Avoid Online Snake Oil Sellers
Learn how to find Internet medical advice that won't make you sick.
When Terry Winckler was diagnosed with lymphoma, he naturally wanted to learn as much as he could about the disease. So the newspaper editor, who lives in Alameda, California, went online. "I decided that instead of waiting for someone else to give me information, I'd find it myself," Winckler says.
He found a dizzying collection of Web sites--some based on well-documented medical research, others anecdotal at best. Many touted "alternative" treatments and miraculous cures for virtually any type of ailment--usually for a steep price.
Winckler became increasingly suspicious of these alternative treatment sites, especially the ones that made sweeping claims of cures. "Any site that 'promised' anything set off my B.S. meter," Winckler says. "With cancer, you quickly learn that there are no promises."
False hope is the lure used by many pseudomedical sites, which often target consumers afflicted with serious illnesses such as cancer or AIDS, or from chronic conditions like headaches, arthritis, or back pain. People who respond to the come-ons are typically asked to pay thousands of dollars up front for "treatment fees" and to travel at their own expense to foreign countries for useless--and sometimes even harmful--treatments.
But you don't need a chronic or debilitating disease to get caught in an online health scam. Countless Web hucksters sell fake weight-loss formulas or potentially dangerous dietary supplements for building pro wrestlera??style muscles.
And this spring's outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) triggered a flood of sites making questionable claims that their products would cure the new disease or could protect against it.
The Feds Step In
Federal agencies are cracking down. The Federal Trade Commission launched Operation Cure-All in 1999 to educate consumers on how to recognize health fraud.
Since launching the site, U.S. authorities have filed 18 actions against Internet sites for allegedly making unsubstantiated health claims; and the Food and Drug Administration has ramped up its efforts to curtail Internet medical fraud. Earlier this year, federal officials working with authorities in Canada and Mexico shut down a Canadian company charged with luring American cancer patients to Mexico for phony treatments involving magnetic fields. The FTC estimates that hundreds of other sites have shut down after the commission filed suit against them or have excised unproven medical claims from their online literature after receiving advisory letters from the commission.
No amount of government action will eliminate all online quacks, however. They're notoriously difficult to police--not only because they are so numerous, but because many of them operate overseas, beyond the reach of U.S. laws.
Besides robbing people of time and money, medical fraudsters can mislead critically ill victims into thinking that they're cured; convince them to discontinue other, life-prolonging treatments; or induce them to stop taking precautions that prevent spreading the illness.
Quack sites also introduce risks in the form of dangerous combinations of drugs and herbs. For example, Saint-John's-wort, an herb that some people use to fight depression, has been much touted online as a cure-all even though medical research has shown serious drug interaction risks for HIV/AIDS patients.
Unfortunately, it's not always easy to tell which medical Web sites are peddling cyberplacebos. To gain credibility, some sites imitate medical logos or icons, or include the names of well-known organizations to imply an affiliation with them.
Your best bet in seeking online medical information is to try university-affiliated sites and such well-established medical Web sites as those hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society, the Mayo Clinic, Medlineplus, and the National Institutes of Health.
Also, although no universally recognized Better Business Bureaua??style icon is synonymous with trustworthy online medical information, an organization called Health on the Net Foundation has established a set of standards that can help you find sites with medical integrity; for more information, click on the HONcode link at the site.
Herbal Hype
Be cautious at sites that hawk herbal supplements. Though doctors I spoke with disagreed over the precise overall value of these substances, they concurred that many Web sites don't market them responsibly and often associate them with unsubstantiated medical claims.
Similarly, avoid sites that use phrases like "secret remedy" or "astounding breakthrough"--or that blithely bandy about undefined scientific-sounding terms or acronyms such as "oxidative phosphorylation" or "ICHT."
The same rules that define a safe e-commerce site apply to a trustworthy medical site: Look for a Webmaster link and full contact information, including the name of the organization, a physical mailing address, and a phone number.
Once you've identified some credible sites, use them--and the sites to which they link--to become well-grounded in the particular medical condition you're researching. The more you know about the subject, the more adept you'll be at identifying misinformation.
Plenty of resources on the Web can help you learn more about medical fraud. Probably the most comprehensive (and certainly the most opinionated) is Quackwatch.org, which offers a virtual library of articles, plus tips and advice, a discussion group, medical resources, and even help for those who've been duped.
If you suspect you've been had by a fraudulent medical site, help protect others from falling victim--report the site to the FTC, to your state attorney general, and to the FDA.
We have to protect ourselves from online predators who try to sell false hope to vulnerable people. The best ways to fight back are by educating yourself, learning to recognize deception, and--as cancer survivor Terry Winckler puts it--"leaving your desperation off the keyboard."
Anne Kandra is a contributing editor for PC World. E-mail her at consumerwatch@pcworld.com. Go here for more Consumer Watch columns.