News and Media Releases

October 25, 2003
There are various industry bodies and consumer deception organisations in Australia devoted to spreading lies, deceptions and untruths about alternative medicine and quackery. They all claim to be opposed to outright medical fraud, but their actions when the house of cards is threatened tell the truth about their real objectives. An example was the hysterical response to an attempt to set up a committee to investigate the most egregious quackery, where the reaction from the industry was not to encourage the weeding out of dangerous and insane practices but to start immediate ad hominem attacks on anyone who was doing any investigating. Until now there has been no body or organisation with the specific objective of countering quackery. Groups like the Australian Skeptics have done a lot, but they have other agendas and other interests which compete for time and resources.

The Australian Council Against Health Fraud has been set up to focus exclusively on the protection of consumers against the sorts of "alternative" medical products and practices which endanger lives, impoverish people, and distract people from seeking real medical advice. ACAHF is not opposed to alternative medicine as such, only to that part of it which is scientifically unsupportable and unproven. Anything which is safe and which can be shown to work is not a problem or a concern for ACAHF. Unfortunately, too much of it is either unproven or cannot ever be proven to work, and much of it is actually dangerous.

The ACAHF is brand new (it has only existed as a legal entity since October 20) and will gradually come to life over the next few weeks. There will be a web site online shortly which will describe coming activities and education programs and offer membership and sponsorship opportunities. Details will be announced here as soon as the site is operational. I encourage everyone who has an interest in defeating quackery to help ACAHF to bring some sanity to the debate about alternative medicine.