About Quackdown
Quackdown helps people make informed choices about health care. We discuss treatments for various diseases and expose people and companies who sell untested health remedies. To us it does not matter whether the seller of a medicine is a pharmaceutical company, a complementary or alternative health dealer. What matters is that the medicine has been tested properly and does what it is claimed to do, safely.
This site also hosts QuackBase. This is a database of unsubstantiated health claims and the attempts by us and others to expose them.
Quackdown was started as a joint project of the Treatment Action Campaign and Community Media Trust. The original editors were Nathan Geffen, Marcus Low and Catherine Tomlinson. Gareth Dawson designed the logo and did it free of charge. Leon Geffen, a doctor in Cape Town who refused to see pharmaceutical company reps long before Ben Goldacre recommended it in his brilliant book Bad Pharma, came up with the name "Quackdown".
As of December 2012, Quackdown is the sole responsibility of Nathan Geffen and Marcus Low. Neither has ever been remunerated by a pharmaceutical, complementary or alternative medicine company or a front for these companies. Low is employed by the Treatment Action Campaign. Geffen is paid by the University of Cape Town. Quackdown is however a labour of love that they run almost entirely at their own cost in their spare time.
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