NEW YORK (AP) — America: land of possibility. And also: land of suckers.
Our enduring belief that anything is possible — whether based in reality or not — has helped the nation become the world’s largest economy. It has also led us to fall head over heels for hucksters and charlatans, again and again.
If so much is possible here in America, who is to say it’s not possible that the next new supplement, device or scheme might make you young, strong, rich
or all of the above, all at once?
In 1897, a Baptist minister convinced us that his company could extract gold from the seawater near Lubec, Maine. A company called Bailey Radium Laboratories in East Orange, New Jersey, introduced a hit product in 1925 called Radithor that it advertised as “a cure for the living dead” that could restore vitality and cure impotence.
There was no gold in Maine's seawater. And Radithor didn't turn people into Adonis; it poisoned them with radiation.
Americans have been suckered by fraudsters so bold that their schemes are now part of everyday speech.
America brought us Clark Stanley, the Rattlesnake King, who sold us what he called “snake oil liniment” that promised to remedy “pain and lameness, for rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, sprains, bunions,” cure “partial paralysis of the arms and lower limbs” and “reduce large joints to their natural size.” America created Charles Ponzi, who could deliver you 50% profit in just 45 days by investing in stamp coupons.
These old examples are easy to laugh at or be mortified by, but we should be careful: We are as willing as ever to believe claims that, when subjected to even a modicum of common sense, seem ludicrous. Raw milk has special powers? Peptides can make us young again? A blast of vitamins through an IV can flush out your hangover?
Why do we keep falling for this stuff? There’s a simple, poignant reason: “People really don’t want to die.”
So says Dr. Lydia Kang, author of a book on medical fads called “Quackery” and associate professor of internal medicine at University of Nebraska Medical Center. There's a desperation to it. “Everybody has a deep wish to have a long and fruitful life,” she says, “without disability or pain and with your brain intact.”
Other experts say there are sociological and evolutionary reasons to be attracted to outlandish and even disproven claims.
This is not uniquely American, of course. But these instincts and tendencies are amplified in America, with its relentless optimism, its spirit of individualism, its lightly regulated capitalism, its desperate ambition to get richer or healthier or prettier, and a desire to get in on the action driven by suspicion: Others surely have gamed the system, so why can't I?
“It’s sort of a wild wild West cowboy situation,” Kang said. “People are like, ‘Well, if you’re not going to do it, I’m going to do it myself.’”
When we fall for claims or cling to beliefs after they’ve been disproved, we're not necessarily being stupid.
We don't have beliefs to create an accurate representation of the world, said Tali Sharot, a neuroscience professor at University College London. Instead, she said, it’s simply “to have beliefs that will get us the most rewards and help us avoid harm. And sometimes those beliefs are the accurate ones, but sometimes they’re not.”
Overconfidence, for example, can land you a mate or a job you aren’t qualified for, she said. People can get a sense of community, support and belonging by believing what others in a group believe. “If it’s a false belief, it doesn’t matter,” Sharot said.
Believing that vaccines cause autism, despite conclusive evidence that they don’t, gives families and loved ones something to blame and provides them with support from a group that shares in their anger, fear and pain.
And hope and belief can provide optimism that things could get better, which can in turn at least temporarily improve mood and mental health. “Believing that your future will be better than the past and the present — even if your future will not be better,” Sharot said, “Many times can be optimal.”
The lottery is almost guaranteed to lose you money — it’s a terrible financial decision. People know this. But they also know that a lottery ticket is a little slip of hope, a chance to imagine a richer future. “What you buy for sure is kind of the fun of thinking about it,” she said. “That is something that you are guaranteed to get.”
Our thinking is similar when it comes to the supplements, balms and techniques that promise benefits that are extremely unlikely to materialize. On one hand, they are a tragic waste of hard-earned money and sometimes have negative side effects. On the other hand, “you gain something from trying,” Sharot said, like positive anticipation or excitement.
But these tendencies leave us open to exploitation by companies that want our money. And they are really good at what they do.
Throughout U.S. history, there is a clear pattern: A hint that something might work opens a crack in a door that companies barge through, capturing the desperation — and the paychecks — of people who are hurting, tired or scared.
Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia physician who signed the Declaration of Independence, was frustrated by his inability to save people during a yellow fever epidemic in 1793. He then read autopsy reports that suggested purging and bloodletting could help. So he took it to an extreme, giving the sick high doses of calomel and jalap — a mercury compound and the powdered root of a Mexican plant that together make an extremely potent laxative — while aggressively draining their blood. According to one account: “So much blood was spilled in the front yard that the site became malodorous and buzzed with flies.”
Charles Stanley’s snake oil was fake — the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry in 1916 found that it was mainly mineral oil, with “fatty oil (probably beef fat), capsicum, and possibly a trace of camphor or turpentine.” But he got the idea from Chinese laborers who used oil — from a very specific snake — that did likely have some anti-inflammatory properties.
Radiation did and does have medical uses, opening the door for William J.A. Bailey, to market his Radithor as a “health tonic” — until one prominent and enthusiastic customer took so much his jawbone decayed and he died of radiation poisoning.
Gray areas leave regulators and health professionals in a difficult spot: It’s often impossible to say definitively that something doesn’t work, especially without a study that no one is willing to waste precious time and resources on.
In the meantime, companies pounce. “What’s scary is that they will take that hope and they will try to stick it in a bottle and sell it to you at whatever price that they think that you can afford,” Kang said.
Countless supplements and unapproved “treatments” are based on hints of potential benefits in animal studies or small observational studies that can’t prove cause and effect. Today, some longevity seekers are pinning hopes on rapamycin, a drug given to organ transplant patients, that has increased lifespans in yeast, flies and mice.
Some incredibly successful drugs such as insulin and the weight loss drugs Wegovy and Zepbound are peptides, short chains of amino acids that can be made into countless configurations. That is sparking a whole industry that markets other peptides — largely unproven and untested — that are said to increase muscle growth, speed recovery and fight aging. Sound familiar?
Of course science, technology and the nation’s relentless economic engine have produced countless true wonders and enduring anecdotes, which in turn softens the ground for credulous thinking.
We can cross the country in a flying metal tube in a few hours. We can tap into nearly all of human knowledge using a small rectangle of metal and glass. Medical advances and especially vaccination — a radical concept, once — have nearly eliminated childhood diseases that killed up to half of children before age 5 when the nation was founded. An American born in 1900 was likely to live until just 47 years old. U.S. life expectancy is now 79, its highest level ever. Who’s to say it can’t double again? Why should there be any limit at all?
We may be more susceptible now than we have ever been. We’re subjected to ever more tantalizing claims, Kang, said, now that we have devices in our pockets that deliver an endless stream of hawkers (euphemized as “influencers”) peddling “treatments” and other shortcuts along our 250-year-strong pursuit of happiness.
Social media is excellent at mimicking the type of messaging scientists say our brains are most open to believing: direct, personal appeals from people who look trustworthy and claim to have had personal experience. And in the U.S., it can be an especially appealing alternative to an expensive, impersonal health system that is absurdly hard to navigate.
Even the nation’s top health official, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has promoted or given voice to those advocating or selling unproven treatments and wellness products, including vitamin A as a measles treatment, peptides and raw milk.
“The guard rails are off right now,” Kang says. “It’s actually worse than it has been before, because of social media, because of what’s on the internet, and because the so-called trusted people we’re supposed to be getting advice from are not trustworthy. And I think that puts the American public in far greater danger.”
The great American swindler George C. Parker, who sold the Brooklyn Bridge — more than once — would have loved it. And would he have a deal for you.
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Jonathan Fahey is the global health and science editor for The Associated Press. The Associated Press’ health and science coverage receives financial support from the AP Fund for Journalism and private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
