LAND OF FAKES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23202, 28 May 1937, Page 12

LAND OF FAKES

/ CANCER "CURES- \ AN AMERICAN PROBLEM „ With the air flooded with advertising for one patent medicine or an-' other and with the lack of legislative means for the suppression of, "quackery," the American Medical Association is facing a difficult problem at the present time, stated ur H M. Peery, a radiologist from Eugene, Oregon, who passed through on the Mariposa. A great deal of harm was being done, he said, by. means of these serums and elixirs which were supposed to be cures for all sorts of diseases. . Dr Peery was dealing with the research work being carried on m America on the question of cancer causation and treatment. A great deal of work has been done, he said, mainly through the development of efficient X-ray apparatus. It was only in the oast few years that medical men had had,the benefit ot. 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 use the mails to defraud, and we can stop; them from shipping from one State to another packages that have mis-, leading statements on the label, or that have contents that contravene the pure foods regulations. "But the radio is free and easy—and they are using that. Faked patent medicines and cosmetics take up, I think, the majority of sponsored programmes. In addition some of the powerful companies own their own stations and put over what they like. There was one doctor, purely a faker, who owned a very powerful, radio station in Kansas. As.the.re-, suit of the efforts of the American Medical Association this doctor was forced four or five years ago to close down in America, but he just shifted across the border into Mexico and' put up a new big powerful station. Later, I believe, he had trouble with the Mexican Government and for a while he established his station on. a ship, which cruised outside the threemile limit at sea. That doctor maintained a hospital in Mexico, and his big word over the air was ' the prostate gland.' The public is gullible, and to anyone who is not trained iri medicine these 'cures' sound quite all right over the air." One of the things which they were fighting at the present time, said the doctor, was a patent "cancer curfc," which was in the form of a serum. , "The country is full of cults, and something-opaths—most of them paths that eventualy lead to the grave," said the doctor. •. "'