There is hardly a week that passes without someone asking my opinion about some video purporting to have found a remedy for some terrible ailment that 鈥淏ig Pharma doesn鈥檛 want you to know about.鈥� Why? Because as we are told, these companies are more interested in selling expensive, ineffective treatments to make sure that profits keep rolling in, profits that would be lost if a cure were made available.
Numerous such videos follow a standard formula. They start with a heart wrenching story about an unfortunate person who has been struck by some devastating disease that has a poor prognosis. But to the rescue comes a distraught family member who dedicates himself to finding a cure by 鈥渄oing his own research.鈥� Delving through scientific papers he discovers some cutting-edge work by a scientist that for some usually nefarious reason has not been embraced by the medical community despite 鈥渆vidence鈥� that it works. Our hero tries it on the afflicted family member who is miraculously cured. His compassion for humanity then finds a way to make the discovery available to everyone. All that a poor afflicted soul requires to benefit from the wonders of the treatment is a credit card.
How are customers induced to fork over their credit card? That鈥檚 where the slickly produced video comes in. After describing how a friend or relative was miraculously cured, the altruistic narrator promises to reveal the secret that 鈥渉as left doctors shaking their heads in disbelief.鈥� The big reveal is to come in the next three minutes, he proclaims, but that doesn鈥檛 happen. The viewer, enticed by claims of studies at 鈥渓eading universities,鈥� has to sit through some 45 minutes of seductive blather about how thousands of patients have already had their health restored. It is all thanks to this good Samaritan having discovered the secret that the world鈥檚 experts have missed, save for the one gallant scientist who put him on the right track.
The torturous video finally does reveal the secret, which, surprise, surprise, is a dietary supplement. Needless to say, it is composed of all natural ingredients and is reassuringly free of gluten, GMOs, and of course, chemicals. If all these ingredients were individually bought, we are told, the cost would be hundreds of dollars! But now, a benevolent company, only interested in saving people鈥檚 health from its inevitable downward spiral, has managed to produce a pill with a combination of these magical ingredients at a fraction of that price. But there is no time to waste! Purchase must be made quickly because this rock-bottom price cannot be guaranteed for long. Today is the time, because the video may soon be taken down as greedy pharmaceutical companies mount an attack.
The only difference between these videos is the disease being 鈥渃ured鈥� and the supplements that are needed to do it. A recent one brought to my attention is all about 鈥淢emoSurge,鈥� guaranteed to reverse memory loss. The heart wrenching story tells of a grandmother who forgets that her grandchild is out in the freezing cold and almost dies. Her husband fears that this is the beginning of a downward slide towards dementia. He takes out a line of credit and sells some property so he can quit his job and devote himself to finding a cure so his wife doesn鈥檛 end up in a confused state in a nursing home, which he says may be the destiny of many who are watching the video.
In his search, he stumbles upon the cutting-edge, ground-breaking work of a Dr. John Wendt, a scientist whom Google fails to locate. He has discovered wondrous chemicals that can reverse brain aging and restore lost memories. The formula consists of some dozen ingredients that include phosphatidyl serine, St. John鈥檚 Wort, N-acetyl carnitine and bacopa monnieri, all of which have been the subject of memory research, none of which is secret. And none of which is compelling. The references that are provided do indeed deal with these substances but do not back up the spectacular claims. No studies have examined this particular combination of ingredients and their doses as found in MemoSurge. It is dishonest to promote a product that claims to have such stunning benefits without any evidence from clinical trials that have used this specific product.
If there were a significant breakthrough in preventing age-related loss of brain function, such as Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, which the video does not name but clearly describes as being the cause of the unfortunate grandmother鈥檚 problems, we would not hear about it in this fashion. It would be documented with appropriate evidence from clinical trials in leading journals such as Nature, Science or the New England Journal of Medicine. My advice is to not waste the hour that you will never get back watching such videos. As soon as you recognize the formula, which quickly becomes evident, just click off.
