Preying on pandemic fears

PETALING JAYA: Quack doctors and “magic potion” salesmen are taking advantage of the pandemic and public fear to offer medical treatments and promote their “miracle products”.

Some of these products, which they claim could “detox” the Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI) and vaccine from the body, are among those sought by anti-vaxxers who were “forced” to be inoculated or risk losing their jobs.

Such conmen would sell their products ranging from RM200 to thousands of ringgit.

Medical Mythbusters Malaysia (M3) advisor and co-founder Dr Ahmad Firdaus Mohd Haris told The Star that there were so-called “doctors” who claimed that the coronavirus is unreal, and alleged that a person who has been vaccinated would die in two weeks.

They then would promote their “natural” products as a solution.

“They sell products to “detox vaccine”, “detox AEFI”, homoeopathy vaccine, and some other tools that purportedly prevent Covid-19.

“These tools can normally be hung on your neck,” he claimed.

Checks by The Star found many of these so-called “detox” products are being promoted in messaging groups, social media platforms as well as online stores.

In such groups, supposedly satisfied users extolled the products to near miracle level.

“My child and I have been using detox by xxx (a certain brand) for seven days, we had to take vaccination ... so far we have no AEFI, a friend of mine took a vaccine and had a stroke,” shared a user in one of the Telegram groups.

The Star approached one of the sellers who noted that it is important to detox following immunisation in order to remove “foreign materials” in our body.

“In many cases, nothing happened following vaccination, the person is well, unfortunately after three months (or) six months, they started to develop AEFI.

“If we know that v@kseen (vaccine) contains materials that are dangerous and harmful in the short and long run, then stop waiting, make an effort to remove the poison, foreign materials, toxin and other harmful materials (from our body),” the seller claimed.

The seller then promoted a detoxification product worth RM200, which she claimed could be used by babies as young as a month old and adults up to 80 years old.

Meanwhile, Dr Ahmad Firdaus said he was also recently alerted of a case where scammers would do house visits for health screenings.

The scammers, he added, would carry the titles “Dr” or “professor” and come along with their medical equipment.

“The seller promotes a RM10 “health screening” at houses, food stalls and mosques. He will bring along test kits and a microscope so that people can see the “science” behind what they are selling.

“After taking a few drops of blood, they use the microscope to check if the patient has gout, cancer, intestine problem or if the body contains high toxic,” he said, adding that the scammer will then promote their products worth almost RM500.

Dr Ahmad expressed his concern over the matter as it could jeopardise public health.

“They are not professionals, who knows whether they are even using sterilised needles to draw blood samples?

“We cannot diagnose a patient with gout solely based on their blood test, or check for cancer by looking at our blood under a microscope. It requires more than that.

“You also need to be a well-trained pathologist or histopathologist to analyse and read the blood test result,” he added.

According to Dr Ahmad Firdaus, some are even daring enough to make outrageous claims that they can “kill” or “reduce” the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) within months.