MORE ON TRUDEAU FROM "SWIFT"

Here's another article about the "Great" Kevin Trudeau, the man that is being "unjustly pursecuted" by the FDC. The article appeared online at Swift - the online newsletter of the JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation), an educational resource on the paranormal, pesuedoscientific and the supernatural.

The TV promoter of the "coral calcium" flummery, the man who oohs and aahs over claims of cancer cures, weight loss, and other miracles by filling up with this farce-of-the-month, is Kevin Trudeau, a man with quite an interesting past. He's served jail time for writing bad checks, and for credit card fraud, and has even posed as a physician to bank officials. The current charges against Trudeau are for issuing "false and misleading and constitute deceptive acts or practices." Despite a court order stopping the advertising for one of his books, Amazon.com still sells his "Mega Memory" course.

Tom Freeman suggests we go to a very good article about Coral Calcium written by Stephen Barrett, M.D., which can be found in Quackwatch.org. It is complete with details of the reasons why, at the recommended doses of Barefoot, that one might have more than a small chance of surviving at all, much less the 120 years Barefoot and Trudeau promise. At best it does nothing. At worst it increases the severity of joint problems in arthritic-prone people. The report is very detailed and one shakes one's head from beginning to end. The infomercial is full of unquestioning broadly-based claims with no research whatsoever to back them up.

There's much more to this matter, which just came to my attention via a mass of documents that arrived at the JREF from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Phoenix, Arizona. In these data, I found references to the fact that the Robert R. Barefoot who peddles "Coral Calcium" on TV with Mr. Trudeau, has been trading on the resemblance of his name to that of Dr. Ronald R. Barefoot, a very respected and accomplished now-retired professor of the University of Toronto, a well-known analytical geochemist. The real Professor has never done any work in Arizona, and he really has written scientific papers on minerals and assaying methods; Bob Barefoot claims to have expertise in gold assaying, and says he has written scientific papers on the subject. He also claims, without any proof at all, that he has been an oil company executive, and a mining industry executive, and that he has a secret method of recovering gold from ore using only water — a false statement. The U.S. Department of the Interior has determined that Robert R. Barefoot — the calcium peddler — has no qualifications whatsoever for the claims he makes. At a court hearing this last May, a report by Barefoot was quoted as saying that he used a "DCRS Autocon metal concentrator" then "electro-amalgamated" the material "with the amalgams distilled and treated with concentrated nitric acid to liberate the bullion." The hearing at which these ludicrous statements were quoted, was about a site of land that was "salted" with gold to encourage — and deceive — investors. Usually, in this "salting" process, a shotgun is used to distribute particles of gold into the land being assayed. Not a kosher operation...

I find the name of the device Barefoot claims to have used — the "Autocon," most interesting.

Barefoot clearly says on his TV infomercial that his "Coral Calcium" pills will cure terminal cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, high blood pressure, and digestive reflux. When I hear of such blatantly quack claims, I'm subject to attacks of digestive reflux.