Duck off

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.

Unlucky

More blogworthy news from South Africa to share with the the world.

A suspected robber, who has been on the run from police ever since they raided his Pretoria rental home two weeks ago, got the fright of his life when he was arrested as he unexpectedly sat down next to the officer investigating his case to watch the Kaizer Chiefs-Platinum Stars soccer match at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium.

While I’m glad that he’s now behind bars, I can’t help but think he’s been rather unlucky there.
For those who like their i’s dotted and t’s crossed, Chiefs won the match 3-2.

More EnvironMENTAL coolness

After we brought you the ski slopes, smoke rings and heat-guided laser wonder from Denmark, here’s some more green coolness in the form of Boston’s Treepods.

Dvice reports:

The Treepods would be constructed purely of recycled plastic bottles. On top, they’d be covered with solar panels to help power the CO2 filtration process, which would take place throughout the branches using a ‘humidity swing’ process. The trunk of the tree sports an integrated seesaw, where children can get off their lazy butts and start generating some electricity to help save the world already.

Side benefits of the Treepods include providing plenty of shade as well as habitats for confused birds. And at night, the Treepods would light up in a variety of bizarre colors, because if they weren’t covered in a bajillion LEDs, they just wouldn’t be worth having around.

These amazing artificial trees were only designed as a concept for an urban intervention competition and the idea probably won’t get any further than pictures on a website.
That’s pretty sad, because I think they’d make a welcome addition to any urban landscape.

Cape Town e-Toll Calculator

As Gautengers gear up for hefty tolls on their new state of the art car parks roads, those lovely people at ensightnetworks have launched a handy e-Toll calculator so that you can see just how much extra it’s going to cost the Vaalies to sit in queues all day get from one place to another.

Obviously, this e-Tolling is going to have a big effect when it is introduced later in the year and so I felt it was only right that Capetonians should also be aware of how much it will cost them to live and drive around the Mother City as well.
I can like to assist with your financial planning for 2011.

We do actually have a toll road in Cape Town – the vastly over-rated and often closed Chapman’s Peak Drive – but since it’s tucked neatly away behind the Lentil Curtain, I’ve chosen to ignore it. Otherwise, your journey from A to B – and quite possibly to C as well – will cost you nothing. But if that’s not quite clear enough, I’ve done some rudimentary calculations and come up with this quick table to assist you:

From: Anywhere in Cape Town
To: Anywhere else in Cape Town
Cost: R0

However, there may be some supplementary costs for Cape Town drivers:

Views of the Mountain from roads: R0
Use of roads that go to beaches: R0
Use of roads that don't go past mine dumps: R0
Opportunity for Dukes of Hazzard jump from unfinished freeway in town: R0

But it looks like there aren’t.

All of which begs the question: Why on earth do people continue to live in Jo’burg?

What more must they do?

The dry-run of the dry-run for tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament and the State of the Nation Address was last night.

Having two dry-runs means that any problems discovered in the first dry-run can be ironed out in the second dry-run and any problems discovered in the second dry-run might be ironed out by the time the real thing happens on Thursday. Any problems on that day will likely be due to reaction to Zuma’s job forecasts.
It’s hard to drive when your eyes are full of tears (joy, despair, gas).

And despite a widespread media campaign, people still rang into radio stations, besieged twitter and probably moved to Perth because of the inevitable traffic congestion in the CBD.
That’s not a problem to me. What is a problem to me is when they put on their best whiny voice and trot out that line:

Why didn’t they tell us about this?

Because the simple answer is that they did. It’s been in the Cape Times (albeit with poor maths therein) and the Cape Argus. I’m told that even the Daily Voice mentioned it, but no-one believes their stuff anyway.

But I don’t read the papers

It’s been on Kfm, it’s been on Cape Talk, it’s been on Heart.

I only listen to CDs in my car

It was on those HUGE new dot-matrix signs which are all over this corner of the Province.

I was too busy chatting on my cellphone to look at the signs

Some local blogs even gave you the details as part of their public service covenant.

So what more must they do to get this information through to you?

Employ scantily-clad midgets  to go door-to-door to inform everyone in the Western Cape?
Get planes to sky-write the details over the Mother City (South Easter permitting)?
Or just tattoo it on your forehead so when you look in the mirror each morning, you’ll remember? Forever.

What I find odd is that the tiniest bit of bad press about anything in Cape Town or South Africa makes its way through the gossip grapevine via word of mouth, SMS, twitter and – more often – email and Facebook, yet helpful information like this just never seems to get through, no matter the best efforts of mice and men to put it out there.
What exactly does that say about the State of the Nation?

So – let’s have one more go for those of you at the back.

There will be more disruption on the this evening (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday) evening.
Here are the full details.

Now stop moaning and get back underneath your rock.