Welcome to Quackdown!, a joint project of the Treatment Action Campaign and the Community Media Trust, whose mission is to expose people and companies who sell untested health remedies. They also host QuackBase!, a database of unsubstantiated health claims and the attempts to expose them.
At last.
There are just too many of these charlatans about. And, although I probably should, I don’t actually care about the Constantia housewife with more money than sense. Because the ca$h that she chucks out on her skin cream which will knock twenty years off her face in two days is small change to her.
But when I see people – desperate people – who are HIV positive and have nothing: no hope, no job, no home and certainly no money and they are promised a cure for their disease by some quack looking to make a quick buck – well, that’s sickening.
And there are a lot of quacks out there, simply for the reason that there are a lot of desperate people out there as well. You only have to look at the Quackbase page to see the number of false claims that have been made around treating or curing HIV and Aids. I see it in my work very regularly and it is one of the most disgusting things I come across, because they are literally killing people and they know that their treatments don’t work, yet they continue making the claims and selling their useless and deadly wares.
Take Peter Michael von Maltitz, for example. Apparently, he’s claiming that his herbal remedy can cure HIV and he’s peddling it in Masiphumelele, just down the road. What interests me is the note made that he is operating from premises 100 metres from a ARV treatment centre. What is also interesting is those premises are run by NGO Catholic Welfare. I don’t recall seeing that sort of thing on their mission statement.
So well done TAC and your partners. I don’t agree with all your work, but Quackdown! is a brilliant idea and deserves to be well publicised. These vultures picking on the most vulnerable individuals in our society need to be stopped and this is an important weapon in that battle.