"Quackery" outlawed in registered pharmacy

Duncan Campbell

A serious loophole in Britain's medicines laws has been closed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society after a disciplinary hearing in which a widely sold alternative medicine system was described as unscientific "quackery". The RPS's Statutory Committee last month warned registered pharmacists that they would be struck off if they associated themselves "in any way" with a remedy called "spagyrik therapy".

Spagyrik therapy is sold by Signalysis Ltd, of Stroud, Gloucestershire. The therapy involves taking blood and urine samples. These are used for diagnosis and in the manufacture of liquid remedies. The company operates through a large national network of "practitioners" - some of whom are registered medical doctors - who take samples and administer to patients the remedies. Advertisments placed by the company, many aimed at those with life-threatening or chronic illness, have stressed that spagyrik's "medicines" were prepared in a registered pharmacy, as though this meant that they were scientifically based and worked. At a series of hearings, the company claimed that their sale of spagyrik liquids as medicinal products was lawful without a product licence because they were produced at a registered pharamacy and under the supervision of a superintending pharmacist, Mrs Jacqueline Wells. The committee found Mrs Wells guilty of serious professional misconduct which "renders her unfit to be on the Registrar". But she has been allowed until October to resign from the company. Provided she resigns, she has been told that she will instead face a reprimand.

The directors of Signalysis Ltd, Kenneth Spellman, a retired town planner, and Rosemary Spellman, who ran the service, were told that they were guilty of "misconduct" under [Section 80(1)(b) of] the Medicines Act. Their premises would no longer be registered as a pharmacy. Had they been pharmacists they would have been struck off, the committee ruled.

They had been "practising quackery from the premises of a licensed pharmacy. That will never do". The company's claim to be exempt from licensing requirements under Section 10 of the Medicines Act was, said the RPS, "a mere device [because] the product being dispensed and made is quackery".

After taking evidence from Professor M D Rawlins, chairman of the Committee on the Safety of Medicines and Professor [name] Lillyman, the committee concluded that the "spagyrik treatment and therapy has no pharmacological basis at all. It is not supported by any clinical trials. It is not scientific. It has no credible or respectable place in scientific literature". A German witness, Dr Habel, had been called to defend Signalysis. The committee said that Dr Habel was "apparently willing to make any claim that he thought he could get away with by obfuscation".

Spagyrik therapy claims to diagnose and treats all types of illness using boiled extracts of blood and urine. Described as a "system of diagnosis and treatment in one", the process involves distilling then evaporating the blood and urine sample by heating to 400 degrees centigrade. The resulting ash was moistened and studied under a powerful microscope, by Mrs Spellman, who had been trained to "read" patterns to produce "an individualised patient-oriented diagnosis". Subsequently, the distillate ash and evaporated fraction were combined, mixed with herbs, diluted and posted back for oral administration to the patient.

Mrs Wells, the Superintending Pharmacist, told the committee that she did not attend through this process, and worked only about 2 hours a week. The spagyrik "pharmacy" did not produce or sell any other type of medicine.

Signalysis Ltd had also claimed exemption under the Medicines Act because the company employs and uses medical doctors. Dr Alec Forbes, a registered medical practitioner and formerly the Medical Director of the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, was listed on stationery as the Medical Consultant of Signalysis Ltd. Mrs Spelman told the committee that she had worked at the Bristol Centre for three years before setting up her business. Advertisments for spagyrik were later published by the Centre. The committee did not further consider the position of registered doctors who prescribe spagyrik therapy or who act as advisers to the company.

The committee conceded that Mr and Mrs Spellman had "over the years responded to criticism and altered their presentation of the therapy". Although "their references suggest that they are well-intentioned and compassionate people", what they had done was "reprehnsible". They had "connived" at their misconduct.

Mr and Mrs Spellman had originally claimed that "in all chronic illnesses regarded as incurable, Spagyrik is able to offer help and the alleviation of pain", and that it had a "high success rate ... in practically all illnesses of humans".

These and similar claims were dismissed as "exceptionally dangerous nonsense" by Dr Charles Shepherd, a Gloucestershire GP who had provided most of the evidence which the committee considered. "If they could do any of that, they would be in line for the Nobel prize. I am very glad that the RPS share my view on this quackery. I hope that the GMC will now look at the role of registered medical practioners in this affair."

He added "Spagyrik was clearly being aimed at very vulnerable patients, many of whom may not have had a precise diagnosis. They were being relieved of their savings rather than their suffering".