[Update: It looks like Michelle Skaff has scrubbed her site clean. Seems like an admission of guilt.]
There's a good find on the website: Our Health and Abundance. Yes that's the website run by LifeVantage Pro 7 Distributor Michelle Skaff that encourages illegal Protandim testimonials for diseases when the LifeVantage itself admits that Protandim is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Vogel found a radio show on this page: Our Health and Abundance. The show takes questions from callers. One caller says:
Hi Dr. Gordon, my name is Marian Gates, I live in Marin County in California and My mother in Boston last week just had quintuple by-pass surgery. She's doing well. She's home now. However do you recommend she start Protandim immediately?
Dr. Gordon: Well if she's had by-pass surgery, if you read the by-pass graft study, yeah, the earlier the better. If it were one of my family members, yes, I would definitely have them start taking it. But as I told you, I don't make recommendations specifically to patients for the reasons that I mentioned.
So what we have here is that Dr. Mark Gordon does recommend the person take Protandim in direct answer to the readers question. In fact he goes beyond that stating that "the sooner the better." Then he ends with a sentence saying that he doesn't make recommendations. At this point it is too late, he already has.
Later on in the same interview Dr. Mark Gordon is asked about insulin levels going down while on Protandim and specifically asked if "that's what [he's] heard." He agrees and gives a testimonial of his wife's cousin's 12 year old daughter who is a type 1 diabetic who cut back insulin usage in 30% in 30 days.
He makes these recommendations despite the fact that LifeVantage itself says, "Protandim is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease." The FDA has not approved Protandim for use with post-op heart surgery or diabetes.
It should be noted that Dr. Mark Gordon is a LfieVantage distributor and earns money from LifeVantage. At a minimum this is an unethical conflict of interest. At a maximum it could cost him his medical license. Check out this >NY Times article about the crackdown on doctors getting kickbacks for recommending products:
"Besides jail time and fines, doctors convicted in the cases could lose their licenses for a time and be excluded from the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, severely limiting their potential pool of patients.
Dr. Charles D. Rosen, an orthopedic surgeon and president of the Association for Medical Ethics, predicted that the pending cases would tarnish the entire profession. “The abuse of the public trust by the few will hurt the many,” Dr. Rosen said."
Dr. Rosen is right. The abuse of the public trust by people like Mark Gordon will hurt many.
Originally posted 2011-10-10 23:17:44.
This post involves:Protandim Doctors Breaking the Law?
... and focuses on:Dr. Mark Gordon
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October 18th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Skaff scrubbed her website completely. It was given a total overhaul and purged of all offending material.
Seems like someone’s listening…and they are afraid.
October 18th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Yep, I’m glad that I downloaded the MP3s before posting so that I have a record of it. I might repost them for posterity.
That person who is watching would be very wise to stop whatever they are doing and spread the world to all to distributors to proactively take down anything involving Protandim and disease claims.
March 26th, 2012 at 8:00 pm
There is a real easy way to settle this, why not check out the National Library of Medicine website at http://www.pubmed.gov? They list all the studies that have been done by various universities on Protandim.
Why not look at the studies? What are you afraid of?
March 27th, 2012 at 12:42 am
Jon, why not check out the National Library of Medicine website at http://clinicaltrials.gov/ ? Here’s a quick link: (http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=protandim). They list all the clinical trials so that you can see the effect Protandim has on humans.
I’ve looked at all the studies on Pubmed and Paul Myhill, Inventor of Protandim, Admits Pubmed is for Marketing. That’s because they only deal with test tubes and animals – except for one study where its been shown that LifeVantage fudged the data.
The real easy way is to settle it is look up the FDA’s website and see what diseases Protandim is listed as helping. Here’s the link: http://www.fda.gov/food/labelingnutrition/labelclaims/healthclaimsmeetingsignificantscientificagreementssa/default.htm. Go ahead and click – you won’t see Protandim listed anywhere.