One of the things we expect governments to do is to make and
enforce regulations that protect the health and safety of citizens.
There are, of course, constant complaints about over regulation,
but generally people accept that there have to be rules and that
most of these rules are reasonable and beneficial.
An obvious area for regulation is the manufacture and distri-
bution of medical products and services. The groups responsible
for managing this are the Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission, the Therapeutic Goods Administra-
tion, and the various government-sanctioned medical boards.
In 2013 Meryl Dorey, then-president of the Australian
Vaccination Network, appeared on the internet radio station
Fair Dinkum Radio and promoted black salve as a cure for
cancer. This is a caustic paste that effectively dissolves any tissues
with which it comes into contact. It is about as useful a cancer
cure as burning cancer away with a blowtorch, although it
works a little slower. The TGA politely asked Dorey and Leon
Pittard at the radio station to display a notice on their web sites
admitting that they had been promoting this dangerous and
useless nostrum. They refused. The notices were never displayed.
The correspondence between the TGA and the AVN over
black salve was acquired under freedom of information rules.
Most of it was just a to-and-fro argument about the legality or
otherwise of selling or advertising products, and what the defi-
nitions of words like “advertise” really are. Then, right at the end,
Dorey threw down what she assumed would be her trump card.
She claimed Freeman of the Land protection. This is basically
that individuals are in fact two people, one of whom has no
obligation to pay taxes, rent or interest on loans or to observe
laws and regulations. (Look up “Freeman of the Land” and
“One People’s Public Trust” with your favourite search engine,
but be sitting down and be prepared to laugh heartily at how
crazy people can be and still manage to turn on a computer.)
This is typical of the effectiveness of the TGA in regulating
quackery: it can make suggestions, it can issue requests, but it
really has no power of enforcement. The ACCC does have
powers of enforcement through the courts, but this can be a
long, expensive and tedious process.
One of the great lies of “alternative” medicine is that home-
opathy is a useful substitute for vaccination (this is called
“homeo prophylaxis”). A leading player in this game of nonsense
is Fran Sheffield’s Homeopathy Plus business. She not only
claimed that homeopathy was a useful protection against
pertussis, or whooping cough, but also claimed that the vaccine
was short-lived, unreliable and largely ineffective in protecting
against the disease.
In April 2012, Homeopathy Plus removed these represen-
tations from its website at the request of the ACCC after the
ACCC had expressed concerns that they were misleading.
Similar claims were then reinstated in January 2013, after which
the ACCC instituted proceedings against Homeopathy Plus and
Sheffield.
In December 2014, the Federal Court found that Home-
opathy Plus and Sheffield had engaged in misleading and decep-
tive conduct and made false or misleading representations by
publishing statements on the Homeopathy Plus website, and
ordered that this behaviour was to cease. Unfortunately, because
the action had been brought on the specific matter of home-
opathy as a substitute for vaccination against pertussis, the
Court’s ability to make a general order against offering home-
opathy instead of other vaccines was limited. If the ACCC
wanted to stop homeopaths saying they could prevent measles,
for example, the entire legal process would have to start again.The final judgement was handed down in October 2015,
prohibiting Sheffield and Homeopathy Plus from making any
claims that homeopathy could be used as an effective substi-
tute for pertussis vaccination for a period of 5 years. Fines of
$138,000 were issued, plus an order to pay the ACCC’s costs.
As Sheffield claimed to be broke and there have been no signs
of the usual crowdfunding to pay for things like this, it is prob-
ably reasonable to assume that the money has never been paid.
Almost 3 years for this to meander through the courts! Two days
after the final court appearance,
Sheffield published a newsletter in which she claimed that
homeopathy could be used to cure autism. The tradition in
internet forums in circumstances like this is to use the single
word “Sigh!”.
The ACCC might have the legal power to regulate some
aspects of the “complementary” medicine industry, but is severely
constrained by the requirement to limit its prosecutions to
specific cases of misleading or deceptive conduct and its limited
budget to pursue everything that is wrong everywhere.
I’ll discuss the uselessness of some of the “medical” boards
at another time.MAY/JUNE 2017 | | 45Peter Bowditch is a former President of Australian Skeptics Inc. (www.skeptics.com.au).THE NAKED SKEpTiC peter Bowditch
Irregular Regulation
A caustic paste can dissolve the authority of regulators more effectively than its purported use
against cancer cells.
“This is typical of the effectiveness of the
TGA in regulating quackery: it can make
suggestions, it can issue requests, but it
really has no power of enforcement.”