As a rule I favor minimal government intervention, but when it comes to marketing medicines, I believe that regulation is essential.
Americans tried an unregulated health marketplace in the 19th century, a period still known as the "golden age of quackery," and rejected it.Consumer protection gains were hard won. Then as now, free-market ideologists promoted laissez-faire. Patent medicine promoters and newspapers, then the only source of mass communication, had "sweetheart" advertising contract relationships, which caused editors to be silent about harm and not advocate reforms.
Samuel Hopkins Adams exposed this in "The Great American Fraud" series in Colliers in 1905 and stimulated the popular support needed for Congress to enact the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.
It was the beginning of what has evolved into the current system of regulatory principles.
In a nutshell, consumer protection laws require health products to be accurately labeled, truthfully advertised and proven both safe and effective for their intended purposes before marketing. Also, users must be warned of possible adverse side effects.
I believe that these represent the minimum needed to assure health and safety. These standards are what American consumers want and have a right to expect.
A significant feature of the Pure Food and Drug Act was elimination of a hallmark of quackery - the secret remedy. Unique products could be protected by patents, but they had to reveal their contents.
I believe that now, as then, consumers want to know what they are buying. The strong support for making labels more understandable, which led to the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, bears this out.
Further, there is evidence that advertising dollars still distort important public health information, such as the risks of tobacco use.
Even quacks do not usually challenge the importance of the safety and effectiveness of health-care procedures. Rather, they work at creating illusions of safety by promoting their methods as "natural," "non-toxic" (even the deadly cyanide Laetrile was promoted as "nontoxic"), "herbal" (versus "drug") or other terms that convey the illusion of safety.
Effectiveness is feigned through the use of "it worked for me " testimonials and unsubstantiated anecdotal reports.
The philosopher George Santayana warned that those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them.
This is sage advice when it comes to the marketing of medicines. Consumers should demand stronger enforcement of the sound consumer protection laws and an expansion within the health marketplace of the sound principles upon which they are founded.