Claim for therapy: no evidence based medicine required

“The Krullaards Perfect Body Reset therapy puts you right again. The tilt of the hips with respect to the spinal column is removed with the plate.” This was the promise of Krullaards on their website. Therapy in which a patient stands in various positions on a vibrating plate in order to assist in the tilt of the hips and thus remove the difference in the length of the legs. The claim led to a complaint with the Advertising Code Committee. According to the complainant, the method was not scientifically proven. In order to prove the claim, the advertiser produced statements from doctors and a professor. The advertiser also produced research, which proved that physiotherapists were able to see the results. The complainant argued that this was not sufficient; it is not evidence based medicine. The complainant argued that the research needed to be “randomised”, as well as the need to have a control group in order to fully compensate for the placebo-effect, none of which had happened. The complainant also pointed to declarations of orthopaedic professors and a neurosurgeon. They indicated that they did not believe in the therapy.

After a long discussion in front of the Advertising Code Committee and the Board of Appeal, the complaint was upheld with respect to one point. There would appear to be two different sorts of leg length difference: anatomical (i.e., born with it) and functional (i.e., not both with it). Krullaards accepted that the therapy does not help those with anatomical difference in leg length. As Krullaards does not say anything about this on his website, the expression would appear to be too absolute and therefore misleading. The rest remains. The Advertising Code Committee and the Board of Appeal emphasise that evidence based medicine is not necessary in order to support a claim. In the words of the Board of Appeal: “The conditions to be taken into account with evidence based medicine go significantly further than the obligation to sufficiently prove the presumed effects of a product if this is subject to a reasoned objection”. The advertiser therefore needs to make the claim sufficiently plausible, but does not need to provide the highest level of proof. This was successful in this case; the evidence filed by the Krullaards provides the breakthrough. An important decision for those types of therapy that do not meet the hurdle of evidence based medicine.

Bram Duivenvoorde