Sales, not science, drive health claims

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Tony Ford may call himself a 'technician,' but in reality he's more like a flimflam man: A purveyor of potions. A glorified vitamin salesman.

"It's good to meet you. I'm Tony Ford," he tells a patient working undercover for News 13. "I'll be your technician today."

You see, Tony peddles a nutritional supplement called ProArgi-9 Plus. In order to get people to buy this stuff, he does medical testing.

No matter what the results, Tony offers up his product as the cure. On this day, Ford uses a wristwatch gizmo called a pulse-wave analyzer to screen the News 13 client for heart disease.

"You've got a little extra pulse pressure, and I see these little bits of arrhythmia," Ford says. "You might have your thyroid checked."

Uh, oh. Sounds serious.

"There is endothelium damage," Ford continues. "There could be plaque building up in there. That could be the cause of what might be the high pressure, the high blood pressure."

The endothelium is the lining of your arteries. Even though Tony Ford isn't a doctor and apparently has no medical training, his remedy? Something called L-arginine.

"It will actually help renew that endothelium, and endothelium will go and start to develop that plaque down and remove it from the arteries," Ford says.

So, where can you pick up L-arginine?

"We have a company called Synergy which creates a very high-quality, pure pharmaceutical-grade arginine," Ford says.

A one-month supply of products will set you back $195 plus $10 for shipping.

What's going on here? Well, Ford's claim amounts to little more than medical quackery. Dr. Mark Bieniarz, a cardiologist with the New Mexico Heart Institute, met with the undercover patient and was asked whether checking his pulse or blood pressure can detect damage to the lining of an artery.

"No, you cannot," Bieniarz replies.

Will L-arginine actually dissolve plaque in your arteries?

"Absolutely not," Bieniarz says.

It's not just Tony Ford. Our investigation finds a whole army of potion peddlers touting the medical benefits of ProArgi-9 Plus in its marketing materials.

"There is deception going on here," said Dr. Warren Lasky, chief of cardiology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. "There is misinformation being provided here. I won't use the term outright lying."

Lasky calls it a little bit of science distorted beyond belief.

"Surprisingly, the several studies that were done in rigorous scientific fashion looking at the utility or safety of arginine in patients with disease turns out to show it harms patients more than it did any good," he says.

ProArgi-9 Plus, promoters say, contains an active ingredient that may protect against heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, reverse Alzheimer's disease, lower cholesterol and heal hemorrhoids. All that and more. Wow!

But, it's not a medicine. It's a nutritional supplement laced with vitamins. You can find the active ingredient L-arginine just about anywhere. But if you want the special ProArgi-9 Plus formula, you won't find it at Walgreens. This product is at the heart of a vast, multimillion-dollar network dedicated to sales and exaggeration.

The only place in the world you can get ProArgi-9 Plus is in Provo, Utah, south of Salt Lake City, at the headquarters for Synergy Worldwide. They don't wear lab coats here. It's not a medical research facility.

You see, Synergy Worldwide is not about medicine; it's about sales. And the star of the show? ProArgi-9 Plus, the so-called medical miracle in a 10-ounce jar.

Synergy is called a multilevel marketing firm selling a host of pills, potions and lotions.

The firm uses independent distributors to hawk its magic elixirs. For every jar of ProArgi-9 Plus a sales rep makes a small commission. The only way to make big bucks with Synergy is by recruiting your friends and neighbors to also peddle this stuff. The more people you recruit the more money you get in commissions.

It's a product-based pyramid scheme, according to Jon Taylor, a Salt Lake City business analyst who has reviewed hundreds of multilevel marketing schemes.

"You make money by recruiting people and encouraging them to recruit people and build an organization, a whole hierarchy underneath you from whom you can draw commissions," Taylor says.

Promoters travel the globe with pep rallies like a recent one in Albuquerque dedicated to the sale and distribution of ProArgi-9 Plus.

"At the opportunity meetings they are given the modern equivalent of a snake-oil pitch," Taylor says. "They are told about the unique properties of these products and the science behind them and how extraordinary they are and all the good they will do them and, by the way, there's an opportunity to make money if you share this with your family and friends."

ProArgi-9 Plus is not regulated by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Brochures and DVDs touting L-arginine are full of promotional hype and misinformation. Synergy acknowledges the FDA has not approved its medical claims.

The suggestion