Quack Miranda Warning

"These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

This "Quack Miranda Warning" is on every just about every woo-meister's website. I see dozens of patients every day, and I never Mirandize them, so whats the deal?

There are three ways to look at this: the truthful way, the sinister way, and the bat-shit insane way.

  • Truth: Anyone who wants to sell you something that's a load of crap must use this statement to cover themselves legally.
  • Sinister: Variation of above--someone wants to sell you something that you are supposed to believe is medically useful, but at the same time they tell you in fine print that it is not medically useful. When it doesn't work, they don't get sued. I wonder why anyone would buy something with that disclaimer attatched to it? When I treat someone for a medical problem, I pretty much say that I intend to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent a disease. Why would I say otherwise? It would be a lie. Also, who would go to see a doctor that told you that they didn't intend to diagnose or treat disease. The whole thing is bizarre.
  • Bat-shit insane: The FDA and Big Pharma are in cahoots with the AMA to keep you from learning all the simple ways to treat diseases. They want your money, and they'll do anything they can to get it from you, including suppressing the knowledge that anyone can learn to heal cancer.
  • I can't really help the people who believe #3, but people who are willing to suspend their paranoia should read #'s 1 and 2 a few times. Unless you're being arrested, no one should be reading you your rights. The Quack Miranda Statement is the red flag that should send you running.

    More like this

    Welcome to scienceblogs.com!

    I would be interested to see someone study whether those with relatives in health care have better outcomes.

    Great, my first comment, and I post it under the wrong story.

    I think most woo-peddlers honestly believe that their woo is effective, which puts them into your "bat shit crazy" class. However, it seems to me that the woo-sters don't need to be conspiracists. Instead they seem to argue, "Oh, that's just the fine print. The FDA is highly resistant to investigating these techniques/treatments so we have to toe the legal line until they stop being so unreasonable. Trust me, this stuff works."

    This line of reasoning plays well since we're all familiar with ass-covering legalese and the plodding progress of bureaucracy.

    If this weren't so, I would agree that the "Quack Miranda" warning ought to raise more eyebrows!

    Let's do a mandatory rewrite without the exaggerations --

    Bat-shit insane:
    The FDA and Big Pharma are in cahoots with the AMA to keep you from learning all the SIMPLE WAYS TO KEEP YOURSELF HEALTHY before you need to see a real doctor who will then milk you for all you've got. (No kidding, some have lost their homes! from medical debt.)

    Jay:
    The fine print... kind of like the one from FDA Approved Drug Commercials on TV with the guy talking 1000 words a minute, stating that "in rare cases, some people have had seizures, heart attacks, gone into a coma or spontaneously combusted." LOL!

    Always double standards. I love you guys!

    Just my OCD coming out, but this shows it was posted Jan 14, 2008 but the first comment was Jan 14 2009, did it really take a year before someone commented?

    When you buy a toaster, the instructions will warn you not to use it in the bathtub. We get in the habit of ignoring the fine print.

    These arguments are weak and invalid Pal. I challenge you to consider these rebuttals.

    âUnless you're being arrested, no one should be reading you your rights.
    âI see dozens of patients every day, and I never Mirandize them...?â
    The Quack Miranda Statement is the red flag that should send you running.â

    Truth: Doctors Mirandize everyone they write a script for. They would do so DIRECTLY IF they handed out drugs instead of scripts to get drugs. Pharmacists sneak the Miranda into the bag, for the Doctor when they include detailed warnings via Patient Medical Information stating Side Effects, Precautions, Drug Interactions, Overdose, BLACK BOX WARNINGS etc.
    The FDA hands out Miranda warnings for Doctors via For Immediate Release - FDA Warnings.
    Informed Consent forms are Miranda Warnings.
    By LAW and as a matter of practice, the medical community is supposed to inform their customers about the theoretical and scientifically unproven bases of the âbenefitsâ of the drugs they are being sold, the known serious and potentially life threatening risks and the alternatives options available.

    âAnyone who wants to sell you something that's a load of crap must use these statements to cover themselves legally.â
    âsomeone wants to sell you something that you are supposed to believe is medically useful, but at the same time they tell you in fine print that it is not medically useful. When it doesn't work, they don't get sued.â

    Informed Consents, Patient Medical Information Sheets, BLACK BOX WARNINGS are the way in which the medical community âcover themselves legallyâ in the hope of limiting suits against their practice. This why the APA and AMA have billion dollar legal funds beyond the private medical malpractice insurance that all practitioners carry to âcover themselves legallyâ. Doctor sell things that don't work and then they do get sued because of it.

    âI wonder why anyone would buy something with that disclaimer attached to it?â

    I wonder why anyone would swallow a pharmaceutical after reading the lengthy and very scary legal disclaimers that they come with. The level of âbeliefâ one has to have in the doctor to do so, is astounding. One must absolutely be willing to DIE every time they swallow a doctors âadvice.â If alternative substances carried the same dangers, they too would legally have to be accompanied by very specific and detailed, yet by no means exhaustive, Patient Medical Information Sheets that pharmacist hand out for doctors, instead of the generic 2 line disclaimers that they do bear.

    The legal question QUE BONO (who benefits) can never be separated from anyone selling you anything- including allopatic doctors who are working to keep roofs over their heads , just like everyone else. Doctors sell the theoretical science whose end results are theoretical drugs. They are sales people who poo-poo other sales peoples products. Nothing new about this rumor spreading, back-stabbing propaganda. It's human nature and doctors are merely human beings peddling wares with the aid of science and science is not infallible; it is an ever evolving system of trial and error questioning. It doesn't know everything and it makes mistakes both saves and costs lives. That's why we have the law.

    "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."
    There is no historical, legal or political context to this disclaimer. In fact these products are FORBIDDEN to make ANY claims whatsoever. This is a complex issue that the public would be well advised to educate themselves about. Using it here to support your arguments does not served your agenda.
    âWhen I treat someone for a medical problem, I pretty much say that I intend to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent a disease. Why would I say otherwise? It would be a lie. Also, who would go to see a doctor that told you that they didn't intend to diagnose or treat disease.â
    Do you honestly tell your customers that you can prevent disease or cure them? I am not sure even God would hang that shingle. Or do you just âpretty muchâ imply it? Is it legal for you to make any such claim? How do you protect yourself against law suits when you fail to âcureâ or prevent disease?
    The attempted intention of allopatic medicine is to âtreatâ disease as it defined by the Medical Model. It is not the only or arguably even the most effective model; it is simply the business model that mainstream medicine uses. Medicine is a business, it sells drugs to make money and disseminate it's theoretical claims through the mass media which in turn enables it to sell more drugs.
    However, allopatic medicine does NOT claim to cure of prevent disease because it cannot make such claims. Based on that fact, it sheds a different light on the term, âmedically usefulâ, which is nothing more than the suppression of symptoms. Symptoms suppression does not cure or even remotely address the root cause of the problem. Allopatic medicines purpose is to MASK the symptoms of the problem, thereby leading the customer âbelieveâ the problem is better or gone. It actually IS in the truest sense of the exercise, a lie, a trick, tom foolery, a joke a dangerous pointless slight of hand.
    *allopatic- pertaining to a therapeutic system in which a disease is treated by producing a second condition that is incompatible with or antagonistic to the first. "
    P. Sachdev, âIs It Time to Retire the Term 'Dementiaâ? Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 12:2 (2000) : 276-279. As sited in Grace E. Jackson MD, Drug-Induced DEMENTIA a perfect crime
    âThe FDA and Big Pharma are in cahoots with the AMA to keep you from learning all the simple ways to treat diseases.â
    This statement is a veiled attempt to insult to the intelligence of anyone who you want to insinuate is stupid enough to believe that other human beings in business are actually ripping them off, lying to them, or are selling products that harm them and the environment, etc. Imagine, as if, Duh, no way man- not the FDA and Big Pharma!

    Clearly, the vast majority of the public is aware of the fact that the government, media, oil companies, pesticide companies, banks, the church and countless other institutions can and do lie to them. They are also largely familiar with the fact that science is fallible, that doctors make mistakes and that everyone- EVERYONE, including doctors, work to make a living. Surely most of them are intelligent and secure enough to grasp that the FDA (who is in court a lot of late, and big pharma (who is a chronic offender of the law) lies to the public, disseminates misinformation and dangerous products that are recalled, kill people and are constantly being found guilty of ghost writing, hiding contradictory findings in clinical trials, conflicts of interest, paying for doctors training. Who are you writing to; the few self-deluded newbies who think their shit don't sink?

    Your statements, simply can not negate the well documented fact that the FDA and Big Pharma's conflict of interests are repeatedly being exposed, sued and fined billion dollar fines BECAUSE they are corrupt and have been so found in the Supreme Court.
    For the history and recorded facts SEE:
    ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
    A Catalyst for Public Debate:Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
    http://www.ahrp.org