LifeVantage and Dr. Joe McCord Lied about the Creation of Protandim!

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You seem displeased about the Dr McCord and his lies. In spite of Dr McCord not being the creator the question is, does Protandim work on chronic illnessess? Have you documented results from all those who are using it? Look at the FDA. They are a bunch of liars who endorse medications that should not be in the market and yet people buy them. Why? Only when hundreds die do they consider certain medication dangerous to be prescribed.

[...] of those numbers may be enough for for Joe McCord to let LifeVantage lie about the creation of Protandim. That’s quite a good sum for using McCord as marketing as the company [...]

And another excerpt from the interview with Paul Myhill http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lifevantage/blog/2009/03/09/inside-protandim-the-paul-myhill-interview
“LifeVantage’s current science program to encourage or promote issue-specific studies is a sound strategy indeed. Since Big Pharma (through its proxy, the FDA) doesn’t allow supplements to make any disease claims, I think it’s important for the scientific literature to make those claims for us. Most people can then make the connection and understand how Protandim can be a positive part of their health regime.”

Mary,

What kind of distress are you referring to exactly? People can be distressed about a lot of things, such as an upcoming deadline or an unexpected car repair bill. Protandim clearly doesn’t with these, nor does it prevent them. As far as any health-related distress goes it is important to head the warning at the bottom of LifeVantage’s FAQ: “Protandim is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”

It is worth noting that Dr. McCord had millions of dollars at stake when Lifeline’s (now LifeVantage) deal with CereMedix to market CMX-1152 as Protandim fell through. It is hardly surprising that McCord would keep his name off the patent (because he wasn’t involved and/or didn’t want to tarnish his name with it). It’s also hardly surprising that Dr. McCord would let someone else to it, in the off-chance that he could save his millions in LifeVantage stock.

I have yet to look into Orphan Lifeline’s non-profit status. If it is in good-order, then good for Paul Myhill. However, it would have been better if he didn’t scam people out of their money in the first place.

Mary,

Protandim has not been “proven” do any such thing. There was on small study done 6 years ago where more than half of the people dropped out of. Furthermore, the study wasn’t conducted on unbiased subjects, but people who made millions in the transaction funding LifeVantage. There are so many things wrong with the study that LifeVantage hasn’t even bothered to try to again for fear of further embarrassing themselves.

As for the TBAR test, here is what LifeVantage’s Company FAQ says:

“To the best of our knowledge no commercial lab offers a T-BARS test. Why is this? First of all, because there is no “fix” for T-BARS other than Protandim and so it is not a priority. Next, it is a difficult test to perform outside of a research lab because the products are unstable and the samples have to be measured very quickly, a process that is difficult to do under commercial conditions. For these very reasons, the commercially offered T-BARS can be inconsistent and unreliable.”

The blood test you mentioned clearly is labeled as “FOR RESEARCH USE ONLY. NOT FOR in vitro DIAGNOSTIC USE”, which fits with what LifeVantage is saying in the above quote.

Finally the entire validity of a TBARS test is called into question. A multivitamin, some fruit juice, or any kind of antioxidant, can radically alter the results. There are more examples here: TBARS: An Unreliable Test of Oxidative Stress. That isn’t intended to be a definitive source, but it does provide you with great evidence that is backed by many, many non-commercial articles (as opposed to the Protandim ones) on Pubmed

Finally, the TBARS test is universally bad for a number of reasons.

Thanks for staying on that top Kevin.

I updated the article to use the past tense as well as point out that the company is no longer telling a straight-forward lie. (I think I got most of the places.) However, it was worth making the additional mention that while the company responded to this criticism, the changes they made are still are designed to deceive people into believe that McCord was significantly involved when his name wasn’t on the patent as a contributor.

Diane,

If that were indeed true then LifeVantage is likely in a whole lot of trouble.

First, it would mean that Paul Myhill lied when he said that he invented Protandim. The invention of something is not bringing a list of 40 possible building blocks and giving it someone else to build.
Second, it would mean that the patent was filed incorrectly.

It doesn’t add up. The patent is hard evidence that Myhill invented it, and Myhill’s later words saying that they tried to hide it and pretend that it was McCord explains what why McCord is continuing with the lie by minimizing the role that Myhill played. With Dr. Joe McCord’s financial interest In LifeVantage/Protandim, it is not surprising he’d want to continue the lie.

It is dangerous to presume that unproven supplements like Protandim “work”, but a wise consumer should be 100 times more skeptical when relying on solution from someone with no medical background and approval from the FDA. You don’t want the bagger from a grocery store who has never fixed a car to attempt to fix your car. Well may you do. I don’t.

The point to note with TBARS is that just about anything with any antioxidant properties will yield results. A vitamin C pill, cup of coffee, tomato… the list goes on… all show results with TBARS. Since literally about $0.03 of vitamin C and a $1.70 Protandim pill both show TBARS results, why do we care about TBAR results – why are they noteworthy?

Let me take those claims in order:

1) The FDA maintains a list of Health Claims Meeting Significant Scientific Agreement. These include all natural substances and ones you have most like heard of such as calcium, vitamin D, and osteoporosis. If LifeVantage felt their combination of ingredients could help with any medical condition (like osteoporosis), they could take the necessary path for proving it and getting it listed.

2) Olivia said, “the FDA receives Hundreds of billions of dollars in fees from major drug companies based upon their sales.” Let’s look at this MSNBC article from less than two weeks ago:

“Last fiscal year, the FDA collected $573 million in user fees under the program, making up 62 percent of its total budget for prescription drug reviews. The portion of FDA’s budget underwritten by industry has steadily increased since 1992, drawing criticism from consumer advocates that the agency has become financially dependent on the companies it regulates. Ten years ago the industry contributed about 49 percent of FDA’s drug review budget.

Woodcock said the portion of FDA funding that comes from user fees is ultimately “up to Congress, and they can set it up however they want.” She pointed out that some countries rely on user fees for 100 percent of their drug review budgets.”

So it isn’t hundreds of billions of dollars, but it is actually a little more than half a billion dollars. The fees that FDA charges are used to review prescription drugs, which in is very important for public safety. It isn’t like the FDA is getting rich, buy private jets and getting lap dances at strip clubs with the money. The system works how it should. Those who are selling more medications should have their medications reviewed more because more people are impacted by it.

Also, if you have a problem with the user fees, talk to your congress representatives. It isn’t the FDA that sets them. That sounds very fair to me.

If you are on the side of Protandim you are programmed a lot more than those who rely on large-scale clinically-proven results of medicine. There’s a reason why Americans live longer today than we did 100 years ago. It certainly isn’t that Americans eat better or get more exercise. It certainly isn’t due to Protandim which hasn’t been around for 10 years yet. Perhaps it’s because our health care and medicine is better. You think?

3) “The FDA has repeated tried to ban all natural substances…” Did I read that correctly? Last I looked vitamin C was a natural substance. Green tea and turmeric are natural substances in Protandim. Cinnamon is a natural substance. If cinnamon and green tea are natural substances, why not put an apple into that group too? Are you telling me that the FDA has tried to ban all of these? I’m sorry, I require extensive evidence of that.

Olivia Robinson,

You are not a corporate whistle-blower. If you were, perhaps you would understand that my life has been threatened because of what I write about Multi-level Marketing Scams like Protandim. These distributors very much don’t their targets having easy access to this material. They’d like to just continue to tell their story that Joe McCord invented Protandim without me exposing the lie.

Your definition of pseudonym seemed a little off. Merriam-Webster defines it as a fictitious name. There’s no mention of a sham or anything like that. They give an example, “Mark Twain is the pseudonym of the American writer Samuel L. Clemens.” By your logic, Mark Twain was a sham and he should not be trusted.

Also by your logic, the American public should have never have known about Nixon and the Watergate scandal because the the whistle-blower went by the pseudonym of “Deep Throat.” His information was proved to be credible and the public realized that it isn’t about who delivers the message, it is the value of the message itself. That’s what they should do here.

It’s easy for you to be open with who you are. Walk a mile in my shoes. I wonder if you would be willing to put your life on the line to help educate others.

As for the “FDA effort to ban and/or control natural substances”, you should actually read the FDA guidelines that are referenced in the article that you mention. The article clearly references these draft guidelines:

1) They are a draft. They are not binding.
2) They are a series of questions designed to allow public comments.

It is also worth noting that this applies to new dietary ingredients (NDI), which wouldn’t apply to substances that were marketed before 1994. This has nothing to do with removing or banning vitamins and minerals. There are no new ones since 1994 that I’m aware of. Are you of any? I’m not sure there are new herbs introduced since then either.

As for the FDA being able to remove fish oil from the market, that would seem to be false. According to this site, “By 1936 the medicinal [Cod Liver Oil] was generally available and being marketed.” This is clearly long before 1994 and not subject to new dietary guidelines.

You shouldn’t assume that you are the norm. There are a lot of 64 year old women who have taken all kinds of dietary supplements since 1972 (even longer!) and they do have degenerative diseases, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, etc. They do have join pain and headaches. Scientifically, should we use your statistically small sample size of 1 and suggest that supplements cure all these things, or should we use the statistically large sample size of the rest of the population who also takes supplements and do come down these medical conditions. I think we should err on the large sample size – perhaps you just happen to have good genetics.

Good luck rejecting my theory that medicine has increased the life span of Americans. Want me to prove it to you? How many Americans used to die of polio? How many die of polio now? That’s proof that medicine has helped people live longer by preventing early deaths from that 1 disease alone. Your turn to prove that medicine has had no effect on lifespan.

Finally, I should mention that this discussion is not related to this article and not directly related to Protandim. It only distracts people from learning about the product, I will delete it in a few days. Olivia, I suggest you cut and paste your comments a more appropriate place, where I will be happy to continue discussion: http://www.healthmlmscam.com/mlm-scam-the-fda-is-evil-and-not-to-be-trusted/. I may move the comments there myself, but I wouldn’t rely on it.

Haley,

Considering there is no verification that this product does anything for people and fits the FTC’s description of Scams and Frauds, a wise consumer should care about who, how, and why it was invented.

The FDA does require approval for use of any medical claims associated with this product. This is why the product doesn’t make any. LifeVantage doesn’t believe in their product enough to even attempt to get approval for any condition.

As for the patents, this patent seems to break FDA law by explicitly stating that the product helps for the conditions listed. Not only that, but many of the conditions are listed multiple times. I think that speaks volumes, but if you want more, here’s a list of other ridiculous patents from Business Week. This shows that a patent does not actually mean that it product is functional or that it serves any kind of practical purpose.

The published studies are in low Impact Factor Journals and Paul Myhill, Inventor of Protandim, Admits Science is for Marketing. There are conflicts of interests in them as Dr. Joe McCord of LifeVantage is included in the studies making them extremely biased. In addition, a few are published in a journal that Joe McCord is on the board of, which is clearly an unethical use of his authority.

I understand the company is telling that story now. However, it’s hard to figure out what to believe. Here’s what we know:

1) Paul Myhill and William Driscoll are on the patent: http://static.protandimscams.com/documents/7241461_Compositions_for_alleviating_inf.pdf. There is no mention of Joe McCord at all.
2) We have the company lying in the past about McCord creating Protandim and not mentioning Paul Myhill’s leading role (as the inventor in the patent) at all. See the screenshots in this article for proof.
3) We now have the company claiming that it was a collaborative effort, but Joe McCord had a majority role.

The only physical evidence is what we have in #1 – the patent. Given the company’s history for lying, as we see in #2, why should we believe their statement in #3 when it contradicts the physical evidence of the patent. Even if we do believe LifeVantage’s “Story of the Week”, it would mean that they falsified the patent filing which is further reason not to trust the company.

I applaud Myhill’s charitable efforts. I’ve got no problem with that. I guess he’s moved on from helping orphans to victims of human trafficking. They are both worthy causes. I think that Myhill is probably the only reputable person who was ever associated with the company. He seems to be the one telling the truth about him inventing Protandim and that the company just used McCord for marketing the product. I give him credit for giving us the only explanation for why Joe McCord wasn’t on the patent – because he didn’t have a hand in the invention. As much as I respect Myhill for this, it doesn’t mean that the product is effective.

The product most certainly does have to have FDA approval for it to make any medical claim. If you are saying that it doesn’t need FDA approval to be sold, then you are right – but then again basil doesn’t does need FDA approval to be sold either. Protandim is just a combination of herbs – to the FDA it is no different than basil. However, if you are going to make a claim that Protandim does something for disease which is what you are doing with oxidative stress – you need to have FDA approval for that.

We already know that the Protandim “studies” on Pubmed are for marketing the product – Paul Myhill told us this: http://www.protandimscams.com/paul-myhill-protandim-science-marketing/

Go to pubmed.gov and search for both vitamin C and E and oxidative stress. You’ll find a lot more articles and you’ll find that they are much, much cheaper.

Of course you love Protandim and recommend it to everyone you talk to – you are getting paid by the company to do so.

Protandim is not accepted by the medical fields. You don’t have to look any further than LifeVantage’s penny stock and their SEC declarations that the fortunes of the company depend on selling marketing materials to Protandim distributors.

McCord was trying pass himself off as the inventor in this article too:

“Colo. Doctor Invents ‘Anti-Aging’ Pill”
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/4565649/detail.html

“A Colorado doctor has invented a supplement that he says slows the aging process and could possibly prevent diseases. The pill is called Protandim”

Shame on you DrQuackery! You seem to be attributing Protandim for having done some “wonders” for you, but you fail to mention that not only are there no clinical trials to show that it has ever done anything for anyone, but also the company itself says, “Protandim is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” Your vague use of “wonders” makes you sound like a distributor for any other MLM health product such as MonaVie, Zrii, Xango, Xowii, etc. They all say the same thing, but don’t have any evidence.

You should not that none of those universities actually studied Protandim. Universities don’t conduct studies. People affiliated with them do. Plus we know that Paul Myhill, Inventor of Protandim, Admits Science is for Marketing. You can tell those are just for marketing because they don’t involve any people or any real world situations.

Also note that the Circulation mention wasn’t about Protandim. The study had no conclusions involving Protandim.

Okay, so you want us to believe that you are a legit doctor who is against FDA approved meds. I shouldn’t have even approved your comment, but you seem to be confused on a monumental level. Anyway, regarding your issue with the FDA approved meds, it’s been well-addressed here: Health MLM Mind Game: The FDA Approves Drugs with Side Effects that Kill People. You can take your mind-games elsewhere.

You left a link about Protandim and FDA approval. Protandim certainly does need FDA approval for making certain health claims. As long as LifeVantage wants to continue to tout that Protandim is useless with it’s claim of, “Protandim is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” then you are correct, it doesn’t need FDA approval. That essentially puts it in the same category as toast or ice cream – a product that isn’t going to do any “wonders.”

DrRKC is a liar. No research on Protandim has ever been published from 4 of the institutions he mentioned (i.e., U. Florida, U. Michigan, U. Kentucky, and Vanderbilt).

Why are you Protandim shills always such lying dicks?

I’ll quote myself…”Your assumption is assinine, that everyone who is for Protandim is selling it.” So you writing…”You should also note that such testimonials are against your distributor agreement.” makes you ASSININE!!! I don’t have a “distributor agreement” with anyone you idiot! I never gave you a “testimonial”, I simply stated that there are no changes that we have made to our lives in more than a year other than taking a supplament that is all natural, cheap and safe!!! We feel better!!! I’m done with you idiots, your not worth my time!

DrRKC said,

“I’ll quote myself…’Your assumption is assinine, that everyone who is for Protandim is selling it.’ So you writing…’You should also note that such testimonials are against your distributor agreement.’ makes you ASSININE!!! I don’t have a “distributor agreement’ with anyone you idiot! I never gave you a ‘testimonial’, I simply stated that there are no changes that we have made to our lives in more than a year other than taking a supplament that is all natural, cheap and safe!!! We feel better!!! I’m done with you idiots, your not worth my time!’

I don’t mean to call you out as a liar, but you weren’t too hard to track down, DrRKC. Let me introduce everyone to:

Ronald Keith Cormier
From his about page (http://www.cormierchiropractic.com/?page_id=2) we see that his BS in Toxicology (just as he stated previously) and his Doctorate of Chiropractic from Parker College of Chiropractic. You can click on his Health Grades (http://www.healthgrades.com/provider/ronald-cormier-2n9rv/) and see that he goes by Ronald Keith Cormier there. Hence the DrRKC name. Additionally, on his Cormier Chiropractic website, you can see a page devoted to Protandim, where the good “doctor” states the following:

“This is the biggest thing since Penicillin.”
“Everyone who is interested in being healthier and greatly slowing down the aging process should be taking this product.”

Also, there’s the line, “Call Cormier Chiropractic or ask Dr. Cormier for a bottle on your next visit.”

So you want to still claim that you are not selling Protandim?

Ok quick question can taking protandim cause any harm to the body long term. Second question are you guys says that protandim cannot even help the body at all atleast to make a difference long term

It’s not known if taking Protandim could cause harm to the body long term. It simply hasn’t been studied.

As for your second question, there also haven’t been any legit studies to show that it could help the body either. LifeVantage has apparently fudged some data on a small sample size (couple dozen people) five years ago, but that’s all we have to go by as far as anything done on the body.

There are no studies to show that Tropicana juice does any harm to the body long term either. The truth is that according to LifeVantage, the people the company encourages are the ones that are studying it. In the cases where negative things have come out LifeVantage suppresses the negative data.

It is wise to look at the individual ingredients. For example, my wife, like many people, has an allergy to ragweed. Milk thistle is in that family and thus it is best for her to avoid products like Protandim with milk thistle in it.

AnnC, I want to reiterate one more time that this article proves conclusively that Dr. McCord was not Protandim’s inventor.

Thanks for the kind comment Steven. Most of the main points are presented in a somewhat orderly manner at: http://www.lazymanandmoney.com/lifevantage-protandim-scam/.

Just so that you know what you up against, here’s a good article to read, “Emergency Handbook: What to Do When a Friend Loves Woo ” – http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4187

Good question. See item III at: http://www.fda.gov/food/labelingnutrition/labelclaims/ucm111447.htm

“Structure/function claims may also describe a benefit related to a nutrient deficiency disease (like vitamin C and scurvy), as long as the statement also tells how widespread such a disease is in the United States. The manufacturer is responsible for ensuring the accuracy and truthfulness of these claims; they are not pre-approved by FDA but must be truthful and not misleading.”

The key here is that it is a nutrient deficiency disease – a class that is well known by scientists. You can see a list of them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_disorder#Deficiencies.

Amazing how an idiot brain-washed by Allopathic doctors wants to talk down who invented something without a medical background, OKAY and if something is NATURAL it CANNOT hold FDA approval. The FDA and American MD’s are just scammers trying to make $$$ off of feeding people chemicals. Yeah way to make it through Med school Im sure you know all.

Hello,
I read about this stuff till I’m punchy… but your claim about the Dr. not creating Protandim is not accurate. As you quote, MyHill work constituted the “core” of the first product, but it wasn’t until McCord came on board that the Protandim formula was created. So… didn’t they both “create” it?

[...] LifeVantage and Dr. Joe McCord Lied about the Creation of Protandim! [...]