Overindulge over Christmas? Can’t shake those extra kilos? Is your arthritis giving you trouble or are your hot flushes getting you down? Could it be your sex life needs a little help? Perhaps your Qi needs boosting or your charkas need balancing. Have no fear! There’s a product or two that maybe just right for you and they’re government approved — but does that really mean that they work?
Search the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)’s Public Summaries for fat and cellulite reduction and you’ll find 26 ultrasound and radio frequency machines.
Many of these are described as “non-invasive alternatives for liposuction” that reduce fat cells by emulsifying them with heat producing energy waves. Costing upwards of $2000 for treatments, they are used by doctors and cosmetic therapists and they do seem to give a “temporary improvement in the appearance of cellulite”, but do they really remove your fat?
A lower-cost option may be a magnetic therapy device that claims to increase your metabolism, but if you’re not into gadgets there are also about 1000 complementary medicines also making weight loss claims.
Natural pain relief is always a big money spinner for the therapeutic goods industry. There are more than 60 magnetic therapy-based products approved by the TGA including mattress underlays, pillows, support straps, jewellery and shoe innersoles.
Some of these products also state they can help allergies, arthritis, asthma, bed sores, blood pressure, carpal tunnel, chilblains, headaches, sciatica, sinusitis, shingles, toothache and tinnitus and that’s only half of the conditions listed!
If your sex life needs a lift, there’s a “penile rigidity device“, which claims “to help overcome impotence and incontinence”. Consisting of four pieces of plastic with two metal bits (which you join together to clamp around your wedding tackle) they sell for more than $600. Apparently, as you walk, the galvanic current generated between the metal bits, supposedly improves your libido.
If “period pain for pre- and post-menopausal women” is your problem then magnetic therapy might help. For other symptoms there’s black cohosh, dong quai, red clover and soy-based complementary medicines, that are meant to reduce them.
If you want the benefits of acupuncture without the needles, there’s even a reflexology product approved as well, but if it’s your vital force that needs a boost, there are pills claiming to “strengthen kidney organ meridian energy to supply healthy liver Qi“.
Despite all these products having TGA’s approvals there is no evidence to support any of these claims. Energy generating machines can’t remove fat or cellulite, magnets are a placebo and the concept of Qi, meridians and reflexology are all based on pseudoscientific nonsense.
For the symptoms of menopause there is no convincing evidence that any natural product can help and some may even cause liver damage, bleeding complications or “harmful effects on hormone-sensitive tissue“.
Some consumers and health professionals are fighting back with some success and new guidelines of evidence for weight-loss pills are to be implemented, which should clear the shelves of these products.
There is also the TGA’s Complaints Resolution Panel, which has upheld complaints against many of the advertising claims for products including wave-generating machines and magnet therapy devices, but they have no power to enforce sanctions, so the advertising remains.
The TGA is funded by the industry it is meant to be regulating and this is easy money for them, so there is no incentive for it to clean up its act. While this situation exists, creative sponsors will undoubtedly keep targeting vulnerable and gullible consumers, by obtaining TGA approvals that enable them to sell product that claim to treat real and imaginary conditions, with a growing range of pills, potions, photons and other placebos.
*Loretta Marron, a science graduate with a business background, was Australian Skeptic of the Year for 2007.
I don’t think approval by the TGA implies support of the product. Sort of the opposite. The TGA only certifies things that are ‘safe’. For me saying a medical product is ‘100% safe’ implies one thing; it does nothing.
Nothing is 100% safe at certain levels. Even water. 🙂
You should be very wary of products claiming to be 100% natural or organic too.
The TGA is not worth a pinch of goat shit, at least you can put goat shit on your garden as a fertiliser. My limited understanding that there is no quality assurance in relation to the therapeutic value of any product approved by the TGA other than the fact that it is not like to have any negative adverse effects on health provided you do not need its claimed therapeutic value.
Provided a quack facility is properly insulated or not poisonous it would appear that you can get the TGA “rubber stamp”. Accordingly any quack machine or facility can be licensed by the TGA provided it is not a direct threat to health.
The American FDA on the other hand has much greater capacity and powers, and it is my understanding that some of the quack machinery imported into Australia is illegal in the US because of their much tighter compliance processes.
One is forced to the inescapable conclusion that both sides of politics benefit from the backhanders from the purveyors of therapeutic goods otherwise a government of either persuasion would have cleaned up this mess years ago.
If the TGA is rubber stamping these pseudo-science products, fine, then they can also be sued in a court of law for medical negligence quid pro quo!
Nugget, you seem to have missed the point, which is that the TGA verifies (perhaps) the safety of the product when used as directed, but does not verify the products fitness for purpose.
The TGA is thus not liable for non-performance and, since there is no adverse safety outcome, then there is no medical negligence. Only a rip-off.
Neat, eh? Where do I apply for a job like that… “All care taken but no responsibility accepted”.
The TGA does only half of its job. It takes money for registration of certain goods about which others may or may not make fallacious claims. What it fails to do is to review these claims of therapeutic efficacy.
Where I come from, this used to be known as the Water Board Principle, “Do nothing and you will have done nothing wrong.” Clearly, the TGA does nothing wrong.