America’s long history of falling for hucksters and their outlandish promises

NEW YORK (AP) — America: land of possibility. And also: land of suckers.

Our enduring belief that anything is possible — whether based in reality or not — has helped the nation become the world’s largest economy. It has also led us to fall head over heels for hucksters and charlatans, again and again.

If so much is possible here in America, who is to say it’s not possible that the next new supplement, device or scheme might make you young, strong, rich or all of the above, all at once?

America brought us Clark Stanley, the Rattlesnake King, who sold us what he called “snake oil liniment” that promised to remedy pain, lameness, sprains, bunions and “reduce large joints to their natural size.” America helped create Charles Ponzi, who could deliver you 50% profit in just 45 days by investing in stamp coupons.

These old examples are easy to laugh at or be mortified by, but we should be careful: We are as willing as ever to believe claims that, when subjected to even a modicum of common sense seem ludicrous. Raw milk has special powers? Peptides can make us young again? A blast of vitamins through an IV can flush out your hangover?

Why do we keep falling for this stuff? There’s a simple, poignant reason: “People really don’t want to die.”

So says Dr. Lydia Kang, author of a book on medical fads called “Quackery” and associate professor of internal medicine at University of Nebraska Medical Center. There’s a desperation to it. “Everybody has a deep wish to have a long and fruitful life,” she says, “without disability or pain and with your brain intact.”

This is not uniquely American, of course. But these instincts and tendencies are amplified in America, with its relentless optimism, its spirit of individualism and its lightly regulated capitalism.

The truth doesn’t matter

When we fall for claims or cling to beliefs after they’ve been disproved, we’re not necessarily being stupid.

We don’t have beliefs to create an accurate representation of the world, said Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist professor at University College London. Instead, she said, it’s simply “to have beliefs that will get us the most rewards and help us avoid harm. And sometimes those beliefs are the accurate ones, but sometimes they’re not.”

Hope and belief can provide optimism that things could get better, which can in turn at least temporarily improve mood and mental health. “Believing that your future will be better than the past and the present – even if your future will not be better,” Sharot said, “Many times can be optimal.”

That opens us up to the lure of supplements, balms and techniques that promise benefits that are extremely unlikely to materialize. On one hand, they are a tragic waste of hard-earned money and sometimes have negative side effects. On the other hand, “you gain something from trying,” Sharot said, like positive anticipation or excitement.

Hope produces hype

But these tendencies leave us open to exploitation by companies that want our money. And they are really good at what they do.

Throughout U.S. history, there is a clear pattern: A hint that something might work opens a crack in a door that companies barge through, capturing the desperation — and the paychecks — of people who are hurting, tired or scared.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia physician who signed the Declaration of Independence, was frustrated by his inability to save people during a yellow fever epidemic in 1793. He then read autopsy reports that suggested purging and bloodletting could help and he took it to an extreme. According to one account: “So much blood was spilled in the front yard that the site became malodorous and buzzed with flies.”

Charles Stanley’s snake oil was fake — the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry in 1916 found that it was mainly mineral oil, with “fatty oil (probably beef fat), capsicum, and possibly a trace of camphor or turpentine.” But he got the idea from Chinese laborers who used oil — from a very specific snake — that did likely have some anti-inflammatory properties.

Gray areas leave regulators and health professionals in a difficult spot: It’s often impossible to say definitively that something doesn’t work. In the meantime, companies pounce. “What’s scary is that they will take that hope and they will try to stick it in a bottle and sell it to you at whatever price that they think that you can afford,” Kang said.

True breakthroughs raise hopes

Of course science, technology and the nation’s relentless economic engine have produced countless true wonders, which in turn softens the ground for credulous thinking.

We can cross the country in a flying metal tube. We can tap into nearly all of human knowledge using a small rectangle of metal and glass. Medical advances and especially vaccination have nearly eliminated childhood diseases that killed up to half of children before age 5 when the nation was founded. An American born in 1900 was likely to live until just 47 years old. U.S. life expectancy is now 79. Who’s to say it can’t double again? Why should there be any limit at all?

Now we’re subjected to ever more tantalizing claims, Kang said, thanks to an endless stream of social media hawkers (euphemized as “influencers”) peddling “treatments” and other shortcuts along our 250-year-strong pursuit of happiness.

Even the nation’s top health official, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has promoted or given voice to those advocating or selling unproven treatments.

“The guard rails are off right now,” Kang says. “It’s actually worse than it has been before, because of social media, because of what’s on the internet, and because the so-called trusted people we’re supposed to be getting advice from are not trustworthy. And I think that puts the American public in far greater danger.”

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Jonathan Fahey is the global health and science editor for The Associated Press. The Associated Press’ health and science coverage receives financial support from the AP Fund for Journalism and private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.