The rogue traders

How sad I was to read of the poor chap who spent £10,000 on bogus medicines. Nothing has been said about any prosecutions pending as this is a very difficult area.
By The Newsroom
Published 18th Jan 2017, 06:43 BST
Updated 18th Jan 2017, 06:46 BST

I suspect it would be possible but complicated to prove that the medicines were useless, and the victim himself, having allowed the situation to progress for five years, must have been persuaded that the items were helping him.

There are people out there making fortunes selling items that “your doctors will not tell you about”, or hawking herbal remedies for which there is zero evidence, or persuading us to take expensive homeopathic medicines which are purely and simply, water.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But where does criminality start and end? Even respectable chemist shops are awash with items of dubious use, and all sorts of slimming aids hit the market without the benefit of proper research.

At the lower end of the scale, people like Russell Grant, (regrettably, published in The Star!), make a good living inventing nonsense about some lumps of rock millions of miles away affecting our lives, and below his column is an unrelated ad inviting us to talk to a ‘live psychic’ for only £1.50 per minute.

Dare I suggest that your local vicar falls lower down but in the same spectrum as those mentioned above? There, I’ve said it. Now that should bring the letters flooding in.

To sum up, I just wish society had been educated to have more respect for scientific research procedures, common sense, analytical thought process and scepticism. The charlatans would then have to find honest work.

Graham

by email