Readers of the (where else) Daily Mail might have relaxed when Jones announced that her unusual marriage to Dhaliwal, who called her ‘mummy’ and received an allowance and a car from the “fabulous and independent” fashion editor, had ended. Sadly, deprived of even this most trivial of subjects, Liz has turned her pen to promoting a belief in interventionist angels, becoming convinced of their existence after the remarkable recovery of her cat, Snoopy, following an appeal to the celestial beings by one Terry Shubrook of Somerset.

He explains that he often works remotely, using the body of his wife to represent the body of his patient, be it cat or person: he can be many miles away, but somehow treat the patient through using his wife’s body.

He tells me Snoopy is not ready to leave me yet, and does some healing work on him, using Snoopy’s angels to tell him what is wrong (cats have guardians, too, apparently).

These encounters are dressed up in a variety of ways to suit the style of the consumer. If you feel that the west country woo of Terry Shubrook is a bit much for you, there is always the same thing dressed up in a white coat, with comforting words dotted about such as patient, clinic, and treatment, and in some cases the swagger of a Harley street address. Liz Jones is clearly impressed by Sohini Patel at the Tranquil clinic, who “uses angels to help treat her patients’ physical and emotional ailments.”

Like most proponents of nonsense, Ms. Patel has an answer for everything:

“She begins running her hands over me, drawing the bad energy away from my body. My buttocks feel warm.

‘That is your angel, supporting you,’ she says.

Not satisfied by magical buttock insulation, Jones seeks out help from the most powerful movers and shakers in the Angel industry. Divorced from any connection to an established church, the new belief in angels stems mainly from a group centered around the Hay House Publishing Company, home to the odious Sylvia Browne and the “Angel Entrepreneur”, Doreen Virtue. Founded by Louise Hay and built on the premise that diseases are caused by negative thinking and cured by a mixture of positive thinking and enemas, it offers a blame the victim mentality that encourages those suffering serious diseases to find the fault for their illness with their own attitudes- hardly a helpful comfort to those in distress.

Doreen Virtue’s range of angel products stretches from the predictable books and CDs to decks of cards for those intimidated by bound reading material, leaving even the most intellectually vulnerable reader with something they need to purchase.

Over the last 30 years or so there seems to have been a shift in the popular perception of deities, which traces the rise of an increasingly selfish strand in society. Traditional religious belief with an emphasis on self-denial and self-sacrifice, coupled with a sense that divine intervention was miraculous and rare, seems to have morphed, in some corners of London at least, into a concierge service providing grownup brats limitless assistance with their trivial problems, all arranged by a middleman for a handsome fee. The cognitive dissonance involved in this kind of pick’n'mix belief system is bizarre, but with trendsetters such as Liz Jones promoting this sort of rubbish, it’s only set to get worse.

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Oh dear. Liz Jones is at it again. The self described “super bright” woman whose chief journalistic output for the last few years has been moaning about her pointless relationship with the obnoxious Nirpal Dhaliwal has found a new subject to entertain her public: the existence of angels.

Readers of the (where else) Daily Mail might have relaxed when Jones announced that her unusual marriage to Dhaliwal, who called her ‘mummy’ and received an allowance and a car from the “fabulous and independent” fashion editor, had ended. Sadly, deprived of even this most trivial of subjects, Liz has turned her pen to promoting a belief in interventionist angels, becoming convinced of their existence after the remarkable recovery of her cat, Snoopy, following an appeal to the celestial beings by one Terry Shubrook of Somerset.

He explains that he often works remotely, using the body of his wife to represent the body of his patient, be it cat or person: he can be many miles away, but somehow treat the patient through using his wife’s body.

He tells me Snoopy is not ready to leave me yet, and does some healing work on him, using Snoopy’s angels to tell him what is wrong (cats have guardians, too, apparently).

These encounters are dressed up in a variety of ways to suit the style of the consumer. If you feel that the west country woo of Terry Shubrook is a bit much for you, there is always the same thing dressed up in a white coat, with comforting words dotted about such as patient, clinic, and treatment, and in some cases the swagger of a Harley street address. Liz Jones is clearly impressed by Sohini Patel at the Tranquil clinic, who “uses angels to help treat her patients’ physical and emotional ailments.”

Like most proponents of nonsense, Ms. Patel has an answer for everything:

“She begins running her hands over me, drawing the bad energy away from my body. My buttocks feel warm.

‘That is your angel, supporting you,’ she says.

Not satisfied by magical buttock insulation, Jones seeks out help from the most powerful movers and shakers in the Angel industry. Divorced from any connection to an established church, the new belief in angels stems mainly from a group centered around the Hay House Publishing Company, home to the odious Sylvia Browne and the “Angel Entrepreneur”, Doreen Virtue. Founded by Louise Hay and built on the premise that diseases are caused by negative thinking and cured by a mixture of positive thinking and enemas, it offers a blame the victim mentality that encourages those suffering serious diseases to find the fault for their illness with their own attitudes- hardly a helpful comfort to those in distress.

Doreen Virtue’s range of angel products stretches from the predictable books and CDs to decks of cards for those intimidated by bound reading material, leaving even the most intellectually vulnerable reader with something they need to purchase.

Over the last 30 years or so there seems to have been a shift in the popular perception of deities, which traces the rise of an increasingly selfish strand in society. Traditional religious belief with an emphasis on self-denial and self-sacrifice, coupled with a sense that divine intervention was miraculous and rare, seems to have morphed, in some corners of London at least, into a concierge service providing grownup brats limitless assistance with their trivial problems, all arranged by a middleman for a handsome fee. The cognitive dissonance involved in this kind of pick’n'mix belief system is bizarre, but with trendsetters such as Liz Jones promoting this sort of rubbish, it’s only set to get worse.

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The real bread and butter of those who prey on ignorance is not, however, the sick and the desperate. Once in a while they come along and provide a windfall to the snake oil merchants, but in the main profits are made from the small regular payments from what we might call the “serially credulous”. These are the people who will consult a chiropractor for every strained muscle, who stop by the Chinese herbal “medicine” shop for a monthly check-up – invariably resulting in the purchase of another load of overpriced, and potentially toxic, vegetation – and who hire a feng shui consultant and astrologer every time they move house.

So who are the people who keep Patrick Holford so handsomely fed and clothed?

They probably subscribe to one of the bibles of bollocks which clog up magazine racks nationwide, such as the cheapo Fate and Fortune magazine, which seems to have escaped criticism by hiding in the “women’s interest” section of the supermarket.

Random quote (in answer to a reader’s question about anxiety):

Dear Diane. In a past life, you were buried alive while pregnant. It happened in Spain in the 7th Century. As a pagan sacrifice, you were bludgeoned and thrown into a pit, then earth was piled on top of you. A past life regression would help get rid of your fear.

Also from the lucrative Bauer publishing stable is the more upmarket Spirit & Destiny magazine (pictured), circulation 237,949, which this month comes with a free Angel Healing wall chart authored by Doreen Virtue (“PhD”). The chart provides readers with advice on the best way to “bring the amazing power of these heavenly beings into your life.”

The appetite for this stuff is huge, a fact borne out by the recent findings of the Office of Fair Trading, who trumpeted their success in closing down a Dutch organisation selling lucky lottery numbers to what the OFT described as ‘vulnerable people’. Over 6,700 orders were placed, at £20 or £40 a time. It doesn’t say whether that figure represents 6,700 customers or a smaller number who brought repeat business. But if you’re naive enough to pay at least £20 for a random string of digits, then you might well do it twice.

The OFT estimates that basic scams such as these earn the perpetrators around £3.5 billion per year, the bulk of it from a small number of suckers whose names and addresses can change hands for large sums thanks to the potential revenue that can be lifted from their pockets. To snare such a person represents a regular source of income for the unscrupulous, much as getting the custom of an incorrigible addict is for a drug dealer, and, for the same reason, it isn’t possible to reduce the number of quacks in operation below a certain number. The resultant high profits for those few that remain represent too great a temptation, and recruit more people into the “business”.

As long as there are people willing to give up their money without thinking about it first, and they are legion, it seems that counterknowledge will be with us for a long time to come.

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Regular Counterknowledge readers will know that there is no shortage of charlatans ready to take money from people in dire straits. Whether they have money problems, anxieties about the future or a life-threatening illness, there will be someone around to profit from their ignorance. The usual answer is either more regulation or stricter enforcement of existing regulations, coupled with a public education drive to try and close off their revenue streams. It is notoriously difficult to persuade authorities of the need to close down these crooks, but each of these efforts helps protect someone in distress from making an ill-informed decision.

The real bread and butter of those who prey on ignorance is not, however, the sick and the desperate. Once in a while they come along and provide a windfall to the snake oil merchants, but in the main profits are made from the small regular payments from what we might call the “serially credulous”. These are the people who will consult a chiropractor for every strained muscle, who stop by the Chinese herbal “medicine” shop for a monthly check-up – invariably resulting in the purchase of another load of overpriced, and potentially toxic, vegetation – and who hire a feng shui consultant and astrologer every time they move house.

So who are the people who keep Patrick Holford so handsomely fed and clothed?

They probably subscribe to one of the bibles of bollocks which clog up magazine racks nationwide, such as the cheapo Fate and Fortune magazine, which seems to have escaped criticism by hiding in the “women’s interest” section of the supermarket.

Random quote (in answer to a reader’s question about anxiety):

Dear Diane. In a past life, you were buried alive while pregnant. It happened in Spain in the 7th Century. As a pagan sacrifice, you were bludgeoned and thrown into a pit, then earth was piled on top of you. A past life regression would help get rid of your fear.

Also from the lucrative Bauer publishing stable is the more upmarket Spirit & Destiny magazine (pictured), circulation 237,949, which this month comes with a free Angel Healing wall chart authored by Doreen Virtue (“PhD”). The chart provides readers with advice on the best way to “bring the amazing power of these heavenly beings into your life.”

The appetite for this stuff is huge, a fact borne out by the recent findings of the Office of Fair Trading, who trumpeted their success in closing down a Dutch organisation selling lucky lottery numbers to what the OFT described as ‘vulnerable people’. Over 6,700 orders were placed, at £20 or £40 a time. It doesn’t say whether that figure represents 6,700 customers or a smaller number who brought repeat business. But if you’re naive enough to pay at least £20 for a random string of digits, then you might well do it twice.

The OFT estimates that basic scams such as these earn the perpetrators around £3.5 billion per year, the bulk of it from a small number of suckers whose names and addresses can change hands for large sums thanks to the potential revenue that can be lifted from their pockets. To snare such a person represents a regular source of income for the unscrupulous, much as getting the custom of an incorrigible addict is for a drug dealer, and, for the same reason, it isn’t possible to reduce the number of quacks in operation below a certain number. The resultant high profits for those few that remain represent too great a temptation, and recruit more people into the “business”.

As long as there are people willing to give up their money without thinking about it first, and they are legion, it seems that counterknowledge will be with us for a long time to come.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The UK leads the way in festive boozing, various surveys have shown. Even more than the French, it is the British who drink most (per capita) during the Christmas season. But what follows, we all know, is not so much fun. On the first day in 2009, many of us will wake up bleary-eyed and dry-mouthed to symptoms of severe dehydration, fatigue, headache, nausea and a host of other discomforts. The festive hangover blights us all.

The yuletide quacks – eager to profit from our morning-after misery – have been out in force over the past few months. Here’s a roundup of ten bullshit hangover cures which have been mentioned by the media over the last two weeks. Avoid them all.

1. The mulled wine smoothie

“Help a hangover with a mulled wine smoothie”, says hypotherapist, fitness instructor and psychotherapist Marisa Peer in an article which appeared in Metro. The recipe? Blend blackberries, raspberries and blueberries, then “add a little cinnamon and some ground/milled linseeds and warm it up”. Alright so far. But her promise that “the antioxidants will help banish the toxins and the linseeds act like a natural colonic, binding to the things in your gut that shouldn’t be there” is pure pseudoscience.

2. The hangover stopper pill

This is “the only hangover pill guaranteed to combat the adverse effects of alcohol”. Guaranteed by whom? Well, none other than Dr James M. Schaefer, “the World’s leading expert in Alcohol Use.” Right, the world’s leading expert who, for some reason, has a Ph.D in anthropology from the State University of New York in Buffallo (dated 1973). Not exactly an expert on anything, then. And there was one question missing from the website’s FAQs: What the hell is in these pills?

3. Vegemite and water

God knows who drinks this (New Zealanders?), but enough people for Dr Rachel Vreeman and Dr Aaron Carroll, both of the Indiana University School of Medicine, to specifically rule it out as a hangover cure in an article published this month in the BMJ (British Medical Journal). In fact, they ruled out all hangover cures or preventions, including “bananas and aspirin”.

4. The Bender Mender treatment

Shabir Daya, co-founder of Victoria Health, says the quickest hangover cure is a herbal remedy called The Bender Mender: “The powder contains dextrose, thiamine and pyridoxine to replace lost sugar and hence results in quicker recovery.” Drink it with a pint of water and maybe, just maybe, the “vitamins” will get rid of your headache.

5. The five mile run

On Jan 1st, 2009 hundreds of poor, hungover post-revellers will flock to parks all over the US to take part in hangover runs. The good news? They’re mostly for charity. The bad news, sadly, is that the runners will end up even more dehydrated and, as a result, feel even worse. But full marks for effort.

6. Artichoke tablets

It’s another Victoria Health special. This time, Shabir Daya tells us, “artichoke increases the production of digestive enzymes”. The pills also “metabolise the alcohol quickly and therefore eliminate it from the body”. Good though that sounds, if you see Shabir knocking these back with champagne, it might be an idea to confiscate the car keys…

7. Raw Owls’ Eggs

Here’s one from the history books, and it’s 100% natural. Pliny the Elder, a Roman who died in the 1st Century AD, recommended two owls’ eggs, taken raw and neat (according to Forbes.com). Pliny famously wrote that “true glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read”. He didn’t, however, tell us what raw owls’ eggs taste like – we can only conclude that this hangover cure is not truly glorious.

8. Nux Vomica

This might sound like the result of Pliny’s eggy cocktail, but it’s actually a homeopathic medicine. The possible symptoms for “needing” this stuff could easily have been written by an astrologist. Are you “spare, quick, active, nervous, and irritable”? Are these symptoms worse in the morning than after a nap? Then Nux Vomica is for you. It cures over-indulgence of all sorts, but not – as far as we can tell – hypochondria.

9. Hangover Morning Mend

Another homeopathic remedy, this not only reduces “headaches and nausea” but also “eye sensitivity to light commonly associated with a hangover”. And how does it do this? Well, Native Remedies tells us, “it works by helping the body to restore balance at a cellular level, helping the body transition back into equilibrium naturally”. All that for only £26 (around $40) a bottle.

10. Tennis balls in socks

Danny Williams, a “council member” of the British Osteopathic Association, brings us this last cure. Williams tells us: “Hangover headaches are caused by the meninges – the fibres that help keep the skull in place – becoming inflamed due to dehydration. To resolve this, try the following: place two tennis balls in a sock. Feel for the hollows at the base of your hairline, either side of your neck and place a tennis ball in each. Lie back on to the balls for up to ten minutes. This will help stimulate the nervous system to dilate the blood vessels going to the head, which will also help improve hydration to the meninges.”

Uh-oh. That sounds suspiciously like Craniosacral Osteopathy, which uses the “rythmic motility” of the brain and spinal fluid to treat various “tensions and dysfunctions in the body“.

Bad luck Danny. In 2002 Dr Stephen E. Hartman and Dr James M. Morton gave this pseudoscience a thorough examination. They concluded: “Atlhough many clinicians (and patients) have become convinced of the efficacy of Cranial Osteopathy, there are still no data, based on properly controlled research, supporting any claim that apparent symptom improvement following “cranial” treatment has ever involved more than, at most, a form of placebo effect”. It’s not clear why Danny’s tennis balls would cause blood vessels to dilate, but let’s just say an osteopath calling himself “the man with the golden hands” is probably not to be trusted.

The real hangover cure?

Well, sorry to disappoint, but there isn’t one. In 2005 Max Pittler, a research fellow in the controversial Complementary Medicine department at Exeter University, discovered this:

No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to practise abstinence or moderation.

Supporting this conclusion, Dr Rachel Vreeman and Dr Aaron Carroll (see Cure 3) confirm:

A hangover is caused by excess alcohol consumption. Thus, the most effective way to avoid a hangover is to consume alcohol only in moderation or not at all.

That, let’s face it, is one New Year’s resolution which won’t keep for long. And despite the quacks’ remedies, a Bloody Mary usually does the trick. Happy New Year from all of us at Counterknowledge.com!

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The UK leads the way in festive boozing, various surveys have shown. Even more than the French, it is the British who drink most (per capita) during the Christmas season. But what follows, we all know, is not so much fun. On the first day in 2009, many of us will wake up bleary-eyed and dry-mouthed to symptoms of severe dehydration, fatigue, headache, nausea and a host of other discomforts. The festive hangover blights us all.

The yuletide quacks – eager to profit from our morning-after misery – have been out in force over the past few months. Here’s a roundup of ten bullshit hangover cures which have been mentioned by the media over the last two weeks. Avoid them all.

1. The mulled wine smoothie

“Help a hangover with a mulled wine smoothie”, says hypotherapist, fitness instructor and psychotherapist Marisa Peer in an article which appeared in Metro. The recipe? Blend blackberries, raspberries and blueberries, then “add a little cinnamon and some ground/milled linseeds and warm it up”. Alright so far. But her promise that “the antioxidants will help banish the toxins and the linseeds act like a natural colonic, binding to the things in your gut that shouldn’t be there” is pure pseudoscience.

2. The hangover stopper pill

This is “the only hangover pill guaranteed to combat the adverse effects of alcohol”. Guaranteed by whom? Well, none other than Dr James M. Schaefer, “the World’s leading expert in Alcohol Use.” Right, the world’s leading expert who, for some reason, has a Ph.D in anthropology from the State University of New York in Buffallo (dated 1973). Not exactly an expert on anything, then. And there was one question missing from the website’s FAQs: What the hell is in these pills?

3. Vegemite and water

God knows who drinks this (New Zealanders?), but enough people for Dr Rachel Vreeman and Dr Aaron Carroll, both of the Indiana University School of Medicine, to specifically rule it out as a hangover cure in an article published this month in the BMJ (British Medical Journal). In fact, they ruled out all hangover cures or preventions, including “bananas and aspirin”.

4. The Bender Mender treatment

Shabir Daya, co-founder of Victoria Health, says the quickest hangover cure is a herbal remedy called The Bender Mender: “The powder contains dextrose, thiamine and pyridoxine to replace lost sugar and hence results in quicker recovery.” Drink it with a pint of water and maybe, just maybe, the “vitamins” will get rid of your headache.

5. The five mile run

On Jan 1st, 2009 hundreds of poor, hungover post-revellers will flock to parks all over the US to take part in hangover runs. The good news? They’re mostly for charity. The bad news, sadly, is that the runners will end up even more dehydrated and, as a result, feel even worse. But full marks for effort.

6. Artichoke tablets

It’s another Victoria Health special. This time, Shabir Daya tells us, “artichoke increases the production of digestive enzymes”. The pills also “metabolise the alcohol quickly and therefore eliminate it from the body”. Good though that sounds, if you see Shabir knocking these back with champagne, it might be an idea to confiscate the car keys…

7. Raw Owls’ Eggs

Here’s one from the history books, and it’s 100% natural. Pliny the Elder, a Roman who died in the 1st Century AD, recommended two owls’ eggs, taken raw and neat (according to Forbes.com). Pliny famously wrote that “true glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read”. He didn’t, however, tell us what raw owls’ eggs taste like – we can only conclude that this hangover cure is not truly glorious.

8. Nux Vomica

This might sound like the result of Pliny’s eggy cocktail, but it’s actually a homeopathic medicine. The possible symptoms for “needing” this stuff could easily have been written by an astrologist. Are you “spare, quick, active, nervous, and irritable”? Are these symptoms worse in the morning than after a nap? Then Nux Vomica is for you. It cures over-indulgence of all sorts, but not – as far as we can tell – hypochondria.

9. Hangover Morning Mend

Another homeopathic remedy, this not only reduces “headaches and nausea” but also “eye sensitivity to light commonly associated with a hangover”. And how does it do this? Well, Native Remedies tells us, “it works by helping the body to restore balance at a cellular level, helping the body transition back into equilibrium naturally”. All that for only £26 (around $40) a bottle.

10. Tennis balls in socks

Danny Williams, a “council member” of the British Osteopathic Association, brings us this last cure. Williams tells us: “Hangover headaches are caused by the meninges – the fibres that help keep the skull in place – becoming inflamed due to dehydration. To resolve this, try the following: place two tennis balls in a sock. Feel for the hollows at the base of your hairline, either side of your neck and place a tennis ball in each. Lie back on to the balls for up to ten minutes. This will help stimulate the nervous system to dilate the blood vessels going to the head, which will also help improve hydration to the meninges.”

Uh-oh. That sounds suspiciously like Craniosacral Osteopathy, which uses the “rythmic motility” of the brain and spinal fluid to treat various “tensions and dysfunctions in the body“.

Bad luck Danny. In 2002 Dr Stephen E. Hartman and Dr James M. Morton gave this pseudoscience a thorough examination. They concluded: “Atlhough many clinicians (and patients) have become convinced of the efficacy of Cranial Osteopathy, there are still no data, based on properly controlled research, supporting any claim that apparent symptom improvement following “cranial” treatment has ever involved more than, at most, a form of placebo effect”. It’s not clear why Danny’s tennis balls would cause blood vessels to dilate, but let’s just say an osteopath calling himself “the man with the golden hands” is probably not to be trusted.

The real hangover cure?

Well, sorry to disappoint, but there isn’t one. In 2005 Max Pittler, a research fellow in the controversial Complementary Medicine department at Exeter University, discovered this:

No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to practise abstinence or moderation.

Supporting this conclusion, Dr Rachel Vreeman and Dr Aaron Carroll (see Cure 3) confirm:

A hangover is caused by excess alcohol consumption. Thus, the most effective way to avoid a hangover is to consume alcohol only in moderation or not at all.

That, let’s face it, is one New Year’s resolution which won’t keep for long. And despite the quacks’ remedies, a Bloody Mary usually does the trick. Happy New Year from all of us at Counterknowledge.com!

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Venus TV, a UK satellite channel aimed at the Asian community, has had its knuckles severely rapped by Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority – to the tune of £35,000 – over ads for highly questionable products and services. The channel breached the advertising code five times between April and October 2007 by screening advertisements deemed to be misleading for not providing evidence to support their claims.

Products whose ads breached the code included:

• Golden Bull Kastoori Capsules, a “natural remedy” that may help “if you are worried about yourself and your family’s health, or feeling depressed and weak because you don’t have children“.

• The Jorge Hane Weight Loss Programme, whose ad claimed that taking a capsule half an hour before each meal resulted in weight loss, regardless of what was eaten afterwards (the ASA weren’t so sure).

• Deepak Chopra wannabe Pundit Maharaj, a mumbo-jumbo merchant who does have his supporters (though the ASA isn’t among them).

• Roopamrit, an “ayurvedic face cream” that “combines the ancient secrets for fair and pimple free skin and manufacturers’ expertise to unlock the secret of glowing/radiant fairness and beauty”

According to the ASA:

The appearance of doctors in the Jorge Hane Weight Loss Programme and the Roopamrit infomercial gave viewers the impression of professional medical support and recommendation for the remedies thereby further misleading viewers of the veracity of the claims made about these products.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Venus TV, a UK satellite channel aimed at the Asian community, has had its knuckles severely rapped by Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority – to the tune of £35,000 – over ads for highly questionable products and services. The channel breached the advertising code five times between April and October 2007 by screening advertisements deemed to be misleading for not providing evidence to support their claims.

Products whose ads breached the code included:

• Golden Bull Kastoori Capsules, a “natural remedy” that may help “if you are worried about yourself and your family’s health, or feeling depressed and weak because you don’t have children“.

• The Jorge Hane Weight Loss Programme, whose ad claimed that taking a capsule half an hour before each meal resulted in weight loss, regardless of what was eaten afterwards (the ASA weren’t so sure).

• Deepak Chopra wannabe Pundit Maharaj, a mumbo-jumbo merchant who does have his supporters (though the ASA isn’t among them).

• Roopamrit, an “ayurvedic face cream” that “combines the ancient secrets for fair and pimple free skin and manufacturers’ expertise to unlock the secret of glowing/radiant fairness and beauty”

According to the ASA:

The appearance of doctors in the Jorge Hane Weight Loss Programme and the Roopamrit infomercial gave viewers the impression of professional medical support and recommendation for the remedies thereby further misleading viewers of the veracity of the claims made about these products.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!