Quackdown is a

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring count ...

-based website aimed at exposing fraudulent and untested medical treatments. It hosts the "Quackbase" database of untested medical claims and publishes articles on

quackery Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, ...

. Quackdown is a joint project of the

Treatment Action Campaign The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid backgrou ...

, Community Media Trust and several individuals. It was originally edited by Nathan Geffen, Marcus Low and Catherine Tomlinson, but since December 2012 Catherine Tomlinson is no longer an editor of Quackdown. In October 2012, the South African medicine company Solal Technologies filed a defamation lawsuit against Kevin Charleston due to a Quackdown article he published that denounces the company's magazine ''Health Intelligence'' for quackery and

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...

. As of 2022 the website appears to be inactive as the Quackbase database was last updated in 2012 and the most recent article on the website dated from 2014. In addition, their twitter account, @quackbase, has not been active since 2012.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Quackdown website
Scientific skepticism mass media Internet properties established in 2011 Medical websites