has anyone seen the idiot on tv?

[drcafone]

has anyone else seen the idiot on tv who wrote a book claiming that he has all of the cures to diseases such as ms, diabetes, cancer, etc., and as a profession, we along with the drug companies are holding out on everyone. people are actually buying it. i had someone ask me how much of it was true the other day. i guess a sucker is born every minute.

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[kinetic]

Hey, people are stupid. What's new? I mean, they pick authority figures at random (they trust the woman on QVC more than they trust a physician), ignore scientific data in favor of anecdotal evidence, are ill-educated in science, and are gullible. That's a winning combo.

And don't yell at me for being unfair. A big part of the problem is that 90% of the population doesn't have any interest in science and makes fun of people who do. Instead, they just learn to form opinions based on hearsay, anecdotes, and gossip. Then when they actually run into something that requires them to think (thirty years down the road), rather than just hazard a wild and random guess, they're clueless. Hence you have the people who run around paying big money to get full-body CT scans, or who think "if SOME medication is good, then MORE is better!," etc.

The guys on TV sell products touting that calcium will cure cancer, or that dehydration is the cause of lupus, or some other crap. And people buy it. You can't stop it.

 

[drcafone]

true that. ignorance is bliss.

 

[EMTLizzy]

I think sometimes it's easier for people to believe the "conspiracy theories" rather than take responsibility for their own life and health. It's much more fun to smoke, eat whatever you want, sit on the couch playing video games all day and say that your obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are all due to the fact that the health care industry and the pharmaceutical industry want you to be sick so they can make money.

I also think that as a society we look for someone to blame. So when someone is diagnosed with terminal cancer they may want to blame Dr X, Insurance Comapny Y, and Pharmaceutical Company Z for not fixing them rather than accepting that it's a really crappy thing that has happened to them and nobody caused it to happen.

 

[Pinky]

has anyone else seen the idiot on tv who wrote a book claiming that he has all of the cures to diseases such as ms, diabetes, cancer, etc., and as a profession, we along with the drug companies are holding out on everyone. people are actually buying it. i had someone ask me how much of it was true the other day. i guess a sucker is born every minute.

The guy you are talking about is Kevin Trudeau. I recently saw his infomercial selling his book "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want you to Know About."

This guy has also sold the "Mega Memory System" which supposedly helps improve your memory, Coral Calcium Supreme, a dietary supplement which could supposedly cure cancer, and Biotape, an adhesive strip, which supposedly provides permanent relief from severe pain.

Interestingly enough, the Federal Trade Commision recently banned him from doing informercials. However, I saw him on television last week.

FTC Bans Kevin Trudeau from Infomercials

It pisses me off when people try to take advantage of those who are so desperate for any chance of cure from chronic illness. I remember seeing reports on 20/20 of con-artists who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from cancer patients who were clinging to their last shreds of hope for cure. I always thought that it would be fitting for these con-artists to be stricken with the same diseases that they claimed they could cure.

 

[Eidolon6]

The goal of these people is to separate idiots from their money...truly the
American way. Of course my *favorite* part of my job is telling these idiots the truth and then have to argue with them about how the "Almighty Black Trinitron God" told them otherwise. I love it so much, I rather work with intubated patients...but I digress.

What really needs to happen is for the FTC to pay for an infomercial on Kevin Trudeau himself, his lavish lifestyle, cars, etc. in Ojai, CA. Then after the FTC has its way, sponsor an informercial to sell all of his ill gotten gains...thats one I'd pay to see.

 

[kinetic]

I'm torn on the issue. On the one hand, sure, I understand that people in desperate situations want to believe that someone can cure them. On the other hand, I've seen that guy and his "miracle cure" infomercial wherein he says stuff like, "the FTC and the FDA try to stop me from helping you ...every time I do one of these commercials, they sue me to stop me from telling you the truth!" Hey, if you believe that the FTC and FDA are trying to block someone who can safely and scientifically eliminate disease "so that they can profit from it" then you sorta deserve to have your money taken. Plus, I stand by my prior post -- if people gave a crap about science and learned a little bit (both factually and in terms of analytical thinking) they could spare themselves all of this altogether ...but that would require some effort on their part, which is too much to expect.

 

[Science_Guy]

The guy you are talking about is Kevin Trudeau. I recently saw his infomercial selling his book "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want you to Know About."

This guy has also sold the "Mega Memory System" which supposedly helps improve your memory, Coral Calcium Supreme, a dietary supplement which could supposedly cure cancer, and Biotape, an adhesive strip, which supposedly provides permanent relief from severe pain.

Interestingly enough, the Federal Trade Commision recently banned him from doing informercials. However, I saw him on television last week.

FTC Bans Kevin Trudeau from Infomercials

It pisses me off when people try to take advantage of those who are so desperate for any chance of cure from chronic illness. I remember seeing reports on 20/20 of con-artists who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from cancer patients who were clinging to their last shreds of hope for cure. I always thought that it would be fitting for these con-artists to be stricken with the same diseases that they claimed they could cure.

This type of pseudoscientific "voodoo" is particularly troublesome amongst those who prey on the fears and hopes of patients in the oncology population. There have been practitioners of the worst sort who claim to help cancer patients "remove" brain malignancies by applying something called "blood root salve", and drawing out the tumor tissue via the lymphatics and through the skin of the back of the neck. Another claim is that cancer is caused by a lack of "pancratic enzymes"......so to hell with DNA damage, chromosomal translocations, p53 downregulation, PTEN downregulation and other known molecular causes of malignancies. Wow, if only oncologists knew this, they could cure cancer. Truly Amazing!

The medical community has to work overtime to counter the kind of junk pseudoscience many of these "practitioners" promote. Unfortunately, as the posters have noted, the lack of science knowledge willl cause many hapless and desperate patients to seek treatments that are absolutely worthless.

 

[banner]

I wish I had thought of it first.

To me, there is nothing sweeter than cashing in on another man's stupidity.

 

[crys20]

This type of pseudoscientific "voodoo" is particularly troublesome amongst those who prey on the fears and hopes of patients in the oncology population. There have been practitioners of the worst sort who claim to help cancer patients "remove" brain malignancies by applying something called "blood root salve", and drawing out the tumor tissue via the lymphatics and through the skin of the back of the neck. Another claim is that cancer is caused by a lack of "pancratic enzymes"......so to hell with DNA damage, chromosomal translocations, p53 downregulation, PTEN downregulation and other known molecular causes of malignancies. Wow, if only oncologists knew this, they could cure cancer. Truly Amazing!

The medical community has to work overtime to counter the kind of junk pseudoscience many of these "practitioners" promote. Unfortunately, as the posters have noted, the lack of science knowledge willl cause many hapless and desperate patients to seek treatments that are absolutely worthless.

"lack of pancratic enzymes" may cause downreg of p53, dna damage, PTEN down reg etc. I am using this as a pure example and am not saying this about pancratic enzymes. I am sayings its not mutaually exclusive to say that there is some other causes of all these mutations, downregulations etc that we dont konw about. You often know and understand the end but fail to understand the means. There is alot to the body we dont know, I am sure there are causes in there causing tons of diseases. For a Phd that is a silly statement to make

 

[MErc44]

I was driving from philly to sf, across the whole country the only entertaining thing on the radio besides Jim Rome and my East 1999 Bone thugs cd was this ND doc who was doing a show in Nebraska. The things he said made me laugh out loud, now I had been driving for about ten hours through Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska so I'm pretty sure that had something to do with my state of my mind, but it was still laughable. He was using lots of jargon making him sound important. Like it's been said there were numerous anecdotes. THis post went nowhere, I wish I could remember more about what he said but it sucked.