Quack silences Quackometer
Quackometer, a website devoted to debunking quack medicine on the web, was silenced by its ISP earlier this week following threats to sue for defamation from Joseph Chikelue Obi.
The site recently targeted the self-proclaimed professor and his “Royal College of Alternative Medicine” (RCAM) in a series of posts on the site’s blog.
We have only been able to verify that RCAM has one member, Joseph Chikelue Obi, despite a list of ten Principal Officers on its website. It offers online courses and accreditations in “alternative medicine”, including a programme in “cancer survival strategies”. Its page on “nutritional immunomodulation” claims to be able to improve fatigue, skin problems, sexual fitness, psychological issues and cardiovascular disorders.
Most disturbingly, RCAM boasts “improvement in the quality of life of cancer sufferers and HIV/AIDS hosts” through “tirelessly deciphering the intricate molecular mechanisms by which both anti-oxidant and pro-oxidant nutrients consistently modulate the structure and functioning of important cells involved in human defense”.
Lifetime fellowship of Obi’s organisation costs €9,999. The website justification of the fee states: “This ‘one-off’ fee may seem relatively high; until you ethically compare it to the total amount of annual fellowship subscriptions which any seasoned professional in orthodox medicine (based in the Western World) would ultimately pay throughout a 40-year professional career.”
Following the criticisms, Netcetera, the site’s hosting company, received demands from Obi’s legal representative “Tanja Suessenbach” threatening to hold the ISP “fully liable to the tune of £1 Million (One Million Pounds) per day, together with additional punitive damages relating to the many months during which the defamatory material had and has been globally accessible via your server.”
Netcetera promptly wet themselves and started pulling individual pages from Quackometer. Then they decided to pull the plug on the entire site, citing their Acceptable Use Policy which states: “Netcetera reserves the right to suspend or cancel a customer’s access to any or all services provided by Netcetera, where Netcetera decides that the account has been inappropriately used. Netcetera reserves the right to refuse service and/or access to its servers to anyone.”
Obi founded RCAM in 2005. He was struck off as a regular doctor by the General Medical Council after a 2003 hearing that found him guilty of serious professional misconduct while employed as a locum at hospitals in Yorkshire and the North East. His misconduct included giving a psychiatric patient the telephone number of a dating agency and failing to administer blood-thinning medication to an emergency patient suffering a heart attack.
Quackometer is now being hosted by The Positive Internet Company and should be up and running once the code has been converted from ASP to PHP.
Thursday 21 Feb 2008 | Paul | UK
