not enough is known about their safety. Erica Bessell, the lead author from the University of Sydney, points out that in many countries no evidence is needed that these products actually work, and of course many companies are happy to exploit that failing and sell a wide variety of unproven products to buyers who hope for a simple solution to the hard problem of controlling their weight.

There's a website in New Zealand promoting "Vortex Water". The front page of the site starts by saying:

One of our contacts noticed an item on TVNZ news on the 7th March detailing a product being developed by the University of Otago for prevention treatment of type 2 Diabetes. A complaint was made to TVNZ but they have not upheld the complaint.

The author of my Bible – The Vagina Bible, Gynaecologist, columnist and author Dr. Jen Gunter was on Twitter recently, again, to educate people about how a vagina is able to self-clean, without any help from the wellness industry which is doing its best to make money out of people by shaming them into thinking they have to fix a problem that isn't there.

The ABC News website published a story about a keto pill scam using a famous (in Australia) NZ born TV Doctor (Dr Brad McKay) to promote their nonsense without his knowledge. Dr McKay was not happy with the fact they had stolen his identity to promote their products, but is still struggling to get the posts removed as Facebook has given him the equivalent of a sorry-about-that shrug and taken no action. He has approached multiple authorities and agencies in Australia but (at the time of writing) is still waiting to hear back from them.

Understanding marketing tactics is a good way to learn how to be more skeptical about them. Knowledge can help you take off that wool you didn't know had been pulled over your eyes, and see the truth behind the lies, and hopefully be able to make a better decision about where and how to spend your hard earned cash.

SleepDrops is a New Zealand based company offering herbal/homeopathic products that are supposed to help you to sleep, although there's absolutely no evidence that they work.

SleepDrops is a New Zealand company which sells small vials of liquid drops which are supposed to help you get to sleep and stay asleep. Their ingredients are a mixture of small doses of herbs and very small (homeopathic) doses of herbs. A look at the Scientific Research page on their website shows that there's a dearth of research for any of the ingredients in the SleepDrops products, and absolutely no research on the SleepDrops formulation.

Herbal remedies are very popular these days, with many pharmacies in New Zealand happy to promote products that don't work as treatments for medical conditions, or even just as a preventative measure - a way of keeping healthy.

The Pharmacy Council has (finally) published their new Code of Ethics 2018.

There's a new fad to put mushroom in your coffee. Claims are being made that these powdered mushrooms can help your health and wellbeing.

A new locally made diet pill has gone on sale in NZ, and will soon be available in the US as well. Its makers are promoting the product at the moment

One of the issues with fundraising sites like IndieGogo and Kickstarter is that there's a lack of adequate oversight to ensure that the products being offered are actually plausible. Sometimes things end up on my radar that look too good to be true, and at other times they're just plain ridiculous.

A new pharmacy called Wellworks, focussing on natural health products, is due to open in Wellington in January.

18 classes of health product are being de-funded by the NHS in the UK, including 7 that are blacklisted:

Doterra is a successful multinational company which sells innovative medical treatments - or at least that's what they'd have you believe. In reality, it appears to be a Multi Level Marketing scheme, based on Essential Oils, which preys on vulnerable people and makes dangerous untrue claims about their products.

NZ now has its second ingested product for sun protection being sold. The first hit the market a few years ago, and is from a company called Osmosis Skincare. Their product contains "harmonised" water, which is described as:

The Pharmacy Council recently ran a consultation about a new proposed Code of Ethics, after they tried to weaken their code a couple of years ago to remove the requirement that pharmacists could only sell alternative medicines where there was evidence that they work.

An article in the Herald this week talked about several innovations that were showcased at the Hamilton Fieldays event. Unfortunately, one of the products, DermaShield, appears to be very much pseudo-scientific.

On April 11th I submitted a complaint to Medsafe about Te Kiri Gold, a bleach made by farmer Vernon Coxhead which he is selling as a cancer cure.

We talked about Te Kiri Gold last year, when Sir Colin Meads was in the news endorsing it as a treatment for cancer. Although it wasn't on sale back then, and Vernon had been promising to run proper scientific trials of the product before putting it on the market, this seems to have now been forgotten.

Homeopathic products are made by diluting a substance that causes similar symptoms to the condition they're meant to treat. In the case of Hyland's Teething Tablets, that substance is belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade. Wikipedia says that it's "one of the most toxic plants found in the Eastern Hemisphere".

Vicki Latele, who was jailed for mortgage fraud, has had a tough time. She has cancer, and has had her stomach removed. It appears that the standard treatments, such as chemotherapy, have not helped her, and she's been released from prison on compassionate grounds.

I was contacted by a journalist about a local cancer "cure", Te Kiri Gold, and sent a response (with a little help from ex-chair of the NZ Skeptics, Vicki Hyde):

Here's a press release that was sent out recently about a complaint I'd made to the ASA. As a result of the complaint, we uncovered the fact that Medsafe "grandfathered" in over a thousand of Weleda's homeopathic products. Medsafe registered these products as medicines without checking if there was evidence that they work, and despite a general understanding within science that homeopathy is ineffective. All they checked for is that there were no records of the products being unsafe, and given that homeopathy is normally nothing more than sugar pills or sugar water there were unlikely to have been any safety issues.

I totally agree that people should not be allowed to talk about treating health conditions if they have not received approval, and hopefully the upcoming Natural Health Products bill will be a step in the right direction in New Zealand for ensuring claims can't be made without good evidence.

Yet another infomercial style article has been published on the NZ Herald, this time talking about the benefits of bee venom. Abeeco are a major seller of bee products in New Zealand, and they have several successful ASA complaints against them. Abeeco talks in the article about their products, but all they are able to produce in support of them is anecdotes - no proper data. The article even has an 0800 number at the bottom, and although it just says to call the number for "more information", nowhere does it state that the number is Abeeco's sales line!

Submissions are closing next week for the Natural Health and Supplementary Products bill, which seeks to regulate alternative medicine. Although there are several issues, such as the use of "historical evidence" being allowed, the bill in general is positive. People are encouraged to read the bill and make a submission.

In early October the NZ Skeptics submitted a response to the Pharmacy Council's consultation on a proposed change to their Code of Ethics. It had recently been pointed out to the Pharmacy Council (by the Society for Science Based Healthcare) that many pharmacies sell unproven health products, in breach of their current Code of Ethics. The Pharmacy Council's proposed solution is to alter their code to remove the part of the clause that is being breached.

The Pharmacy Council is trying to change part of its Code of Ethics: Here is the old code:

Pills & Potions at the Cotter Medical History Trust, by Claire le Couteur. Otago University Press, 2014. RRP $25. Reviewed by Vicki Hyde.

Janelle Wallace reviews Salt Sugar Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us, by Michael Moss. Random House Publishing, 2013.

The Advertising Standards Authority provides an accessible platform for members of the public to take on the merchants of woo. This article is based on a presentation to the 2012 NZ Skeptics Conference.

Making a submission to a parliamentary committee proved to be a worthwhile exercise.

Vicki Hyde announces the Bent Spoon and Bravo Awards for 2012.

The Natural Health Products Bill passed its first reading in Parliament in September. It appears to have wide support across most political parties, and those who follow such things expect it to pass into law next year without significant amendment (www.lawfuel.co.nz/releases/release.asp?NewsID=2763).

The website www.endohealth.co.nz is selling such items as homeopathic immunisation and travel kits. On offer are such remedies as Natrium Muriaticum 200C which, it is claimed, will protect against all types of Malaria and Haemophilus 200 for protection against H I B (this abbreviation is for Haemophilus influenzae type B which causes severe pneumonia and meningitis in infants).

As part of the Memorandum of Understanding between the National and Green parties, the Ministry of Health has been developing proposals for a natural health products scheme to regulate such products on the New Zealand market. To kick this process off the ministry has produced a consultation paper setting out high-level proposals for the scheme and called for submissions on it. The NZ Skeptics were among those who sent in a submission in time for the closing date on 17 May. Vicki Hyde and Michelle Coffey were the principle authors, with contributions from several other society members.

While in the gym, Alison Campbell considers some health issues.

NZ Skeptics link up with a British campaign against homeopathy.

Don't scoff. A magazine as authoritative as Woman's Day reports a case where a woman treated her breast cancer by drinking her own urine. Following a mammogram and ultrasound examination the patient reports: "I was introduced to a surgeon who said I needed to have both my breasts removed right away." This is complete nonsense as no surgeon would ever perform a bilateral mastectomy without a tissue sample confirming the diagnosis. It is quite clear that she never had cancer at all, but a condition colloquially known as lumpy breasts or benign fibrocystic breast disease.

A surgeon claimed that an alcohol-based hand wash had been responsible for a failed evidential breath alcohol test (EBA). He had been operating all day, went home, had two glasses of wine went out again, and failed an EBA. He argued that "the moderate amount he had drunk was not enough to have put him over the limit." He claimed that an alcohol-based hand wash had been absorbed by his skin. What was he doing? Drinking it?

I imagine that most people joining the Armed Forces would expect the likelihood of a posting to an area of conflict. I know I did. I spent six months in Iraq between the two Gulf Wars. I admit that it was stressful but it was also one of the most exciting and interesting experiences that I have ever had. But that's another story.

It's Bent Spoon time again-the time when the Skeptics highlight the worst-and best-of the year's media.

The Letters to the Editor columns have been spilling over with irate readers concerned about yet another attack on New Zealand's sovereignty. The cause of all the anger is the proposed Therapeutic Goods Act, which would see a trans-Tasman agency take over the regulation of therapeutic products-a term which includes not only medicines and medical devices, but also complementary medicines and dietary supplements. No one seems too concerned that the new Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Authority will be regulating medicines; the fuss is all about what this move will do to the alternative health industry.

Many pharmaceuticals originate from nature, but their development is very different from that of so-called natural health products. This article was originally presented at the 2005 Skeptics Conference.

Just once in a while, speaking up can make a difference.

During my recent overseas trip I had two stopovers in Hong Kong. The South China Morning Post (3 October) reports that demand from patients has led to a policy where acupuncture treatment will be allowed for patients recovering from stroke and cancer. This is rather an unfortunate move because a very recent study found no difference between acupuncture and sham acupuncture in their ability to perform daily activities of living or in their healthrelated quality of life. The study involved 116 patients who received 12 treatment sessions during a two-week period. [Park J and others, 2005: Acupuncture for subacute stroke rehabilitation. Archives of Internal Medicine 165: 2026-2031, 2005].

The product Body Enhancer, marketed by the Zenith Corporation, costs $95 per bottle and is "claimed to assist fat burning, muscle growth and liver detoxification." A judge, however, found that the product offered 'bogus benefits' although the couple behind the company remained defiant and claimed that they were "scapegoats for the natural remedy industry."

A drug company has been perplexed at a shortage of Vitamin B12 created by a surge in use. A spokesman for the company said "doctors had so far failed to come up with a convincing explanation" and "Vitamin B12 was also used to treat chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and as a vitamin booster."

Consumer response to the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy has involved a complex balancing of risk and price

The British General Medical Council (GMC) has found family practitioner Michelle Langdon guilty of serious professional misconduct and banned her from practising for three months. According to press reports, Langdon had advised a couple that the gastrointestinal symptoms of their 11-month-old were caused by "geopathic stress patterns" beneath their home and then "dowsed" for a remedy by swinging a crystal attached to a chain over a book of herbal remedies. A hospital emergency department subsequently found that the child had gastroenteritis. The GMC also examined evidence that another patient had been prescribed an herbal remedy for a sore throat after the doctor dowsed for the treatment.

The Word-based submission to the CAM discussion document which was sent out in our (NZCSICOP) name is now available for you to read at http://skeptics.org.nz/cam

Breaking news as this issue goes to press (Waikato Times, April 30 and elsewhere) is the recall by Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) of 219 products manufactured by Pan Pharmaceuticals. This is the biggest recall of medical products in Australia's history; the TGA has also withdrawn Pan's licence for six months.

John Welch finds that the sexual abuse industry rolls on unabated.

It was a Ngatea farmer who finally got to Doug Edmeades on an Autumn day in 1985.

The Swedish chemist Berzelius coined the term "organic" for substances that could only be made by living organisms and not synthesised by humans. His German friend Wöhler synthesised urea in 1828 proving Berzelius wrong: there was no such distinction. Another brilliant German chemist, Liebig, then used "organic" to mean carbon-compound chemistry, extending this to include the chemistry of living organisms and so beginning biochemistry.

More from last year's Skeptics conference.

A ruse by any other name smells just as fishy, and it seems RSI, OOS and OOI are good examples, if a UK surgeon is to be believed. According to Murray Matthewson, the condition, whatever you choose to call it, is not what it's cracked up to be.