[ELI5] How governments allow snake oil “medicine” to sell on TV, light night? Some of these products are dangerous to people, like prostate crap that will do nothing and may prevent the people to survive if diagnosed too late?

Question

[ELI5] How governments allow snake oil “medicine” to sell on TV, light night? Some of these products are dangerous to people, like prostate crap that will do nothing and may prevent the people to survive if diagnosed too late?

In: 1634

Answer 1

They get away with it by being deliberately vague and not making any claims that they actually work.

They drop some hints that a pill “works with the natural balance of your hormones which help with prostate health”. A sentence like this is totally meaningless. It doesn’t say anything about the pills, and adds some BS about hormones affecting prostate health as a distraction to make it sound like the pills affect the prostate.

They can’t simply come out and say “relieves the symptoms of prastatic hypertrophy” because that is a medical claim, and the FDA would require clinical trial proof before they allowed a company to make such a claim.

Sometimes they may out a disclaimer on, but the disclaimer is mostly irrelevant. It’s the words that count. And if you listen closely, they are just saying words which don’t actually mean anything, but if you don’t listen closely enough you might think they meant something.