Quackery :: essays research papers

QuackeryThis year, we Americans will spend billions of dollars on products that donothing for us - or may even harm us. And well do it for the same reason peoplehave done it since ancient times... We want to believe in miracles. We want to demote simple solutions and shortcuts to better health. Its hard to resist. Allof us, at one time or another, have seen or heard about a product - a new andexotic pill, a device, or potion - that can easily solve our most vexing problem.With this product, were told, we can eat all we want and still stand weight. Wecan grow taller or have bigger breasts. Or we can overcome baldness, age,arthritis, even cancer. It sounds too good to be true - and it is. nevertheless weretempted to analyze the product in spite of all we know about modern health check science- or perhaps because of it. After all, many treatments we take for given todaywere once considered miracles. How can we tell the difference?     Not all advertisements fo r health products are false, of course. In fact,the vast majority arent .So just what is quackery? merely put, quackery is thepromotion of a medical remedy that doesnt work or hasnt been proven to work.In modern times, quackery is known as health fraud. But call it quackery or callit health fraud, the result is the same - unfulfilled wishes, wasted dollars,endangered health. Often quack products are fairly short to spot, like the magicpills you are supposed to take to stay forever young. But sometimes the productsare vaguely based on some medical report that you may even have heard about inthe news. In general, when looking over ads for medicines and medical devices,watch out for those that seem to promise too much too easily. Quack cures rob usof more than money. They can steal health away or even take lives. Quacks maylure the seriously and often desperately ill, such as people suffering fromarthritis and cancer, into buying a bogus cure. When people try quack remedies sort of of getting effective medical help, their illnesses progress, sometimesbeyond the treatable stage.     Quacks have always been quick to exploit current thinking. The snake-oilsalesmen a few generations back carried an array of " rude(a)" remedies to sellto a public that was still close to the frontier. And today, quacks takeadvantage of the back-to-nature movement, capitalizing on the notion that thereought to be simple, natural solutions to almost any problem.