/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/larazon/DZCK6VTM6ZGXTK6ACZOBTLMW7Q.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1 "Spanish Television allows the defense of pseudotherapies")
It was a major surprise for the Catalan viewers of Televisión Española when they saw how one of its broadcast programs in Catalonia, “Obrim fil” promoted and defended various pseudo-therapies, many of them illegal. Contributors and presenters regularly described practices that are proven to be false or fraudulent. The program was so degrading that the biologist Fernando Cervera refused to charge for his collaboration: “I would consider it a scam on taxpayers.”
Recently, in the social debate program presented by Xavier Sardà and Ana Boadas for Spanish Television, according to the Association to Protect the Sick from Pseudo-scientific Therapies (APTEC), called Obrim fil and broadcast in Catalonia, there was a controversy for his defense of pseudotherapies. The program began with one of his collaborators, the journalist Víctor Amela, saying that alternative therapies heal, something in which the collaborator would redound throughout the program, even promoting the use of pseudotherapy known as psychomagic for health issues, such as throwing a ball made with the photo of his mother dipped in milk to a street dog to remove his wartssomething that the journalist came to defend as effective.
For her part, Lorena Vázquez, also a collaborator of the program, came to promote the pseudotherapy known as holographic energetics, which according to the journalist consists of putting colored glass on top of the body to heal through its vibrations. But according to Ferdinand Cerveraone of the participants, things got worse when they came to promote centers that offered therapies without being registered as health centers. «In order to offer therapies, it is logical that one must have health training and their center must be duly registered. To get an idea, a lawyer cannot open a center to treat diseases. There is what is called the law of centers and health professions that prevent it, and if one offers therapies without having the training required by law, and the registration required by law, he does it illegally.”
Cervera refers to the intervention of Anna Ramos where she presented the Institute of Holistic Health, whose center lacks a health registry if you look for it in the Registry of Health Centers. “Furthermore, every health center must have its registration visible in its facilities and on its website, and this center not only does not have it, but also offers cataloged pseudotherapies as such by the Ministry of Public Health”, says Cervera.
Another therapist who worked at the same center, well-known hypnotist Daniel Marmor, also appeared on the show. When Cervera asked him if the center had health authorization, the hypnotist stated that he did have it. But when cervera he told him seconds later that he had verified it and it was not true, he denied having said that the center had the registry . «For me, the most serious thing is that when I explained that there is a law that prevents a center from applying therapies without health control, the collaborator of the Víctor Amela program told the public television audience that the health law did not matter, that this type of centers can offer pseudotherapies breaking the law”.
He appeared on the show Jaume Padróspresident of the College of Physicians of Barcelona, stating that he had nothing against offering homeopathy if it was done as complementary therapy. «That the representative of a medical association says that he sees well that a doctor offers homeopathy, even if it is in a complementary way, explains much of the problem. There is no will on the part of the medical associations to put an end to some health scams such as homeopathy, and if you add to this public television promoting centers that do not comply with health regulations, it is perfectly understandable why pseudotherapies continue to kill people every year. They offered to charge me something symbolic for the displacement, but I gave up charging for that program: it’s a scam on taxpayers. I don’t want anything to do with a show that offers medicine versus health scams like it’s a debate. They told me that the program would be something else, not the circus that I found. Besides, I think it is the responsibility of public television, if you are going to talk about health issues, at least not to present illegal centers as if they were a legitimate option”, says the biologist.
This program has already generated parliamentary questions in the past, such as when surrogacy was presented solely as an altruistic motherhood option. It remains to be seen whether in the current context, where the Ministry of Health launched its well-known Plan for the Protection of People’s Health against Pseudotherapies, this time the program returns to star in a controversy in parliament.
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