304 Journal of Public Health Dentistry

has been done in this country to apprehend this felonious malefactor that continues to rob our children of good dental health and, in many instances, of an adequate diet.

Herschel S. Horowitz

BOOK REVIEW The Health Robbers

Edited by Stephen Barrett & Gilda Knight (Lehigh Valley Committee Against Health Fraud, Inc.), Philadelphia: George F. Stickley Company, 1976, 340 pp., $10.50.

“Day after day, we hear about our health. Advertisements bombard us. News is sensational. Health books abound. Unfortunately, much of this information is false,” assert the editors, whose purpose here is to expose medical quackery.

They contend that misinformation, often in the form of deceptive or exagger- ated health claims, is disseminated by the “health robbers” to exploit the public. ‘The book’s twenty-four chapters, written by authorities in each field, include exposes on phoney cancer cures, “misery merchants” who prey on arthritics, diet and health food phonies, “make-believe” doctors, pill peddlers, “spine salesmen” (chiropractors), and “quackupuncture” (acupuncture).

In a chapter entitled “Phoney Sex Clinics,” for example, William Masters (Reproductive Biology Research Foundation) attacks dubious sex therapies practiced by “an astounding assortment of incompetents, cultists, mystics, well- meaning dabblers, and outright charlatans.” He asserts that, “The main stimulant to sexual quackery seems to be money. Whenever you have thousands of people who are willing to spend money, begging somebody to take it, somebody will always oblige-at a minimum of $25 an hour.”

In the past few years, Masters writes, “approximately 3,500 to 5,000 new ‘clinics’ and ‘treatment centers’ devoted to sex problems have been established in the United States. Of these, the most charitable estimate cites perhaps 100 that are legitimate. Our instinct says that SO would be a better guess. Only 50 out of a pos- sible 5,000 offer treatment methods that have been developed with proper scienti- fic care; have been subjected to long, conscientious testing and evaluation; and are administered by trained, fully competent personnel.”

Possibly the cruellest of the books subjects are the “cancer quacks,” who “are often closely attuned to the emotions of their customers. They may exude warmth, interest, friendliness, enthusiasm and compassion. Most important, they assure their frightened patients that they will be helped.” The authors of this chapter, Sidney Arje and Lois Smith (American Cancer Society), discuss some of the folk remedies, diets, drugs, devices and procedures promoted for cancer management. The theory behind diet “remedies,” they claim, “is that cancer is caused by an ‘imbalance’ in the body or by accumulated ‘poisons’ or ‘impurities.’ Proper diet would then ‘detoxify’ the body. One such regimen is promoted by Johanna Brandt, N. D. (Doctor of Naturopathy), in her book The Grape Cure. The patient must eat

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one-half pound of any ‘good variety of grapes,’ starting at 8 A. M. and repeating every two hours, for seven meals a day.”

But like the “grapefruit diet” which became a fad some years ago, a grape diet may be nutritionally inadequate or even dangerous. In the chapter entitled “Weight Control and ‘Diets’: Facts and Fads,” Jean Mayer (Tufts Univ.) comments, “Profi- teers . . .exploit the craze for thinness so that they can sell their pills, their diets and their books. The concern of these people is not for the public health but for their own financial welfare. If their miracle regimen or diet revolution entail some (sometimes serious) risks for the consumer, what of it? They are good for the author.”

The most important message of this book is that a person need not be unintel- ligent or gullible to fall prey to the health robbers. It could happen to anyone. The Health Robbers was written to protect the public from being victimized. l h e editors have succeeded in compiling an informative book which they hope will arouse the public “to press for stronger consumer protection laws and better health education.”

--Robert Cohen Reprinted with permission from Current Contents - Clinical Practice January 24, 1977 Vol. 5, No. 4 .

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NOTES ON THE NEWS DUMMETT HONORED

Clifton 0. Dummett, professor of dentistry at the University of Southern California and president-elect of the Los Angeles Dental Society, has been ap- pointed to the Advisory committee on National Health Insurance by Secretary Califano of the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Dummett, the only dentist on the Advisory Committee, was the first dentist in the nation to be appointed Director of an OEO Neighborhood Health Center. IIe initiated the department of community dentistry 10 years ago at USC’s dental school.

A graduate of Northwestern University Dental School and the [Jniversity of Michigan School of Public Health, Dummett is a past president of both the Inter- national Association for Dental Research and the American Association of Dental Editors.

In 1976 he received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Northwestern University.

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DR. TOWNSLEY NAMED CHIEF OF THE CARIES GRANT PROGRAMS BRANCH

John D. Townsley, Ph.D., has joined the National Caries Program of the National Institute of Dental Research as Chief of the Caries Grant Programs Branch. He succeeds Dr. Thomas O’Brien, who has become Chief, Scientific Programs Branch of the National Eye Institute.

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