Into this breach, have stepped the scammers. They are without morals and are concerned only with profiteering from the misery. If the fake medicines they sell you lead to your death, they couldn’t care. If they take your life savings to sell you a space in a hospital that doesn’t exist, they couldn’t care. They have your money and that is all that interests them. Indian newspapers are rife with stories of woe and horror, showcasing the darker side of humanity.

The IndianExpress has just published a story entitled, Covid-19 patient dies after getting fake remdesivir injections, culpable homicide charges have been invoked against the accused. An article in The Hindu highlights just how cybercrooks are stealing from the vulnerable. In a recent case, a person lost ₹40,000 to a cyber crook who asked for money to arrange an ICU bed at a private hospital and after taking the money in advance, switched off his phone. The article below, another death linked to black-market remdesivir.

How to Stay Safe

We are indebted to Sugandh Rakha for the following advice he is sharing on social media, via Twitter in an effort to support his thread and address these con-artists and keep victims safe, we’ve reprinted the content of the Twitter thread below for ease of access. You can unroll the entire thread here. This information is reprinted with his consent and we encourage readers to share this as broadly as possible. For the most part, Sugandh advocates common-sense steps and no matter how desperate you become, take a moment to verify details and ask friends for their advice.

Tips to avoid Remdesivir/Tocilizumab/Covid-19 scams:

• Do a Twitter search and Google search on the phone number and account number provided to you. Check if there are other people complaining about the fraud. Fraudsters will validate their own numbers, so watch out for scam alerts.
• Remdesivir needs to be kept between 2–8 Celsius at all times. Hence, even if you get the injection from the black market, it would have probably lost its efficacy due to incorrect maintenance of cold storage.
• If you have never spoken to the seller on phone or in person, that’s a red flag. Scammers tend to use WhatsApp messages/SMS only. This helps multiple people operate the same number. Business accounts are also very common. Insist on talking to them on phone (not WhatsApp call).
• Ask a trusted friend to cross verify. Tell him/her to pose as an independent buyer.
• Check this thread for known Scammers. If you find any scammers or black marketers add them to this thread.

Editors note: Facebook also provides a reverse search for telephone numbers. We recommend using it as another tool, simply enter the telephone number in the Facebook search box.

Things scammers/black-marketers commonly say:

1. “This is from a family of a patient that didn’t survive.”
2. “I will courier the injection to you.” Even if they do courier it, the product’s efficacy would probably have been lost because of the summer heat during the travel.

Here is the original thread, and you can expand this directly to Twitter if you’d like to contribute to the conversation or add scammer numbers, you could be saving a life. Medika Life will check this thread and add the numbers you contribute to this article, please be sure to include the area you live in.

India’s government has issued a notice that it has attached all legal supplies of remdesivir and tocilizumab. These are being channeled to hospitals and this is your safest option for securing medication. Speak directly to your nearest clinic or hospital. Here’s another Twitter thread on the announcement.

Stay safe and try and protect your loved ones by avoiding dangerous fake medications sold by online scammers. If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is and if you’ve fallen victim to a scammer, please share the experience. It will save others.

Please also keep in mind that almost all these medicines that are being sold need to be very carefully stored and transported to ensure they retain their effectiveness. Black market products, even if they are “legitimate” are almost always rendered useless because of failure to store or transport the medicines correctly. It is also a very simple operation to replace the contents of a vial with something else. You have no guarantee at all if you choose to buy from a scammer, no matter how convincing they sound.

The post Covid Patients in India Warned About Scammers Selling Fake Medicines and Cures appeared first on Medika Life.

They are doing all this for money and they need to be stopped.

We are not referring to the healthcare heroes on the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic, but a group of medical misfits that have appropriated the name America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLD), as a moniker for their motley band of quacks and con artists. They are extremely dangerous, with ties to radical conservative extremists, witchcraft, paranoia, conspiracies, and do not possess a shred of actual experience dealing with Covid patients on the frontlines of the pandemic. They are, in short, frauds, exploiting a pandemic for their own financial gain.

They are, and we are ashamed to admit it, doctors. Doctors, however, in name only and that is the intent of this article. If, like so many of us, you would like to see the end of their orchestrated campaign of covid misinformation and attacks on the covid vaccine, join us in deplatforming their social media, reporting them to their individual medical boards, and filing reports with the Department of Justice. They are an affront to the medical profession and a danger to public health.

Their website blatantly tries to combat official Covid-19 advice and destroy public confidence in the covid vaccines for reasons we will explain below. Here is a screenshot from their website where they refer to the vaccines as experimental. This is a false and misleading statement.

They continue to spread advice about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid despite this having been publically disproven by open studies conducted under the auspices of the World Health Organization and other medical boards. They continue to question the efficacy of masks, thereby encouraging the spread of the virus. Their actions will lead to trusting members of the public accepting their advice and people will die as a result of severe Covid-19. It could be someone close to you.

If you want to protect vulnerable members of your community, register your outrage by contacting the links in the footer of this article or reporting the individual doctors to their relevant medical boards (shown below each doctor listed below).

If you don’t think they pose a risk, then have a look at their petition to stop the covid vaccines. If they were to have their way, your grandparents, parents, and at-risk sectors of our community would be facing Covid-19 without the benefit of a vaccine. Still, think they aren’t dangerous?

Incidentally, no one is enforcing the covid vaccine. That is patently untrue and under the American constitution, you cannot be forced into taking a vaccine. It remains a personal choice.

Their website displays a whole range of supposed “hydroxychloroquine home treatments” for Covid-19, the suggestion a clear one. You can treat Covid-19 at home. This is untrue, not based on any verifiable clinical data and in flagrant breach of the FDA’s policy of advertising cures or treatments for Covid-19. The following screenshot is again taken from their website, in the event they should remove it.

To be clear, there are no home treatments for Covid-19. If you suspect you have contracted the coronavirus, please quarantine and if you are in an at-risk category, dial 9-1-1 and seek immediate medical help.

Why all the effort?

Great question and as will all these cons, profit is at the heart of the sales pitch. In this instance, it wasn’t even very well hidden. Initially, politics and Trump’s agenda to reopen America provided funding and impetus for this group. With those agenda’s now behind them, the business has been repurposed for profit.

Convince the American public you have the cure for Covid-19 in the form of hydroxychloroquine and then proceed to supply it to them through your network of unethical doctors, who are only too happy to write out prescriptions that a complicit pharmacy then fills.

The players in this not so elaborate con are as follows. America’s Frontline Doctors, Ravkoo Pharmacy and Speakwithanmd.com

Here’s how the chain works, not that it’s important, but it will provide a roadmap for the FDA and DOJ to follow. I encourage any journalists who want to explore and expose existing relationships between these entities to investigate further.

Step 1: American Frontline Doctors – The marketing arm

They discredit conventional Covid-19 treatments and scare people off the vaccine in favor of hydroxychloroquine, which as we all know, isn’t that simple to get hold of anymore. They achieve this with a concerted campaign of misinformation and pseudoscientific materials published on their website and spread through social media. They become visible, they become political and they become radical. At the top of their site is a link to purchase hydroxychloroquine, which takes you to this page.

Step 2: Speakwithanmd.com – Distribution

You cant shift your product, which, annoyingly, requires a prescription, without the necessary paperwork. How do you address this across numerous states? Easy, you hook up with an online service that allows your network of doctors to prescribe to their heart’s delight, state by state. Possibly the cleverest bit of the con. You can see the network on this page and I suspect having a look at the prescriptions issued by these doctors would make for fascinating reading.

Here’s what their page says about America’s Frontline Doctors on Speakwithanmd;

• America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) are available in every state. Physician Consult Fee is $90. We see patients between 7 am and 9 pm and we will try hard to see you on the day you contact us but it could be the next day.

• Through telemedicine we can offer convenient and affordable healthcare services to patients. Telemedicine is an excellent option for nonemergency situations, including prophylactic (preventive) and early (home) treatment of COVID-19.

• Our physicians are hydroxychloroquine knowledgeable and fully aware of the science and data regarding its safety and efficacy.

Step 3: Ravkoo Pharmacy – Fulfillment

Linked on their page on Speakwithanmd.com is Ravkoo Pharmacy. Officially, according to America’s Frontline Doctors, partnered with them to ensure all the scripts are quickly filled and dispatched. We have reached out to the Ravkoo CEO, Alpesh Patel for comment regarding their association with AFLD, but have not, at the time of publication, received a response.

Cutting the head off the snake

Let’s start with the originator or founder of AFLD, Dr. Simone Gold. Her most recent claim to fame is a photograph of her in the Capitol building, surrounded by her fellow protestors, after having forcibly gained entry. Her statement that she did not know it was illegal to enter the building should be seen for what it is. Complete bullshit.

She is a trained Stanford lawyer. Ignorance, claimed or otherwise, is not acceptable as a legal defense. You lie, Ms. Gold, and you should be locked up, along with your other seditious conspirators.

Simone Gold, MD, JD, is a board-certified emergency physician in Los Angeles, California. You can view her current status here. She graduated from Chicago Medical School before attending Stanford University Law School to earn her Juris Doctorate degree. Impressed? Well, don’t be. We all know education is not a prerequisite for either common sense, morals, or ethics, none of which Ms. Gold appears to possess.

Her California medical license includes her unverified claim that she is involved in patient care 30-39 hours per week and indicates a practice location in Hesperia, a bedroom community of about 100,000 at the edge of the Mojave Desert. Efforts to determine where specifically she may practice were unsuccessful.

Any platform offering medical advice alongside the sale of the founder’s book and featuring prominent “donate” buttons all over the site is by definition, highly suspect. The strapline Gold uses to advertise their site “Empowering patients and physicians with independent, evidence-based medicine.” is laughable. There is no hard evidence-based medicine taking place in their deluded world.

The quotes Gold references from reputable sources are taken out of context or reflect earlier views, now scientifically repudiated. No sane doctor or medical student would waste five minutes on the journals or papers she uses to justify her flawed agenda. Simply put, Dr. Simone Gold and her band of merry co-conspirators are trying to pull the wool over your eyes for personal financial gain. She is trying to mislead you and is, in effect, threatening your life and the lives of others.

To clarify just how radical her medical views are, let’s take an excerpt from one of her websites, where she responds to a comment on an article she wrote on maks.

then, given these big neocons’ vaccination programs intentionally spreading sterility (as well as thimerosol-caused autism, & even the very diseases being vaccinated against, esp. measles & polio);

Perhaps, Ms. Gold, you would care to explain why that anti-vaccine stance doesn’t quite gel with your comments on your petition website. Here they are, in case you’ve forgotten making them.

SMD & AFLDS is NOT “anti-vaxx” or in any other form to be considered or mislabeled as disapproving of established, reputable vaccines when taken voluntarily without coercion. 

Gold first rose to notoriety when she appeared in a viral video touting hydroxychloroquine back in July of 2020. She was accompanied by Stella Immanuel, MD (we exposed Immanuel’s quackery/witchcraft here), James Todaro, MD, Bob Hamilton, MD,Dan Erickson, DO, Richard Urso, MD and Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD.

In a later article from the Washington Spectator exposing more lies about the media face of Simone Gold and the Republican-backed politics and people enabling her, Emergency physician Nick Sawyer, disturbed by the implications for medical practitioners that Gold and the AFLD poses, had this to say.

The America’s Frontline Doctors campaign, he says, “violates two of the primary principles of medical ethics. Medical ethics has four major principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. As hydroxychloroquine offers no clinical benefit and may be harmful, it violates the first two tenets. Further, their statements place actual frontline physicians treating patients with Covid-19 in conflict with patients’ right to autonomy.

To have Simone Gold’s medical license investigated, you will need to place a formal complaint with California’s medical licensing authority. This link will take you directly to the Califonia Medical Board’s page for filing a complaint online. Gold is not acting in the interest of public health and her outspoken views and advice on the coronavirus, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and the covid vaccine are not in keeping with her profession’s very clear overriding mandate – First do no harm.

Report Gold and America’s Frontline Doctors directly to the Department of Justice by following this link. The page contains information and telephone numbers or you can call directly on COVID-19 Fraud Hotline: 1-888-C19-WDPA.

Here is information on the other medical voices that have lent support to Gold and enabled her reach online and on Social Media. They are, in Medika’s opinion, incidental and Gold is the driving force behind AFLD.

James Todaro, MD

Todaro, an ophthalmologist based in Michigan who is no longer practicing, graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2014. His medical license, which was classified as “educational limited” in Michigan, expired in 2019. According to his LinkedIn profile, Todaro has not practiced medicine since 2018. He co-founded an investment fund called Blocktown Capital.

Bob Hamilton, MD

Hamilton, a pediatrician and school liaison with America’s Frontline Doctors, has been practicing in Santa Monica, California — home to his private practice, Pacific Ocean Pediatrics — for more than 30 years. He has hospital privileges at Providence-St. John’s Health Center and the UCLA-Santa Monica Medical Center. He has been vocal in suggesting schools re-open, citing no risk to children from Covid-19

Dan Erickson, DO

Erickson is the co-owner of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, California. He is a former emergency physician, according to reports, who was featured on national television in late April after he claimed data his center had collected showed that COVID was more widespread and less harmful than reported in medical journals.

The American College of Emergency Physicians and American Academy of Emergency Medicine issued a joint statement condemning Erickson’s claims, calling them “reckless and untested musings” that are “inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19.”

Richard Urso, MD

Urso is an ophthalmologist at Houston Eye Associates in Bellaire, Texas, who has been touting HCQ for COVID-19. He told Fox News host Laura Ingraham earlier this month that he has been working with the drug for 30 years and has never had a patient with a heart issue.

He also said during that interview that HCQ was “safer than Tylenol, aspirin, Motrin.” In 2003, Urso paid a $1,500 fine to resolve allegations that he didn’t provide a narrative of medical records to an attorney for a patient’s personal injury lawsuit.

Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD

Ladapo is a physician and health policy researcher at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, according to his UCLA profile. His primary research interests include diagnostic technology cost-effectiveness and decreasing cardiovascular disease population burden. He is also an adjunct professor of population health at New York University-Langone, a spokesperson confirmed and sees patients at Langone Medical Center.

He has cared for COVID patients at UCLA, he wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial in early April, though that could not be confirmed (a UCLA Medicine spokesperson declined to answer questions and said Ladapo declined to comment). On the Supreme Court steps, he said nothing about treating COVID-19 patients himself.

Simone Gold, MD, images are all used in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, commonly known as “fair use law”. This material is distributed without profit with the intent to provide commentary, review, education, and increase public health knowledge.

Still don’t get it?

If you still don’t believe that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are sold to you as part of an elaborate medical scam. please read this article on why we just can’t say at this point which treatments are actually useful in reducing deaths.

The post Exposing America’s Frontline Doctors and Their Financial Empire Built on Hydroxychloroquine appeared first on Medika Life.

What is the Predatory Health (PH) sector 

This broad term, which Medika has coined for convenience, encompasses practitioners from almost all the fields of healthcare and includes the complimentary and alternate health (alt-Health) sectors,

For clarification, the alt-Health sector we refer to includes Complimentary and Alternate Health (CAM) – which includes fields like homeopathy and chiropractic – and is far less strictly regulated. The same is true of the other included sectors under this heading, including but not limited to, the natural products and supplement market, new age life coaches, and the grey area of unregulated health (medical) devices. 

The alt-Health sector tends to far more representative of Predatory Health practices. Traditional medicine is broadly regulated and therefore less susceptible to the quackery of PH, but by no means immune to its perpetrators.

Predatory Health practitioners gravitate towards the alt-Health sector, attracted by lax regulation and the vast legally grey areas that allow them to operate and ply their wares almost with impunity. 

The more outlandish and non-traditional the peddled cure or treatment becomes, the more likely the PH practitioner is to gravitate away from traditional medicine by embracing these fields, where their cohort welcomes them with open arms. 

What does a Predatory Health practitioner sell?

Their main product is intangible. They are selling hope, albeit false, something terminal patients and those afflicted with conditions like chronic pain are desperate for. These patients cling to the hope of finding some relief or miracle cure and the predatory health market preys on this. Below is a non-exhaustive list of the typical markets (marks) and strategies these individuals exploit with their health cons.

• Offering miracle cures, treatments, and relief to the terminally ill. Cancer patients are a favored target, but any deadly disease offers these quacks the opportunity to peddle their dangerous and untested wares.
• If you or your child suffers from conditions like autism, you are a primary target. Support groups, especially closed groups on Telegram, Facebook, and other social media groups offer these practitioners the opportunity to exploit you in relative safety. Be wary of any individuals offering treatments for conditions that do not have known medical remedy.
• Chronic pain sufferers are a massive target for Predatory Health. They have an unlimited number of relatively safe, but ineffective treatments and natural products they can peddle to you. It isn’t in their interest to kill their cash cow, but there are unscrupulous merchants who will offer you products that are known to be very dangerous and sometimes fatal
• Obesity, eczema, high blood pressure, influenza, and covid. The list is endless as are the techniques and strategies these unscrupulous merchants will engage to appear legitimate.
• Mental Health is also catered for with New Age life courses offering all sorts of benefits from attending costly online seminars and retreats. It is hocus pocus and has no foundation in solid science. None of these things will cure your chronic pain, cancers, or autism.
• Machines claiming to offer some sort of medical benefit, some working on sound, some using vibration, and others still, claiming amazing unvalidated results and health benefits. Never, ever take endorsements at face value. If these devices actually worked, don’t you think your doctors would be using them?
• The exploitation of misguided activist groups like anti-vaxers to further promote their sales. More damage is done to the cause of vaccines by these individuals than any other group combined. It serves the interests of Predotory Health to promote distrust in traditional medicine.

False Prophets and Fake Prophets

There is a distinction between the two and in the examples and names I will highlight below, most occupy one camp or the other. 

False prophets are usually doctors and medically trained individuals who, for unknown reasons, have latched onto treatments that are not evidence-based and they believe, without conclusive medical evidence to support their beliefs, in the safety and efficacy of the treatments they peddle. 

Belief is a dangerous drug and the sustenance of religion. It has no place in evidence-based medicine. 

Fake prophets, on the other hand, are under no such illusions. They know full well the potential dangers and risks of the products or treatments they peddle. They are highly skilled at manipulating marketing channels to ensure they reach their potential ‘marks’ and will often possess no formal medical training. 

Both are equally dangerous. The fake prophets are usually limited to the alt-Health markets and prefer this environment as it allows for greater freedom to ply their deadly wares. 

It is important to note that sales may not be the only motivating factor that drives certain Predatory Health practitioners. It can simply be a desire to spread disinformation, or, as they may see it, deeply insightful information they have come upon. These are possibly the most disruptive and dangerous voices from within the Predatory Health sector as they enable and empower the real charlatans by creating doubt in people’s minds. 

Take for instance Dr Christiane Northrup, whose divergence from a reasonably distinguished medical career in women’s health has been abrupt and complete. Her adoption of conspiracy theories, 5G cell towers, microchips in vaccines, and other nonsensical rantings on YouTube and social media beggars belief.

Whatever her motivation, this doctor enjoys a broad following on social media, and her voice has impact. I have no doubt whatsoever that her rantings will result in eventual deaths. People avoiding the Covid vaccine because of baseless lies, people not inoculating their children, and an avoidance of traditional medicine because of the distrust she sows. She epitomizes the False Prophet. 

Meet the Predatory Health Practitioners

The names below are linked to Medika’s Quack Scale, a tool designed to enable the public to identify quacks and charlatans operating in the Predatory Health sector. 

The other end of the scale (Fake Prophets) is occupied by individuals like Dr Fitt, a marketing pseudonym for a disgraced doctor, Roby Mitchell, who now peddles bleach treatments and enemas to autistic children from his base in Texas. Purely driven by financial gain, Mitchell ranks among the bottom feeders in the world of predatory health. 

Dr. Kerri Rivera is another example of a doctor gone bad. Her exploitation of vulnerable mental health patients for profit is well documented and her association with Sayer Ji, an alt-Health proponent who used to sell health foods, has resulted in them spewing a sea of misinformation on Covid and other medical topics. Once again, their motivation is the sale of their products and treatments ay any cost

Kelly Brogan, Joseph Mercola, Zach Bush, the list is as endless as it is dangerous and the reason it grows daily is simply this. Money. There are fortunes to be made in the alt-Health sector, particularly if you claim to have the “cure for Covid” marketed of course as a drug or treatment to boost your immune system against influenza viruses. The FDA might be watching.

Millions of dollars change hands daily, paid over freely by those duped into believing the lies. Often, customers also pay with their lives. 

The individuals who engage in Predatory Health are willing to risk being caught. The system grinds slowly and by the time the FDA catches up with them, the damage is already done. Their message is out there and they simply move the supply of their “toxins” to less mainstream channels. Loopholes and blindspots in current U.S legislation leave room enough to drive buses through. The system offers little more negligible punitive fines and smacks on the wrist, which are not a deterrent.

This is the nature of predatory health and it isn’t always easy to spot. Particularly if your desperation and need for relief or hope outweigh your common sense.

Buying from a “large” business isn’t always a guarantee of safety either. Take the following company Phoenix Biotechnology, whose aggressive marketing campaign to sell a “natural extract” called Oleander 4x is a textbook case of manipulating the health market to promote sales of a product that can potentially cause death. 

Through the misrepresentation and manipulation of clinical studies, they have produced the illusion of medical acceptance and the latest FDA warning issued against them for offering their toxin as a treatment for Covid has exposed the true nature of their business. 

Many other similar companies operate below the radar for years in relative safety, selling and enabling Predatory Health practitioners by making their fake treatments and products available to a global market. 

It is a monumental problem that the healthcare industry and the American government can no longer afford to ignore. Every Predatory Health practitioner we allow to operate, particularly those who still have a foot firmly placed in traditional medicine, bring disrepute to the industry. 

They encourage mistrust of conventional treatments to the detriment of many critically-ill people. The formally qualified quacks breach the oath they have taken and a legal option must be explored to permanently strip them of their qualifications and the right to their use.

Many of these individuals took an oath and their actions are a clear breach of this oath, thereby rendering the conditions of the degree null and void. Simply removing their right to practice is an insufficient response and continues to endanger public health. Where clear intent to harm and deceive is established, the full force of the law should be brought to bear on these quacks.

Legislation enabling medical boards to act more aggressively against medical professionals in the predatory health sector is desperately needed on a federal level. It is in the interests of public safety and in the continued interests of maintaining credulity in existing public healthcare institutions.

Dealing with alt-Health

Policing the alt-Health sector requires an entirely different approach which may include clear legal guidelines of operation, enforceable by institutions like the FDA. This is simply one mechanism though, and the problem will require a multi-faceted approach. 

What compounds the complexity of the problem is the alt-Health sector itself. There are definite and real health benefits to certain treatments and therapies offered by the sector. Recognizing, regulating, and protecting these practitioners, products, and therapies will be critical to the future of this market. An excellent example of how a legitimate profession can be ruined by its association with predatory health is the Chiropractic industry.

Left unchecked, the alternative will be an eventual wholesale ban on many potentially helpful drugs, therapies, and products. This would be a knee-jerk response, an oversimplified solution to a complex problem and needs to be avoided at all costs. Sadly, all too often, this type of exaggerated response is typical of politicians who lack a clear grasp of an industry’s dynamics and are looking to simply exercise damage control.

There has been little effort shown by the alt-Health sector to police themselves and whatever results now from the proliferation of fraudsters within their sector, they will share blame in the outcomes. 

If you’ve been affected by Predatory Health practitioners what can you do to stop others falling victim?

Stop enabling Predatory Health Practioners

Every time you come across these individuals and you paths will cross, perhaps frequently, as they proliferate on social media, call them out, unfollow them, report them, block them. 

Their current success is largely attributable to the internet and their mastery of social media as a sales and marketing tool. The privacy of private groups on Facebook and other platforms allows them to operate with impunity, away from prying eyes. 

They are usually only exposed when tragedy occurs, when someone dies from the poisons they peddle and that death is often a child. You can help by exposing them before this happens. 

Websites like Medika Life and others offer pages that highlight the unethical and dangerous practices of these doctors. We also offer a page where the public can confidentially bring names to our attention. You can also report the professionally registered quacks to the relevant boards within their states or directly to the FDA if medication is involved. 

Reporting accounts to the social media platforms is often futile as they are slow to respond, if ever, particularly if groups are closed. Take screenshots of offending materials and include these in a report to the websites listed below. 

Your actions are essential to saving lives and stopping the spread of the rot of predatory health within our communities. By using your voice, you can join a growing community of people speaking out against disinformation. You will not be alone and somewhere on the planet, a child may owe you their life. 

You can also sign a MOBILIZE™ Health petition if you would like to add your voice to a campaign to rid the industry of this blight by creating a formal watchdog, an Organization tasked with and legally enabled to, root out health fraud and the dangerous practices of predatory health practitioners. 

Help us to help protect the most vulnerable sectors of our communities. 

The post Exposing the Dark World of Predatory Health appeared first on Medika Life.

“This stuff works. myoleander.com #COVID19” . . . See opportunities for #botanical to not only treat #COVID19 but to also prevent #SARSCoV2 #infection” — Tweet from Phoenix Biotechnology

This is the story of how a pharma company has milked a practically useless compound for the last 20 years, misleading its investors and offering the public hopes of miracle cures for everything from Alzheimer’s, to cancers and Covid. In July of 2020, they made the ultimate play, approaching the White House in the hopes President Trump could be sold another version of hydroxychloroquine to treat covid patients. They failed. Here then, the tale of Phoenix Biotechnology and their wonder drug, Oleander 4x.

What do you do when your star new product, Oleander 4X, and the wild claims you’ve made around its efficacy gets flagged by the FDA? How do you respond to an official warning letter from the FDA listing and condemning your fake claims and misleading marketing practices? You do what Avila Herbals and Phoenix Biotechnology have done. 

You register the product for yet more clinical trials with the National Institute of Health, of course. Anything to keep up appearances and buy a few more months of sales, or if you’re a pharma company, extend the opportunity for further investment.

Trials that are funded by you (Phoenix Biotechechnology), controlled by you and will run under the auspices of medical experts you employ. No reason at all to treat the results of any data produced as highly suspect. Worth mentioning is that the current trial (other failed trials are listed below) simply seeks to assess the safety of your product in human use. The same product that you’ve been aggressively peddling as a cure-all for the last few months to any American who’d listen. 

So, much like water, the product, Oleander 4X, will be shown to be safe to drink, or not. Any pharmacological effects aren’t to be studied in this trial and with good reason as, as I will show. 

This is the same product, in essence, that Phoenix submitted(PBI-05204) for trials as a potential cancer treatment in 2016. I would have thought establishing safety in humans (2020 trial) would have come before you started dosing terminal cancer patients in 2016?

There are no existing human trials of your drug that have established safe dosage in humans, are there? In fact, you’re not even certain if there are side effects yet, are you? Hard to tell when your trial volunteers are terminally ill and dosed with a cocktail of serious cancer chemicals. Despite this, you still feel selling and marketing your product as a cure-all is justified. 

Based on what exactly, if you don’t mind me asking? Where is a shred of scientific evidence that Oleander 4X does anything that you claim?

I’ve checked your website and, at best, you insinuate possible treatments you’ve somehow extrapolated from non-referenced and in-vitro studies. I call bullshit. 

I would suggest, in the politest way possible, that your companies, their associated directors, board members, and “medical experts” have in fact been lying for the last 20 years, that you have misled the public in an effort to peddle your snake oil and mislead potential future investors. Your website’s News page reads more like a wish-list of imagined cures in a world where proof of efficacy isn’t required, merely ‘maybe’s’ and ‘looks like’ will suffice. They won’t, and I would suggest your investors to date have been grossly guilty of a serious lack of due diligence or complicity.

Phoenix Biotechnology is guilty of selling fake cures to gullible members of the public. You are peddling an unapproved drug with unproven claims. Claims are not evidence and you are well aware of your product’s continued failures.

Either company is welcome to provide actual data from registered and peer-reviewed studies validating the medical claims you make relating to Oleander 4X (shown below)and I will happily print a full retraction. I have reached out to the registered directors of both companies offering them an opportunity to respond to the above. Remember, representing data in a way meant to intentionally mislead the reader is as good as lying.

The following are medical properties your companies have claimed for Oleander 4X, either on your websites or on social media (accounts now deleted)

• AN ALL-AMERICAN NATURAL COMPOUND TO CONTEND WITH THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC[,] A Promising Response to the Coronavirus-2019 Threat[,] Proposing an entirely U.S.-developed, -sourced and -manufactured treatment for “envelope viruses” — including Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) — that can be available in great scale now at a low price-point.
• PBI’s research to date suggests that the extract prevents key viruses from correctly forming their protective “envelope”, rendering the virus progeny non-infective; the virus is then unable to overwhelm the host and its ability to spread itself is severely impaired. In this way, oleandrin may help “flatten the curve” and curtail the pandemic. Due to its efficacy against the viral envelope, it is considered a platform solution with wide-spectrum applicability to address multiple viral pathogens and their mutations” (bold text in original).
• “We are naturally inquisitive scientists, and so we continually experiment with new formulae to develop exciting breakthroughs. When the Guile coronavirus pandemic hit the start of 2020, we knew we couldn’t sit by without investigating possible avenues that might help the world overcome this devastating virus. We’ve partnered with Phoenix Biotechnology to make a homeopathic medicine called Oleander 4X.” Below this appears a button that hyperlinks to the website myoleander.com with the text “Visit Myoleander.com” followed by “We felt that in our farm we could potentially develop something that could help turn the tide against our invisible enemy — and we did just that.” — Source Avilaherbs.com

On Phoenix Biotechnology’s social media website https://twitter.com/PhoenixBioInc: (now closed)

• In a November 19, 2020 post, you state: “What we’ve been trying to tell everyone since March. This stuff works. myoleander.com #COVID19” . . . See opportunities for #botanical to not only treat #COVID19 but to also prevent #SARSCoV2 #infection.”
• In an additional September 11, 2020 post, you state: “Thanks @HegKong for the mention. It is truly shocking we still have not received an IND number on something that has proven to be more efficacious than the 53,000+ potential CV19 treatments tested at UTMB. The science is there. The safety is proven.” accompanied by an embedded Tweet dated September 11 stating “New potential natural treatment for COVID-19 derived from the Oleander plant proposed.”

On Avila Herbals’ social media website https://twitter.com/AvilaHerbals:

• In a November 24, 2020 post, you state: “Oleander 4X is a homeopathic remedy for flu-like symptoms. . . . NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE Oleander 4X is an OTC homeopathic . . . myoleander.com”

Claims included in the FDA complaint point to a now-defunct Twitter account https://twitter.com/PhoenixBioInc What happened there? Innocent folk don’t suddenly move their accounts or close them. 

We haven’t yet dealt with Avila Herbals (the growers, manufacturers, and retail arm of Oleander 4X) and I’ll get to them in a minute. First, we need to examine Oleander itself, as a herbal extract and what is actually known about the drug.

Oleander and its known safety profile

Deaths attributed to Olendear are easily found online. This reference lists three as well as exstensive warings related to Oleander or Anvirzel, a brand name associated with drug.

• Death of an adult diabetic man: Due to consumption of oleander leaves.
• Death suspected from daily intramuscular injections: In a 43-year-old cancer patient, who used intramuscular injections of Nerium oleander extract for 2 months.
• Accidental poisoning: In a woman who attempted to self-medicate for thyroid disease.

According to an article in PubMed, the common oleander is one of most poisonous plants that have been shown to contain nondigitalis cardiac glycosides. Oleander is an idiom for plants of the N. oleander L, N. indicum, and, Nerium odorum, species. Common names include soland, lorier bol, rosebay, and rose laurel and kaner. 

The plant also has shown toxicologic importance for accidents when used in folk medicines, when adults unknowingly eat parts of the plant, or food that has come into contact with the plant, such as hot-dog sticks, and in homicides or suicides. 

The cardiac glycosides in oleander produce more gastrointestinal effects than those in digoxin, and the symptoms range from nausea and vomiting to cramping and bloody diarrhea. Also, it causes irritation to the mucosal membranes, resulting in burning around the mouth and increased salivation. Confusion, dizziness, drowsiness, weakness, visual disturbances, and mydriasis are central nervous system manifestations of toxicity.

The most serious side effects of oleander poisoning are cardiac abnormalities, including various ventricular dysrhythmias, tachyarrhythmias, bradycardia, and heart block.

Multiple reliable medical sources stress that Oleander should not be used outside of clinical trials. In addition, they categorically state that Oleander doesn’t have the medical evidence to support any claims for treating the following:

• To treat congestive heart failure
• To treat hepatitis C
• To treat AIDS
• To treat COVID-19

Clinical trials of PBI-05204

A Phase 2 clinical trial published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology entitled “Clinical trial of novel agent PBI-05204 in patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma (mPDA)” established thatPBI-05204 was a non-starter for the treatment of mPDA. 

Conclusions: PBI-05204 did not meet its primary endpoint for OS in this study.

A second clinical study, ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02329717, was commissioned in 2016 with the following stated objective. ‘Efficacy and Safety Study of PBI-05204 in Patients With Stage IV Metastatic Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma’. To date, no action has been taken and no patients have been recruited.

Another study in Dallas at SMU in 2019 suggested Oleander was effective against IVT. In a study entitled, The Botanical Glycoside Oleandrin Inhibits Human T-cell Leukemia Virus Type-1 Infectivity and Env-Dependent Virological Synapse Formation, the drug was examined for efficacy in-vitro.

This suggestion (suspicious by its very nature) was immediately latched onto by Phoenix and bandied about all over its website and across social media. In-vitro is a world away from reproducing similar results in vivo, as any responsible scientist will tell you.

The Longest Road

Imagine milking a cash cow for 20 years. I am certain it reaches a point where you are simply unable to walk away from it without compromising yourself and your fellow board members. Perhaps that is the position Phoenix Biotech now finds itself in. 

Whatever the reason, they are all intimately aware of their product’s continued failure to prove itself useful at anything. Oleander isn’t going to be recognized as medicine by the FDA in 2020 or in 2030. It simply doesn’t work and if anyone is aware of this, it is Phoenix. It is, after all, their product and no sensible person can refute the mountain of evidence pointing to the drug’s failure.

The business structures attached to Oleander are convoluted and complicated, with offshore companies and layered structures of businesses within businesses. Here for example, is an SEC document from 2011, 20-F SEC Filing, filed by NERIUM BIOTECHNOLOGY INC on 6/28/2011documenting just how convoluted. Nerium Biotechnology manufactures Anvirzel™ which is essentially PBI-05204 or oleander. 

Can you blame the FDA and investors for struggling to keep up? You might argue at this point that all is fair in love, war, and business, and really, where is the harm? That is easily answered. Aside from a clear intent to mislead, Phoenix has tried to actively market their oleander snake-oil as a cure for Covid, based on little else other than a petri dish experiment. 

They have knowlingly tried to sell the public a highly toxic drug, using their web of investors and political influence.

If anyone doubts this is about money, read the Marketwatch report here on Phoneix’s efforts to pitch Oleander to the Whitehouse as a Covid cure. 

Oleandrin, an extract from the highly toxic oleander plant, which was pitched to the president by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in July. It should be noted that Lindell, a Trump supporter, owns a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology, which is developing the experimental oleandrin product. And Carson, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, is a personal friend of his.

The tweet below from August of this year, highlights Andersons Cooper’s attack on Mike Lindell, accusing him of selling Snakeoil during a CNN interview shortly after.

Enter Avila Herbals

No, I hadnt forgotten about them, just wanted to ensure our long and winding road ended here. So who is Avila Herbals and how do they fit into all this? Why are they featured in the FDA warning letter? Let’s do a little digging, should we?

A visit to the Avila Herbals website will lead you to myoleander.com, run by Avila and referenced in the FDA complaint. You can view their About page here. They go to great lengths to assure you they are FDA registered. Yes, as a manufacturing facility, which coincidentally produces CBD, Avila’s main business and another steadfast favorite of the alternate health sector. A small disclaimer in the footer reminds you that Oleander is not FDA approved.

Homeopathic Products: Claims based on traditional homeopathic practice, not accepted medical evidence. Not FDA evaluated.

I’ve highlighted the word “claims” in their disclaimer above. Its a very important word,and one that most choose to ignore. A claim is simply that, a claim. Anyone can make any claim they wish, the claim does not require any basis in fact, something worth while remembering the next time you peruse a product or drug.,

Move over to their storefront on the site and you can purchase Oleander 4X on the product page. There is no mention made of the incredibly toxic side effects of an overdose from Oleander and the risk to life. There is also no mention made of the fact that safe dosage in humans has not been established for their product. The screenshot below from myoleander.com is from their About Oleander page.

Lets examine each of these three statements in turn.

Extracts of Nerium oleander have been studied for decades.

Oleander 4X provides temporary relief of symptoms associated with flu, such as muscle or body aches, headaches, chills and fever, cough, congestion.

Where is the clinical proof for this statement? Studying something in no way suggests a product is safe. This is a misleading statement that is intentionally framed to suggest the product is safe because it has been studied. If it’s been proven safe, why is your company currently engaging in clinical trials with the sole purpose of ascertaining if it’s safe? Surely a responsible and ethical retailer would first ensure safety before recklessly marketing to the public?

Oleander-4X is a whole leaf extract, which has been shown to be safe. Oleander-4X is 100% vegan, and does not contain high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives, artificial colors, flavors, or sweeteners.

Again, where is your proof of how the product has been shown to be safe? Another intentional effort to mislead the public regarding the safety of a dangerous product.

Extracts of Nerium oleander have been used safely, with minimal side effects in thousands of people in the United States.

Oleander-4X is an all-natural homeopathic drug that can easily be taken sublingually (under the tongue).

Really, thousands you say? Where is the evidence for this statement? Have you contacted these users? Now suddenly you mention minimal side effects? Care to share the real dangers this drug poses with the public. Obviously not if you’re touting it as a cure-all.

Follow the money

In a press release, dated 28 October, Theresa Obiso, CEO of Avila Herbals announced their intention to manufacture Oleander 4X on behalf of Phoenix Biotechnology. According to the press release, Avila has a vested interest to the tune of $4.5 million in Oleander. It’s only natural they would want to see it succeed and establishing it in the alternate health market as a cure-all would be in the companies interest. The release states;

Since Q2 CY2020, Avila Herbals and its partners have invested over $4.5 million dollars into the development and commercialization of these products in the New River Valley of Virginia.

The press release also reiterated Phoenix’s misleading statements regarding Oleander.

To date, Phoenix has identified potent antiviral activity against Ebola and Marburg viruses, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex viruses, HIV and HTLV-1, and SARS-CoV-2.

I would suggest that the timing of this shared venture was hugely influenced by the Covid pandemic and that both companies viewed Oleander 4x as the perfect cash cow. Continued failure to introduce oleander, in its various guises and under different pseudonyms, into the pharmaceutical arena in the US has meant that the only viable market left to exploit is the natural healthcare one. An arena where homeopathy rules supreme and evidence of efficacy is an alien concept.

Has Avila simply fallen foul of Phoenix’s 20-year-old marketing ploys or are they actively engaged in furthering the Oleander fairy tale?

There has been an orchestrated campaign to take Oleander 4X mainstream and it had proven quite successful. This, from an article in the Palm Beach Post, entitled ‘Oleander extract sales rocket after Ben Carson touts it for COVID. But is it safe?’ on the 22nd of November.

“We just launched this product at the end of October, and sales are up over 65,000%,” said Richard Obiso, a doctor of biochemistry who two years ago co-founded the Virginia-based manufacturing company Avila Herbals with his wife, Theresa Obiso, a doctor of microbiology.

Carson later admitted he survived Covid because of proper medical intervention, but that didn’t stop him tweeting initially that Oleander 4x had made him feel ‘much better’. Not surprisingly, he was hospitalized as a consequence of his Covid infection and no doubt, drinking Oleander played a role in that. Our bodies don’t tolerate poisonous materials well, particularly when we are fighting a viral infection. The article continues;

“It is a common misconception to think that plants, being natural, including oleander, may be safer alternatives to pharmaceuticals,” Molina said.

But that hasn’t stopped Palm Beach County-based Carson, who, along with President Donald Trump and My Pillow founder and multi-millionaire Mike Lindell — who is on the board of directors of Avila’s partner company Phoenix Biotechnology — from pushing the idea that oleander extract can help treat or cure COVID-19.

Phonix is starting to run out of options. Their application to the FDA to market Oleandrin as a supplement was declined in September this year. It would appear that even Phoenix is starting to fall foul of its own marketing strategies. Confusion surrounding the different names it has used over the last twenty years no longer simply serves to “baffle with bullshit’, it’s also come home to roost, as the FDA’s response showed.

In a follow-up call with FDA, the agency suggested to Phoenix Biotechnology that the safety data provided in the NDIN failed to meet “formal requirements because it was based upon safety data for PBI-05204, and not based upon a determination of safety for our dietary ingredient when used under the conditions described in the notification (or the package labeling),” according to Matos.

The FDA also pointed to Phoenix’s ridiculous use of a clinical trial on terminal cancer patients to claim product safety.

“Furthermore, studies performed in advanced cancer patients generally cannot establish the safety of your ingredient in its intended population of normal healthy adults, and you did not provide any information to indicate that such extrapolation between different populations would be scientifically valid,” Abdel-Rahman added.

However you choose to package it, and whatever your motivation may be, Oleander 4x remains an untested and dangerous drug that needs to be removed from the public sphere with all haste. 

The post Oleander 4X Snakeoil. The Story Behind a Fake Covid Cure appeared first on Medika Life.

Heel Inc. are unscrupulous and ruthless in their exploitation of gullible and desperate members of the public and people seeking real solutions for often terminal conditions. In the late ’80s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that Heel Inc. (then called BHI) was one of the most flagrant law violators among homeopathic marketers and they banned further imports of their products into the USA. You can read their full history in this very detailed post on their company and business practises.

 In 1997, the Albuquerque company was renamed Heel Inc, which now manufactures and distributes both BHI products and Heel products. Heel products are primarily marketed to practitioners, whereas BHI products are primarily marketed to consumers. The company also prints and produces possibly the most misleadingly titled publication in the history of health publishing, ‘ Journal of Biomedical Therapy’.

The company enjoys large sales in India, an area known for its fondness of alternate medicines and ‘cure-alls’. Heel’s most recent marketing success under their Dr Reckeweg brand (the companies founder) has been India’s embrace of one of their products for the treatment of Covid-19. The product is Dr. Reckeweg Arsenic Alb-30. So successful has their campaign been, that some Indian provinces have even approved its use.

The product is diluted arsenic, commonly used in homeopathic circles for the treatment of digestive disorders and other conditions. If you doubt the dangers of this product, read this clinical study on the effects of arsenic from homeopathic treatments. The image below is from a company that markets Heel Inc’s brand in India.

It may seem shocking to some people that Arsenic would be considered a treatment for Covid, but don’t forget that recently, and evidence suggests the practice continues, Americans were ingesting MMS (Bleach) for preventing Covid. Heel’s catalog of products is massive, over 1000 different lines, and their marketing is targetted, deceptive and highly effective. They have seen the space in the market provided by the homeopathic quacks and have moved in with the intent of dominating it.

Heel Inc. and the FDA

In January 2005, the FDA ordered Heel Inc. to stop making illegal claims for five products claimed to be effective in preventing or treating influenza. In 2010, the FDA and FTC jointly ordered Homeopathy for Health, of Moses Lake, Washington, to stop claiming that BHI Bronchitis, BHI Bronchitis for Children, BHI Flu Plus with Influenzinum, and Heel Gallium Heel were an effective anti-viral for respiratory flu, such as the then-current swine flu. The FDA also placed these products on its Fraudulent Products List.

Numerous prior actions, product import seizures and warnings were issued to Heel Inc. prior to this by the FDA, many of which can still be accessed online. In 2014, Heel announced that it would stop marketing within the United States and Canada after August 31, 2014. Its press release attributed the decision to two class-action suits that has caused a “substantial financial burden.” You can read the full details of these actions here.

In truth, Heel was bought out in 2014 by MediNatura Inc. (another US-based company), and the products were simply routed through this business. A visit to Medinatura’s web site shows three featured products on their front page, advertised as fighting, guess what? Cold and Flu symptoms.

Heel in Germany

You know you’ve been around awhile when the street your business is located in is named after the person who founded the company. Biologische Heilmittel Heel GmbH (Heel) is situated in Dr. Reckeweg-Straße in Baden-Baden. Its an institution in Germany and it speaks volumes to the marketing drive and market penetration of the company. The companies growth has also been ably abetted by Europe’s more lenient approach to homeopathy.

How does Heel feel about their products being marketed as Covid cures? They are delighted, I’m sure. Restricted by legislation in Europe and the USA with regards to claims they can make about the quackery they sell, India and Asian markets are ripe for exploitation. These markets are more loosely regulated, the customer is more susceptible to pseudoscience and less likely to sue if he meets an unfortunate end swallowing arsenic. What’s not to love?

If you can knowingly sell fake hope to terminal cancer patients and other seriously ill people, then a little cure for Covid isn’t even going to register on the ethics scale.

For those on the fence, there is absolutely no scientific proof of the value of homeopathic treatments and they most certainly cannot cure Covid or any of the other dizzying array of conditions claimed by their quack resellers. If you are ill, seek qualified medical advice from a certified medical doctor or healthcare provider.

The post Heel Inc. (Dr.Reckeweg): Homeopathy, Quacks and Covid Cures appeared first on Medika Life.

In fact, much to my surprise after spending days online hunting down these quacks and charlatans for our Medika Quack Scale, I discovered that the FDA has a list on an obscure page of all the businesses, companies, and individuals they’ve sanctioned over fake Covid-19 claims. in 2020. All 139 of them.

If you are in any doubt, and you should be, about any claims made by an individual relating to a product’s ability to boost your immune system against Covid or to directly combat the virus, have a quick look through the listed products on the FDA page. Keep in mind, if these individuals or companies have lied to you about these products, all their other claims and products should also be viewed as suspect.

FDA Page: Fraudulent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Products.

Additional COVID-19 related warning letters can be found on the Agency’s Internet Pharmacy Warning Letters webpage. According to the page;

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is issuing warning letters to firms for selling fraudulent products with claims to prevent, treat, mitigate, diagnose or cure coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We are actively monitoring for any firms marketing products with fraudulent COVID-19 prevention and treatment claims. The FDA is exercising its authority to protect consumers from firms selling unapproved products and making false or misleading claims, including, by pursuing warning letters, seizures, injunctions or criminal prosecutions against products and firms or individuals that violate the law.

You can also report any products or website by visiting this FDA page. Always educate yourself on a product or treatment, particularly vitamin and homeopathic – natural products that make claims. The internet provides a number of resources and you should always seek out information from recognized medical websites.

Medika is building a list of untrustworthy retailers that profit from selling snake oil, fake cures, and making fictitious claims about their products. You can view our Rotten Retailers List by following the link. The video below explains the FDA approach to health fraud.

There is also another fantastic resource on the FDA site that lists loads of links and offers advice and breaking news on how the FDA is dealing with health fraud. Visit the page here

The post Fraudulent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Products appeared first on Medika Life.