Mexico Tightens Laws Regarding Cure All Advertisements

If you are living in Mexico, or you've vacationed here, perhaps you've noticed the abundance of television commercial espousing home cures for all sorts of ailments.

All that is about the end. This week Mexico introduced new legislation that will end "cure all" advertisements.

My brother, who had a rare and terminal cancer, died before his fortieth birthday. My father believed in naturopathic cures and discovered a clinic in Mexico that used coffee enemas to cure cancer.

Off went my brother, his wife, my mother and father to that Mexican clinic. At the clinic, my brother contacted dysentery and almost died. Nevertheless, upon returning to Canada, he continued the clinic's restrictive diet and coffee enemas almost until the day he died.

My brother was a dentist, and therefore had a better than average understanding of medicine. He knew he was going to die. His adherence to that cockamamie treatment was to please my parents.

When he asked my opinion on the treatment, I looked at the literature. It was 1987, and the literature was all from the 1940's. Well," I said, "it seems to me if this was a valid treatment there would be more recent literature."

Some of my Mexican friends, too poor to afford anything beyond bare necessities, spend, what for them, is a great deal of money each month on special concoctions. They believe these herbal mixtures will keep them healthy.

Mexico is a country that combines mainstream and alternative medicines. This isn't always a bad thing. I have restless leg syndrome and a Mexican doctor wrote on a prescription pad "walk one and one half hours a day." My blood pressure was a little high; an American trained Mexican doctor thought I should take medication. A Mexican trained doctor recommended losing a few pounds.

Medical advice that reaches beyond medications and surgeries can be beneficial. We don't always live healthy lives. But, when a person is really sick unproven cure alls are dangerous.