*giggle*

[simont]

I just went down to the front door to go to work, and found a small business card pushed through it. This card turned out to be paper spam, and it started with the words ‘HELP! Our natural organic healthcare business is exploding!’.

It was, of course, inviting me to take part in a dubious business opportunity. But reading the first two lines I couldn't help thinking that what they wanted was for me to call a fire engine, or possibly a bomb squad :-)

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Natural organic healthcare? Are they making any specific medical claims?

[simont]

You are kidding, right? They were offering me the chance to make £2000–£5000 a month if I was honest and ethical, on a tiny business card. There wasn't room for any specific medical claims :-)

(And no URL with further information, either. Just a phone number.)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll press the mute button on my quackometer.

[simont]

*grin*

It certainly seems pretty unlikely to me that they have a genuinely useful product of any kind. However, it doesn't follow that they're quacks: it seems at least as likely that they don't have a product at all and the "healthcare business" is a front for some sort of pyramid scam, which would make them common-or-garden frauds before even getting as far as the medical quackery...

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I realise this - but I'm exercised by medical fraud whereas financial fraud leaves me cold.

[simont]

Fair enough. Well, if you want me to give you the phone number off the card this evening so you can ask them difficult questions and sic medical watchdogs[1] on them, just say the word :-)

[1] that initially came out as "watchdocs", which was pleasantly apposite.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Sadly, it's not that easy. If they were advertising on the card, then the ASA would take an interest. Information given down a phone isn't covered by the ASA, so it'd have to be trading standards, where all the burden is on the complainant to prove that it's impossible that the remedy being offered works. It's not enough to say that the suppliers have no evidence that it does work. So all they need to do is use a slight variant on any quackery and I'd have to fund a complete medical trial to get them to stop.

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I had exactly such a card pressed into my hand on the High Street in Cheltenham a couple of weeks ago... If it's a pyramid scam, it's a national one already...

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

I had exactly the same card shoved through our letterbox this morning. Maybe this is a national scam!

Organic healthcare boggles the mind. Is that without GM medicines or something, or do we all just eat grass and thus get better? o.O