About the Author

Tony Robertson is a retired gynaecologist. He was born in England but has

lived in Africa from the age of six. He obtained his medical degree from the
University of Cape Town and is a Fellow of the Royal College of
Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in England. Married to Fiona they live in
Zimbabwe. Tony has taught and lectured publicly for many years. He was a
lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe before spending the last 40 years in
private medical practice.

Dedication
To those who appreciate the truth fairy rather than the toothed one.

Copyright Tony Robertson (2015)

The right of Tony Robertson to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for
damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library.

ISBN 978 1 78455 454 5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978 1 78455 456 9 (Hardback)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2015)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LB

Printed and bound in Great Britain

6

Acknowledgments
To my teachers and mentors who encouraged me to think, always to
question and only to accept where there is good evidence.

CONTENTS
Chapter one - Quackery - General .......................................................................... 11
Chapter two - Quackery - Hormones ...................................................................... 17
Chapter three - Quackery - Complementary and Alternative medicine (CAM) ....... 30
Chapter four - Quackery - Homeopathy ................................................................. 87
Chapter five - Quackery - Traditional Chinese medicine ...................................... 123
Chapter six - Quackery - Miracle cures ................................................................ 165
Chapter seven - Quackery - Medical quackery ..................................................... 173
Chapter eight - Quackery - Research misconduct ................................................. 195
Chapter nine - Quackery - Food Supplements and vitamins ................................. 228
Chapter ten - Quackery - Pharmaceutical companies ............................................ 257
Chapter eleven - Quackery - Top Health Frauds ................................................... 275
Chapter twelve - Evidence-based Medicine.......................................................... 289
Chapter thirteen - Change .................................................................................... 315
Chapter fourteen Management .......................................................................... 326

10

CHAPTER ONE - QUACKERY - GENERAL

On the walls of Les Trois Frres cave in the Pyrnes, there is a rock painting of a
man, wrapped in the skin of an animal, with his legs and arms painted in stripes
and with the antlers of a stag fixed on his head. The artist, who lived in the
Aurignacian age, between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago, has provided an authentic
portrait of a contemporary witchdoctor in his professional dress, and it is from the
witchdoctor that the medical man of today is descended.1 Quackery is not new.
The word quack is derived from the archaic quacksalver, an earlymodern Dutch word. It referred to someone who sold home and other remedies to
gullible purchasers by fast talking patter or quacking. By the time the customers
found that the medicines they had purchased were worthless; the quack had
disappeared. These days, gullible people still buy worthless medicines, but the
vendors do not disappear, they merely become richer. For every quack who later
proves to be a genius, there are 10,000 quacks that prove later only to be
quacks2. By no means are all of them shysters; many are very intelligent and
write or speak persuasively and with great authority.
Conversely many of the discoverers of very important advances in medicine
were originally thought to be quacks before their discoveries or treatments were
proven to work. Gynaecologists of today use a colposcope to look at the cervix of
the uterus and a hysteroscope to look through the cervix into the cavity of the
uterus. A laparoscope is used to investigate the abdominal cavity. The ItalianGerman Philip Bozzini3 was the physician credited with the first significant
attempt to visualize the interior body, earning him the title of the father of
endoscopy. He first started to do this using candles and mirrors with an apparatus
called a lichtleiter at the beginning of the 19th century.
Bozzini was frustrated by the then-standard technique of blind palpation
or fingertip exploration. This was the only means of examination in gynaecology.
A common saying at that time was that the eye of the obstetrician should be
located in his fingertips. Bozzini, was heavily censured by almost all his eminent
contemporaries for undue curiosity. His most vigorous critic; Dr. Andreas Josef
von Stifft, head of the opposing Viennese medical centre, dismissed the new
apparatus, with its candlelight and mirrors, claiming that even if Bozzini
improved the optics the judgment of a reasonable doctor and the finger of an
experienced examiner will still remain, as in the past, the sole means from which
the patient can expect fitting treatment. Within a few short decades of
course, Bozzini was vindicated.4
The resistance to change and personal rivalries of colleagues has been a
persistent problem affecting pioneers throughout the history of medicine. An
official Imperial Resolution signed by the Kaiser banned the use of Bozzinis
lichtleiter. This was probably at the instigation of a Dr. Stifft, Bozzinis most
11

powerful critic and rival, who just happened to be the personal physician to the
Kaiser. Influence rather than any shortcomings of the actual device may have had
more to do with this decree. In what was an unfortunate and untimely demise
Bozzini succumbed to typhoid fever on April 4th, 1809, a month before his 36th
birthday and just three years after his first test with the apparatus. He did not live
to see the ban revoked.5
Within only three short years from its first testing in 1806 until his passing
in 1809 Bozzinis lichleiter, attracted the attention of some of the most
important medical centers of the world. In comparison even in the 20th century
the value of the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 took over
ten years to be recognised by the scientific community.
Kenneth Walker, the author of The Story of Medicine, distinguishes the
quack from the physician by considering their predominant motive rather than the
nature of their treatment. The most common motive of the quack by far, is his or
her personal gain whilst that of the physician by contrast, is the welfare of his or
her patient. This does not imply that the physician is completely indifferent to his
own profit. It means only that his personal gain is not the sole key to his actions.6
The relationship between doctor and patient is a very special one. Unlike the
quack, the doctors own profit and convenience must often be sacrificed to those
of the patient. He must put the interests of his patient first but there are defaulters
in the medical profession as there are defaulters in every other walk of life, men
who put their own interests first and who are ready to make profit out of their
patients gullibility.
Why do people listen to quacks? Francis Bacon wrote: We see the
weakness and credulity of men is such as they will often prefer a mountebank or
witch to a learned physician.7 This is as true today as it was true of Bacons time,
because the quack has the great attraction that he promises his patient what the
learned physician is quite unable to offer him; a quick cure without any
complications. The learned physician may only be able to recommend an
operation for the removal of his cancer, the quack knows how to remove it with
tablets, an infinitely preferable proceeding. The honest physician may require all
sorts of inconveniences from the patient. He may request that the patient stops
smoking or abandons other bad habits. He may require a hospital stay in an
expensive nursing home. The quack, on the other hand, can promise the earth. It
is no wonder that they never lack patients.
The intellectual is particularly partial to quackery. He or she is very often
convinced that it is professional jealousy alone which prevents the medical
profession from recognising quacks. Bernard Shaw had a very strong bias in the
direction of the unorthodox practitioner. He accused the medical profession, in
the preface to The Doctors Dilemma, of being the strongest and the most
reactionary of all the trade unions. 8 According to Shaw it was jealousy alone
which prevented the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons from recognising
quacks.
The first Act in Britain to suppress unlicensed practice was passed in the
year 1511.8 The College of Physicians was founded seven years after the passing
of this licensing Act, and this College was given powers for the suppression of
12

quacks and impostors. These powers were not sufficient however, to stop
quackery. Thomas Gale,9 an army surgeon, complained in 1544 that while visiting
St.Thomass and St. Bartholomews hospitals in London, he saw three hundred
people so severely damaged by mischief brought about by witches, by women,
and by counterfeit javels (worthless fellows) that take upon themselves the use of
art, not only robbing them of their money, but of their limbs and perpetual
health.
Life was not always plain sailing for the quack. Even before the passing of
the Act of 1511 in the U.K. some foreign rulers had adopted their own private
measures to curtail quackery. In 1140, Roger II of Sicily issued an edict
forbidding anyone from practising medicine without producing satisfactory
credentials and punishing infringement of this law by imprisonment. Mathias,
King of Hungary went further. In 1464, he proclaimed that any person who could
cure him of his arrow wound would be richly rewarded but that if this proved
unsuccessful, then the practitioner himself would be put to death. This was an
arrangement discouraging even to a bona fide surgeon and still less attractive to
the quack.10
Foreign practitioners have often had a reputation far beyond that deserved. 11
Dr. Abraham of Groningen was an example of the special popularity enjoyed by
the foreign quack in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He claimed that he
could perform many fine and curious manual operations not before heard of and
that he had many excellent remedies for curing disease which others have not yet
found out. These two examples were typical of the quack; that he knew what
other doctors did not know, and he could do what other doctors could not do. He
possessed special knowledge and skill beyond the reach of ordinary men. Another
example of the selling techniques used by the typical quack is to suggest that he is
in such demand that he has to limit the number of patients he can see. This is
guaranteed to keep him busy.
Another quack, Dr. William Read, began life as a jobbing tailor in
Aberdeen.12 He later moved to Dublin and from there to London, where he settled
in rooms in the Strand. His infallible eye-wash apparently helped Queen Anne
who suffered from chronic eye weakness. She was so grateful that he was
knighted in 1705. Another recipient of a knighthood at the same time was Sir
William Hannes. The two honours were accepted with some criticism by many,
and their knighthoods were celebrated by one cynic in the following verse:
The Queen, like Heavn, shines equally on all, Her favours now without
distinction fall, Great Read and slender Hannes, both knighted show That none
their honours shall to merit owe.
Queen Anne had a partiality for irregular practitioners as have many
members of British Royalty over the years.
Scientists are often initially ridiculed when they describe a new finding.
Whenever a new invention is discovered the cynics state that time is needed to
show that the invention works. When enough time has elapsed to show that the
device works they then say Yes, it works, but it is no longer new.
Nobel prizes are awarded annually in several fields. They are not awarded to
quacks, but they do have some unusual competition. The annual Ig Nobel Prizes,

13

conferred by the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), are now among the most
coveted prizes in science.13
They honour achievements that first make people laugh and then make
them think. They do not offer financial rewards or offers of funding. The prizes
are often mere plastic mock-ups of humorous items, and they have been awarded
to some of the worlds quirkiest scientists. Recent winners included a UK-Mexico
collaboration, for perfecting a method to collect whale snot using a remotecontrolled helicopter. Another was the demonstration by a team from Otago
University in New Zealand that people slip and fall less often on icy footpaths in
winter if they wear their socks on the outside of their shoes.
Andre Geim from Manchester won the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics and
then went on to win the real 2010 Nobel Physics Prize for his research on
graphene. His work, by that time, had come to be regarded more seriously. In
2009, Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University won an Ig
Nobel award for revealing that cows with names give more milk than cows that
are nameless.
Sometimes the Ig Nobel prizes drifted into irony. The 2010 economics prize
was awarded to the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman
Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting
new ways to invest money - ways that maximised financial gain and minimised
financial risk for the world economy or for a portion thereof
One piece of British research was a study called Courtship Behaviour of
Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain and,
amazingly, a 2008 prize was awarded to a University of New Mexico team for
discovering that professional lap dancers earn higher tips when they are ovulating.
The physiology prize was awarded in September 2011 to Anna Wilkinson of the
University of Lincoln in England and her colleagues for investigating if the
yawning of red-footed tortoises was social and contagious. The full list of
previous years winners can be found at: http://improbable.14
This is not quackery it is scientists having fun. On a much more serious note
and completely at the other end of the scale patients had their hopes raised, and
then dashed, when a much-hyped cancer breakthrough was reported in the
HealthWatch newsletter.15 It was even claimed in this article that cancer would
soon be a disease of the past. Sadly, the claims were premature. The theory
behind the research was good. It showed that two drugs, endostatin and
angiostatin, reduced the blood supply in developing tissues such as cancers
resulting in the death of these tissues. It was hoped that the rapidly developing
growth of certain cancers would be curtailed. Unfortunately, this work could not
be replicated.16 This was not quackery. Sometimes science gets it wrong. The
premature announcement by the media, of hope as opposed to fact, was wrong
and harmful.
A magazine advertisement recently promised You name it; I will make it
happen A spiritualist by the name of Queenie Lane, described in the headline
as a High Priestess, stated that she could be called upon to undertake such tasks
as, removal of a curse, revenge, confidence, weight loss, weight gain,
appearance and job status. This advertisement was quackery. It was the subject
of a complaint upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority. They considered
14

that the specific claim included in the advertisement I will make your dreams
come true. Guaranteed could not be substantiated by the information
submitted to them. The advertiser was asked to remove the claim and amend the
advertisement wording accordingly. There the matter ended after the High
Priestess had made her money. No punishment followed. Some of the public
were poorer.
American Dietetic Association, American Institute of Nutrition and
American Society of Clinical Nutrition) recently issued a warning of ten red
flags.17 The ten flags advised consumers to avoid recommendations that promised
a quick fix, claims that sounded too good to be true, simplistic conclusions drawn
from complex studies, recommendations based on a single study, dramatic
statements that were refuted by reputable scientific organisations should be
avoided, lists of good and bad foods, recommendations made to help sell a
product, recommendations based on studies published without peer review and
recommendations from studies that ignored differences among individuals or
groups. There were dire warnings of danger from a single product or regimen.
Martin Gardner18 and Ben Goldacre19 cover the subject of quackery in great
detail and very enterprising style. I thoroughly recommend both of these books to
anyone interested in the subject. Gardners book has the following on the main
cover The curious theories of modern pseudoscientists and the strange, amusing
and alarming cults that surround them. A Study in Human Gullibility. Ben
Goldacres book was a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller.
I could certainly not improve on their coverage of the subject, but I will
discuss certain aspects of quackery which pertain to obstetrics and gynaecology
and I might stray slightly!
References:
1. Kenneth Walker. (1959). The Story of Medicine. Arrow Books. Grey Arrow
Edition. London. p 20.
2. Martin Gardner. (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Dover
Edition. Dover Publications. New York. p 241. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of
Science - Wikipedia, the..,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fads_and_Fallacies_in_the_Name_of_Science (accessed
July 20, 2013).
3. Wikileaks. En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp Bozzini. History of Endoscopy: Chapter
06. Bozzini: The Beginning of ..,
http://laparoscopy.blogs.com/endoscopyhistory/chapter_06/ (accessed April 27,
2012).
4. History of Endoscopy: Chapter 6. Bozzini: The Beginning of ..,
http://laparoscopy.blogs.com/endoscopyhistory/2008/05/chapter-6.html (accessed
July 20, 2013).
5. Ibid.
6. Kenneth Walker. (1959). The Story of Medicine. Arrow Books. Grey Arrow
Edition. London. p 301.
7. Ibid. p 301.
8. Ibid p 302.
9. Ibid. Quoted from C. J. S. Thompson. (1928). The Quacks of Old London. p 303.
15

10. Kenneth Walker. (1959). The Story of Medicine. Arrow Books. Grey Arrow
Edition. London. Ibid. p 304.
11. Ibid. p 307.
12. Ibid. p 308.
13. Victoria Lambert. The Weekly Telegraph. September 28th - October 4th, 2011. Ig
Nobel awards: the triumph of silly science - Telegraph,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8775127/Ig-Nobel-awards-thetriumph-of-silly-science.html (accessed April 27, 2012).
14. List of Ig Nobel Prize winners - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize_Winners (accessed July 2013).
15. Dr. Neville W. Goodman. HealthWatch newsletter. Issue 30. July 1998.
HealthWatch Newsletter no 26, http://www.healthwatchuk.org/newsletterarchive/nlett26.html (accessed April 27, 2012.
16. The Observer. Cancer drug hopes dashed. 15th November 1998.
17. HealthWatch newsletter. Issue 26. July 1997.
18. Martin Gardner. (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Dover
Edition. Dover Publications. New York. 19. Ben Goldacre. (2009). Bad Science.
Fourth Estate. London.

16

CHAPTER TWO - QUACKERY - HORMONES

In 2002 Michael Henk,1 an Honorary Clinical Oncologist Consultant at the Royal
Marsden Hospital, London questioned the sensational reporting of the Womens
Health Initiative. The reported results of this research caused tremendous alarm.
Was it all really necessary?
On 10th July, 2002 The Times carried the headline HRT is linked to breast
cancer: US study is halted after health fears rise: patients suffer 41 per cent
increase in stroke: 22 per cent increase in risk of heart disease! Equally
sensational headlines appeared in other newspapers. Behind these headlines
which caused alarm and despondency to millions of woman was the publication
of preliminary results from the large USA randomised controlled trial of hormone
replacement therapy (HRT) in post-menopausal women in the Journal of the
American Medical Association.2,3 This study will be discussed in the chapter
under evidence based medicine but what did the trial actually show?
The study was stopped after 5.2 years because the excess incidence of breast
cancer had just hit the conventional five per cent significance level, while the
global index supposedly supported risks exceeding benefits. Coronary artery
disease and thrombo-embolic disease, in addition to breast cancer and strokes,
were more frequent in the HRT group, while fractures attributable to osteoporosis
and colorectal cancer were less frequent. The incidence of all these events was
very low, and differences between them small, yet all were deemed to be
statistically significant. There was no difference in deaths or in the total number
of cancers, between the two groups.
Michael Henk stated that It is sad that despite the enormous amount of
work the investigators put into this study, their paper, and especially the reaction
of the media to it, tell us much about the pitfalls of statistics and little new about
HRT. Focussing on relative risks when absolute risks are small can make a
negligible effect appear huge. For example, only 212 of the 16,000 women in the
study actually suffered a stroke, 127 (16 fatal) in the HRT group and 85 (13 fatal)
in the placebo group. The percentages are 0.29 and 0.21 respectively. Therefore
the 41 per cent increase in strokes actually represents a 0.08 per cent absolute
increase, or put another way, 8 more strokes per 10,000 person-years in those
taking the HRT. Someone so minded could have extracted from the above data
the contrary claim that HRT confers a 22 per cent improvement in the chance of
surviving a stroke, but Henk says that he must have missed that headline! The
increased risk of breast cancer also works out to be eight cases per 10,000 personyears. He goes on to explain that The use of the five per cent probability level,
p<0.05, as the index of a statistically significant result has become a ritual in
17

clinical research. All it means is that the probability that the observed result of a
trial would occur by chance if there were no real difference is no more than five
per cent. In other words, one in twenty significant results are false positives. The
five per cent level was chosen arbitrarily by Sir Ronald Fisher many years ago,
only because it was mathematically convenient, yet it has become the yardstick
for publication of clinical trials. It is something of a quirk of mathematics that the
smaller the absolute percentages the smaller the difference between them that will
achieve statistical significance, hence the number of reportedly significant risks of
HRT. Moreover, the p<0.05 figure for breast cancer is based on a calculation of
nominal confidence intervals, i.e. the variability that would arise from a simple
trial with a single outcome. When the investigators applied a more complex
adjusted method that takes into account multiple testing over time and outcome
categories, only thrombo-embolic disease and fractures attained five per cent
significance.
These were already known hazards and benefits respectively of HRT. Some
of the other apparent effects that this trial purported to demonstrate could well
have occurred by chance and might not be a genuine effect of the treatment. Most
British medical statisticians, according to Henk, would say that a probability of
0.01 is the maximum that gives grounds for stopping a clinical trial prematurely.
However, the action of the trial group in this respect was understandable; breast
cancer is such an emotive subject and p<0.05 is so ingrained in both the
scientific and legal mind that the fear of litigation in USA left them with no
alternative but to stop the trial. In fact, litigation was already underway. The
Sunday Telegraph reported that lawyers in America had started a worldwide class
action against Wyeth, the leading manufacturer of HRT. British women who
suffered strokes or other illness while on HRT joined in, claiming they had been
used as guinea pigs. The alternativists also entered the fray. In the weekly
Whats the Alternative page in the Sunday Times colour supplement the writer
Susan Clark pointed out the results of the trial, of course quoting the relative
rather than the absolute risks. Instead of HRT she recommended treating
menopausal symptoms with a cocktail of phytochemicals, one of which happened
to be an estrogen and another, a progestin! Of course she omitted to mention that
there had been no objective assessment of the risks of the therapy she
recommended. Presumably as it was derived from plants it must be, by definition,
natural and therefore considered by the alternative therapy adherents to be
perfectly safe.
Henk concluded that there was little in the study that should cause alarm to
women who took HRT and whose quality of life was enhanced by this treatment
but millions of women did indeed stop taking it. Such, according to Henk, were
the consequences of the misapplication of statistics in medicine and journalism.
Natural progesterone
Many ladies purchase natural progesterone. It is claimed to be the
universal panacea curing everything from premenstrual tension to puerperal
depression.

18

To digress to puerperal depression as I have mentioned it; on Sky News on

the 3rd of October 2011 there was an item describing this complex and common
syndrome and saying that thousands of women in the United Kingdom, about 33
per cent of new mothers were too scared to mention their depression for fear of
being stigmatised. If indeed it is that common, I certainly never realised it. The
commentator said that doctors could and should detect the syndrome more often
and even warn their patients about the possibility. They could be more
sympathetic when it is diagnosed rather than merely prescribing sedatives and
anxiolytics. These are probably very valid points.
One of my patients, a very nice nursing sister who was in hospital for a
prolonged period of time with threatened preterm labour suffered very severe
puerperal depression and she wrote a very poignant poem titled Mind to let. I
have not seen this patient for many years and do not know how to contact her but
I have decided to include her poem in this book in the hope that it may help other
mothers who suffer from the same condition. I am sure that the lady will not mind
me doing this. I am also glad to relate that when I last saw her she had fully
recovered and was leading a full, successful and happy life. Puerperal depression
is a truly traumatic condition and very few sufferers have the ability to relate their
feelings during their period of illness. She was.
Mind to Let
Mind to let, its vacant,
The owners packed and gone,
They dont know how it happened,
They say it wont be long.
But try and make them realise,
That Im no longer here
This other Mind is stronger,
Theyve put mine out of gear.
There are words and phrases shouting
And screaming in my mind,
With long- forgotten memories,
Of words that were unkind,
Snap out of it, they tell me
Im trying, cant they see?
This strange, bizarre behaviour,
It really isnt me,
A great abyss divides me,
From friends and every day,
How will I find a footbridge,
Nobody knows the way.
Along a long dark tunnel,
With no light at the end,
And only love to help me,
A husband and a friend.
and the rest

19

Back to natural progesterone.

Many patients are dissatisfied with estrogen replacement therapy (ERT)
because doctors may not explain this treatment adequately due to time constraints,
the patients lack true knowledge of the risks and benefits of the treatment, they
fear cancer, they do not want the inconvenience of monthly withdrawal vaginal
bleeds, they wish to control their own health and they dislike the thought of
taking medication for the rest of their lives. No more than 30 per cent of women
comply with their prescribed estrogen regimens. In women prescribed estrogens
for the first time 20 to 30 per cent never even have the prescription filled.
Moreover, 20 per cent discontinue therapy within the first nine months and
another 10 per cent use estrogen therapy in an intermittent fashion.
Approximately two-thirds of those who start therapy with an estrogen progestin
sequential regimen discontinue the progestin after 12 months. Because of this
limited acceptability of prolonged estrogen replacement therapy many patients are
looking for substitutes and they are prepared to accept alternative forms of
treatment even though these may be untried and unproven but marketed very
successfully by misguided well wishers or, being uncharitable, unscrupulous
money-makers.
In addition to this, as a result of the publication of the Womens Health
Initiative report in July 2002 mentioned above, many more women sought
alternative treatment.4 One alternative that was promoted was a transdermal
cream containing bio-identical progesterone. In 1974, Dr. John R. Lee, a
Californian general practitioner with a background in pharmacology, had
developed this cream. It was intended to deliver 1012 mg. progesterone daily. In
the normal menstrual cycle following ovulation, the secretion of progesterone
increases to between 20 to 25 mg. per day.
Lee reported that most patients using the cream experienced an improved
sense of well-being. On the basis of these anecdotal responses, he developed and
promoted progesterone cream as a commercial product. Pharmaceutical
companies in the United States, France, and Australia marketed the progesterone
creams.
Clinical information on the benefits and use of this transdermal progesterone
cream, without the addition of estrogen, was based on reports mostly from the
United States. Many claims were made but the paucity of credible supportive
scientific data raised considerable concern regarding the potency of this form of
progesterone therapy 5, 6, 7, 8 and peer-reviewed studies have failed to confirm the
expectations expounded by proponents of this treatment regimen. Currently,
available progesterone creams cannot be recommended for treatment of
symptoms associated with menopause.9
Lee10 the most prominent promoter of so called natural progesterone in
his book stated quite openly that as with other hormones, any use of
progesterone as a therapeutic modality should be undertaken only with
consultation with ones physician.
Yet there are today, in Zimbabwe and elsewhere, certain unqualified totally
non-medical people openly promoting the sale of natural progesterone.
Everyone has the fundamental right to treat their own body as they wish. They
20