The new world of medical fraud

Mar 26 09:46 UTC 2002

I just returned from a trip to Nebraska, two flights out, two flights
back.

I rarely have occasion to fly, and this was my first occasion to do
so since 9/11.  One thing I noticed is that books and magazines seem
frequently to be left behind by passengers in the seat pockets.  On two of
the four flights, I found non-airline-provided items in the seat pockets.

One of these items was a men's magazine called "Stuff".  I'm not exactly
sure of its market niche.  It has pictorials of scantily-clad women which
would look tame next to the Playboy or Penthoue of thirty years ago.  It
has a lot of men's fashions and consumer electronics stuff, and the prose
style is so snarky and littered with cheap jokes that it gets tedious to
read after a few paragraphs. 

The thing is not even worth mentioning except for the fact that I found
SPAM in it -- a species of patently dishonest and illegal spam that
infests all of our non-Grex email inboxes, originated from shadowy sources
overseas.  Yup, there was a three page ad for "Herbal Science
Breakthrough," i.e., penis enlargement. 

Now, I don't normally peruse these kinds of publications, but it is my
impression that U.S.-based media are more or less obliged to avoid
accepting ads for things that are illegal or fraudulent, especially in the
medical field.  Ads for medicines or medical devices are regulated in some
fashion by the FDA.  For example, claims of efficacy have to be supported
by scientific evidence, and ads for certain kinds of pharmaceuticals are
apparently required to list the possible side effects.  The really dodgy
ads for completely fake medicines contain the word "placebo" in hopes, I
guess, that the intended audience will not understand what that means.

But here was have a large ad which claims that a pill will bring about
permanent change in a body part.  And it's published in a U.S.  magazine
with offices on the Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY.

However you may feel about regulation in general, I would think that
anyone who doesn't vote Libertarian would regard the Pure Food & Drug Act
as being at least a well-intentioned idea if not perfectly implemented.

Does the Bush Administration's idea of deregulation include an FDA that no
longer worries about medical frauds?

response 2 of 25:

Mar 26 13:59 UTC 2002

The FDA doesn't regulate herbal remedies.  As long as, somewhere in the fine
print, they say "this claim has not been verified by the Food and Drug
Administration," they can apparently claim pretty much whatever they want. 

It used to be the rule of thumb was they could only claim to support a
natural process ("encourages good digestion"), but the rules don't seem to be
enforced that strictly anymore.  I've been seeing a lot of ads on cable for
an herbal capsule called "chaser" that claims to prevent hangovers, for
example.

response 4 of 25:

Mar 26 16:36 UTC 2002

I *do* vote Libertarian, and I find laws against fraud necessary.
 
(STUFF is, I believe, published by the same people as Maxim, discussed in the
last Agora, and has a similar niche.)

response 6 of 25:

Mar 27 03:20 UTC 2002

Amazing.  An otherwise intelligent and thought-provoking post about a topic
worthy of discussion and occasional ridicule that, in the space of one
sentence, becomes a cheap political flame.  C'mon, Larry, it's not ALL about
Bush.  

response 8 of 25:

Mar 27 14:19 UTC 2002

There are scientific studies showing the effectiveness of acupuncture in
anesthetizing *animals*.  There's some value to at least researching
alternative treatments to find out which ones actually work, and why.

response 10 of 25:

Mar 27 16:11 UTC 2002

If commercial medicine and pharmaceuticals were not so ridiculously expensive,
people would have less incentive to use the cheaper and non-prescription
cures, but in some countries (former Yugoslavia) pharmacies also stocked and
doctors also prescribed medicinal teas, which were much cheaper to gather and
process than it was to synthesize the equivalents.

response 12 of 25:

Mar 27 17:27 UTC 2002

What do you call it when a pharmacy charges you the co-pay of $5 for 15 pills
a month when you can skip the whole insurance thing and buy 60 of the same
pills for $9.99?

response 14 of 25:

Mar 27 18:21 UTC 2002

My apologies for the slighting references to Libertarians and the Bush
administration.  I wrote #0 under the influence of my astonishment that
such an ad could appear in a U.S.-based magazine claiming over a million
circulation.

I'm not at all opposed to the sale and even the advertising of herbal
remedies as such.  I would be taken aback, though, by an ad with a
headline such as "CHAMOMILE FORMULA CURES CANCER IN 14 DAYS".

Certain kinds of fraud require the complicity of the victim, and are
always under-reported because victims are reluctant to reveal their own
greed and gullibility.  Hence the "pigeon drop", profitable and low-risk
for crooks, has been commonplace for over a hundred years, and is now even
done via email from Nigeria. 

Who's going to complain about being bilked and/or injured by "penis
enlargement" fraud -- and suffer the personal embarrassment such a
revelation would entail?  Somewhat like reporting to the police the theft
of one's burglar tools or heroin.

Spam is cheap, but a three-page ad in a national publication probably
costs a lot of money and implies a very well funded operation.  I would
just guess that some unscrupulous crook is making a lot of money off men's
gullibility and vanity.

response 16 of 25:

Mar 27 21:35 UTC 2002

Re 13.  The $5 is the generic co-pay.  If it was a brand name my co-pay would
be $10.

response 18 of 25:

Mar 28 07:55 UTC 2002

Burned by the penis enlargement pill were you...

response 20 of 25:

Mar 28 21:20 UTC 2002

LOL!

response 22 of 25:

Mar 29 19:11 UTC 2002

There are a lot of MDs who are incompetent diagnosticians and who order
unnecessary tests.  Hmm.

(I'm quite happy with my osteopath, who, when I had walking pneumonia,
asked if I wanted to use herbal remedies or antibiotics, and told me
later that if I had chosen only herbal remedies he would have tried
mightily to talk me into using antiobiotics.)

response 24 of 25:

Mar 30 01:45 UTC 2002

        And the ads.