One the way back from work on Friday I got a leaflet for traditional herbal remedies, with the one that was given star treatment being penis cream – sounds like they had fun making that one.

Other effects advertised on it included the various remedies being able to help with court cases, make your enemies “show their face” and promote monogamy. All thanks to the mystical knowledge of snake-oil salesmen from Zanzibar.

Shouldn’t the people advertising this sort of thing be forced to demonstrate how effective their medicine for court cases is? By having to defend themselves from charges like fraud perhaps?

One of my earlier posts on this blog highlighted the frequent diet pill ingredient, bitter orange, and how it can cause heart problems. In My Health other herbal remedies got the spotlight turned on them – Saint John’s wart and gingko balboa. These were highlighted as possibly being bad mixes with normal medication.

In light of how these “supplements” can sometimes clash with medication, or even cause problems all on their own, shouldn’t they have to undergo the same testing we put normal medicine through?

My bit of advocacy here is for us to take alternative medicines seriously – to stop allowing things to slide through as “supplements” when the best that could be said for them is that they are harmless, and the worst that they could actually be dangerous.

We need to recognise that our duty as a society is to stand up for our most vulnerable members, who are all too often targeted by quacks and con-artists.