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There's nothing that makes my life brighter than a new infomercial installment from natural health activist Kevin Trudeau. He's a warrior in the fight against corporate America and their culture of quick-fix drugs that do more to cause problems than they do to solve them. He takes mainstream culture to task with his book Natural Cures They Don't Want You to Know About (and the accompanying infomercials for the book). What more could you want from a media personality? He's got media cred -- he's done time like Martha Stewart. And he makes late night television interesting. No more fabulous country CDs thank you! His face is so honest. He could make a good used car salesman. Of course he wants to make money.  Of course he's probably exaggerating. But the fact that the FTC has been going after proponents of an industry that stands to hurt theirs (for legitimate reasons or otherwise) adds a little salt to an already sizzling dish. A superstar book seller, if nothing else, he's brough a certain irony of American culture to the surface: freaking out at the monster they've created by buying so much...these people are only too happy to buy more.
So is Kevin Trudeau just a get-rich-quick schemer or a Dahli Lama in the world of Big Pharma. Here's what we know so far: 

November 6, 2005:

The Columbus Dispatch -- Q&A; ANDREW WEIL;
DOCTOR'S RX FOR AGING TAKES HOLISTIC APPROACH

By: Dennis Fiely

Ten books and numerous TV appearances have made Dr. Andrew Weil known nationwide.

And, with 76 million baby boomers storming into their twilight years during the next two decades, his latest release, Healthy Aging (Knopf, $27.95), promises to sell well, too. (...)

Q: If you were U.S. surgeon general, what would your priorities be?

A: First, I would improve nutrition. . . . I'd get fast food out of the schools and hospitals, and mandate nutritional education for physicians and other health-care professionals. I'd provide a free multivitamin and multimineral to all school kids.

I'd also work to get the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to create a new division to regulate herbs, minerals and dietary supplements. Right now, it's a mess. We really need some regulation there. (...)

Q: My guess is that your book will soon be near the top of the best-seller list, with Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About by Kevin Trudeau. Is Trudeau stealing your thunder?

A. We're not competing for the same audience. But it is annoying to see him mix common-sense advice with nonsense. He appeals to people who dislike doctors and medicine, and want to believe that the powers that be are suppressing all these cures.

October 20, 2005:

The Boston Herald

If you believe the infomercial, Flex Protex might be the answer to arthritis sufferers' prayers.

The natural supplement works like a ``COX-2 Inhibitor'' relieving chronic arthritis pain without any of the nasty side effects of traditional drugs, such as Vioxx or Celebrex, says Donald Barrett, president and CEO of Beverly-based ITV Direct Inc. and Direct Marketing Inc.

But the Federal Trade Commission finds Barrett's supplements a bit hard to swallow.

In fact, the FTC is calling most of the ``natural remedies'' the infomercial producer touts bogus. And the agency has taken Barrett to court.

Now he's firing back with a lawsuit accusing the FTC of targeting his company and of being in cahoots with big drug manufacturers.

``We've been selectively prosecuted because (the FTC) is protecting the interest of the large pharmaceutical companies,'' Barrett said.

The agency has harassed employees, contacted media outlets to stop the company from advertising and violated free speech rights, ITV's suit claims.

The ugly battle started two years ago when Barrett began marketing two dietary supplements called ``Supreme Green with MSM'' and ``Coral Calcium Daily'' through infomercials on cable television.

The FTC claims ITV heralded the products as a cure for cancer or even the way to a slimmer figure.

Barrett denies branding the products as a cure for cancer.

ITV pulled the ``Supreme Green'' and ``Coral Calcium'' infomercials after the FTC won an injunction last year.

Three other figures named in the suit settled with the FTC, including Alejandro Guerrero of Healthy Solutions, who appeared with Barrett in past infomercials.

Guerrero agreed to pay the FTC $65,000 or surrender the keys to his 2004 Cadillac Escalade.

The FTC recently took aim again at Barrett and his company of 300 employees for airing new infomercials selling ``Flex Protex'' and a seaweed-based supplement called ``Sea Vegg.''

Barrett is not the first infomercial star pushing dietary cures to come under fire from the FTC.

Kevin Trudeau, a well-known natural cures guru, settled with the agency for $2 million in 2003 for claiming a product could cure cancer and relieve pain.

Barrett accused the agency of engaging in a witch hunt, attempting to take down natural remedies companies to protect the pharmaceutical industry.

A spokeswoman for the FTC declined to comment on the allegations.

October 16, 2005: Guardian Newspapers Limited: The Observer

WHAT LITTLE THERE is of the snooker season started last week in Preston. At present, only five ranking tournaments are scheduled, although one or two may be added. The sport continues to attract large television audiences - 7.8 million for this year's world championship final - but, despite these figures, it remains unattractive to sponsors.

It is little surprise, therefore, that the two most charismatic figures in the game, Ronnie O'Sullivan and Jimmy White, have decided to fill in the ample time between tournaments by signing up for the International Pool Tour, which is the brainchild/plaything of billionaire marketing man Kevin Trudeau. [is this the same dude?]

Trudeau's tour will have no problem with sponsors because one of his companies, NaturalCures.com, is stumping up the funds. He says: 'It is ridiculous to think that pool players are only interested in drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and taking erectile dysfunction drugs! Or eating at McDonalds!'

'Up until now all sports advertising has been for these things. This makes no sense to me. Pool players, like everyone else, are interested in eliminating their pain, curing arthritis, learning about natural ways to handle diabetes, acid reflux disease, obesity, constipation, headaches, back pain, etcetera.'

If you say so, Kevin, although I can't recall the last time someone placed me in a deep snooker and then tried to disrupt my game with a graphic description of his ongoing acid reflux problem.

O'Sullivan is certainly impressed. 'He wants to make pool like the Super Bowl,' he says, 'and I couldn't help but get excited about it. He said they had noticed in sports that don't go anywhere, everyone - from top to bottom - gets a fair cut and in sports that are successful the top ones get all the dough and the ones who aren't making it get nothing. And I thought: "There is a different mentality from snooker to pool."

'Snooker wants to keep 128 players all happy and they want the top players to carry dead meat. In America, if you are a loser and can't cut it you get out of it. Whether this is right or not I don't know but it makes sense.' Or, as Fast Eddie Felson puts it in The Color of Money : 'The trouble with shooting pool is that it's no good if you don't win.'

Trudeau, by guaranteeing prize money of more than $ 5 million a year, is seeking to establish a structure whereby the professionals can make a decent living from playing the game.

THE GAME PLAYED will be eight-ball rather than nine-ball, which is the version played by 90 per cent of amateurs and the British pub-going public.

In theory, it should be easier for a snooker player to turn to pool than vice versa, but O'Sullivan isn't expect ing to make an immediate impact. 'I'm an awful pool player,' he says. 'It is completely different from snooker and although it looks simple it isn't unless you know how to work the system. There is a diamond system to the table, which is simple if you know how to work it. If you don't it isn't.

'That's why snooker players get thrashed by American pool players. There is an art to it and a lot more tactics to the game of pool, which I need to learn. But I have got the time to do that - I have a lot of time.'

The danger for snooker is that without more tournaments many of their top players will have too much time on their hands to perfect their pool games and, if Trudeau's tour takes off, they will be well remunerated for doing so.

O'Sullivan feels that snooker 'needs a dictator - a Bernie Ecclestone. Someone to say, "Look, you are getting that, you are playing to these rules, you can do this and do that and you will all get loads of money. It will be fun and it will be exciting." But snooker hasn't got that. Snooker has got people saying, "You don't want to do this" or "You don't want to upset that."

'The game needs restructuring. We need to ask publicists and business people what is so unattractive about snooker.'

These comments drew this response from the world snooker chairman, Rodney Walker: 'Some of it I don't blame him for because we haven't announced our results for last year, nor have I announced a new broadcast contract, nor have we announced any new sponsors. Two of those announce ments are imminent. His timing is unfortunate when the sport is about to make some very positive statements.'

The problem is that snooker has been 'about to make some very positive statements' for the past decade or so. The news is not all gloomy: 400,000 people a day in Germany watch snooker on Eurosport; and more than 100 million watched live coverage of the China Open final when Ding Jun Hui came back from 1-4 to defeat Stephen Hendry 9-5 having beaten Ken Doherty 6-0 and Peter Ebdon 5-0.

Events in Preston might have been enlivened had Ding Jan Hui been given a wild card but that might have upset someone, which is something snooker doesn't seem prepared to do.

August 31, 2005: Rocky Mountain News

(...)

If you think Americans are overmedicated and too quick to invite the surgeon's scalpel, that's fine. You probably have a point. But spare us charges of conspiracy, cover-up and restraint of trade involving drug companies, the American Medical Association and the government when explaining why Americans so easily turn into pill-popping hypochondriacs.

KNUS has been running ads trumpeting Kevin Trudeau's blockbuster book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About - the "they" of course being drug companies and other scoundrels of the medical Illuminati who spend every waking hour scheming to ensnare people with worthless but costly products.

And what of the tens of thousands of people working for the regulatory agencies, drug companies and other outposts of the medical establishment? Are they conscious collaborators or merely dupes of this conspiracy to keep Americans sick and ignorant? It has to be one or the other, doesn't it?

Such reasoning is contemptible. And yet if Trudeau's book sales are any indication, a great many people are lapping it up. (...)

August 29, 2005: The Guardian (London)

Title: For the sake of your health, avoid the snake-oil billionaire who has grown rich exploiting America's poor

America loves "how to" books. Typically they are about how to be a better American: richer, thinner, happier, sexier, and more beautiful. For the past few weeks the how-to charts have been headed by a book which has provoked more controversy than anything since The Anarchist's Cookbook instructed America's disaffected youth how to make Molotov cocktails.

Kevin Trudeau's book, Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About, offers, for a mere $ 25 (£14), "natural cures for more than 50 specific diseases" - including cancer, heart disease, bad breath, gout, male erectile dysfunction, obesity, dandruff, multiple sclerosis and gloom.

Buy this book, Trudeau promises, and "never get sick again". That's not quite accurate. Buy this book together with products that have included coral calcium on Trudeau's website, www.naturalcures.com, and subscribe to his email newsletter (lifetime subscription $ 499) and then enjoy eternal health. Just because it's natural, doesn't mean it's free.

Mr Trudeau has no medical, pharmaceutical or therapeutic qualifications. He did, however, spend two terms in Federal prison for credit-card fraud. In his book, he admits that "I have made major mistakes in my life. I have paid my price and I have turned my life around."

Before he turned around into bestsellerdom, Trudeau's most successful self-help publication offered a surefire remedy for snoring. Nowadays, he presents himself as "America's foremost consumer advocate". He is the lone voice speaking up against the all-powerful "they": regulatory government bodies, such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission in alliance with NGOs such as the American Medical Association and - behind them - the drug companies, the health insurers and the fast-food chains.

"Did you know," asks Trudeau, "that the medical profession, in partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, has a huge interest in keeping you sick rather than healing you? Do you realise the Federal government is doing everything in its power - and some things well beyond its stated power - to keep this a secret?" Now you know.

The problem faced by the authorities ("they", that is) is whether, even in the land of the free, the public should be allowed to buy snake oil. Some of Trudeau's "cures" are so harmful as to verge on the homicidal. "Pacemakers," he alleges, "cause heart failure." "Stop taking all non-prescription and prescription drugs," he urges. If you take them, "you absolutely will get sick and develop disease". Throw away the aspirin and live for ever.

Instead of popping the poisons prescribed by your family doctor, Trudeau recommends 15 colonic irrigations in 30 days, magnetic rings on the fingers (especially at night), and no alarm clocks ("they have profound effects on your body's pH"). And lots of coral calcium. That, not chemotherapy, was supposed to keep the big C at bay.

Last September, the FTC slapped a $ 2m fine on Trudeau for claiming that his magic powder, procured from the swirling depths of the barrier reef, could cure or prevent cancer. Since he has made a reported $ 2bn over the past few years the fine, as with others he has been obliged to pay, was small change. He admitted no wrongdoing, agreed to stop marketing the coral calcium, but kept on with his bestselling books (carefully "updated" to avoid any more irritating inroads into his royalties). He has a follow-up on the way: How to Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days: the Weight Loss Secret "They" Don't Want You to Know About.

It would be easy to dismiss Trudeau's ability to separate the great American public from their hard-earned dollars as confirmation that there's one born every minute and somebody else eager to profit by it. But the runaway success of Natural Cures also bears witness to genuinely troubling aspects of the American healthcare system. It has been estimated that some 50 million citizens have no health insurance. For these desperate people, who fall sick like everybody else, "natural cures" are all they can afford. "Socialised medicine", as the Clintons learned the hardway, has no place in America. Capitalistic medicine does. What John le Carre calls "Big Pharma" has made America the most drugged nation in history. Big burgers, as the film-maker Morgan Spurlock amusingly suggests, has made it the fattest. The profits roll in, as Americans become more chemically zonked and unwell. Why don't "they" do something about it? Dig into your wallet, read Trudeau, and have your most paranoid suspicions confirmed.

Apr 18, 1996: Kevin Trudeau, has been accused by Illinois regulators of running an illegal pyramid scheme. Regulators in at least six other states are conducting similar inquiries. The accusation against Trudeau is that he violated Illinois law by recruiting thousands of Nutrition For Life distributors with a sales pitch that emphasized the rewards for bringing in new members instead of selling products to end users.

Jan 20/22, 1996: Apotex owner loses US$19m: Nutrition for Life shares plunge after report of pitchman's criminal past

[Barry Sherman], best known as the founder and owner of generic drug manufacturer Apotex Inc. of Toronto, holds 1.2 million shares obtained when he held stock in a predecessor company and helped Nutrition For Life out with a US$650,000 loan.

Nutrition For Life (NFLI/NASDAQ) stock fell after U.S. reports revealed that pitchman Kevin Trudeau, whose marketing company encouraged people to pay US$1,000 each for the right to distribute NFL's diet supplement products, had criminal convictions for larceny and fraud.