In 1939 the British parliament passed a littleknown piece of legislation, the Cancer Act, which outlawed the publication of any advertisement containing "an offer to treat any person for cancer, or to prescribe any remedy therefor, or to give any advice in connection with the treatment thereof". The act was passed to protect the public from potential profiteers at a time when not much was known about the underlying causes of cancer, and when effective treatments, other than radical surgery, were unavailable. The Cancer Act remains in force today, and several successful actions have been brought in recent years. It is interesting that similar legislation appears never to have been considered necessary to protect the public against claims of treatment that might stave off the ageing process. Such 'treatments' have long been sold, with classic cases involving potentially dangerous medical procedures, such as the transplantation into humans of monkey testicles or the injection of fetal tells from sheep or goats. For the would-be confidence trickster, the life-extension scam is one of the oldest games in town. We must assume that no one thought it necessary to legislate against such claims because, despite the evidence to the contrary, it was believed that nobody would take them seriously.
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