About a year ago, an international vendor of herbal products denounced the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for launching what it described as “a campaign of terror against companies selling natural cures for cancer.”
This allegation was obviously worded to mislead and anger the consumers and pit them against the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC, like the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration), has the Congress-mandated obligation to protect the public from fraud and abuse, just like the BFAD (Bureau of Food and Drug) in the Philippines . The FTC was simply doing its job of protecting the public by weeding out international and domestic manufacturers and traders who sell unproven products—herbs, pills, juices, potions and lotions—they claim to be a cure for cancer.
Unfortunately, these “natural” or non-prescription products have not undergone the strict scientific tests and detailed scrutiny of the FDA. Every medical substance or drug used in the United States today has been exhaustibly tested in the laboratory and in clinical settings for its efficacy, safety, proper dosing, side-effects, etc. before its gets the prestigious stamp of approval by the FDA.
If these herbal products could really cure cancers as their vendors claim, then all cancers would have been eliminated from the surface of the earth and those manufacturers long awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Unfortunately, nothing in their claims could be farther from the truth.
When the Philippine Bureau of Food and Drug (BFAD) warned the public that the pharmaceutical claim that the Ampalaya capsules and related products (claimed to be an effective treatment for, or a cure for, diabetes) was false, its proponents, who stand to lose millions, if not billions, also assailed the BFAD.
The government warning came after some diabetics, who abandoned their physician-prescribed anti-diabetic medications and replaced them with the Ampalaya pills after reading or hearing the infomercials, developed complications of uncontrolled diabetes (visual, cardiovascular, and kidney problems, etc), some even lapsing into diabetic coma and others dying.
As we have reported in this column a couple of years ago, eating the vegetable ampalaya (bitter melon) had been found to lower blood sugar. Taking a cue from this medical discovery, enterprising companies marketed these ampalaya pills and similar products in various forms, and advertised them as they did, confusing the ignorant and gullible consumers, many of them subsequently adversely affected.
While ampalaya vegetable can lower blood sugar, it is not effective enough to be used alone to treat diabetes. It is no substitute for the time-tested proprietary medications available today in drug stores. As an adjunct to the FDA/BFAD approved medications, eating ampalaya and its leaves is safer, tastier, more enjoyable, healthier, and at least 95% cheaper than those ampalaya capsules on the market. These capsules are beneficial only to the vendors’ financial health.
But the greater tragedy to the thousands of unsuspecting consumers is inflicted by manufacturers of herbal and “food supplement” because they sell false hopes, victimizing cancer patients who are so desperate they would cling to anything, even to a knife, just to find a possible cure for the deadly malignancy that ails them. This act of greed is most cruel and unconscionable. Medical statistics have shown that all patients who resorted to these unproven alternative “cures for cancer,” did not lose their fatal illness. All they lost were their life and part of their savings. The anecdotal herbal treatment successes reported were nothing but cases of benign or non-malignant conditions misdiagnosed (intentionally or otherwise) as cancers to begin with.
Today’s great mind-boggling advances in medical diagnosis and therapeutics, and in science as a whole, are indeed awesome. They provide promising opportunities for better health, more enjoyable life, and greater longevity. It behooves all of us to take full advantage of the wonders of modern medicine if we could, and not succumb to charlatan claims. In taking good care of our health and the only one life we possess, we have to be well-informed and wisely cautious and vigilant in protecting ourselves by adhering to what is scientific and proven, and to heed the sage advice, “consumers beware.”
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus in Northwest Indiana and chairman of cardiac surgery from 1997 to 2010 at Cebu Doctors University Hospital, where he holds the title of Physician Emeritus in Surgery, is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the Philippine College of Surgeons, and the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society. He is the chairman of the Filipino United Network – USA, a 501(c)(3v) humanitarian foundation in the United States. Email:[email protected]
