New proposals target fraudsters

CRANKS offering unproven cancer treatments could face jail or hefty fines if new laws are introduced next year.

Fine Gael’s Kate O’connell wants to propose legislation that would make it a crime to advertise or offer cures for the disease that have not passed trials.

The TD, who is also a pharmacist, hopes her proposals will crack down on homeopaths, faith healers and fake medics targeting vulnerable patients with treatments that can contain toxic ingredients.

In the UK, anyone advertising bogus cures can be jailed for three months or fined.

Ms O’connell wants similar laws introduced in Ireland.

She said: “Cancer treatments are improving all the time, outcomes are getting better and people are living longer.

“But with those improved outcomes, a lot of people think everything can be cured and a lot of unscrupulous people come into that “everything is curable” market offering cures where conventional medicines have failed.

“Opportunists

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take over, usually at great expense to the patient. People will pay for anything to get what they see as extra time, and there is a proliferation of false treatments going around on social media.”

A top researcher said there was a high amount of fake cures because they are not banned. David Robert Grimes, from Queen’s University Belfast, revealed to The Sunday Times: “The extent of dangerous, useless items currently being hawked at very vulnerable people is quite shocking.

“The problem is once you get a patient into the mindset that these things work, they end up dropping out of conventional regimes because real treatment can be tough.”

The physicist said he hoped any new laws would open the way for a ban on dangerous treatments for conditions such as autism.

In 2016, Patrick Merelehan, from Newtown, Co Kildare, was fined €4,000 after selling “Miracle Mineral Solution”, which contained bleach and was said to cure HIV.

Some people will pay for anything to get what they see as extra time

TD KATE O’CONNELL