A great quote I came across...

Fundamentalists: believe 2+2 =5 because It Is Written. Somewhere. They have a lot of trouble on their tax returns.

“Moderate” believers: live their lives on the basis that 2+2=4. but go regularly to church to be told that 2+2 once made 5, or will one day make 5, or in a very real and spiritual sense should make 5.

“Moderate” atheists: know that 2+2 =4 but think it impolite to say so too loudly as people who think 2+2=5 might be offended.

“Militant” atheists: “Oh for pity’s sake. HERE. Two pebbles. Two more pebbles. FOUR pebbles. What is WRONG with you people?”

-From Planet Atheism

FTC v. Q-Ray, Medical Fraud

The seventh circuit court of appeals affirmed a decision of a lower court against Q-Ray company by the FTC (federal Trade Commission).

This is great news. I heartily recommend reading the court's decision, it reads as a rational and well-reason argument against modern day snake oil. It gives me hope to know that the FTC, and the courts have some skeptics members who still think protecting the public is a valuable and worthwhile endeavor.

It's a fairly long decision by the court, but it's worth the read. For those who don't wish to invest the time in doing so, I'll sum up the article: Q-Ray makes knowingly fraudulent claims that hurts the consumer. The court saw right through these empty and hollow claims that used quasi-scientific and techno-babble. For example, the court cited several reason, but three among them were:

• The bracelet does not emit “Q-Rays” (there are no such things) and is not ionized (the bracelet is an electric conductor, and any net charge dissipates swiftly). The bracelet’s chief promoter chose these labels because they are simple and easily remembered—and because Polaroid Corp. blocked him from calling the bangle “polarized”.

• The bracelet is touted as “enhancing the flow of bio-energy” or “balancing the flow of positive and negative energies”; these empty phrases have no connection to any medical or scientific effect. Every other claim made about the mechanism of the bracelet’s therapeutic effect likewise is techno-babble.
  

• Even statements about the bracelet’s physicalcomposition are false. It is sold in “gold” and “silver” varieties but is made of brass.

The article goes on to cover some serious topics, such as the nature of placebo effect, and the effects of believing in bunk on health. The article, well written and reasoned makes a compelling argument that selling this bunk is consumer fraud that has a harmful effect on the public. Some quotes I would like to highlight:

"One important reason for requiring truth is so that competition in the market will lead to appropriate prices. Selling brass as gold harms consumers independent of any effect on pain. Since the placebo effect can be obtained from sugar pills, charging $200 for a device that is represented as a miracle cure but works no better than a dummy pill is a form of fraud. That’s not all. A placebo is necessary when scientists are searching for the marginal effect of a new drug or device, but once the study is over a reputable professional will recommend whatever works best."

"Medicine aims to do better than the placebo effect, which any medieval physician could achieve by draining off a little of the patient’s blood. If no one knows how to cure or ameliorate a given condition, then a placebo is the best thing going. Far better a placebo that causes no harm (the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet is inert) than the sort of nostrums peddled from the back of a wagon 100 years ago and based on alcohol, opium, and wormwood. But if a condition responds to treatment, then selling a placebo as if it had therapeutic effect directly injures the consumer."

"Physicians know how to treat pain. Why pay $200 for a Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet when you can get relief from an aspirin tablet that costs 1¢? Some painful conditions do not respond to analgesics (or the stronger drugs in the pharmacopeia) or to surgery, but it does not follow that a placebo at any price is better. Deceit such as the tall tales that defendants told about the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet will lead some consumers to avoid treatments that cost less and do more; the lies will lead others to pay too much for pain relief or otherwise interfere with the matching of remedies to medical conditions. That’s why the placebo effect cannot justify fraud in promoting a product. "

As a skeptic, this is often the most asked question about superstitions : "What's the harm?". Why not let the silly people believe in myths, superstitions, and the supernatural, what is the harm? Plently, I say. Some of the effects are only visible in the aggregate (i.e. teaching creationism and the weakening of the scientific program in school, the election of a president who is not scientifically literate, "faith-based" governmental programs.). Hopefully the quotes above can show just some the impacts of medical fraud as well. But with snake oil, there effects can be seen at an individual level. The religious parents who won't accept medical treatment for their children, but for reading the bible, ending usually with needless pain, suffering, long-lasting problems, and sometimes even a preventable death. Parents who won't vaccinate their kids, believing them unsafe or that they cause autism, who put not only their kid at risk of the virus that could be prevented, but allow their kids to be a carrier of the virus and thus allowing it to spread. A touching story I read about years ago from James Randi experiences in debunking miracle shrines hits on this point. It was about how he encounter a man weeping over a dead child he had brought this healing shrine. His knees were bloody from walking on his knees, as he was instructed to do in order to bring healing to his child. In the background, James Randi could hear off in the distance the sound of the money counting and sorting machine that the shrine operators had installed in some back room. James Randi turned away and weep.

Ignorance, willful or otherwise, usually has an identifiably cost.

-Skeptical Simon