An isolated case of quackery? By no means. Rather, it is typical of the thousands of quacks who use phony therapeutic devices to fatten themselves on the miseries of hundreds of thousands of Americans by robbing them of millions of dollars and luring them away from legitimate, ethical medical treatment of serious diseases. The machine quack makes his Rube Goldberg devices out of odds and ends of metals, wires, and radio parts.

With these gadgets -- impressive to the gullible because of their flashing light bulbs, ticks, and buzzes -- he then carries out a vicious medical con game, capitalizing on people's respect for the electrical and atomic wonders of our scientific age. He milks the latest scientific advances, translating them into his own special Buck Rogers vocabulary to huckster his fake machines as a cure-all for everything from hay fever to sexual impotence and cancer.

The gadget faker operates or sells his phony machines for $5 to $10000 -- anything the traffic will bear. He may call himself a naprapath, a physiotherapist, an electrotherapist, a naturopath, a sanipractor, a medical cultist, a masseur, a ``doctor'' -- or what have you. Not only do these quacks assume impressive titles, but represent themselves as being associated with various scientific or impressive foundations -- foundations which often have little more than a letterhead existence.

The medical device pirate of today, of course, is a far more sophisticated operator than his predecessor of yesteryear -- the gallus snapping hawker of snake oil and other patent medicines. His plunder is therefore far higher -- running into hundreds of millions.