I'm not a violent man, but...

[lederhosen]

Everybody has their buttons. One of my biggest is scumbags like Kevin Trudeau.

From transcript here:

NBC5's Don Lemon: "Do you know someone who actually has a natural cure for AIDS and is not sharing it or its being suppressed? Or is this information that you've gotten second-hand?"

Trudeau: "No. The book is me reporting on what I've found, what I've researched, what I've personally investigated."

Lemon: "Hydrogen peroxide, intravenous, in your veins."

Trudeau: "Correct."

Lemon: "Using hydrogen peroxide to cure AIDS?"

Trudeau: "Correct."

Lemon: "I'll move on. And the sun does not cause skin cancer? Sunscreens do?"

Trudeau: "Yes."

Baldness, addictions, poor memory - you name it, Trudeau (who served two years for credit-card fraud back in the '90s) has a quick-fix. His book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About has been on the NY Times bestseller lists for months.

And yes, like all the best lies it incorporates a few grains of truth. There *are* problems with the way medical research works; he's absolutely right in claiming that the patent system fosters drug research while leaving precious little financial incentive for research on things like lifestyle-based preventative medicine. But he is still a parasite who feeds off people's fear and pain. I'm not usually a fan of capital punishment, but I'd be willing to make an exception for 'assisting' quacks to die by their own methods.

Comments

[djfiggy.livejournal.com]

How many in/famous Trudeaus does there have to be? Of course Gary isn't related to Pierre, and I'm guessing Kevin isn't related to either, but the name immediately grabbed my attention the moment I read this post. :)

[fluffy-cloud.livejournal.com]

I work with someone who swears by his book and has totally bought into the whole changing your body's ph to avoid cancer thing. She buys $50 vitamins every month to "change her body's ph".

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Blargh. At least, working in the Evil Medical Industry of Evil as I do, I'm not likely to see my workmates doing that.

[fluffy-cloud.livejournal.com]

Ths sad thing is, she is a *very* paranoid person. If someone made her stop the vitimans, a month later she would swear she was getting cancer.

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

The cruel thing to do would be to tell her that excess vitamins give you cancer.

They don't, as far as I know, but my knowledge of vitamin overdoses is approximately equal to "too much Vitamin B Complex turns your pee fluorescent yellow, and the amount of Vitamin A in Polar Bear Liver will kill you."

[quatranoctal.livejournal.com]

Well, hydrogen peroxide would kill AIDs, but I just wish he'd demonstrate on himself the required dosage. Preferably on air, with several independant witnesses. And to show it works you'd probably have to infect him with HIV then dose him until he's not infected any more. I'd pay to see that.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

...hydrogen peroxide.

Must... Stop... Kill... Reflex...

[mdsteele47.livejournal.com]

NPR's On The Media did a piece on Trudeau a couple of weeks ago... and yes, the man is scum. The FCC sued - successfully - to get his infomercials taken off the air, and now I believe they're trying to go after the book. The angle they took with the story is that the political aspects of the book make it difficult to attack the book as a flat-out fraud, or at least that's the tack his defense is taking. So every nutjob out there would just need to put in a line about "the man keeping them down" and they can make anything up they'd like.

The best quote in the story was from a doctor, paraphrasing from memory: "These kind of books make it very difficult for us to do our jobs." Amen.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

The angle they took with the story is that the political aspects of the book make it difficult to attack the book as a flat-out fraud, or at least that's the tack his defense is taking.

I understand the flip-side to that is that the book is much lighter on specific treatments than he leads potential buyers to believe (which is annoying for them, no doubt, but probably just as well). Still more than enough to harm them.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

Agreed. "Never give or recommend a treatment that you wouldn't be willing to have used on you," I reckon.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

When I worked at the bookstore last summer, one of the first things I learned was where that book was shelved, because we sold a LOT of them. :(