Global prevalence of quackery practices: A scoping review of definitions, regulations and allied healthcare.

Advancements in medical science and digital access made it easier for individuals to seek appropriate treatment. Despite living in the current information era, the practice of quackery has continued worldwide. The current scoping review was planned to explore different definitions and laws related to quackery, and the acceptance of allied healthcare services in traditional, cultural and legal contexts. The review examined a total of 3,327 published studies and 400 pieces of grey literature, including existing laws, regulatory authority websites, news articles and reports. A total of 56 studies and 21 excerpts were shortlisted for analysis. The definitions of quackery varied significantly across regions, but a general consensus is that unauthorised healthcare practices constitute quackery. Legal perspectives differed worldwide, with Europe, North America and Oceania discouraging allied healthcare services, such as homeopathy, naturopathy and traditional methods, considering them quackery. In contrast, Asian and African regions endorsed allied healthcare and established provider registration and licensing systems.

A voyage to Argentina: the Asuero case and the illegal practice of medicine (Buenos Aires, 1930). / Un viaje a la Argentina: el caso Asuero y la práctica ilegal de la medicina (Buenos Aires, 1930).

This article examines the activities of a well-known figure who, during his stay in Argentina, influenced life in Buenos Aires by cultivating his connections to medical science, the political sphere and the news media. The person in question was Fernando Asuero, an ear, nose and throat specialist from San Sebastián (Spain), whose activities in Buenos Aires in 1930 allow us to examine the conflicts within the healing arts, a field rife with competitors and numerous concurrent and opposing traditions. Using a biographical approach centered on a case study, this article shows that, at certain points, the disputes over cognitive monopoly ended up being debated within a courtroom.

Indagamos el derrotero de un personaje que, durante su estadía en Argentina, incidió en la vida porteña mediante los vínculos que trazó con la ciencia galénica, la esfera política y los medios de comunicación. Nos referimos a Fernando Asuero, especialista en nariz, garganta y oídos, oriundo de San Sebastián (España), figura cuyo itinerario por Buenos Aires en 1930 nos permite avizorar enfrentamientos propios del arte de curar, campo minado de competidores y cuantiosas tradiciones concomitantes y contrapuestas. A partir de una aproximación biográfica centrada en un estudio de caso mostraremos que, en ciertas oportunidades, los litigios imbricados al monopolio cognitivo terminaron por debatirse en el interior de un juzgado.

Un viaje a la Argentina: el caso Asuero y la práctica ilegal de la medicina (Buenos Aires, 1930) / A voyage to Argentina: the Asuero case and the illegal practice of medicine (Buenos Aires, 1930)

Resumen Indagamos el derrotero de un personaje que, durante su estadía en Argentina, incidió en la vida porteña mediante los vínculos que trazó con la ciencia galénica, la esfera política y los medios de comunicación. Nos referimos a Fernando Asuero, especialista en nariz, garganta y oídos, oriundo de San Sebastián (España), figura cuyo itinerario por Buenos Aires en 1930 nos permite avizorar enfrentamientos propios del arte de curar, campo minado de competidores y cuantiosas tradiciones concomitantes y contrapuestas. A partir de una aproximación biográfica centrada en un estudio de caso mostraremos que, en ciertas oportunidades, los litigios imbricados al monopolio cognitivo terminaron por debatirse en el interior de un juzgado.

Abstract This article examines the activities of a well-known figure who, during his stay in Argentina, influenced life in Buenos Aires by cultivating his connections to medical science, the political sphere and the news media. The person in question was Fernando Asuero, an ear, nose and throat specialist from San Sebastián (Spain), whose activities in Buenos Aires in 1930 allow us to examine the conflicts within the healing arts, a field rife with competitors and numerous concurrent and opposing traditions. Using a biographical approach centered on a case study, this article shows that, at certain points, the disputes over cognitive monopoly ended up being debated within a courtroom.

Quackery in Dental Practice in Nepal.

Quackery and fraud in dental practice, seen in many countries, is also rampant in Nepal, and they are unethical practices. There is a growing need for strict enforcement of government policy measures to eliminate quackery and fraudulent dental practice in Nepal. The government should mobilize all dental workforce (dental specialists, dentists, and dental auxiliaries) and aware of their responsibilities and limitations. This article presents a brief review showing some cases of malpractice in dentistry in Nepal.

Publicity, politics, and professoriate in fin-de-siècle Vienna: The misconduct of the embryologist Samuel Leopold Schenk.

This essay uses the case of the fin-de-siècle Vienna embryologist Samuel Leopold Schenk to analyze the factors at play in allegations of misconduct. In 1898, Schenk published a book titled Theorie Schenk. Einfluss auf das Geschlechtsverhältnis (Schenk's theory. Influence on the sex ratio). The book argued that, by changing their diet, women trying to conceive could influence egg maturation and consequently select the sex of their offspring. This cross between a scientific monograph and a popular advice book received enormous publicity but also spurred first the Vienna Medical Association and then the Senate of the University of Vienna to accuse Schenk of poor science, self-advertisement, quack medical practice, and wrong publisher choice. Formal proceedings against Schenk ended in 1900 with the unusually harsh punishment of early retirement. Schenk died two years later. I examine the elements of the case, from the science of sex determination and selection, to the growth of print media and advertising within the changing demographic and political landscape of Vienna. I argue that the influence of the public, via the growing media, upon science was the main driver of the case against Schenk, but also that the case would have had a more limited impact were it not for the volatile political moment rife with anti-Semitism, nationalism, and xenophobia. I draw the attention to the importance of setting cases of misconduct in the broader political history and against the key social concerns of the moment.

Crimes against Public Health in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The criminal protection of human health, public health is based on the punishment procedures doctor, pharmacist, ordinary citizen, manufacturers and merchants. It is justified to singleout these crimes in a special group of criminal offenses within the particular part, which is particularly true for those offenses where the focus is not on false threats to the health of a particular individual, but when it may lead to more people lose their lives or get to poor health of more people. This paper will point out the fundamental characteristics of these criminal offenses, their justification to identify a separate chapter in the criminal law, the importance of respect ethical standards in scientific activity, the criminal liability of doctors as fundamental carriers of health activities with regard to the offenses for which the perpetrators appear primary doctor.

Origins of the prohibition against off-label promotion.

The statute and regulations administered by the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") do not explicitly prohibit the promotion of drugs and medical devices for unapproved uses, yet the government has collected billions of dollars in penalties for such "off-label" promotion. The statutory interpretations and regulatory provisions relied on by the government to take enforcement action against off-label promotion are the incidental by-products of initiatives undertaken by FDA through administrative action and litigation early in its implementation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The actions were designed to obtain FDA authority over therapeutic claims made in advertising, even though Congress had assigned authority over advertising to the Federal Trade Commission, and to establish a prescription-only drug system, even though FDA lacked statutory authority for such a system. The principal purpose of both efforts was to prevent inappropriate self-medication. This article describes the history of those strategies, including expansion of the definition of the term "labeling" to encompass matter that was initially regarded as advertising; creation of the rule that the labeling of drugs must have adequate directions for all "intended" uses; and construction of the prescription-only drug system in a manner that allowed FDA to use the statutory requirement for labeling to have "adequate directions for use" to prohibit the off-label promotion of prescription drugs.

'Just a quack who can cure cancer': John Braund, and regulating cancer treatment in New South Wales, Australia.

In 1948 the New South Wales government instituted an inquiry into the claims of John Braund ­ a 78-year-old self-described 'quack' ­ that his secret treatment had cured 317 cancer sufferers. The 'Braund controversy', as it became known, was one of Australia's most prominent cases of medical fraud. This paper examines that controversy and its effects on cancer philanthropy, medical research, and especially on legislation regulating treatment providers up to the present. With the Braund controversy in mind, the New South Wales (NSW) parliament struggled to develop legislation that would protect patients and punish quacks but also allow for serendipitous, unorthodox discoveries. Recent decades saw new elements added to this calculus ­ allowing a wide-ranging health marketplace, and allowing patients to choose their therapies. This paper argues that the particular body of law legislatures used in regulating cancer treatment and how regulations were framed reflected the changing context of healthcare and illustrates the calculus legislatures have undertaken in regulating the health marketplace, variously factoring in public safety, serendipitous discovery, the authority of orthodox medicine, patient choice, and economic opportunity.

If it quacks like a duck: reviewing health care providers' speech restrictions under the first prong of Central Hudson.

The First Amendment protects the speech of health care providers. This protection can limit states' abilities to protect patients from harmful therapies involving speech, such as sexual orientation change efforts. Because providers' speech is more similar to commercial speech than traditional political discourse, it is possible to create a First Amendment review analysis that better balances states' police powers with providers' First Amendment rights. Under a "single-prong" approach, the first prong of Central Hudson can be used to identify quackery, which is analogous to false or misleading commercial speech and would therefore be outside the protection of the First Amendment. Because health care must be tailored to individual patients, restrictions on speech that survive the first prong of Central Hudson would be subject to strict scrutiny in order to leave the therapeutic decision to the provider and her patient, and maintain consistency with current jurisprudence. This Comment examines litigation from California's attempted ban on sexual orientation change therapy to illustrate the conflicts created by the current approach to First Amendment review of health care provider speech. This Comment then demonstrates the benefit of the proposed single-prong approach, including how it simultaneously protects patients from harm while protecting health care providers' speech.

Misplaced hope: misleading health service practitioner representations and consumer protection.

A series of court and tribunal decisions in the course of 2012 in Australia has highlighted the vulnerability of seriously ill patients to overtures and advertising by charismatic health practitioners offering panaceas of unproven efficacy. Drawing upon the findings of the Victorian Court of Appeal in relation to Noel Campbell, the Deputy State Coroner of Western Australia in relation to Helfried Sartori, and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in relation to Reza Ghaffurian, it is argued that there is a strong public interest in the capacity for effective early intervention by government in relation to unscrupulous and unethical conduct by health practitioners, whether they are registered or unregistered. For Australia a constructive reform would be nationally consistent legislation to regulate unregistered health practitioners.

Quackery versus professionalism? Characters, places and media of medical knowledge in eighteenth-century Hungary.

This essay discusses the question of health in the Kingdom of Hungary during the Age of Enlightenment. It explores the relationships and tensions between central theories of medical police and the local expectations of government administrators, as well as those between academic or official knowledge and implicit or alternative knowledge about health. The reigns of Maria Theresia and Joseph II marked the moment at which particular kinds of folk and practical knowledge about healing became visible and above all legible. This is to be seen in the enormous rise in book production, which in itself represented an 'approved knowledge' that found legitimation in new academic and bureaucratic institutions, such as the reformed medical faculty of the University of Vienna, the newly-founded medical faculty at Tyrnau, the establishment of a health department within the Hungarian Statthalterei, as well as in the emission of royal legislation supporting the agendas of the new enlightened science of 'medical police'.