Every now-and-again, on a support board or some other
website, I will run across a person who is asking about a herbal remedy they
found on the Internet. Had we heard of it?
Has anyone tried it? Does it work? What are the side effects? Is the
money-back guarantee for real? Now, it
very easy for a well person in the cold light of day to spout hackneyed phrases
like "stay away from miracle cures" and "if it sounds too good
to be true, it probably is". Those who are well and relatively pain-free
don't understand the desperation some of us with chronic conditions (and our
families) can go through when faced with an incurable condition and very little
help. It is easy for the well to warn that cross-border herbal remedies are not
regulated and that we have no clue what we might be getting.
Yes, it is easy to say if you are well.
However, if you are
looking down both barrels of a chronically painful and potentially disabling
condition like Syringomyelia, for yourself or your child (or your mother /aunt /brother /grandchild /father /sister /uncle /niece /nephew...
etc) and it is three in the morning and you can't sleep for pain and worry,
can't find a specialist who knows about the condition within 300 miles and then
maybe some of these solutions may seem like they are worth a try. How many among us would not spend a hundred dollars to try and help a loved one?
Sick people and their families can be easy pickings for
unscrupulous product developers and sales people. I remember a couple of
years ago, -in Feb '07 actually, I came across a product called Syrotab mentioned on a
message board. The product claimed that “Syrotab
is a completely guaranteed and clinically proven herbal treatment for
Syringomyelia.
An admitted bold claim, but they say they can back it up.
If you look at the web site for
Syrotab, it looks legit.
The site is slick and professional
looking, with a picture of a beauitful but rather vacant-looking bi-racial
woman, flanked by a couple of handsome guys in the background; one serious and
one trying to look sincere. The site has a short but accurate description of what
Syringomyelia entails and then they get to their -self-acknowledged "bold" claims of
treatment (not cure!) within a few weeks. They back up these claims with promises
of clinical trials and money-back guarantees up the wazoo.
Back in February '07, I did some analysis on Syrotab. I checked their site to try and find details
on their clinical trial results. but the link said it is "coming soon" For a laugh, I checked again today. Guess
what? It is still "coming soon"! Shocker! Did you ever hear the Jamaican expression
"Soon Come" (i.e. never)? Yep. It's the same deal.
Back in '07, I cut and pasted some text from their website:
“Syrotab is a completely guaranteed and clinically proven herbal treatment
for Syringomyelia.
It consists of a formulation consisting of purely natural ingredients based on
the Unani (Greek) system of herbal medicine blended together in a specific
proportion to fight and treat Syringomyelia effectively.
Thousands of patients have been successfully treated with Syrotab over the past
few years. Syrotab is a completely outstanding product and there is absolutely
no alternative to its unique formula. Had the effectiveness of Syrotab not been
proven beyond any doubt, it would not be possible for us to make such a bold
claim.
The main ingredients of Syrotab tablets are:
Magnesium Murakab
Zinc Murakab
Berberis aristate Ext
Egg Shell Calcium
Sulphur
Substituted olive Oil
The exact proportion of each ingredient has been deliberately kept secret to
avoid imitations of our confidential formula.
Treatment with Syrotab is very rapid obvious results can be noticed within 40
days of use. A complete course of treatment lasts three months.
Syrotab is taken in an oral pill form and the normal dosage is two tablets
twice a day, mornings and evenings. There are absolutely no side effects and
the treatment is safe and sold over the counter.
Syrotab comes for a fixed price of $230 for a one month supply….” Update:
the price is now $79.99. Bargain! ...NOT!
I researched some of the ingredients mentioned, which was an education in
itself. I will get into all of that in
part two of this piece.
When researching these ingredients, I came across something
very interesting.
Amylotab! Here again,
was my friend,. the vacant biracial woman.
...and here is the text from the "about Amylotab"
page...
Amylotab is a completely guaranteed and clinically proven herbal treatment
for Cutaneous Amyloidosis.
It consists of a formulation consisting of purely natural ingredients based on
the Unani (Greek) system of herbal medicine blended together in a specific
proportion to fight and treat Cutaneous Amyloidosis effectively.
Thousands of patients have been successfully treated with Amylotab over the
past few years. Amylotab is a completely outstanding product and there is
absolutely no alternative to its unique formula. Had the effectiveness of
Amylotab not been proven beyond any doubt, it would not be possible for us to
make such a bold claim.
The main ingredients of Amylotab tablets are:
Magnesium Murakab
Zinc Murakab
Berberis aristate Ext
Egg Shell Calcium
Sulphur
Substituted olive Oil
The exact proportion of each ingredient has been deliberately kept secret to
avoid imitations of our confidential formula.
Treatment with Amylotab is very rapid obvious results can be noticed within 2
months (60 days) of use. A complete course of treatment lasts four months.
Amylotab is taken in an oral pill form and the normal dosage is two tablets
twice a day, mornings and evenings. There are absolutely no side effects and
the treatment is safe and sold over the counter.
Amylotab comes for a fixed price of $290 for a one month… (now a virtual bargain at $79.99!)
I saw a theme emerging. Something smelled very fishy
indeed. I did some more searching and
found Osteotab
It was probably a mistake on my part. But at that point I left the whole business behind me, thinking it was
small scale and well, that it wasn't really my problem. Surely some other
people would come along and blow the whistle on these guys?
Then yesterday, when I got started again on the theme of false miracle
cures for a completely unrelated reason, I found all these sites still happily operating. I also found this!
Oh no, they Di-n't!! (Oh yes. They did!)
...and after that, I went completely mad on Google using
all sorts of combinations of keywords and search strings. I hit the motherlode! I have summarized and collated the data. The list is at the end of this piece with
links and all that good stuff. If you
check it out, you will see the evidence is indisputable: Oslo Health Solutions are
total rip-off artists. What makes me so
mad is the scale of the operation, as well as the people targeted. Most of the
conditions they claim to "treat" are chronic and incurable. many
cause serious pain, disability or death.
Talk about preying on the desperate! 
Even worse, some of the conditions they claim to
"treat" are progressive, dangerous, cancerous or pre-cancerous. I don't
think anyone would be stupid or desperate enough to try one of these treatments
in lieu of real medical help. At least I hope not! But then again, there may be
desperate people out there with no insurance, who spend what little money they may
have on acquiring false hope.
There are two primary templates used on these sites. The
most-used by far is the vacant woman one as show previously.
However there is another template, even more slick, which I have dubbed the "laughing
couple" (aren't they lovely?) template.
Although this site looks
completely different to the others mentioned so far, read the text:
Peritab
is a completely guaranteed and clinically proven herbal treatment for
Peripheral Neuropathy.
It
consists of a formulation consisting of purely natural ingredients based on the
Unani (Greek) system of herbal medicine blended together in a specific
proportion to fight and treat Peripheral Neuropathy effectively.
Thousands
of patients have been successfully treated with Peritab over the past few
years. Peritab is a completely outstanding product and there is absolutely no
alternative to its unique formula. Had the effectiveness of Peritab not been
proven beyond any doubt, it would not be possible for us to make such a bold
claim.
The
main ingredients of Peritab tablets are:
Magnesium Murakab
Zinc Murakab
Berberis aristate Ext
Egg Shell Calcium
Sulphur Substituted olive Oil
The
exact proportion of each ingredient has been deliberately kept secret to avoid
imitations of our confidential formula.
Treatment
with Peritab is very rapid. Obvious results can be noticed within one month of
use. A complete course of treatment lasts two months.
Peritab
is taken in an oral pill form and the normal dosage is two tablets twice a day,
mornings and evenings. There are absolutely no side effects and the treatment
is safe and sold over the counter.
Peritab
comes for a fixed price of $180.00 for a two months supply (240 Tablets) and
can be ordered from our website. We do not charge any shipping price.
Treatment
with Peritab is fully guaranteed. We are so confidant about the effectiveness
of Peritab, that in the rare case you remain unsatisfied with the improvement
in your condition, you may simply return the empty packaging along with the
original receipt and claim a refund of the amount you paid us. The guarantee is
valid for 120 days from the date of purchase. Since all payments are made via
credit card directly to CCNOW (our credit card processing company), your money
is completely safe. CCNOW will ensure that we honor all claims for refund. The
only condition is that you have to be persistent in your treatment with Peritab
for a complete course of the treatment. Skipping pills or being irregular will
only delay the treatment.
If it sounds familiar, it is. It is exactly the same wording
as for Syrotab, Amyltab, Osteotab, MD-Tab and several others, right down to
the ingredients list. A straight cut-and paste job, with just product name and pricing changed.
Proof of Cut and Paste: Check out the title of this
"Thyrotab" about page. They forgot to rename it from "Psoriasis
Tab"!
Although there is no company name or address
listed on the Peritab site that I could find, the "Order Now" button
gives it away
CCNow
is an authorized retailer for OSLO HEALTH SOLUTIONS
Bastards.
Just to clarify, I think CCNOW is a legit operation, however
they don't issue refunds without their client's approval. Their client is Oslo
Health Solutions,-not the consumer.
Do Oslo Health Solutions back up their promises? Well, this person will never know. OHS never
sent the Ptosotab that was paid for.

The next person actually received some bottles of pills (I
must admit I was surprised to see this) but returned them and got no refund
(quelle surprise!).
Another report; -this time for Sarcotab:
But what about the clinical research, I hear you ask? They say there is some.
I didn't check absolutely every site for
clinical research, and most of the ones I did check, had the very familiar
"will be posted soon" message.
However, Vitiligo Tab (Vitiligo Tab is our 100% guaranteed and
clinically proven permanent cure for Vitiligo.) has a research report attributed to Gaurang Clinic and
Center for Ayurvedic research.
I tried to cross reference this by searching Guarang's own site
for the paper -I thought they would have it listed among their 49 other
reports, but it wasn't. Curious.
Then I read the report. It seemed a bit low on actual
research to my somewhat-trained eyes. There is a of information about Vitiglio
itself , and some interesting if rather vague claims made. But the information on the study itself and
the findings thereof seemed somewhat hazy. They look great at first blush, but
there were some things that seemed a little ...off. First off, the study was not double-blind.
There was no placebo.
Next, I noticed that the report uses a timeframe of 1996-2001. However, Vitiligo Tab -according to the site copyright- wasn't introduced
until 2007. Was it in development for 19 years? (no wonder it is so
expensive). And finally, it doesn't say
how the results were measured and over what timeframes. It used terms like "cured" and
"90% Improvement, but does not break it down into the different types or
extent of vitiligo, which had been painstakingly outlined in the beginning of
the paper. It looks like it does:
-uses terms like "both sexes are equally affected by Vitiligo" but it doesn't say how they genders are
affected by Vitiligo Tab! Hmmmm.
Psoriasis Tab was another with a research paper
published from the same source (different attributed author)
Again, if you read this paper, it is heavy on waffle and
very light on actual research and concrete findings. And again, that paper it
is not listed on Guarang's site.
I have mentioned a lot of "tabs" in this post,
haven't I? A lot of products called something-or-other-Tab that claims to treat well... something-or-other? Do you want to know how many I found? Almost 50 (forgot to put clustotab on the list). And I don't think I have found them
all. Some have been discontinued (like cardiotab) but have left footprints
around the web, showing that they *used* to exist. Oslo Health Solution have
around 284 domains registered, so I am guessing there are other um.. products out
there that I haven't found yet. Anyhoo, have
a little look at this list. It is in alphabetical order. Check the links and
see for yourself if you come to the same conclusion that I did. That these people
-Oslo Health Systems (formerly Botanical Sources) are total rip-off artists.
Here it is: The Grand List of Oslo Health System's (and
related sites) "completely
guaranteed and clinically proven" herbal treatments
This list was last updated on September 7th, 2009. There are almost 300 products on it.
I have figured out that Oslo Health Solutions and their affiliates use around 13 different formulations to "treat" over 60 different diverse ailments. I will discuss these in Part II.
Stay
tuned.