🚀 go-pugleaf

The following Q&A (by Steven Fowkes) was originally published in
"Smart Drug News: The Newsletter of the Cognitive Enhancement
Research Institute" Vol. 1 No. 10 of December 1992. Make of it
what you will.

If you have any questions, direct all your correspondence to Q&A
ATTN: Steven Fowkes: P.O. Box 4029, Menlo Park, California 94026
USA, or call (415) 321-CERI and (415) 323-3864 for FAX messages.

Ever forward,

David <dcosenza@netcom.com>

(the following is republished with permission from the author)
--

  Question: In the question and answer section of your November
1992 issue (Vol. 1, No. 9) Mr. Dean states, "Personally, I would
not purchase anything from the Life Extension Foundation,
because of their history of questionable ethical practices." Mr.
Fowkes adds, "I also have serious questions about the quality of
the Life Extension Foundation's products."
  Could you please be more specific? I have been a member of
the Life Extension Foundation for over a year, and have been
using their supplement products extensively. I have no
complaints with the quality of the products or the service I
have received. The only ethical question raised against the Life
Extension Foundation and its founder Saul Kent, as far as I
know, are attempts by the FDA to destroy Mr. Kent and his
organization. If you have other information, I am most
interested in hearing about it. However, your vague reference to
improprieties and poor quality seems unprofessional and not up
to the level of reporting I have come to expect from Smart Drug
News. I was preparing to renew my subscription when these
remarks caught my eye. I am now having second thoughts about it.
DW

  Answer: The Life Extension Foundation's (LEF's) unethical
and possibly illegal activities date back ten years. Some of
those activities involve unfair business practices, mail fraud,
impersonating a Federal agency (the FTC), forging Denham
Herman's signature to a phony American Aging Association
document, mailing an anonymous "child molester" letter to
competitor's customers, plagiarism, and numerous other frauds.
These activities have been exposed in articles I have written in
*Forefront* -- *Health Investigations* (Vol. 3, No. 2; and Vol.
3, No. 5) which culminated in the formal withdrawal of
MegaHealth's recommendation of the Life Extension Foundation in
the fall of 1987.
  Please understand that our regard for Kent and Faloon is
*not* based on the FDA's indictment of them. If you've read John
Morgenthaler's and my book *STOP the FDA*, you know I would not
want to legitimize the FDA's war on health freedom in any way.
Frankly, we hope Saul and Bill beat the FDA. I have been
secretly providing strategic recommendations to their legal 
defense team through members of the AIDS underground. In my
opinion, Kent and Faloon are not doing anything with FDA-
unapproved life-extension and smart drugs that the AIDS buyer's
club aren't doing with FDA unapproved AIDS drugs. The FDA's
prosecution of Kent and Faloon is blatant "selective
enforcement." It certainly meets our definition of harassment.
  From what I have been able to determine about the Federal
case against Kent and Faloon, they are not being charged with
any of the unethical and possibly criminal activities about
which I reported. The current charges by the FDA involve Kent
and Faloon's dealings with the Hauptmann Institute, a mysterious
"mail-drop" supplier of overseas drugs who's supposed founder,
Dr. Karl Gustav Hauptmann, is unknown professionally
*anywhere* in the world. According to my analysis and that of a
handwriting expert, the signature of "Dr. Hauptmann," the
Vitamin Factory "President," the phony FTC officer, and Saul
Kent (on a Project 2000 flyer from LEF) are made by the same
person. Although this person was *not* Saul Kent, the Feds
believe it was Bill Faloon himself.
  Hauptmann literature contained a photograph of "Dr.
Hauptmann," which turns out to be a piece of clip-art used by the
Nevada Medical Society. The photograph of the "Institute" in
Europe is actually a house located in southern California.
Hauptmann mailing labels were printed on the same green-and-
white striped computer paper used by the Life Extension
Foundation for their own mailings, with the same misspellings of
names and addresses as on LEF labels and the same print-head
defects in the dot matrix pattern.
  One of the Federal charges is the alleged destruction of
printing plates for Hauptmann literature at a Hollywood, Florida
printing shop. The Feds call this *obstruction of justice*, but
we wonder if this kind of crime is more akin to the century-old
English crime "lurking with intent to loom" and its modern US
equivalent "*conspiracy* to lurk with intent to loom." The Kent-
and-Faloon trial has just begun in Federal Court in Florida.
  I possess substantial documentation of all of these past
unethical activities. The most recent incident involves an LEF-
published book which is a word-for-word, paragraph-for-paragraph
plagiarism of Ward Dean's and John Morgenthaler's book *Smart
Drugs & Nutrients*. Although Faloon was informed of the
plagiarism, the plagiarized material has been subsequently
reprinted -- without change and without permission.
  My reservations about the *quality* of LEF products stems
from 1) a single analysis of LEF's Life Extension Mix which
turned up substantial deficits, 2) reports from several LEF
employees about LEF's quality-control procedures (or lack
thereof) during the pre-1987 time period, 3) taste tests by
myself and others. I do not know whether their past
practices are still in effect today.
  Although I usually think their newsletter *Life Extension
Report* (formerly *Anti-Aging News*) valuable and timely
reporting state-of-the-art developments in life-extension
research, they have on several occasions made some ludicrous and
fallacious assertions which seriously undermine their
credibility. The one *faux pas* that most sticks in my mind is
their assertion that all iron-containing vitamin supplements are
carcinogens. SWF
  I have been (and continue to be) a member of the Life
Extension Foundation (LEF) since it's inception. I am a former
member of the foundation's Advisory Board. I believe in the
*principals* of the foundation, and support their battle with
the FDA.
  However, I have serious reservations with regard to the
ethical standards of the two principals of the foundation, Bill
Faloon and Saul Kent. These reservations stem from a long
history of questionable tactics and activities.
  I first became concerned about the quality of LEF products
shortly after the introduction if the Life Extension Mix. This
product actually tasted great! I knew from past experience that
high-potency nutrient formulas taste *terrible*. If you want
proof, empty a tablespoon full of Durk and Sandy's *Radical
Shield* in a glass of orange juice, and taste it. Add as much
sugar as you want. It *still* tastes awful. Dr. Richard Kaufman
tried numerous methods to make his powdered formula *Age-Less*
palatable, including massive doses of fructose and natural
appricot powder. He finally gave up and went back to capsules
and powder. Twin Lab's *Maxi-Life* is just *barely* tolerable
when mixed in V-8 Juice. I suspected that was on the Life
Extension Mix label was *not* what was in the product. My
suspicions were subsequently confirmed by the assay described
above by Steven Fowkes, and by the reports of a former LEF
employee who confided that not only did the products *not*
contain dosages as claimed on the label but that few LEF
employees consumed LEF products. Instead, they too supplements
manufactured by other companies, believed to be reliable (like
Twin Labs).
  After the reprehensible attempt by LEF to destroy Vitamin
Research Products as described above, I requested that the
foundation remove my name from its Advisory Board. I sent
several registered letters and made several phone calls
requesting that my name be deleted from the masterhead of their
newsletter. For nearly a year, they ignored my requests. It was
not until I threatened legal action (and I like lawyers about as
much as I like the FDA, DEA and IRS) that they acquiesced and
removed my name from their Advisory Board.
  The most recent example of questionable ethics of LEF is
their book, *The Physician's Guide to Life Extension Drugs*. On
first reading of their book, I was favorably impressed. Some of
the writing in the book was so good that I found myself
thinking, "I wish I had written that." Then, I dumbfoundedly
realized that I *did* write it. I compared *The Physicians Guide
to Life Extension Drugs to Smart Drugs & Nutrients* and found
over 40% of their book was copied *word-for-word* from *Smart
Drugs & Nutrients*. Even some of the mistakes in our book were
included in theirs. I notified the publishers, who informed
Bill Faloon of their violation of copyright. Despite this
notification, *The Physician's Guide to Life Extension Drugs*
has been reprinted and continues to be distributed. This is not
only a clear violation of U.S. copyright laws, it is also
indicative of sleazy ethics.
  Again, I support the principals of the foundation and their
justifiable battle with the FDA. Support them with a donation if
you wish, but I would be leary about trusting my health with
their products. WD
  We have recently heard of an FDA "hit list" of people
considered to be conspirators in the promotion of smart-drugs
sales in the U.S. Rumor is that we (Fowkes, Dean and
Morgenthaler) are on that list, along with Kent and Faloon. We
have received one report of an FDA investigator looking for
"targets" which might justify all the money wasted in FDA raids
over the last few years. The FDA may be worried about their
failing "enforcement" image. There is a serious chance that they
will loose their entire case against Kent and Faloon. The
defense has successfully subpoenaed key members of the AIDS
underground who will testify about FDA collaboration in the
importation and the sale of unapproved AIDS drugs. They have
also subpoenaed FDA Commissioner David Kessler and former
Commissioner Frank Young. Kessler is allegedly fighting tooth
and nail to avoid having to comply with the subpoena and testify
under oath about his involvement. If Kent and Faloon's defense
team succeeds in documenting open FDA assistance in violating
Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act regulations against importation and
sale of unapproved AIDS drugs, the government's case against
Kent and Faloon for doing the same thing with smart drugs and
life extension drugs should collapse. There is a constitutional
prohibition against uneqal enforcement of the law.
  Regardless of how this case ends, it is clear to us that the
FDA is selectively violating both Constitutional law and its own
regulations in its senseless campaign to protect Americans from
themselves. Although Kent and Faloon are on the right side of
their battle with the FDA, it remains to be seen whether they
have truly abandoned their past methods of doing business. Until
they do so to my satisfaction, I will not recommend their
products or services. *Caveat emptor*. SWF