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Quackery Targets Teens

Quackery, an age-old business, costs Americans billions of dollars each year and immeasurable losses suffered from harmful products and delayed medical treatment. The quack's victims are usually thought of as the aged or chronically ill.

But quacks are quick to spot new markets, so it's not surprising that they have discovered teenagers. These youths and their impatience with the blossoming process are fertile ground for quacks. Teenagers are ready to experiment with products that promise to speed their development and ease growing pains.

And many of these junior and senior high school age children have money enough to do the experimenting. In fact, a study by Teenage Research Unlimited revealed that 27.6 million teenagers spent an average of $93 a month on personal items in 1989 for a total of nearly $31 billion.

Further, in families in which both parents work, teens take on more of the family shopping responsibilities. The U.S. Labor Department reports that as of March 1988, 62.4 percent of families with teenagers had two working parents. And a 1987 report by Teen Research Unlimited showed that teens do the shopping in 70 percent of the households with working mothers.

These young shoppers often have access to mom or pop's credit card. And, like their parents, they are buying more through the mail, a medium that offers a cloak of anonymity under which quacks thrive.

The teen years, often insecure years, filled with questions like:

• "Am I beautiful (or handsome)?"
• "Will my breasts ever develop?"
• "Shouldn't I be more muscular?"
• "Am I too fat?"
• "Would a tan give me more sex appeal?"

Quacks love such questions. And they're ready with answers that have been - according to them - "overlooked or ignored by the established scientific community."

Time is of such essence to the young that they grasp at straws and don't recognize the quack's deceptions for what they really are.

Take a look at some of the advertisements in teen magazines:

• "Space age diet" that allows you to "eat all day and still lose weight"
• A beauty cream that will ensure "gorgeous, proportioned breasts"
• And a pill to provide a tan overnight

Sound unlikely? Impossible is a better word. But, fond of superlatives and driven by desire, teenagers are ready to believe such ads.

Here are some of the dubious products that teenagers today are asked to believe in:

Steroids and Growth Hormone
"Quackery. That is the bane of sports medicine. We've rid ourselves of some of the worst but there are still many people handing out get-good-quick pills, touting medicines that send blue sparks and make big muscles, or advising athletes to drink superduper seaweed extracts." - Dr Daniel F. Hanley, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, as quoted in Death in the Locker Room.

Our sports-loving nation loves a winner, and it's fair to say that most of the 5 million boys and girls who compete in high school sports love to win. Some of them will go to great lengths to do so. That may mean using performance-enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

Anabolic steroids - compounds similar to the male hormone testosterone - are too often used by athletes, both boys and girls, to build muscle. They are also used by young men who just want to look better. They are prescription drugs, but most of those who use them obtain them illegally, often from the black market. Steroids have a lot of unwanted side effects - that's why they are supposed to be sold only by prescription. They may well build muscle, but it's a losing proposition, because their use - particularly in the large doses that athletes take - can stunt growth, lead to cancer, ruin the liver, and bring on other complications, including enlarged breasts in boys. For girls, the side effects include developing masculine traits that may be irreversible.

Black-market steroids often are produced in another country or by clandestine domestic manufacturers under questionable conditions and may be contaminated. The quacks have also moved in with phony steroids and phony pills that they say - falsely - will counter some of the side effects of steroids.

Earlier this year, FDA warned that a counterfeit version of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG, was being sold to weight lifters and other athletes. The bogus hormones were contaminated with a substance that causes infections and fever.

A black market has also sprung up for human growth hormone. This prescription drug is legitimately given to children who suffer from pituitary dwarfism or growth hormone deficiency, but it, too, has dangerous side effects. Nevertheless, athletes seeking to benefit from added growth are buying the hormone on the black market. Quacks are also marketing "growth tablets" that, in fact, contain no hormones or any other ingredients that can promote growth.

For More Information
If you have questions about a product or company, get answers before you make a purchase, For information, contact:

• The Better Business Bureau
• The nearest Food and Drug Administration office
• Your local consumer office or state attorney general's office
• Your doctor

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Tanning and Tanning Pills
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Look-Alike Drugs
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