Monday, May 8, 2023
Ed Iannuccilli, PhD, Columnist
I was cautious when patients asked me about alternative therapies for medical care. I knew charlatans and charlatans who preyed on the sick, so I was cautious and too often suggested expensive remedies with no scientific basis.
I have never deterred patients from seeking alternative medicine. Rather, I encouraged them to do their homework, research as much as they could about alternatives, and contact me with any questions. If you were convinced that alternative treatments were neither harmful nor contraindicated, my advice would have been, “If it doesn’t hurt and it isn’t prohibitively expensive, try it”. I knew it was going to work, so I continued, “If you feel better, keep going.”
But defenseless and desperate patients, when frightened and with little or no other options, seek out quacks who are impostors to medical techniques and treatments they didn’t believe were impostors. The term quack originated in his 17th century and was an abbreviation for quacksalver or ‘ointment hawker’, from the Dutch word ‘quacken’ for boasting or boasting and ‘salven’ for rubbing with ointment. Moreover, they sounded like ducks when peddling their wares.
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The impostor is an ignorant, incompetent, and self-assured impersonator of medical knowledge who adopts a dubious diagnosis and uses dubious diagnostic tests and untested or refuted treatments, especially It speaks of its power to cure serious diseases such as cancer.
They surfaced during the Great Plague of the 17th century, when thousands of people died without hope of a cure. , recommend remedies such as lighting bonfires, using laxatives, liquor, and even onions. It doesn’t have to be a pandemic to bring them up.
But recent pandemics have seen similarities. Our vulnerability has brought to the fore a new crop of ambitious frauds. People who recommended things like drinking bleach or essential oils, refusing vaccines, and not wearing face masks.
Even legal medicines were contaminated. The antimalarial drug chloroquine (subspecies hydroxychloroquine) has been touted as a game changer in the fight against coronavirus by prominent supporters.
Every pandemic is sad in its own way. But it’s an opportunity to realize that we should keep in mind that we remain vulnerable to both phony and the disease that evokes phony.
Today, quacks are surfacing on the internet. What a shame it is becoming more prevalent in our fragmented healthcare system. Care gaps are filled with bogus cures. Look at this nasty twist.
Even judges with little or no medical or scientific background reject solid scientific evidence.
If you knew someone who used extreme rhetoric, like a judge who relied on unreliable sources and gave questionable reasons, would you consider it a hoax? I have. Do you want a judge, not a doctor, to decide which medicine is right for you?
Dr. Ed Iannuccilli is the author of three popular memoirs. Grandfather’s Fig Tree and Other Stories”, “What Happened at Sunday Dinner”, and “My Story Continues: Neighborhood to Middle School”. Currently, he is writing his fourth book, A Whole Bunch of 500 Word Stories.
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