I saw this today over at Teresa’s Frog Applause strip, and thought I’d share it just because I found it fascinating. Phytolacca Decandra, if you were not sure, is pokeweed – a toxic plant with no known legitimate medical uses and a host of applications in folk medicine. It’s poisonous. That’s all I need to […]
With all the good food to eat in the world, compounded by reality shows about celebrity chefs and such things, it’s easy as pie to gain weight. (I see what I did there.) But getting it off is another matter. Which is why the weight loss industry, including its concomitant multilevel marketing products, homeopathic remedies, […]
I wage war against spam, affiliate marketers, snake oil and general pseudo-scientific bulldust. In a previous post about worthless nutritional supplements, I posted three identical advertorials from the “Every Day with Rachael” website, which is nothing more than an affiliate marketing portal for hawking useless weight-loss nostrums. Yesterday I got another one. I reproduce all four […]
As anyone who follows my blog knows, I have been quite active in warning people against sweepstakes fraud, Nigerian scam letters, and other types of jiggery-pokery, including nutritional scams like the Acai berry, Forskolin, Green Coffee Extract, Garcinia Cambogia, and others – most of which are relentlessly flogged by affiliate marketers including the infamous Dr. […]
It starts with spam. That’s the first indication that whatever product or service being hawked is ineffective, undesirable, dangerous, or unethical. Honest companies just don’t spam. From: “ProbioSlim” <oobclfchirgiim@lapostacompliancy.xyz> To: redacted Subject: No more pho | ny d | i••et plans Notice the subject line with the crap in it. Anything that pulls tricks like this is […]
Sometimes I’m just tired, I guess. Normally I don’t pay attention to things I see on my Android since I don’t have ad-blocking software and I’m used to getting the occasional popup or redirect. The other day I saw this: and thought, what the heck. To my shame, I didn’t bother to look at the […]
According to Wikipedia, caralluma ascendens, another name for caralluma fimbriata, is an edible form of cactus used throughout the Indian subcontinent as an appetite suppressant, or so-called “famine food.” Leave it to the snake-oil hawkers to turn this into the next big thing they can make a few bucks on. Got an email today from a “friend,” […]
I’ve written here multiple times about medical snake oil. Green coffee extract (debunked), garcinia cambogia, forskolin, caralluma, you name it: It’s all smoke and mirrors… but that doesn’t stop Dr. Oz and others from making a fortune promoting it. What’s next, portland cement? On that note, have a look at the two following screen captures. […]
Just got this in my spam box today. It appears that Dr. Oz has now moved from hawking garcinia cambogia to this new garbage, Forskolin. The name sounds thoroughly unsavory for reasons I won’t go into here. I found a great post over at Science Based Medicine that says many of the things I’d normally […]
So here’s the email that showed up in my inbox today: From: Ultimate.Cure.17690762 <your.miracle.cure@highly-wondercure.com> Subject: Doctor Jailed for CURING Cancer (see why), Article No. 10754166 To: <redacted> Today, you have a 95% chance of eventually dying from a disease or condition for which there is already a known cure right at your fingertips. Well-respected doctors […]
