Posted by: Nige
on Apr 12, 2010
Not a week goes by without me seeing someone claim to have a cure for diabetes. Its odd because considering there are 2 million diabetics in the UK, you would have thought it would have made the news.
Except of course that it hasn't made the news because its nonsense. There are a number of tricks which are used to make this sort of thing believable but we can see through those.
1) Its in a book by someone selling the product. If something is in a book, it tends to be more believable until you realise that someone can write anything in a book, whether its true or not. Its not as if anyone checks before its published. So although we tend to think that books are a source of knowledge, we have to remember that books can just as easily be full of lies, half-truths and misunderstandings
2) They give a reference to a scientific study. If there's a scientific study that says cinnamon cures diabetes, it must be true, right? No. For starters, there is one and its wrong. The problem is that studies start off small, find some point of interest which is worthy of further study and what follows is bigger and more rigorous studies to see if there's anything in it.
Cinnamon is a good example. An initial study seemed to be quite promising for its effects on diabetes, until some more detailed studies were done and found that it actually has no effect.
There's various reasons for this including the placebo effect where if people genuinely believe they are getting some wonder drug, they will think they are better than they are. Or things may actually improve since the human mind is a wonderful thing. So in order to test properly you have to give half the people the product and give the other half something harmless but tell them its the same thing and see if there's a difference between the two. Crucially the people doing the study shouldn't know which is which either, in case that skews the result. This is roughly what's referred to as a double-blind study since neither the researchers nor the subjects know who got what until the results are collated.
It was when double-blind studies started being done on cinnamon (or cassia) that it emerged there was no effect.
But that doesn't stop people from seizing on the original small study, claiming all kinds of wonderful things and selling wonder products. Whether or not they intend to deceive you (or are deceiving themselves) they refer to the first small indicator study as absolute proof that their product works.
Now some of these people may just be conning you, using the study as an excuse. Others may just not know what they are doing and have thought that 2+2 = 22. But whether they are dishonest or not, both types are wrong.
3) "They don't want you to know". The conspiracy theory con. They may tell you that there is this cure, which all the scientists know about, but the medical community is suppressing it so that they can make money out of selling you drugs instead of curing you.
All kinds of claims are made for conspiracies in relation to diabetes and if all of them were to be believed then there is a conspiracy between every doctor in the world, all the drugs companies, all the government health advisors, all the food companies, sweetener manufacturers, the masons, the CIA, the FBI, MI6, Prince Philip, Elvis and the aliens who kidnapped him.
The message is simple. What they are trying to hint at is "they won't let me tell you about the wonderful things this product can do". There's a reason for that. There are laws preventing them from making unproven claims about products. So they can't claim that this wonder pill cures cancer without actually proving first that it cures cancer. So the reason they are being silenced is that they don't actually have any evidence that it works. If there was any evidence they would use it and be able to make the claim.
So this is all a "the big boys are picking on me" con.
4) Its a natural remedy thats been used for hundreds of years in some developing country such as Peru - China is a favourite. This is often used in conjunction with the "big boys are picking on me" line.
It may have been used for centuries somewhere. That doesn't mean it works. For centuries leeches were used in Britain as a treatment for almost everything. They didn't actually work on anything, despite lots of claims that they did.
Basically, we know better now.
Plus, the research done by pharmaceuticals companies has to start somewhere and its generally with a herbal remedy. Take metformin as an example. Its a chemical found inside a particular south american plant. They analysed it and worked out which chemical actually had any effect from the couple of hundred chemicals in the plant. Now they just produce the bit that actually does some good and don't give you the other 200 chemicals, in pill form. This was over 30 years ago.
Now what are the chances that this guy tripped over a wonder drug which the pharmaceuticals companies (with their massive research budgets) missed?
At the end of the day, if this guy's theory or pill actually worked, he would not be selling 58 copies of a book online or spamming you with special offers for his wonder pill. He would be off in Stockholm claiming his Nobel Prize.
Except for me of course, I have these chinese pills which will make you lose weight, cure diabetes, make you fantastically attractive and wealthy. I tested them on myself and here's my study's conclusion... well I would tell you but the big boys are trying to silence me. But if you send $5000 to my nigerian bank account in used, non-sequential notes I'll send you a copy of my book ;)
