Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of people urging people to make health decisions based on little or no evidence.
Alternative medicine can be an amazing thing. As an ex cancer patient, current medical researcher and medical student, who suffers from debilitating chronic health conditions as a result of treatment, I know, and have benefited from complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM). Overall, practitioners in this space take more time to look into you wholistically. And the vast majority of what they recommend constitutes good, general health advice.
But today, especially with the rise of social media and fake news, more people than ever are falling victims to less scrupulous members of the CAM industry who spread misinformation to make more money... Often, these people who have no qualifications whatsoever. And this is literally killing people. Cancer patients who use alternative therapies are up to 5.7x more likely to die than those who don't, a consistent trend seen in numerous independent studies.
Free speech is important, and it is important that we investigate treatments which may compliment, or even surpass current treatments with, often, less side effects.
But many people are literally breaking the law and claiming their treatments and/or recommendations CURE or FIX problems outright. Social media only perpetuates this.
There are thousands of influencers with millions of followers making millions of dollars pedaling misleading, and often dangerous misinformation. It's a multi-billion dollar industry.
And there are thousands of stories of people who have suffered because of it. Recent examples include the story of a mother now charged with negligence for treating her daughter with essential oils instead of antibiotics, the jailing of "Dr" Tulio Simoncini, proponent of the "Cancer is a Fungus and Sodium Bicarbonate is the Cure" scam, the shut down of a natural birth Facebook group which resulted in the death of a baby who otherwise could have gotten help. I personally have lost friends to these myths, who otherwise would have had a chance, as well.
Consumer protection laws like The Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Australia), the "Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008" act (London) and numerous acts and precedents set by the FTC in the US clearly mark this behavior as illegal.
1) IF YOU MAKE CLAIMS PERTAINING TO HEALTH - claiming a therapy WILL cure or fix a condition, or encourage others to try such therapies, without any evidence to back up your claims, without inserting disclaimers or saying "May" - YOU SHOULD BE CULPABLE, YOU SHOULD BE PROSECUTED AND YOU SHOULD GO TO JAIL if your advice ends up harming someone.
- If you profit from the sales, in any way, of products with purported health benefits, YOU SHOULD HAVE TO MAKE THAT CLEAR, and it SHOULD BE YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, to check the validity of those health claims.
I'll even go so far as to say:
- If you share misinformation, without any reasonable scientific or other evidence behind it, and it ends up harming someone - YOU SHOULD BE PROSECUTED AS WELL.
Too many people are dying, and too many people are put in harm's way because of this. It needs to stop. Join me in signing this petition today. #LOCKEMUP
To check out something I'm working on that will provide, amongst other things, services which test wellness hypotheses and powers medical research via machine learning, check out CAroundYou.com
