My curiosity was piqued lately when I began receiving a deluge of spam promoting a weight-loss supplement called Hoodia.  So I did some research.

Apparently the stuff being promoted is Hoodia gordonii, a substance that supposedly works as an appetite suppressant.  I won't get into whether it actually works.  My research uncovered enough viewpoints to leave that question open.  However, I firmly believe that anyone who undertakes a weight-loss program without first consulting a doctor is a damned fool, and anyone who tries something that is being promoted by millions of spam messages is beyond foolishness and needs therapy.

At the moment, there are millions (perhaps billions) of spam messages going out promoting Hoodia.  They possibly are more numerous than all the other cheap pharmaceutical promos put together.  Any reasonable person has to assume that most of them are scams – somebody with mass-mailing capability trying to ride a rising fad and attempting to rip off the small fraction of people who are idiotic or desperate enough to fall for the quick fix.

With hundreds or thousands of fly-by-night pseudeo-pharmaceutical companies promoting their wares via the Internet, the FCC and FDA are virtually powerless to catch scammers and spammers (the two are essentially synonymous).  It's up to us to use common sense, especially regarding something as important as health.  Medicine has been searching for a quick fix for weight loss and weight control for decades.  So far – despite innumerable fad diets and all sorts of experimental chemical "cures" – no quick fix has been found.  If it were, it would be front-page news, not something relegated to promotion via spam.

Anyway, how do we know that what we are getting from these Hoodia hawkers is the genuine article?  The "miracle drug" that they ship – if indeed they ship anything – could be a sugar pill.  Don't fall for the Hoodia hooey.

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