Let me tell you about a couple of unsavoury characters. One that got his just deserts and one that didn't. Back in the 1920s, Charles Willie Kent invented the Electreat Mechanical Heart, a quirky device that was not mechanical, was not a heart, but was electrical.
It resembled a rolling pin attached to a flashlight and delivered a shock to the body when held as directed. Kent was rather vague about how the contraption worked but was quite clear about its effects.
The Electreat would eliminate pain, stimulate circulation, cure Parkinson's disease, improve bowel function and improve thinking. The latter two were, according to the inventor, closely connected: "When the bowels lose their energy to eliminate, the mind will cease to elucidate."
Over a quarter of a million gadgets were sold, backed by personal testimonials and clever packaging that featured the Statue of Liberty with her torch discarded in favour of the Electreat. Kent made a lot of money by fooling people but was eventually run off the world stage when the Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1938 finally gave the U.S. government some teeth in its fight against scientific nonsense. The inventor of the Electreat Mechanical Heart was the first person to be accused of making unsubstantiated medical claims under the new law. During the trial, expert witnesses testified about the uselessness of the Electreat and the defence replied with about 2,800 testimonial letters and various proponents. Many of these did not further the cause. A chiropractor described how the Electreat had helped her move bad blood from the base of the skull out through her nose. But the prosecution's case was nailed down when Kent himself took the stand.
Asked what a battery was, the inventor answered that "there are 10,000 batteries and no two are alike." He did not fare much better when queried about the workings of an electrical transformer. "I am not a walking dictionary. It is an unanswerable question." But even the most ardent of the faithful were shaken when Kent was asked whether he ever used the device himself. The courtroom burst into uproar when the obviously scientifically illiterate Kent blurted out: "Yes sir, for menopause!" Needless to say, Kent was found guilty.
Justice had triumphed. But unfortunately, that is not always the case. You've got to catch'em to convict them. So if anybody knows the whereabouts of Thomas Vigil of Meridian, Idaho, U.S. authorities would love to hear from you.
Vigil and his wife, Beverly, took advantage of desperate people who had suffered spinal cord injuries.
Severe spinal cord injuries have a very poor prognosis and patients have a hard time accepting that they may never walk again. But if they listened to Beverly and Tom Vigil, or read their diatribe on the Web, they were told they did not have to accept their fate.
Thomas Vigil represented himself as a physician trained at Harvard who came up with a drug called Neuralyn that would allow paralyzed patients to leave their wheelchairs. Ever the man of science, he claimed that the formula for Neuralyn, a blend of vitamins, amino acids and extracts of Mexican plants, came to him in a dream.
For patients, the dream turned into a nightmare. Neuralyn, the Vigils maintained, would allow the regrowth of nerve cells and allow 85-95 per cent of spinal cord injury patients to walk again. The cost of treatment in their clinic was about $10,000 and this was to be followed by home treatments at a cost of $500 per vial of the miracle drug.
The high price, the Vigils said, was justified by the cost of the ingredients, the money they had spent on research, clinical studies and their patent applications.
There was no research, no clinical studies, no patent application and the cost was trivial. The main ingredients in Neuralyn were lidocaine and procaine, a pair of common local anesthetics that were supplied by an unethical pharmacist. When the anesthetic was applied to the skin, patients felt a tingling which convinced them something was happening and that they would soon be moving about. The only thing that moved was the funds out of their bank accounts.
Finally, the Vigils picked the wrong patient. A San Diego man, disappointed by the lack of progress, had the product analyzed and learned that it was a concoction of useless ingredients. He contacted the FBI and agents discovered that Thomas Vigil was not a physician and only had a meaningless mail order diploma. Furthermore, the Vigils were guilty of illegally marketing a drug for a specific illness that was not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Beverly Vigil was convicted of fraud, ordered to repay almost $800,000 in restitution and sentenced to 33 months in prison. The pharmacist who supplied the quack drug was sentenced to five years probation and fined $37,000. But the head honcho is still at large.
This afternoon CJAD's Dr. Joe Show will be live on location at the McGill University Bookstore from 3-4 p.m. as we launch my new book, Dr. Joe and What You Didn't Know. You are all invited.
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Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society (www.OSS.McGill.ca).
He can be heard every Sunday from 3-4 p.m. on CJAD.
joe.schwarcz@mcgill.ca
Copyright 2003 Montreal Gazette
http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/columnists/story.asp?id=A0DE6
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