Consumer Health Digest, Issue #22-31 (original) (raw)

Consumer Health Digest is a free weekly e-mail newsletter edited by William M. London, Ed.D., M.P.H., with help from Stephen Barrett, M.D., It summarizes scientific reports; legislative developments; enforcement actions; other news items; Web site evaluations; recommended and nonrecommended books; research tips; and other information relevant to consumer protection and consumer decision-making. The Digest’s primary focus is on health, but occasionally it includes non-health scams and practical tips. Items posted to this archive may be updated when relevant information becomes available. To subscribe, cli ck here.

Two reports unmask deceptive language of quackery. Quackwatch has published a report that discusses how promotional buzzwords and mischaracterizations of standard medicine are used to promote quackery. Its key points include:

Standard medicine is a useful term because it implies a standard of practice which is commonly used in legal affairs in which a practitioner may have violated the standard of practice for his/her community.
The words allopathic, conventional, orthodox, and traditional should not be used to describe standard medicine because they suggest that standard practice is ideologically driven, authoritarian, rigid, or outdated rather than steadily improving due to scientific discovery.
The words alternative, complementary, integrative, holistic, and natural should be regarded as misleading marketing terms rather than categories of health-related practice. It is best to either avoid their use or place them in quotation marks to indicate that they are problematic.

The report was compiled from essays written in the mid-1990s by William T. Jarvis, Ph.D., founding president of the National Council Against Health Fraud. [Jarvis WT. The semantics of quackery. Quackwatch, July 28, 2022]

Skeptical Inquirer has published a sports-science column by applied physiology expert Nick Tiller that scrutinizes misleading “wellness” jargon used in the sale of dubious products. [Tiller N. Ten health and wellness buzzwords every skeptic should know. Skeptical Inquirer, May 26, 2022]

TikTok criticized for permitting herbal abortion content. No herbal remedies are safe and effective for inducing abortion or pregnancy prevention. [Swenson A. Experts warn against using herbs as abortion alternative. Associated Press, July 1, 2022] Nevertheless, since July 19—even though the social media platform had promised to crack down on such content—NewsGuard has identified 102 videos on TikTok promoting bogus herbal recipes to induce abortions. Collectively, these received approximately 18.1 million views and 3.3 million likes. NewsGuard has also identified 91 videos about “natural” abortions, 67 of which were posted after the Supreme Court’s June 24 anti-abortion ruling. These videos include:

a June 25 video that mentions the hashtags #roevwade and #womenpower and ends with “Do you wanna know a secret??? Mugwort tea and vitamin C.” (268,000 views)
another June 25 video that provides a longer list of herbs and states: “ATTN UTERUS HOLDERS save for later to make tea if u need an ab0rtion: tansy, thuia, safflower, scotch broom, rue, angelica, MUGWORT, wormwood, yarrow, eo of pennyroyal, or OREGANO PINEAPPLE AND PAPAYA IN THE EARLY DAYS.” (12,600 views)
a June 26 video that starts with the statement, “Foods that can cause a miscarriage!” and lists papaya, sesame seeds, and fish high in mercury. (738,000 views)
a June 27 video that states: “Guys remember mugwort may cause a miscarriage, induce menstruation, & cause your uterus to contract; get in contact with your local herb store to see where to avoid this herb.” (9,000 views)

NewsGuard’s report also describes tricks used by video posters to bypass TikTok’s content moderation system. [Sadeghi M, Pavilonis V. Videos promoting dangerous herbal abortions continue to circulate on TikTok despite platform’s pledge to crack down, NewsGuard finds. NewsGuard special report, July 25, 2022]

Naturopath accused of writing vaccine-exemption letters has license suspended. The Washington State Board of Naturopathy has indefinitely suspended the naturopathic license of Virginia L. Frazer of Blue Heron Naturopathic Care in Kennewick. The Board determined she had failed to cooperate after being contacted about complaints about unauthorized disclosure of confidential medical records and issuing unwarranted exemption letters to parents who did not want their children to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. In 2018, Frazer’s midwifery license was suspended for at least three years for charges related to inadequate record-keeping. [Cary A. Kennewick doctor’s license indefinitely suspended. Complaint over COVID vaccine made. Tri-City Herald, July 25, 2022] Her clinic website is still online.

Alberta politician’s false claims lambasted. Danielle Smith, who is campaigning to lead the United Conservative Party and become Alberta’s premiere, has been severely criticized for spreading health misinformation. A CBC report provides three examples:

In a recent campaign video, she interviewed naturopath Christine Perkins for nearly an hour. During the video, Smith portrayed naturopaths as equivalent to medical doctors and Perkins said (a) cancer is within the patient’s complete control until it reaches stage four and (b) naturopaths are better than mainstream medicine practitioners at dealing with prevention. Health professionals, cancer survivors, and people who have lost loved ones have responded with outrage.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, she tweeted “hydroxychloroquine cures 100 per cent of coronavirus patients within six days of treatment.”
In an online podcast, she hosted COVID-19 denialists and promoters of the discredited claim ivermectin is an effective COVID-19 treatment.

[Markusoff J. From COVID care to cancer, there’s a pattern to Danielle Smith’s ‘alternative’ medical thoughts. CBC News, July 25, 2022]

New blog spotlights chiropractic shortcomings. J. Michael Burke, D.C., who practiced chiropractic for than 40 years, is blogging about chiropractic’s shortcomings at Michael Burke’s Back Issues. He has also written an article for Chirobase describing how subluxation-based chiropractic leads to unnecessary treatment in personal-injury cases. [Burke M. Observations of a forensic chiropractor. Chirobase, July 25, 2022]

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