The Associated Press reported this week that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched an investigation of Kinoki Foot Detox.
What’s their alleged crime?
They claim their foot “pads use secrets of ancient Japanese medicine to cure or lessen many health woes.”
As my co-author, Donal O’Mathuna, PhD, and I write in our book, Alternative Medicine: The options, claims, evidence, how to choose wisely, one of the warning signs of quacks and frauds in the alternative medicine world is that they claim to use “ancient,” or “forgotten,” or “hidden” secrets to “cure” this and that and that and that, etc.
The FDA is investigating whether Kinoki Foot Detox’s “claims in television and Internet ads” violate the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act.
No surprise to me, but Jonathan Emord, a lawyer for Xacta 3000, Inc., the company that distributes the pads, said, “The claims made for the product seem to exceed the evidentiary support available.”
Ya think?
No surprise, again, but the company appears to have recently “modified the claims for the product,” and the revised ads will not “claim to eliminate toxins from the body anymore.”
So, why did they make these apparently unsubstantiated claims in the first place?
Well, why not? The risk is awfully low when compared to the obscene profit that can be raked in.
The FDA is woefully underfunded and can only investigate a very small portion of the nearly endless claims of manufacturers attempting to dupe you and take your money.
So, what will the new foot pad ads claim?
Only that the “product has a cleansing action upon the foot.”
Would you pay $19.95 per month for that? I doubt it.
In addition, a representative for the company says it now “has contracted with a research firm in Israel to conduct a scientific study of the product.”
Bet we’ll never see the results of that one.
Ya think?
You can find more about this topic in my book, Alternative Medicine: The options, claims, evidence, how to choose wisely.