Do you know where the expression "Let the cat out of
the bag" came from?
Well, it came from the practice in Old England of selling
piglets in a bag (i.e. "a pig in a poke") at the market or fair. Sometimes, people would buy a piglet only to find when they got home that the
wriggling animal inside the bag was actually a worthless cat. So if you were
wise, you would open the bag before you hand over any money and "let the cat out of the bag". That
is, you would reveal the scam.
Many pig sellers would leave the pig's tail sticking out of
the bag, so you would know it was a piglet and not a cat. However, in a less
well-known variation on the old scam, some unscrupulous bastards would cut off
the piglets' tails and tie them onto
bags, which each contained a cat.
So there was a 'level II' on the pig scam, if you like.
I see Towards Natural Health as a Level II internet
scam. They went through all the trouble
to cut the tails off the poor piggies. But it is still a freaking scam; albeit a
much prettier one than some the previous scams uncovered here on OSM. And
keeping in a porcine vein, the expression "putting lipstick on a
pig" very much comes to mind here.
Here is an example of one of their sites:
Wait a sec: To get the full impact you have to load it. Click here and come right back
It's really gorgeous lipstick, isn't it?
The zooming graphics, the spinning-around globe thingy, the leaves, the starry things, the slick "shick" sound when you roll over a menu item, the persuasive language (although I am
never sure what might "suite" me best. A bathroom installed on my ass, perhaps...?),
all the links that they post...
But look
at those links again. Notice they are all general. There are never specific
links to the actual condition for which you seek relief. The links are the
pig's tail.
Don't be fooled: It's a scam.
They try to cover their asses by
saying things like "This particular website is aimed at helping Motor
Neuron Disease patients..." I guess
if you happen to come across the exact same site for ...say Grave's Disease, or
one of the 62 or so other sites that I have found (so far), they think their asses are
covered.
Now, unlike SPAH, or Herbal Product Reviews, which are identical
scams to this one; Towards Natural Health even has a main site, that goes on about their humanitarian mission to save the world or
some such hogwash.
But it is all bullshit. A total and complete scam. A con. A fraud. Please don't waste your time
and money on these guys or on any of the products that they recommend.
Here's how I know they are a fraud:
First off, all of the
products that they recommend are either by Solutions by Nature, Gordon's Herbal Research Center or Healing Plants, Ltd. ALL of which have been outed here on OSM as scams.
Often, Towards Natural Health (TNH) will recommend the
Solutions by Nature Product. Hmmm. I wonder why?
Well, Here is TNH's address, taken from their main site. It is also the address to which all their domains are registered (the ones I checked, anyway). 
PO Box 2175, Paleagade 7, DK-1231, KBH K, Denmark
Here is Solutions by Nature's Address:
PO Box 2175, Paleagade 7, DK-1231, KBH K, Denmark
I included both screen grabs so you can see for yourself that they are exactly the same, with no sleight of hand by this Sick Mother.
Towards Natural solutions does list a different address on
some of their sites.
Does that address: 115 Abercorn St, M0013, Paisley, PA3 4AT, Scotland; 
look familiar to you?
It should.
It is the exact same one as is listed on the domain registration for Herbal Product Reviews, which OSM has previously outed as
a scam.
Don't listen to a word that tortoise says.
He is a lying wee bastard.
And he wants to trample your ice cream, apparently.
Now some of you; -the more trusting among you- may be thinking
"It can't possibly be a scam! Why would
people go through all this trouble for a scam? "
For the same reason that people would mutilate baby pigs. Because it might make them money.
These guys OWN all of these fake herbal sites. There are hundreds of them
because they are carpet-bombing the "sick people" market with fake solutions in the hope that some of us will be sick or desperate enough to fall for the ploy. They are professional con artists. Scamming people it is what they
do, and -judging from the number of e-mails I get from people who were scammed or who narrowly escaped because of this site; -they are pretty good at it.
And maybe there is another reason:
Maybe they like it.
Maybe they have such
disdain for people with illness and disabilities, that they get some kind of
kick out of messing with our heads and our wallets.
And that is really sick.
Help though creating awareness? Yes. It's what I plan to do. Thanks for the tagline. It works far better when applied to One Sick Mother than when applied to Towards Natural Health.
Here is the list of TNH scam sites that I have found (updated Sept 6th 2009):
NOTE: While compiling this list, I realized that there are many More Solutions By Nature sites than I had found previously. I will update
that page when I get a chance. Really, there is too much out here for a single
person to track (I bet that is a large
part of the plan)
