Rocky says what?

WE see the full-page colour advertisements in many of our papers regularly. We may conclude from this that business is booming, as it not cheap to buy full-page adverts every week if you are not selling product. They offer some products which are indisputably legitimate such as condoms. Some of the other products are not quite as straightforward.

First of all, I would treat anyone who says they can enlarge the size of your penis or tighten your lady parts with extreme caution. The same way I might treat an e-mail from the daughter of the Nigerian finance minister who has 40 million in cash once I give her my bank account. With a very critical eye. Just because you see a medicine advertised does not mean it is legitimate. In fact, it seems the newspaper mostly regulate themselves, so this is no guarantee whatsoever that a product is legitimate. You can even find an advertisement in one weekly paper for a product called ‘vira-kil’ which claims openly in their ads to ‘halt the reproduction of the virus’ – it, of course, does no such thing, and seems to be an existing herbal supplement re-labelled by morally challenged people who flog it on innocent Namibians. The problems with many ‘alternative medicines’ is that they are not really regulated. Therefore are able to make claims that they are not able to back up medically. One ready example is the Rocky ‘supplements’ you see advertised in the newspapers in Namibia (Even though it is technically illegal to advertise products making medicinal claims in newspapers) which are unable to show any trials they may have gone through to prove that their product actually works. Although I was told by the company in South Africa that they have in fact undergone medicinal trials in Namibia – this was denied by the Namibian Medical Regulatory Council (NMRC) at the time – who said the company has submitted no such paperwork.A medical product, a real medicine has to go through clinical trials by independent physicians to prove that it works and to prove that it has no or limited side effects. If you are buying a medicine that has not undergone such trials to ensure it is safe, you are simply trusting the people who are selling it to you to tell the truth, but since they go out of their way to be misleading in their ads, and operate in a grey area of the law are you sure that these are the folks you want to trust? Just in case there are some readers at home who are still wondering- No you cannot ‘make it bigger’ – keep your money.