describe the different types of people who go to quacks for treatment (5 marks)
Answers
Answer:
What is the difference between quack and quackery?
Quackery, the characteristic practice of quacks or charlatans, who pretend to knowledge and skill that they do not possess, particularly in medicine. The quack makes exaggerated claims about his or her ability to heal disease, generally for financial gain.
Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. ... Common elements of general quackery include questionable diagnoses using questionable diagnostic tests, as well as untested or refuted treatments, especially for serious diseases such as cancer.
Since it is difficult to distinguish between those who knowingly promote unproven medical therapies and those who are mistaken as to their effectiveness, United States courts have ruled in defamation cases that accusing someone of quackery or calling a practitioner a quack is not equivalent to accusing that person of committing medical fraud. To be both quackery and fraud, the quack must know they are misrepresenting the benefits and risks of the medical services offered (instead of, for example, promoting an ineffective product they honestly believe is effective).[citation needed]
In addition to the ethical problems of promising benefits that can not reasonably be expected to occur, quackery also includes the risk that patients may choose to forego treatments that are more likely to help them, in favor of ineffective treatments given by the "quack".[5][6][7]
Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch defines quackery "as the promotion of unsubstantiated methods that lack a scientifically plausible rationale" and more broadly as:
Pietro Longhi's The Charlatan (1757)
"anything involving overpromotion in the field of health." This definition would include questionable ideas as well as questionable products and services, regardless of the sincerity of their promoters. In line with this definition, the word "fraud" would be reserved only for situations in which deliberate deception is involved.[1]
Paul Offit has proposed four ways in which alternative medicine "becomes quackery":[8]
"...by recommending against conventional therapies that are helpful."
"...by promoting potentially harmful therapies without adequate warning."
"...by draining patients' bank accounts,..."
"...by promoting magical thinking,..."