Warning this one is a heartfelt, uncomfortable truth bare your soul email so read it at your own risk but if you do please read it all!
Sadly, there are unscrupulous people out there who have no qualms about misrepresenting themselves.
Some potential examples of this are the current (should I be saying recurrent?) cross hairs that are trained on Costco- this time for misrepresentation of their fish oil brand. Now we live in a guilty until proven innocent society these days because we read qualifiers – may, could maybe, what if, might and the like as absolutes.
They are not.
But there is this magic word the government uses called “insinuates”. Guess who gets to decide what is an insinuation and what isn’t!? If you guessed the same people who decide that the number of randomized placebo-controlled studies you need to prove a claim in the government’s eyes is undefined and subject to changes, you get the gold star.
The real answer to the study question is: “More than you’ve done however many that is.”
And they do not poll the general public to see what the definition of “insinuates” is.
And as far as Costco is concerned we might wait until this legal situation is over to pass judgement.
The problem is most people will have long decided based only on the headline and never bother to follow the actual case for the real verdict. Damage done and maybe not for good reason.
Ask me how I know*
In addition, there are far too many people who just read headlines and concoct an entire story about it much like the recent fish oil study that showed moderate benefit (and was poorly designed or perhaps ((another qualifier)) designed perfectly to show a negative result by using tiny doses of fish oil).
This study got blasted all over the internet as the “FINAL VERDICT”. I am not a profane man but that is you know what ridiculous especially since even a small dose of fish oil DID show benefit.
Combine qualifiers as absolute and headline skimming without reading or understanding what you are talking about and you have 50% of the internet.
You may as well get all your information from Facebook.
The FDA and the FTC could have a field day if they cared to.
However, there are some real phony baloneys out there. For instance, if you had a company that was named after a doctor say, “Dr. John’s Supplements” wouldn’t you think that very strongly implies there is a doctor there?
I suggest you ask. The Longevity Edge is the ONLY place that has Dr. Dave Woynarowski. If you see someone saying there is a doctor somewhere, I’d ask who that doctor is and check to see if it’s a real person with a medical degree. Nothing against my PhD colleagues but treating rats does not qualify.
Honorary degrees in vaguely related disciplines don’t count.
Remember this guy?
Similarly, if you were to get an email from Dr. John’s Supplement Company and the headline started with “I” and no other “I” was mentioned you might wrongly assume that “I” was Dr. John when there was no such person there.
Under any circumstances the FTC would consider that deception. If you are getting emails from someone like that please report them to the FTC so they can be investigated!!!!
Next if it’s too good to be true it probably is.
I know this because I have gotten complaints from customers about products that are discounted 50-80% and are either expired or about to expire. They are surprised to hear that I am not involved in any way and The Longevity Edge is about to celebrate its 2nd birthday with the only Dr. Dave W there is at the helm.
I am sorry if you were one of the people who has been deceived by any of the above scams but again, it was not me!
OK now for the fun stuff.
The first of our telomere products is due in less than 10 days so stay tuned for an early April launch.
I’ve got something special planned for you at that time!
Our amazing probiotic will also be in stock again at the end of this month- for those of you who wondered why we haven’t been talking about it – it’s in short supply!
Well it sold so well that we barely had enough to meet our subscriptions for this month, but we timed it right and when you start seeing emails about it again it will be a “no wait” situation.
Until then I wish you a great rest of the weekend and stay alert for con men. They are most definitely out there**
*and **- I used to think you had to really be way out of line to attract negative attention from the government or Quack Watch and the like. I have learned over the years that it really is not hard to get negative attention at all.
There are 4ingredients any one of which can lead to costly negative attention (costly in legal fees even if you are found totally innocent, and costly to your reputation) even in the face of complete innocence.
- You piss someone off. Either someone who has more money than you do to waste on legal nonsense or someone who has far more time than you do and makes a career out of an ax to grind.
- Similarly, if you are a colossal flapping celestial size anal sphincter you may get nailed on karma alone. This is the “witch hunt” scenario you occasionally hear about where some jerk is totally innocent of everything other than being a jerk and they get nailed. No one really pities them but…. The problem is these people generally take a lot good people down with them.
- You make what someone else considers an obscene amount of money. For example, a company I know of (no its not mine!!!!) recently got dinged by an alphabet agency even though they did pretty much everything right including studies and using great scientists to prove their findings. Problem was 2 or 3 of these findings potentially made them competitors to Big Pharma who is selling “real” drugs (You know the kind that build bone in your spine but erode your jaw, or the kind that lower your cholesterol and it took 30 years of continued studies to make a questionable case for their wide spread usage). Big Pharma doesn’t like competition from supplements and has done everything in their power to make sure they don’t have any. Alphabets comply.
But please remember they exist for your protection!
Or is that an insinuation?
So, all over the 50+ page complaint filed by the agency were references to the money made and paid to people for various advertising and “false” insinuations and claims. That case is now up for public complaint and the average person who does not know anything about the health care industry is going to see an alleged figure for gross income of 39 million over 12 years and think this company must be greedy beyond all belief. The concept of salaries for employees, various types of insurances, legal retainers and expenses, physical plants, shipping, taxes of all kinds-Federal, State, City, disability for the employees, Social Security, Medicare, SS disability contributions, supply and manufacture, quality control, scientists and consults and providing income for several dozen people and several other companies-is not subtracted from that sizeable figure. After all, if you are trying to get the public to hate a company just show the gross income and imply they get to keep it.
For the record The Longevity Edge does not look, feel or make anything anywhere near that nor did my former company. We always have been (until the original company was sold) friends and family running the business and our inventory alone costs us about 55% of what we make. This is because when I ran the company they were custom made.
Then there are all those other fees!
Right now, I have 3 people including myself in the company so the numbers are tiny compared to the company that got nailed for false claims by the FTC.
At the time of this writing my February 2018 income after expenses was $1600. Yeah, I’m really greedy!
If you still think greed is motivation recall that Big Pharma owned supplement companies that you don’t have any idea are owned by Big Pharma because they have wonderful titles that include nature, natural, farm fresh, clean, green, earth and all kinds of variations on those names that are not even words but look like them AND, similar meanings in other languages that are well known enough in the West to imply a “natural” or raw or from the earth naturally by association.
Why is that not an insinuation?
These companies are reported to gross 50 Billion with a B yearly from supplement sales. So, if money is your only criteria for judging greed please judge them far more guilty than some small business (small business earning definitions vary but generally under 500 employees and under 50 million YEARLY in gross receipts = a small business- who knew!)
Those of us who do not even dream of that amount of money in our life times are likely to judge anyone who makes that much as greedy. Hence the unending references to the amount of money made in this particular FTC complaint. They know what they are doing.
- You actually do something wrong either out of ignorance or malice AND #1 and or 2 have occurred.
There are plenty of mom and pop business out there that simply do not have the legal background or the finances to hire the legal background to prevent themselves from making a mistake. That used to constitute a “stop and don’t do it again” letter. Now it can become a costly investigation and or lawsuit in a heartbeat. Free speech stops when you start selling some things ( not something or anything, just some things) and it gets even more circumscribed when you are more successful than the average person-even a little bit.
Then again as I mentioned in paragraph one of this blog there are some serious quacks and frauds out there. Be vigilant!
If you’ve read this entire thing then bless you. I appreciate your continued support and will do everything in my power to make all of our lives better in as many ways as possible. And I will share that with you!
Dr. Dave Woynarowski MD
www.TheLongevityEdge.com
But right now I am in Costa Rica doing a one week intensive session with an amazing Yogi named Pablo Lucero at a gorgeous place called Rio Chirripo.
