Roger W. Miller

Freedom of speech doesn’t give a person the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theater, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once noted. Nor should it give con artists the right to promote health frauds through ads in print or on the air. Yet, health fraud lives and even thrives, in no small part because of successful advertising. To get an idea of the prevalence of advertising for possibly fraudulent health items, the Food and Drug Administration contracted with a clipping service to survey the nation’s newspapers and magazines for one month. The clipping service came up with a total of 435 questionable ads in publications ranging from the smallest of weekly newspapers to multimillion-circulation magazines. The 435 ads hardly indicate the true …