MonaVie M(Mun), Dr. Paul Clayton, and Wellmune

Hello there, I was pointed to your page by a UK colleague and thought I would respond to some of the points you raise.

1. Re fruit and veg, I think farmers markets are a good thing, and use them whenever possible. I agree that a good diet should be the first place to start, BUT … we all know that a lot of people just will not eat the right stuff, or listen to the government guidelines. They may not even like fruit, although I have a hard time understanding that. The real problem, however, is our low energy lifestyles. Cheap energy and high tech make it possible for many to get by on 2300 to 2500 kcals/day, and at that rate of calorific throughput its not easy to get to 5 portions /day, let alone the 9 a day that the Am Cancer Soc and others now recommend. A drink like Monavie’s can help.

2. You didn’t quite get the fruit being a problem bit. What I was referring to here was that imported and especially unprocessed foods can be disease vectors. Juices that have been at least flash pasteurised are a lot safer! Just ask a microbiologist.

3. Zoonotic diseases are on the rise, you can check with the EPA or, if you’re feeling keen, search PubMed. Don’t expect me to do all your work for you! You’re right about malaria, it got crammed onto the slide due to shortage of space; the point there was that like the zoonoses, its sphere of influence is likely to increase due to climate shift. Unfortunately, 2 slides got crammed into one as I only had 20 minutes to cover a whole range of topics.

3. No defences against these diseases. I’m not sure if this came over clearly, but the point I was trying to make here is that we have few if any defences against those zoonotic diseases that have yet to emerge. Vaccines can only be assembled once the new pathogen has been isolated and characterised.

4. Antibiotics are useless. Well, you got me there, I did exaggerate to make the point, and they do still work but the problem here (which is acknowledged by the CDC, WHO etc etc), is that antibiotic resistance is becoming more and more prevalent. It was, btw, the very eminent Prof George Poste who predicted the end of the age of antibiotics by, you guessed it, 2010!

5. Do your literature searches and you will find a huge number of studies on the beta glucans. There might be more papers on sugar, or even water, but I was talking here about functional ingredients; and the definition of functional generally used when talking about functional foods and beverages is functional over and above basic nutrition.

6. Your comment about differently priced beta glucans is short on substance. Yeast is complex stuff, and what you want is a high beta glucan content with little if any mannoproteins (which can trigger abreactions). You should also know that different yeast strains have different moelecular structures, and as the beta glucan – CR3 receptor interaction is classic lock and key pharmacology, this means that data derived from one product such as Wellmune, cannot automatically be used to support any other yeast or indeed any other mushroom or algal extract. You generally get what you pay for, and with Wellmune you have a very high level of scienc supporting it.

7. My fees. I consult with a large number of companies, and charge standard speaking fees. My day rate is #1000, and as I travelled from the UK and returned there it took me three working days. For this I charged the princely sum of #1500. That pays my bills but it does not, I can assure you, buy my integrity.

Finally, I have learned over the years that a little learning is indeed a dangerous thing, and learn enough new every day to remind me how little I do know. I note, but do not admire, your certainty.

All the best,
Paul

Thanks for taking the time to come here. I didn’t really expect to get a personal response.

1. I agree that people don’t eat enough fruit. I don’t think you’ll find people argue that point. My question is how much does one ounce of MonaVie really help? What about other juice alternatives? Because people in MonaVie circles talk about acai so much, what about V8 Fusion Acai Berry? Unlike MonaVie it isn’t limited to providing just fruit, but also has vegetables. If people aren’t eating enough fruits and vegetables, they still have a hole in their diets with MonaVie… no vegetables. Also many people have commented here that MonaVie is a substitute for eating fruit. This is a dangerous crutch as even MonaVie mentions that it’s not a substitute. For one you’ll find minimal fiber in MonaVie.

Beyond all that, there is the cost of MonaVie vs. other juices. If we agree that juices can “help”, we either need to quantify the amount of “help” that each juice provides, or the smart consumer should consider them all equal and take the lowest price (perhaps moving that MonaVie budget towards a gym membership, personal trainer, etc…)

2. I would agree with your statement on this point. I think you should have gone into it in your talk a bit more (though I understand you being pressed for time). Still, I think it’s fairly unusual that we’ve had big problems with disease in our fruit supply. If that is a concern, go back to the simple answer of farmer’s markets. I didn’t hear one mention of farmer’s markets being the best solution in your talk.

3a. (You had two #3s above, so I’m splitting up my responses.
I don’t expect you to do the work on Zoonotic diseases being on the rise, but I have to feel that if you are going to make the statement, you should have some source to back it up. It’s not that I believe it to be untrue, but I think some of it could be media hype.

Sure I can go search PubMed and probably find a lot more information on them than I could in the 1920s… but perhaps that’s because there are few more medical journals around now and the spread of information is faster. This is something like how there’s also a lot of belief that crime is on the rise in a lot of areas, where much of the time it’s the media increased presence in our lives (television, Internet, etc.) that brings each incident to people’s attention. Many people are surprised to learn that crime is down in those areas.

3b. I think you were clear, but the picture you painted was one of doom and destruction. What about praise for how quickly we’ve come up with a vaccine for swine flu? I don’t know the last time I’ve heard of SARS or bird flu in the media. I don’t follow Zoonotic diseases in general, but I did find that Wikipedia says, “Although millions of birds have become infected with the virus since its discovery, 262 humans have died from the H5N1 in twelve countries according to WHO data as of August 31, 2009.” (They sourced it too). Are we going to compare bird flu to the bubonic plague? Perhaps an increase in number of Zoonotic diseases is not the issue, but the severity and spread of them are.

4. I did not argue that antibiotic resistance is becoming more and more prevalent. I even mentioned that is the case in my comparison to oil (oil supplies are dropping, but we are getting smarter about how to use the supply). Antibiotic resistance is an issue, but I was just commenting on the sensationalizing of it. I heard you give credit to Prof. George Poste on his prediction. I’m not a betting man, but I don’t think Las Vegas would give him very good odds that every antibiotic on the face of the earth will end by December 31st.

5. I was simply pointing out a basic error in your talk. I understand that you meant the context to be different. Maybe I missed it in the speech (and I can’t currently listen to it again), but I didn’t hear you point out that the studies were done on beta glucans in general and not on Wellmune itself. It made it sound like there were a number of studies on Wellmune.

6. It seems like you are making a differential between Wellmune and other beta glucans here. However, in the point above it sounds like you applying all the research on beta glucans to be applicable to Wellmune. I’m sure the research is since Wellmune is a type of beta glucans. However, if, from the above point, we have all this research on the value of beta glucans, then shouldn’t we be taking the beta glucans with all the research behind it? It doesn’t look like all those studies were on the Wellmune version. I couldn’t find one article on PubMed on Wellmune. I couldn’t find any details as to how it differs or if it differs from WGP 3-6. For £40.77, this source offers 125 capsules of the Wellmune brand specifically:

“Each Bio-Glucans Primmuno capsule contains 250mg of Wellmune WGP (equivalent to 200mg beta 1.3/1.6 glucans) from baker’s yeast.”

I think I stand strong on my earlier point. If you want Wellmune WGP, a year supply of the same quantity used in studies that I saw is available for £119 or about $189 USD (giving a rough estimate of today’s exchange rate.) A year supply of MonaVie is roughly $1500 per person… $5000 for a family of four. It would seem that a wise consumer in this economy would be better off spending around $350 per person on the juice of their choice (or better yet, fruit) plus Wellmune WGP… unless there are studies to show that MonaVie’s combination of the two in M(mun) is better. I’m not aware of any such studies.

6b. I wanted to make another point here, so hence the sub-point. You point out that logically Wellmune studies can’t be applied to beta glucans in general because it’s more specialized (or that’s what I took from the lock-and-key pharmacology – I’ll ask my wife, a pharmacist, later). By the same logic, can we say that Wellmune studies can not apply to MonaVie M(mun) since MonaVie’s juices introduces other factors that may inhibit the effectiveness of Wellmune (various vitamins for instance). Isn’t it fair to that conusmers ask for studies that encompass the totality of the product before they plunk down a significant amount of their hard-earned money?

7. I understand the need for you to charge for your time. I would do the same. Ironically I wrote an article about this very thing on another website of mine, where I came to the same conclusion in that it’s a fair wage for your time and doesn’t necessarily impact your opinion. I added it because it was something that should be considered. I wasn’t really going to point it out, but my wife (again, a pharmacist) mentioned that in the medical industry, companies seek out doctors who will sell their integrity. Considering the conference was more of a marketing piece to MonaVie distributors than one before a medical review board, it would seem to me that they could have found a few doctors would could support the views that you did. After all, a lot of the points in the presentation, people not eating enough fruit, resistence to antibiotics, are easily defendable points that nearly any doctor would have no problem standing behind.

It’s not often that people give intelligent debate that has the chance of actually advancing our knowledge of MonaVie. MonaVie distributors when spreading the information on MonaVie often talk with certainty that drinking 4 ounces of juice is equal to eating 13 fruits (it’s really the ORAC score and which 13 fruits is up in the air). They also talk with certainty that acai has the protein profile of an egg (meaning amino acids and such, I’m guessing), ignoring the fact that there are 0 grams of protein in a serving.

It’s with that in mind that I do write with an air of certainty. I don’t think you’ll find me advocating anything unhealthy. Instead I’m advocating a way to bring health to the masses without sacrificing their wallets. Any way you slice it, it’s easier to be healthy in the long-term if you have money for the right foods, proven medicine, and health care. I hypothesize that homeless people are more exposed to disease. If you think that’s irrelevant or off-topic, the reason is that you don’t get the emails about MonaVie that I do from friends of MonaVie distributors who are at bankruptcy buying expensive juice, tools to sell the juice, airfare and conference fees, etc…

Edward,

Before I address any particular thing you mentioned, I feel that I should mention that you need to list your name and distributor ID when posting in blogs… at least according to Monavie:

Distributors may post text and videos on Blogs, Social Networks, and Video Websites so long as he or she has passed our Compliance certification course.

All text postings must include the Distributor’s name and ID number.

Of course a Blue Diamond distributor should be a shining example and comply with that.

——

With that out of the way, I would like to say that I appreciate your honesty.

However, I notice like most distributors you talk in generics when you say, “great health benifits” that “coencidentally” occurred. This can be considered a testimony which MonaVie and the FTC agree you shouldn’t do. If you aren’t prepared to talk about the great health benefits, then how can we know what they are?

Keep in mind that there were doctors and Dallin Larsen involved in Royal Tongan Limu. It might be worth noting that company was fined millions for illegal health claims.

There are a lot of charismatic people in the world, and I’m sure the speeches by the doctor and CEO were quite convincing. The speeches by Jim Jones at Jonestown were also convincing. I’m not trying to compare the two, but merely pointing out that charismatic speeches do not make juices healthy.

If you read my original MonaVie article, you know that I simply asked questions and gave MonaVie every benefit of the doubt. The thing is that no one presented scientific evidence that supported MonaVie (and stood up to scrutiny), while a lot of people brought scientific evidence to show that MonaVie doesn’t provide value for it’s money. Read through the comments, and follow the discussion and you’ll see how my opinion is swayed in the comments.

How did MonaVie respond to that fair shake? They tried legal threats to try to silence my voice in a widely covered event. Also in the comments of their blogger admits that a MonaVie employee called me “an annoying douche” on my site posing as an unaffiliated person who had never tried MonaVie (read the comments in that link). If you want to judge good vs. evil, I think that’s a great a place to start.

I’m not suggesting that I’m infallable with this site, but I’m merely giving another side of the story. MonaVie is welcome to comment here. MonaVie’s chief blogger, Shante Schroeder, and I have a fairly good e-mail relationship going. Thus I would suggest that if I am incorrect, MonaVie is still the evil one here for not clarifying these questions.

Entrepeneur of the year is something, but ask yourself why MonaVie didn’t when Product of the Year. This site is less about evaluating the business of MonaVie than the value of the product. On a personal level, I’ve admitted that MonaVie has a great business:

• They get distributors to pay for advertising (via brocures and other materials)
• They pay a vast majority of their workforce below minimum wage (via the MonaVie Income Disclosure Statement)
• They found a way to motivate their workforce unlike most other companies with dreams of being millionaires even though the odds are closer to winning the lottery than being realistic
• They found a product that is difficult to objectively quantify the value unlike a product like a pan from Pampered Chef.
• They find a way to give 100% complete truths like acai has the protein profile of an egg, so distributors will echo that despite the fact that MonaVie has no protein. You’ll also see distributors forget (whether intentionally or not) the “profile” part claiming that it is equal to an egg.

So, I’m saying that entrepeneur and crook are not mutual exclusive. A great business plan encompassing all the above does not justify the value of MonaVie’s product.

Lastly, please note that I’m only putting out facts. I cite the sources for almost everything that I say that is not a pure logical argument. I don’t think I can be considered the evil person for mentioning that scientific tests on MonaVie are not good. If you’ve read the rest Lazy Man and Money, you know that I’ve written many, many articles to help people manage their money… Here’s a whole section of them. How is that evil?

To “Dr.” Paul Clayton. It’s now apparent why you would debase yourself through affiliation with a company like Monavie. You are a victim of your own mediocrity. I am appalled by your superficial unprofessional comments in response to this post. You are an alarmist and a crass opportunist.

Clayton said: “Re fruit and veg, I think farmers markets are a good thing, and use them whenever possible. I agree that a good diet should be the first place to start, BUT … we all know that a lot of people just will not eat the right stuff, or listen to the government guidelines. They may not even like fruit, although I have a hard time understanding that. The real problem, however, is our low energy lifestyles. Cheap energy and high tech make it possible for many to get by on 2300 to 2500 kcals/day, and at that rate of calorific throughput its not easy to get to 5 portions /day, let alone the 9 a day that the Am Cancer Soc and others now recommend. A drink like Monavie’s can help.”

And your point is what exactly? That Monavie can substitute for a lack of fruit in one’s diet? You are apparently advocating fruit juice as a substitute for fruit, and yet there are many far more nutritious fruit juices which sell for a fraction of Monavie’s price and would apparently do a much better job nutritionally and economically. That you would ignore these clearly superior options in favor of Monavie completely undermines your credibility. Shame on you! The rest of your nonsense about “cheap energy” and “calorific throughput” was basically unintelligible; and the American Cancer Society DOES NOT recommend 9 servings of fruit a day. That is a blatant lie. Your rapidly eroding credibility just took another huge hit.

Clayton said: “You didn’t quite get the fruit being a problem bit. What I was referring to here was that imported and especially unprocessed foods can be disease vectors. Juices that have been at least flash pasteurised are a lot safer! Just ask a microbiologist.”

Pathetic comment! If you are advocating processed fruit juice over unprocessed fruit, you are very much in the minority. And pasteurization in no way distinguishes Monavie from other fruit juices like grape juice, which provide more of what Monavie pretends to contain (eg, polyphenols and antioxidants) at a fraction of the price.

Clayton said: “Zoonotic diseases…”

…have absolutely nothing to do with Monavie. Please don’t waste our time with red herrings. If you have something to say about Monavie curing or preventing zoonotic disease, then come out and say so. If not, then you shouldn’t be mentioning the word “disease”.

Clayton said: “…are on the rise, you can check with the EPA or, if you’re feeling keen, search PubMed. Don’t expect me to do all your work for you!”

Did I just hear you right??? Did you actually have the gall to say “don’t expect me to do all the work for you”? You come here pretending to be some kind of authority and yet you can’t even make the effort to provide a single PubMed citation or a link to a review article to back up your claim? We have been backing up what we say with references and diligent research for well over a year, and yet you can’t “do all the work”??? You are a disingenuous lazy HACK!

Clayton said: “You’re right about malaria, it got crammed onto the slide due to shortage of space; the point there was that like the zoonoses, its sphere of influence is likely to increase due to climate shift. Unfortunately, 2 slides got crammed into one as I only had 20 minutes to cover a whole range of topics.”

That’s a convenient excuse. Blame your shoddy research on a slide malfunction. God forbid you should have to admit the truth, HACK! How about exercising some personal responsibility for the claims you make instead of always having a convenient excuse with which to backpedal? Why are you even talking about malaria at a Monavie conference? I’ll tell you why; to dishonestly imply that Monavie can prevent or treat such cnditions.

Clayton said: “Antibiotics are useless. Well, you got me there, I did exaggerate to make the point, and they do still work but the problem here (which is acknowledged by the CDC, WHO etc etc), is that antibiotic resistance is becoming more and more prevalent. It was, btw, the very eminent Prof George Poste who predicted the end of the age of antibiotics by, you guessed it, 2010!”

Well George Poste was obviously dead wrong, and no responsible physician would EVER make such an alarmist claim as the one you made about antibiotics being useless. Your claim was nothing more than a loathsome dishonest fear-mongering tactic, although you whitewash it by calling it an “exaggeration”. Once again, your credibility slides into the toilet. You do a grave injustice by implying that antibiotics are useless but that Monavie can prevent zoonotic diseases. You truly disgust me.

Clayton said: “Do your literature searches and you will find a huge number of studies on the beta glucans.”

Done. I don’t see anything in that research to demonstrate that Wellmune is superior to any other inexpensive form of beta-glucan; nor is their evidence that Monavie M-mun contains a significant amount of beta-glucan or that it has any benefits whatsoever.

Clayton said: “Your comment about differently priced beta glucans is short on substance. Yeast is complex stuff, and what you want is a high beta glucan content with little if any mannoproteins (which can trigger abreactions)…You generally get what you pay for, and with Wellmune you have a very high level of science supporting it.”

No, the point was made well; it is you who is short on substance. Show us one piece of scientific evidence that backs up you statement that “you get what you pay for” with respect to beta-glucans. Where is your scientific evidence that Wellmune is superior to any other less expensive form of beta-glucan; there is none, and you know it.

Clayton said: “My fees. I consult with a large number of companies, and charge standard speaking fees. My day rate is #1000, and as I travelled from the UK and returned there it took me three working days. For this I charged the princely sum of #1500. That pays my bills but it does not, I can assure you, buy my integrity.”

You apparently have no integrity to sell, and given your lack of credibility and expertise, I can’t imagine why anyone would pay you a nickel to speak at an event unless of course it’s because they know that you’ll tell LIES to a roomful of people for less than $1,000 a day – is that different from what any other run-of-the mill prostitute would charge?

Clayton said: “Finally, I have learned over the years that a little learning is indeed a dangerous thing, and learn enough new every day to remind me how little I do know. I note, but do not admire, your certainty.”

Steeped with irony. I have no doubt that you have been reminded daily of the limitations of your knowledge. I’ll second that reminder. And you certainly seem to have the potential to be dangerous.

The videos have been pulled already (I still have access to them elsewhere though). It was probably a prudent move for the company to have erased this evidence because the videos were rife with illegal implications about Wellmune and Monavie as a preventive measure for infectious diseases, respiratory tract infections, and even anthrax. Clayton also claimed that Wellmune “has FDA GRAS approval”, implying that it is FDA-approved for the treatment of infectious diseases. He says that drugs and vaccines “don’t work”.

I also took a look at what “Dr” Clayton is passing off as his CV. There is no indication that he has ever authored even a single research publication.
http://www.drpaulclayton.com/scripts/paulcv.aspx

The deleted Monavie videos introduced Clayton as a fellow of “the Royal Society of Medicine”. Sounds like he’s a licensed MD right? Wrong. The RSM has nothing to do with physician licensure; it’s a pay-to-play medical education organization.
http://www.rsm.ac.uk/membersh/joining.php

Clayton’s website says that he has a PhD, but conveniently, there is no mention of what discipline the alleged degree is in and from which institution it was received. I’m doubling down that it was some generic mail order diploma mill.

The video also describes Clayton as the “Joint President of the EU Commemoration Foundation”. A quick Google search was unable to identify any organization by this name. Another website describes Clayton as “Scientific Director” of the “Szent Gyorgi Institute” in Budapest. A Google search finds no evidence that the Institute exists; just random 5 hits, all mentioning Clayton.
http://www.fabresearch.org/view_item.aspx?item_id=1244
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Szent+Gyorgi+Institute%22

In the Monavie video, Clayton claims “my natural habitat is the university and the gleaming spires of Oxford”. In fact, Clayton’s CV describes him as a “visiting professor” from “Oxford Brookes University”, a lowly institution that has absolutely nothing to do with the gleaming spires of the illustrious “University of Oxford”. Who it is that he is “visiting” during his “visiting professorship” is never mentioned.
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/about
http://www.ox.ac.uk

This site claims that Clayton was a “Senior Scientific Advisor to the UK government’s Committee on Safety of Medicines”.
http://www.healthdefence.com/who_is_paul.html

However. a search through the Committee’s meeting archives finds no mention of Clayton.
http://www.mhra.gov.uk/Committees/Medicinesadvisorybodies/CommitteeonSafetyofMedicines/index.htm

This site claims that Clayton was the Director of the Nutritional Therapy Council.
http://www.icyou.com/channel/dr-paul-clayton

Quackwatch, a reputable consumer watchdog website, considers the Nutritional Therapy Council a “Questionable Organization”.
http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecorg.html

We have seen this kind of resume fraud among Monavie’s principals too many times before (e.g., Ralph Carson, Alexander Schauss, Jose Allongo, Lou Niles, etc.).

Mr. Clayton is also listed as chief of the advisory board of Biothera, the maker of Wellmune.
http://www.biotherapharma.com/healthcare/HealthcareScientificAdvisors.htm

Presumably he receives some form of compensation for his services. I have yet to see any examples of Mr. Clayton disclosing that he has a financial conflict of interest with respect to Monavie M-Mun and Wellmune WGP. That’s deceptive and a no-no according to the FTC.

I don’t want to argue with any particular fact other than the fact that Dr. Clayton has disclosed his earnings here. It’s deceptive that he didn’t do it during his talk, but I’m not sure if the FTC requires it to be done for speakers (and how they require that disclosure).

Not to minimize some of these, but some of the biggest things I find in this research are:

Dr. Clayton doesn’t seem to be an Medical Doctor as he points out. Most people might think that the PhD shows that he is a medical doctor, but a PhD can be in Spanish for all we know.
Passing off “Oxford” as if he graduated or was affiliated with Oxford University.
His affiliate with Wellmune… He didn’t mention it in the speech (as far as I saw) and didn’t mention it here. There’s significant bias and that might explain why he’s trying to differentiate beta glucans. So of course he’s going to say things like “You get what you pay for” with regard to Wellmune.

I’m going to go back and add in the comments that Dr. Paul Clayton sent me anticipating that they’d be uploaded to the comments.

[Note: This is a response that I got from Dr. Clayton. He subscribed to get email comments (which you can do with the check box below), but I think he believed that replying to those emails got uploaded to the site for discussion. That isn't the case, and I've talked with him about publishing his comments, so here they are...]

Comment from Feb 2nd to my response:

“Hi there, and thanks for your considered reply which I enjoyed. I am dashing between appointments so this is just a brief and incomplete response, just wanted to share a reference with you on the zoonotic issue which I think is real and not just hype. Have a look at ‘Biodiversity Loss Affects Global Disease Ecology’ by Montira J. Pongsiri, Joe Roman, Vanessa O. Ezenwa, Tony L. Goldberg, Hillel S. Koren, Stephen C. Newbold, Richard S. Ostfeld, Subhrendu K. Pattanayak, and Daniel J. Salkeld.
It is in the December 2009 issue of BioScience(http://www.aibs.org/bioscience/current_issue.html)

I take your point about the swiftness of the development of a bird flu vaccine, but then again it was just another flu variant. As and when a really serious pandemic takes off, epidemilogical modelling and past history clearly show that vaccine development will not be able to keep up with the emergence of viral changes (drift and/or shift) UNLESS current work on a pan-virulent strain vaccine pays off. Would be great if that happens, but what about the other known and unknown pathogens? The paper above indicates why not just spread but also frequency are likely to accelerate.

More brief comments – farmers markets are a good thing, no question – but they don’t exist on the same scale in the UK where I am based, so guess I don’t prioritise them as much as an American might do.

Antibiotic resistance …It ain’t just Poste; my colleagues here include consultant microbiologists who specialise in antibiotic resistance, and they are universally pessimistic. Of course it won’t be Dec 31st – that was a humourous reference, and very obviously wrong! But the general drift is clear, and widely understood and accepted.

Beta glucan studies. Acrtually, I was citing specifically Wellmuine studies. Go to http://www.biotherapharma.com, most of them are listed there. Fascinating reading, and good science.

Lots more to talk about, and I liked your point about the validity of betas glucans in a food matrix. All this has been covered elsewhere, but my time is up now. I will try to come back to this at a later date.
All the best
Paul”

———————-

[Editor's note: This comment came about 90 minutes after the previous one. There were no other comments here, so let's consider it part of the same comment]

“I’m back, this will probably be my last response as I have some major deadlines to beat but I hate to walk out on a good discussion so here goes.

Your point about costs is something I don’t really feel qualified to talk about, I’m not commercial and have no idea about the cost of ingredients, processing packaging etc. This is, as I believe they say, above my pay grade. However, I do know that people are generally more likely to maintain good compliance for sopmething they have paid for, than for cheap or free stuff, and this could be in Monavie’s favour. Being part of the organisation also helps compliance; any belief system does.

I’m not too concerned about the fibre argument, for the following reasons …. There are, as you may be aware, at least 6 categories of dietary fiber, and in general the most important typers appear to be the fermentable carbohydrates. These don’t occur to any significant extent in fruits anyway, so their absence in pulp-free juices is probably no big deal.

Too early to know, frankly, whether bird flu will be a bubonic plague-type of problem or not, but it does seem unlikely. I was not in any case making this comparison, I thought that was obvious – I was talking about the role of infection in history. What does concern me is that burgeoning human populations, expanding mass transit systems combined with climate shift plus the background ongoing failure of the antibiotics – make up a frightening pattern. Again, go talk to microbiologists and epidemiologists who specialise in infectious illness – there is a huge concern.

Re beta glucans, you specifically cite PharmaNord. Duh … they buy their beta glucans from Biothera, as do most other reputable supplement companies. And yes there are other manufacturers, but look at the label when you buy (and that is general advice). Look, inter alia, at the beta glucan content in % terms; and then look at the price. Too high a %/$ ratio is a sure sign that the label claim is bogus, too many of the products I have seen tested fail to provide what they promise. A word to the wise ….if you don’t believe me, buy them and have them tested yourself.

Finally, I know there are plenty of people out there who are either not interested in the science (which is, I admit, complex and not always clear); or whose vested interests make them impervious to reason – and this on both sides of the debate. I see that you are someone who considers the issues reasonably carefully, and I trust that you understand that I do this also. I don’t really have the time to contine here, but if you want to use my email to talk to me directly please feel free to do so.”

This video still works:
http://www.monavietv.com/monavietv?from=widget&mode=video&vid=6597
Almost 11 minutes long.

Back after a few days at work. MonaVie Scam, I respect what you say (even if I don’t always agree with you) beacuse you join in the dialogue. Vogel, on the other hand, and on the basis of his/her entertaining contributions, seems to be more interested in heat than light. I have seen plenty of blowhards locking horns on the net before, but never encountered such a prime example at first hand.

One of the key aspects of the scientific method is to try to remove, or at least reduce, subjectivity from the argument. This is why we use placebo controls and double blinds, for example. Vogel is too obviously the victim of his own rage to see at all clearly, and name-calling is no substitute for reasoned debate.

I have never claimed to be a medical doctor; my doctorate is in clinical pharmacology, and for the last 30 years I have specialised in the pharmacology of food and food derivates. My UK affilation is with Oxford Brookes, and – from the autumn – with a research group established at Oxford University. The Szent-Gyorgyi Institute is actually being built, even as we speak, in Budapest, with completion scheduled for next February; the name was granted to us by the great Albert Szent-Gyorgyi’s only living relative. The European Commemoration Foundation is a translation from the Hungarian, it is a Hungarian historical / political organisation and I doubt you would find it using English search terms. FDA GRAS does not imply medical usage, it means Gerally Regarded as Safe, a tag generally used to describe materials for supplemental or fortification purposes. Of course I advise Biothera, I have never tried to conceal this and it is indeed all posted, very clearly and obviously, on the web. All my points about the quality of beta glucans stand, I suggest you visit the pharma website for details.

Und zo weiter. Vogel, you have done a little homework but not enough; you are clever, but not wise. You haven’t even been able to find any of my papers, so here’s a clue; try Pubmed.

If you are really interested in a discussion, I’d be happy to talk with you. The emotional nature of your responses, unfortunately, gives the impression that you actually want to shut off debate. I do not know if this is because you feel that your intellectual position is threatened, or your vested interests. It would be interesting to know.

All the best,
Paul

My take on this is that it seems from the videos that Dr. Paul Clayton took every opportunity to do what I often see the smarter MonaVie distributors do. They don’t tell lies (at least the smarter ones), but they put a half-truth out there hoping that the audience will fill in the rest of the picture mentally. Vogel makes a good point that when you talk of academics and Oxford in the same sentence, 99.9% of the people assume Oxford University, one of the most prestigous learning institutions in the world. It’s similar to a MonaVie distributor saying that acai has the protein profile of an egg, but not mentioning that there are 0 grams of protein in MonaVie. It’s misleading people – plain and simple – and it’s one of the reasons why I created this site.

If I had it in my nature, I’d probably respond as Vogel did. I think he has a right to be upset after uncovering all the half-truths that were mentioned. As Dr. Clayton says, he goes through no effort to hide that he’s a Wellmune Advisor. However, he also made no effort to disclose that either. No reputable Doctor of Phamacology would claim that “antibiotics are useless.” It’s nice that Dr. Clayton mentioned it was an exaggeration here, but MonaVie distributors can choose to take that at face value in their sales pitches. When a doctor says that a treatment is useless, the average person believes it.

I can see numerous MonaVie distributors spreading the word that antibiotics are dead and the only thing that can stop the next plague is MonaVie. If you think I’m wrong, remember that back in April of last year MonaVie distributors were claiming that MonaVie helped with Swine Flu… and that was before anyone knew that M(Mun) was on the horizon. Don’t believe me? See:

http://twitter.com/MonaVie_Shop/statuses/1646185316
http://twitter.com/ChiaraGravell/statuses/1648656877
http://twitter.com/johnmontgomery1/statuses/1659442421

I’m very happy to say that in 6 weeks or so, I’ll be at The American Pharmacists Association Annual Meeting with my wife (who is a Doctor of Pharmacology like Dr. Clayton). She’s suggested that I shouldn’t be shy about mentioning how MonaVie is being pitched as a medicine. I haven’t quite decided to what extent I wish to talk about it… but I might be handing out business cards with this website name on it. I know a few pharmacists have seen this are pretty appalled about what is going on.

For what it’s worth, one of the biggest questions of PhD to me is whether it’s exactly a “PhD.” For example my wife has a PharmD (Doctor of Pharmacy), not a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy).

It looks like European countries are somewhat split on the distinction. The Czech Republic has PharmDr for instance. However, Hungary, which is a country that Dr. Clayton referred to definitely seems to have a “Pharm D” (from the Wikipedia link that I reference previously).

I couldn’t find information on the UK’s actual title, which is fair for Clayton to use, but for those of us in the US, the PhD for a Doctor of Pharmacy is considered very strange.

I think Vogel was right to question why you didn’t list your graduate studies anywhere. It is a bit of admission. If I went to Harvard undergrad and then went to U of Massachutts for a graduate degree, I wouldn’t ignore that the graduate degree was from U of Massachusetts. This was clearly done on your (Paul Clayton’s) website.

I think there is something very different to saying that out antibiotics are becoming less effective and that they are “useless.” I don’t think anyone (me or Vogel) is claiming to be unaware of bacteria becoming more resistent to antibiotics. That fact that you say we are “unaware” of such a thing is a way to paint us as ignorant, which isn’t true at all.

It looks like those Biothera research papers clearly reference “BETA 1,3/1,6 GLUCAN” (here’s an example). Without needing to read the study at all for validity, I can find many sources of “BETA 1,3/1,6 GLUCAN” available all over the Internet. If you want to claim that Wellmune’s version is better than others, I would expect the tests include at least three groups… a Wellmune group, a generic group, and a placebo group. It’s one thing to show that Wellmune is better than a placebo (and that’s important), but Wellmune also has to show it’s brand is better than others… or else the smart consumer should buy the cheapest version available.

This is a problem that MonaVie has as well. Proof against a placebo is not as important as proof against significantly cheaper and widely available products.

Dr. Paul Clayton is probably coming into this a little late. Vogel has been able to show numerous MonaVie transgressions over the last 2-3 years. Many of these transgressions include distributors (and even company employees) creating lies that not only put people into financial dire straits, but also endangers their health (many people have said that they’ve stopped taking their medication after MonaVie). I think it’s extremely rational for Vogel to use the tone he does given the circumstances. If you were to go back two years and read his posts, they were much more tempered. However, when charlatan after charlatan are causing consumers harm, it’s easy to see why he’s not Mr. Nice Guy.

While on the topic of Vogel (and myself), it does make sense to be anonymous. We aren’t the ones arguing that people should spend $45 for 25 ounces of juice.

Where is the straw man that says we expect fruit juice can cure disease? That’s the exact opposite of anything we’ve said. It’s the MonaVie distributors that are claiming fruit juice can cure disease. If you do a search on Google for “MonaVie and” and see what the suggestions (in the drop down) are, you’ll see, “diabetes”, “cancer”, “autism”, “fibromyalgia”, “MS”, “ADHD”, and “lupus”. That is 7 of the 10 topics it lists. The others are Oprah (who has sent a cease and desist to MonaVie to stop using her name), pregnancy (a fair thing to search for), and weight loss (probably another claim of distributors as MonaVie can not be considered a weight loss tool in any way).

I don’t think anyone here claims that fruit juices aren’t helpful. The question is whether one ounce of MonaVie is equal to drinking 8 ounces of another juice. From a consumer cost perspective MonaVie has to show that to be the case. We don’t care about the generic case of juice – it’s not worth debating because we agree. You just get to feel good about proving a point that it irrelevant to the discussion.

Dr. Paul Clayton, will you go on record as saying that MonaVie M(mun) has more scientific benefits than the equivalent amount of Wellmune with other juices that are around $4-5? That’s the main question that a smart consumer would care about. It’s one that seems to have been avoided. What about generic versions of Wellmune and $4-5 juice?

A few other very suspicious details regarding Clayton’s CV:

1. He claimed to have “a degree” in medical pharmacology from University of Edinburgh. However, a Google search and a search of the University of Edinburgh website yields zero hits for “medical pharmacology”. Apparently, the university does not offer such a degree. They may have at some point, but if they did, a Google search should have yielded hits from other graduates who list this degree from U. Edinburgh in their CV.

2. Clayton claimed to have graduated from U. Edinburgh “summa cum laude”. In general, this term is used only for baccalaureate degrees. According to Wikipedia, “summa cum laude” is not used in the UK and many other countries in Europe. A Google search for “University of Edinburgh + summa cum allude” yields zero hits.

3. Clayton’s website states that he received his degree from U. Edinburgh “PRIOR” to obtaining his PhD. It does not mention which university awarded the alleged PhD or what discipline the PhD was in. Curiously, when confronted by this detail, Clayton claimed that his PhD was in fact in medical pharmacology and was awarded by U of Edinburgh. However, see #1.

4. Clayton claims to be a “visiting fellow” with Oxford Brookes University. However, the review article that he mentioned recently [Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2009;6:1235-53), in which he lists an affiliation with Oxford Brookes U., shows that he has a Gmail e-mail address. However, if he were a faculty member at Oxford Brookes University, his e-mail address should be from the domain “@brookes.ac.uk”.

5. In one document from 2009, the same year he claimed to be a visiting fellow with Oxford Brookes U., Clayton also claimed to be a “visiting PROFESSOR” at the University of Debrecen (a medical school in Hungary).
http://www.cnelm.co.uk/courses/Attachments/Cancer%20Care%20Seminar%20Series.pdf

6. On Clayton’s website, the title line in the browser reads “Dr. Paul Clayton: DOCTOR and nutrition scientist. This is very misleading as it appears as though he is purposely misrepresenting himself as physician rather than the holder of an academic doctorate (and it is highly questionable at this point whether he even holds a doctorate).
http://www.drpaulclayton.com/scripts/index.aspx

The details above, in addition to those discussed previously, are very strong evidence of fraud.

I tried to find out if there’s some idiomatic meaning to that Alexander Pope quote. I couldn’t find one. Taken literally, it seems to mean, “I’m am great. Who are you and how are you great?”

Sadly Dr. Paul Clayton doesn’t realize that this is an attempt of argument from authority. If you follow that, you find that this is a fallacy of defective induction, which “produces a faulty generalization” (paraphrased from that Wikipedia source).

This is fitting in two ways, as I see it:

1. Vogel has shown pretty effectively that Dr. Paul Clayton is not an authority (i.e. not his Highness’ dog at Kew), but instead has lead everyone to believe he is. Thus he’s not even doing a good job of using the argument from authority.

2. The argument from authority doesn’t hold any weight in the debate.

Dr. Paul Clayton again makes the mistake of asking Vogel to reveal himself. He doesn’t note that Vogel isn’t trying to represent himself or any product here in anyway. It doesn’t matter if Vogel’s comments are the product of 1000 monkeys typing. The point of the message is where the importance lies. After all, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Vogel,
Please share with us your background (ie education,profession,degree). If you wish to request full disclosure on Clayton then it is only fair that you do the same.
Thank you,

Carter said: “Vogel, Please share with us your background (ie education, profession, degree). If you wish to request full disclosure on Clayton then it is only fair that you do the same. Thank you”

First, who is “us”? I don’t hear anyone else making this request for my background information, so why create the illusion of numbers when you could have simply said “share with ME”.

Second, the day I accept money from an MLM to stand on stage, spew a bunch of blatant BS, and try to sanctify it all based on my credentials, then it might be fair to request my “full disclosure”. Unlike Paul Clayton, however, I’m not making claims to promote any particular product and I haven’t been paid a nickel. But of course you know this already; the request for disclosure is just a red herring to divert this discussion away from where it belongs -– Paul Clayton and his fraudulent resume. Perhaps you are even Mr. Clayton (or his proxy) trolling under a new username, now that he has been proven to be a fraud.

Third, you fail to acknowledge that it has been conclusively demonstrated that Clayton has fraudulently misrepresented his credentials. A simple acknowledgment of this fact would be in order instead of throwing out red herrings about my credentials. As far as Clayton is concerned, the only credentials I really need are the ability to conduct a Google search, since this is all it took to demonstrate conclusively that he is a liar and a fraud.

Lastly, perhaps you didn’t stop to ponder that this thread is not about me; it’s about Monavie and Paul Clayton’s paid-for promotional claims about the product. Please stay on topic and avoid silly tangents about other people’s credentials.

PS – Lazyman, I liked your analogy. Can I just be known as “Vogel – the giant space octopus from the planet Kelmar” from now on?

Fair enough, I do have a question for Vogel & lazyman. What sparked all of this?

Vogel, my favorite space octopus, you are forgetting that the facts will never be enough for the Mona-bots, because (as Dallin said) “Facts are the enemy of truth”!!!
Enjoy planet Kelmar.

I did not wish to take the topic off course. I just was interested in knowing what drives the other folks on the site(lazyman has pointed out why he started this site ).

I have one simple question left, have you or would you be willing to drink M(Mun)? Put aside your distaste of Clayton and take a look at the product it self and put it to the test. I wonder if you drink the product for 2 months if you will have any positive impact. Want to get ride of the “mind over matter” aspect, then give the drink to a kid. THey don’t know what to expect, see if a difference in health can be documented.

Would this be something you might be open to?

My offer is to Lazyman or Vogel, however if they are not willing to step up then we shall talk about having you run the test and posting to this site for all to see.

Have you had any other products from Monavie?

Food Tech (he’s commented here in the past) has already run the test. If you want a copy of how MonaVie fared in independent lab tests, send an e-mail to Foodtech101@Yahoo.com. Here’s a hint… it didn’t go well.

FYI – Dr. Clayton will be speaking at the MonaVie Indianapolis Regional on March 13.

http://monaviemediacenter.com/register-today-for-indianapolis-regional-meeting

Thanks FT. On the one hand, I would find it revolting and a painful waste of time; but on the other, the pathological behavior in that auditorium would be fascinating to witness.

The fact that Clayton has now been shown to have an ONGOING finacial relationship with Monavie adds weight to what I had said about him before; i.e., he’s a lying money-grubbing whore. Notice that when he was first confronted here about his undisclosed financial relationship with Monavie, he only confessed to having received a onetime payment of $1,500. Obviously he was aware that his finacial relationship with Monavie would be an ongoing one. So once again, we have evidence that Clayton is dishonest (not that any more evidence was needed).

John, Exactly how would he “get his azz whipped”? Are you implying MonaVie distributors would resort to violence against someone who disagrees with them? Is this normal MonaVie distributor behavior? Or are you personally threatening physical violence against him?
Do tell.

I was just about to delete these comments, but they got a little productive. Too bad you are taking your ball and going away. Kind of silly you showed up, if you didn’t want to learn. It just goes to show the character of MonaVie proponents.

John, we (well FoodTech who posts here from time to time), with the help of MonaVie distributors, did take the juice to a reputable lab for testing. MonaVie distributors agreed that the process and the test results would be valid. The lab results came back and they were really bad. I believe that Food Tech said that he’d give you a copy of the results if you e-mail him at: Foodtech101@Yahoo.com.

What redirection are you referring to? How do you propose one legally infiltrate the “back room” of government agencies? That’s just not a very smart statement on your part. Then again, you brought nothing smart to the table.

The poster in this thread claiming to be Paul Clayton is an imposter.

I’m guessing it’s a creation of Scam’s doing.

Amusing.

Funny, Fred thinks this is all a conspiracy, but he believes a fruit punch in a shiney bottle will cure most diseases.