Farrukh Dhondy | Of Snake Oil ‘Cures’ Other ‘Remedies’: How the World Gets Taken for a Ride

OF CABBAGES AND KINGS

“In the twilight

As I stare at the pink sunset

Through the dry branches of winter trees

An imagined sight

Accompanied by a stab of regret

Accosts my being with a faint unease

Nothing we do is absolutely right

Nothing ever new, disturbs our sense or sight

We are but shadows, my love

We disappear with the fading of the light…”

From Dharamatology, by Bachchoo

Around the end of the nineteenth century an American called Clark Stanley, a fellow with a cowboy hat and a pointed white beard began a profitable sale in what he called “Rattlesnake Oil”. It purported to cure rheumatism and stiff, painful joints. Analysts later discovered that the stuff he was selling had no snake oil ingredient and was made up of vegetable oils and animal fat.

So why, gentle reader, am I burdening you with this probably boring and irrelevant information? Because the precedent that Stanley set has an equivalent in the contemporary world and I, maha- sceptic that I am known as, despite holding strong beliefs, fell for it. And thereby hangs a confession of gullibility, foolishness or plain human “give-it-a-go-it-can’t-do-any-harm-except-for-a-tiny-dent-in- the-wallet-region”.

You see, as my short and happy life progresses, my hearing was/is losing its sharpness. OK, I am going slightly deaf! So, when I felt the beginnings of the loss, I stumbled upon an advertisement that popped up on my mobile phone when I accessed a “news and current affairs” site. It said there was a definite cure for loss of hearing.

The positioning of this “ad” on a news site gave it, in my immediately curious perception, a sort of respectability. I couldn’t ignore it and opened the video, which began with a probably genuinely qualified ear doctor telling us who he was and how he had been suffering ear loss until he discovered, through his scientific medical training and years of practice, the cure for the loss of hearing. Was I tempted to finish watching and get the answer, which he said followed in the video?

Not just tempted, a convinced apostle at that point, believing that I was seconds away from getting the free cure for all deafness.

But now, I’d have to be patient. The video, in absolute morbid soap-opera style, went on to tell us sob stories of how the doctor himself had suffered from tribulations in his family and working life, intolerable hardships caused by a deafness which he had now found was totally avoidable. This went on for several minutes.

Then the video told me that conventional medicine and big pharma- including, I presumed, the manufacturers of hearing aids- had been in a conspiracy to stop the real causes of the adjustment of certain functions of the brain which would restore perfect hearing to persons like myself.

There was then stuff, seemingly very technical, about how certain parts or functions of the brain were really responsible for hearing and its loss and how our expert doctor had discovered how to stimulate these through absolutely natural, if hitherto unattributed, stimuli which he had now discovered, experimented with and obtained through application. hundred per cent results.

There followed on the video the testimony of several “patients” whose hearing the doctor had absolutely restored. They told the viewer at tedious length how they had suffered in their lives through the loss of hearing and how its restoration through our doc’s remedial treatment had restored hearing and happiness to them and their grandchildren. All smiley, sincere, sentimental testimonials.

And then of course, the crunch. The “natural” pills that could be ordered online for a modest price.

Yes, I fell for it and ordered the pills. I took them diligently for the prescribed month. My hearing got worse. I emailed the firm and was told to increase the dose and it would work. I did. It didn’t.

When I related my experience to friends, one a doctor, he laughed in my face and said I, the great pretender to logical and scientific beliefs, had fallen for “snake oil” -- now the name for fraudulent remedies -- medical, philosophical or otherwise.

And then, gentle reader, I came across, on similar websites and through similar apps on the phone, supposed cures for rheumatic pain, memory loss and dementia, weight loss, obesity… you name it: anything that the human flesh is heir to and is unavoidable or incurable!

There are ads, introduced with exactly the video format or formula which I fell for with hearing loss.

They all have the same eight or more ingredients: they are all introduced by a genuinely certified medical practitioner who says he or she is now the leading expert in the alternative remedy. This expert always suffered himself or herself from the affliction until they found the cure. The cure is always based on natural ingredients. The video always has evidence of the misery caused by the affliction. There is always an attack on big pharma and other interests which don’t want the natural remedy touted. Then there are witnesses who have been “cured” by the remedy and how it has restored happiness to their lives. Then “scientific” persuasion, obscure enough to get the viewer/customer to presume it’s beyond their ken, and then the sale of the miracle cure. Caveat emptor!

No snakes were harmed during the writing of this column.