Confronting Health Fraud
Health fraud encompasses a variety of unproven and untested modalities that are often advertised to individuals that are either desperate for a cure or often just gullible.
Pureyors of health fraud are often particularly adept at describing the benefits of their products with a complex blend of pseudoscience and just enough fact to make it sound as though they really know what they are talking about. The sad truth is that in most cases, dissecting their sales pitches finds that most of it is composed of gibberish. The cost of ineffective treatments may range from the economic loss associated with spending money for a useless product, to the use of products with potentially serious side effects and interactions, or the delay of proven and necessary treatment while unproven and ineffective treatments are first tried (click on A case study: Inaccurate health information on the Internet" for a very good example).
Although new (and sometimes vey old) modalities and ideas with respect to preventive medicine and tertiary care are often valid and effective, the use of the scientific method is a critical step in the practice of evidence-based medicine.
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