LAND OF FAKES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 113, 14 May 1937, Page 8

LAND OF FAKES.

CANCER "CURES."

AN AMERICAN PROBLEM.

MEDICAL MEN'S FIGHT.

With the air flooded with advertising for one patent medicine or another and with the lack or legislative means for the suppression of "quackery," the American Medical Association is facing a difficult problem at the present time, stated Dr. H. M. Peery, a radiologist from Eugene, Oregon, who is a through paesenger on the Mariposa. A great deal of harm wae being done, he said, by means of these eeruma and elixirs which were supposed to be cures for all ports of diseaees.

Dr. Peery wae dealing with the research work being carried on in America on the question of cancer causation and treatment. A great deal of work had been done,'he said, mainly through the development of efficient X-ray apparatus. It was only in the past few years that medical men had had the benefit of really adequate apparatus of this sort. As yet, however, nothing of a really vital nature had been discovered.

"As yet there are only three recognised ways of treating cancer." said Dr. Peery. "They are surgery. X-ray and radium. The American Medical Association is trying by means of newspaper propaganda and by 'shorts' on the movies to bring home that fact to the public, for, as you know, America is a great land of fakes. We have not the legislation to combat them, though I guess in time we will get it. At present they are not allowed to usu the mails to defraud, and we can stop them from shipping from one State to another packages that have misleading statements on the label, or that have eontents that contravene the pure foods regulations. Radio Advertising. "But the radio is free and easy—and they are using that. Faked patent liie.licines and cosmetics take up, 1 think, the majority of sponsored programme''. In addition some of the powerful emupanic-; own their own stations and put over what they like. There wars one doctor, purely a faker, who owned a very powerful radio station in Kansas. As the result of the efforts of the American Medical Association this doctor was forced four or five vears Jigo to close down in America, but he j"ist shifted across the border into Mexico and put up a new big powerful station. Later. I lielieve. he had trouble with the Mexican (iiivprnnient and for a while he established his station on a ship, which cruised outside the three-mile limit at sea. That doctor maintained a hospital in Mexico, ami his big word over the air was 'the prostate gland. . The publicis gullible, and to anyone who m not trained in medicine these 'cures" sound quite all right over the air."

One of the things which thev were fighting at the present time, sai.l the doctor, was a patent '•cancer cure," which was in the form of a serum.

"The country is full of cults, and something-opaths— most of them paths that eventually lead to the grave," said the doctor.

Dr. Peery, who is on a holiday visit to Australia, will he returning here on the next visit of the Maripoaa.