Fake medicine but real money

Quack. Charlatan. Cheat. A fake. According to the Supreme Court of India, someone who has no knowledge of a particular system of medicine but goes on to practise in that very system, pretending to be skilful and knowledgeable. Quackery is a business in India; an attractive business, at that, especially for people living in poor areas.1 For people who fail to complete their formal education and have grim career prospects otherwise,2 it is a preferred “career option.”

Why is quackery such a threat to modern medicine? Apart from irrational medical practice, quacks spread misinformation, helping to make an already strained relationship between doctors and patients even worse. Worse still, their actions can injure, disable, and sometimes kill unsuspecting patients.2 This doesn't serve the medical profession any more than it serves the patients.

It is easy to see why patients sometimes fall prey to fake doctors. They seem more accessible, charge less, take more time to talk to them, seem to understand patients better, and apparently examine them well. Well groomed doctors, on the other hand, are “mechanical,” scarcely allowing more than five minutes for a patient, examining patients as if there was something wrong somewhere in their bodies and that was all there was to it, and that the problem needs to be sorted out right away. More often than not trained doctors seem to fail to recognise that reassurance is the first step in the management of any disease.

Poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, lack of health education, and an increasing aversion towards modern doctors all serve the quacks well. This is particularly true in rural communities in India, where doctors rarely attend their clinical postings on a regular basis.1 One look at the …