QUACK MEDICINES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23631, 15 October 1938, Page 28

QUACK MEDICINES

LORD BORDER’S VIEWS GOVERNMENT AND DRUGS Lord Border spoke strongly in the Mouse of Lords recently on the subject of “ quack medicines,” says the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post. His observations were powerfully supported by lay speakers, and debate ended with a promise on behalf cf the Government that measures would, if possible, be taken to include in the educational side of the national fitness movement a warning against the indiscriminate use of drugs. Lord Border claimed that the quack medicine trade was a monopoly which “bled the public to the tune of £25,000.000 or £30,000,000 a year.” Millions of citizens were all'ected. He instanced the case of one firm which budgeted for an expenditure of £ 1,000,000 in a year, a firm which showed huge profits on its shares and owned a number of proprietary preparations, “if we exclude shampoos and dog and cat medicines.” For every £ 100 which the Government spent in making people health-conscious, he declared, the uruprielors of quack medicines spent £ 1000 in making them diseaseconscious.

It was, however, against the advertisement of quack remedies rather than against the remedies themselves which Lord Horder directed himself. Such advertisements were often “cruelly misleading if not actually fradulent.” In seeking to clean these Augean stables, he explained, he was not acting in the interests of his medical colleagues, but in the interests of poor people and the struggling middle classes.

The amount spent annually on quack medicines, lie declared, was almost the same as was required to maintain all the voluntary and municipal hospitals in the country.

Lord Horder described the ingenuity and skill which, he claimed, went to the marketing of quack medicines. It was now realised that the public mind was subject to change, that it was alive to the fact that certain diseases could not be cured by drugs. Therefore the proprietors of medicines turned to something which was in the public eye; a topical instance being malnutrition, which, it was now suggested, could be cured by preparations hitherto supposed to heal, quite different ailments. Mass suggestion by means of newspapers, hoardings, wireless, kinemas, and aeroplanes had played on the chief emotion —fear. In the U.S.A., in some of the dominions, there were penalties for the making of false claims to cure In this country reputable newspapers endeavoured to create an advertisement censorship of their own; but no newspaper censorship could effectively deal with the matter. Those newspapers which were trying unsuccessfully to control the exploitation of their readers would be protected and not penalised as they were now if there was some form of central control.

Lord Faringdon. in lighter vein, declared that many of the preparations which had been described were the present-day equivalent of the love philtre. Lord Addison, a former Minister of Health, strongly commended Lord Horder upon raising the matter. Viscount Gage, for the Government, analysed the situation dispassionately. We were, he agreed, behind other countries in the matter, and he agreed that it was one which might constitute an obstacle to the national fitness which all desired to see. But the difficulty lay with the individual. “ If people prefer to diagnose and treat their own complaints,” he observed, “ it is largely their own responsibility if they suffer in consequence.” In theory there was a case for controlling advertisements, but it would be difficult to devise a form of words vjnch could not be evaded.

Lord Herder had himself, in a recent article, said that a law which aimed at being in advance of public opinion was rarely a good law.

Here was a matter in which public opinion was divided. Repression alone was one of the most dubious forms of progress. Lord Gage abandoned the matter with the undertaking that if necessary a warning against the misuse of drugs generally would be incorporated in the National Fitness Movement.