Some alternative medicines ‘dangerous’

Press, 21 May 1987, Page 14

Some alternative medicines ‘dangerous’

PA Auckland Condemnation of alternative medicines and people who practise them has come from a professor of medicine, who describes himself as an expert on quackery. Addressing the New Zealand Medical Association at their centennial conference, Professor Victor Herbert said some alternative therapies could be described only as fraudulent and dangerous. Professor Herbert is professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York. Nutritional substitutes, such as vitamins, also came in for strong criticism by Professor Herbert. Substitutes, he said, were a euphemism for something you did not need, and a way of avoiding United States drug laws. In the United States, he said, any product could be sold over the counter if it

was marketed as a nutritional supplement. An excess daily intake of vitamins could often involve great risk, Professor Herbert said. High doses of vitamin A were toxic if taken during pregnancy, he said, and it could cause deformed babies. “No proposed preventive or therapeutic therapy should be used unless the potential for benefit is proven to outweight the potential for harm,” he said. “It must be scientifically proven to be better than doing nothing.” At their best, alternative remedies were a waste of money, he said. At their worst, they were dangerous. Professor Herbert is also a doctor of laws. He said he gained the degree so that he could defend himself in libel actions taken by groups challenging his stated beliefs.