Steer Clear of Quack Treatments for COVID-19

By SAM URETSKY

Arthur Joseph Cramp was one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. True, he never received the recognition of Edith Wharton or Ernest Hemingway, but the blurb on the back of his magnum opus begins, “This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.” Dr. Cramp was one of the most influential quackbusters of the century, and his writings, particularly those which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, led to many of the laws an regulations governing the purity, safety and efficacy of the drugs that we take for granted today.

In the early years of the 20th century, medicine was largely unregulated, and there was extensive sale of so-called “patent medicines” although few, if any, were actually patented. At best, they were harmless, although they might leave dangerous diseases untreated. At worst, they were toxic, and could exacerbate the conditions they claimed to treat. The table of contents of Dr. Cramp’s book “Nostrums and Quackery” includes listings for cancer cures, consumption (tuberculosis) cures, cures for drunkenness, drug habit, etc., baby killers (which often contained lethal doses of tincture of opium) diabetes cures, and cure-alls.

As late as 1984, the House Select Committee on Aging, Subcommittee on Health and Long-Term Care published a report titled “Quackery a $10 Billion Scandal,” which described products that had hardly evolved from the earlier snake oil products. The only difference was that, in some cases, a valid treatment for the original claim had been discovered, and then the quack cures no longer found a market. The market for baldness remedies was shut down by the discovery that minoxidil (Rogain®) was actually effective. A large collection of so-called AIDS remedies were no longer marketable once zidovudine (AZT, Retrovir®) was confirmed to extend survival. As for COVID-19, in February 2019, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent out 12 warning letters and five online advisory letters to companies that are selling more than 58 products, many that are sold as dietary supplements, which are unapproved new drugs and/or misbranded drugs that claim to prevent, treat or cure Alzheimer’s disease. There is no cure for COVID-19, and so the quacks are out in force, selling false hopes and meaningless promises.

So far, none of the products offered for treatment or prevention of COVID-19 have been proved to be effective. Some have been advocated on the basis of false information, or no information at all. Televangelist Jim Bakker and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have been charged with selling solutions of colloidal silver as a treatment for COVID-19. While ClinicalTrials.gov lists 1,133 studies at some stage of development of treatments that just might have some value in prevention or treatment of COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a section called “Mythbusters,” which includes the helpful note, “Adding pepper to your soup or other meals DOES NOT prevent or cure COVID-19.” People of a certain age may recall that the hot pepper treatment was mentioned in “Surviving and Thriving with AIDS – a guide for the newly diagnosed” back in the 1980s. Garlic may be equally tasty, but is also useless as a cure for the virus. The WHO also reports that neither houseflies nor mosquitoes transmit COVID-19, and neither hot nor cold weather will destroy the virus.

COVID-19 is new, but there has been a great deal of research into the use of alternative medicine in cancer patients, where over half of all patients turn to herbalism, or other non-traditional treatments. Few really believe in these remedies, but there’s a desire to do something, to be active in fighting the disease, even if it doesn’t work. The most reliable information sources remain the United States National Library of Medicine and the World Health Organization (United Nations). Just about anything else might have been written by Dr. Cramp.

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sdu01@outlook.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2020

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