By RFD Editor, Nicholas Regush

This is not about those annoying pop-ups and banner ads that pollute the environment of many websites. My anger, however, is directed more these days at trends that I consider dangerous to health but also give off a smell so bad that you have to wear a nose peg when thinking about them.

Yesterday, Google (I’m sure you know “google” like I know “google”) announced that it will stop taking ads from unlicensed pharmacies using the Internet to sell narcotics and prescription drugs without medical supervision. Good? Yes, because the trend of selling has gone bonkers. The hucksters have moved in so much that they are getting close to being the rip-off artists that the major drug companies have become. I say this only because many of the drugs peddled to far too many people unnecessarily by the so-called “legitimate” drug industry main and kill everyday. Of course, add another layer to the chaos of FDA “drug approval,” namely the online so-called “pharmacies” and you have one hell of a mess. Anyone who doesn’t see the drug huckstering aspect of this huge business needs to get his head examined.

Of course, there are big problems associated with any move to limit advertising on the Internet. For one thing, where will the line be drawn? Will established, mainstream patterns of drug prescription become the gold standard? You know, get the bad guys out of the henhouse and let the good guys control the roost. But we all know that many of the “good guys” can even be worse than the bad guys.

The problem we face here is that greed and avarice often rule on the Internet and it is maddening to see it going on and on. So, I have mixed feelings about what Google intends to do. I don’t want to see a free-for-all continue, but I don’t want to see alternative ways of doing medicine feel the pain because of the further development of a police-like state that will try to either marginalize or eliminate certain forms of competition in both ideas and commerce.

So, that’s redflag #1 for today. The second redflag really makes my blood boil. That has to do with alternative medicine proponents who basically are running advertorials on their sites in the guise of creating a new revolution in health care. You want that revolution? I sure don’t. I don’t want a revolution in health that is based on articles running on websites that are linked to product sales. This is a total abomination.  What really gets me is that those doing this crass product sales hype either are stupid or they are clueless about the kind of message they are sending out into the world. Is alternative medicine, which I find to be extremely important in the evolution of our health knowledge base to become a peddler’s market, a cesspool of shallow, unsubstantiated dime-a-dozen opinion, mixed with links to news and then links to sales of just about anything anyone wants to call “healthy?”

I’m angered by this and I’m saddened by it. As a journalist, I have been taking a bead for more than 30 years on what I considered to be corruption in mainstream health. I am now going to also turn some of my attention to alternative medicine that refuses to clean up its act. So far, I haven’t pointed to any particular websites. This will change. I’ve had enough of this. And I’m sure many of you also have had enough. If anyone wants to take me on over this issue, make my day.