Trade Agency Finds Web Slippery
With Snake Oil
Phony Health Data Abounds on Internet
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON -- Snake oil
salesmen have been
around for ages. But they are proliferating in the
electronic age, according
to the Federal Trade
Commission, which Thursday
announced that it had
identified hundreds of Web
sites promoting phony cures
for 30 different ailments,
including AIDS, multiple
sclerosis, liver disease
and cancer.
The sites are so numerous,
the agency said, that it
cannot possibly take action
against all of them. But it
has reached legal settlements
with four Internet
companies: one that advertised
shark cartilage as a cure
for cancer, another that
sold a fatty acid to treat
arthritis, and two that
promoted magnets for various
diseases.
"Sites touting unproven remedies
for very serious
diseases -- cancer, heart
disease, H.I.V./AIDS and,
particularly, arthritis
-- are absolutely exploding on the
Web," said Jodie Bernstein,
director of the agency's
Bureau of Consumer Protection.
None of the four companies
admitted wrongdoing, and
the settlements do not
preclude them from doing
business on the Web; they
must only stop making
fraudulent claims. However,
Melinda Sneed, owner of
Arthritis Pain Care Center
of Arlington, Tex., one of
the four, said she shut her
Web site down nearly a year
ago -- not because of F.T.C.
pressure, but because other
sites were touting the same
product, a fatty acid derived
from beef tallow, for arthritis.
"By the time they contacted
us, we already had the Web
site down," she said. "It
was strictly competition that
put us out of business."
The cases announced today
stemmed from two "health
claims surf days," one in
1997 and another in 1998, in
which agency investigators
and public health advocates
from 25 countries scanned
the Internet for fraudulent
health claims. Each session
identified 400 sites
containing questionable
promotions, said Richard
Cleland, an F.T.C. lawyer
handling the probe.
Cleland said the trade commission
did not have the
resources to conduct full-scale
investigations of all the
sites. The investigations
are extremely time-consuming
and require a comprehensive
review of scientific
literature to prove the
agency's contention that a
company is behaving deceptively.
Instead, the agency
acted against four of the
most egregious sites, Cleland
said, and sent the rest
e-mail messages, warning the site
owners that the Government
had paid them an
electronic visit.
Some companies reacted incredulously
to the warnings,
Cleland said. One fired
back, "If you're from the
Government, what are you
doing here?" Others sent
stronger messages.
Two months after the 1997
warnings were sent,
officials surveyed a representative
sample of 64 of the
sites. Nearly three quarters
of them, 72 percent, were
operating unchanged. About
13 percent had dropped
their unsubstantiated claims
or disappeared from the
Web; 10 percent had made
some changes and 5 percent
could not be found.
When the survey was repeated
in 1998, the Government
found that the percentage
of sites that had dropped their
phony claims had more than
doubled, to 28 percent.
Cleland characterized the
increase as a "significant
shift," which he said demonstrated
the agency's work
was having an effect.
Today's announcement was
part of what the trade
commission has dubbed "Operation
Cure All," a
consumer education campaign
to help patients sift
through the maze of often
confusing health information
available on the World Wide
Web.
Officials from the Department
of Health and Human
Services used the occasion
to promote their own Web
site (www.healthfinder.gov),
which they said was
visited by 400,000 people
a month and had links to
5,000 other sites containing
reliable health information.
"Our message is: It's quality,
not quackery," Ms.
Bernstein said.
In addition to the Arthritis
Pain Care Center, the
companies that settled with
the agency were Body
Systems Technology, of Casselberry,
Fla., which sold
capsules containing shark
cartilage for cancer and
AIDS; and two selling magnetic
therapies, Pain Stops
Here of Baiting Hollow,
N.Y., and Magnetic
Therapeutic Technologies
Inc. of Irving, Tex.
The lawyer for Body Systems
Technology could not be
reached, and the owner of
Pain Stops Here declined
comment. Jim Richardson,
the owner of Magnetic
Therapeutic Technologies,
said he had cooperated with
the F.T.C. from the outset.
Thursday's announcement, he
said, has been blown out
of proportion.
An estimated 22.3 million
adults in the United States
sought health care information
on the Internet last year,
said Scott Reents, an analyst
with Cyber Dialogue, a
market research company
that tracks the Internet. He
said most people visited
the Internet to understand their
personal ailments; the most
oft-visited sites are those
devoted to specific diseases
and specific drugs.
There are an estimated 15,000
to 17,000 health care
sites on the Internet. Consumers,
Reents said, generally
feel confident that they
can distinguish good information
from bad -- a confidence
many doctors do not share.
"It is perfectly obvious
that some of the junk is junk,"
said Dr. George D. Lundberg,
former editor of The
Journal of the American
Medical Association and now
editor in chief of Medscape,
an Internet health
information site (www.medscape.com).
"But there is a
lot of in-between stuff
that is very difficult to discern."