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  • The Non-Future of Anti-Aging Pills

    September 5, 2019: by Bill Sardi

    LONGEVINEX® Nutraceutical Passes Scientific Scrutiny, But Will It Ever Gain Political Approval Or Hurdle Anti-Competitive Practices?

    Overcoming Covert Competition

    It was May of 2017.  I was on the telephone explaining to a Washington Post medical reporter that a major scientific breakthrough was about to be announced at an international scientific meeting of eye researchers (ARVO) in nearby Baltimore.  The Washington Post had been purchased by Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com chief executive four years earlier in 2013.

    The scientific value of a landmark pilot study was unequivocally ground breaking.  A noted researcher reported for the first time a nutraceutical had reduced the time it takes for the human eye to adapt to dim light following a blast of bright light. The discovery was notable because the longer it takes for the human eye to adapt to dim light the greater the risk for future macular degeneration, a dreaded sight-robbing eye disease for which there is no proven treatment or preventive measure.  Even though the study involved a small number of subjects, it had less than a 1% probability the results of the study were obtained by chance.

    Dark adaptation tests have been validated.  If it takes less than 6.5 minutes for visual chemicals at the back of the eyes to be replaced following exposure to a blast of bright light, eyes are considered healthy.  The dark adaptation test has been cleared by the Food & Drug Administration as a proven diagnostic technology and is over 90% accurate.  The dark adaptation test can detect clinical impaired dark adaptation up to 4 years before eye disease is clinically relevant.

    Announcement of this discovery was published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science Eureka Alert news outlet.  This nutraceutical could be the first preventive for an otherwise unconquerable eye disease.   But such an announcement would categorically render the nutraceutical a drug if it was shown to prevent a human disease, a classification exclusive to FDA-approved drugs.

    If this pilot study were being paraded by a pharmaceutical company, its stock price would have soared beyond imagination.  But as a nutraceutical, the news media and health practitioners yawned and ignored it.  Prevention is a four-letter word in modern medicine.

    Longevinex® would have been gaining public approval ahead of government approval.   But given there is no proven preventive measure for this eye disease that robs about 9% of senior adults of their central vision used for reading, driving and other daily tasks, such a development would have been monumental and out of desperation, millions of senior Americans would have likely tried this well-tested remedy that had been safely marketed for over a decade prior to this announcement.

    But it was not to be.  The Washington Post never saw fit to publish the report even though its lead investigator could have been conveniently interviewed at the nearby ARVO meeting in Baltimore.  competition

    The obvious censorship of this breakthrough was more than indirect commercial gamesmanship , it was surreptitiously anti-competitive.  Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com had been swiping the Longevinex’® trade name and planting it on their covertly owned BRI Nutrition posting at Amazon.com, redirecting web traffic from Longevinex.  Go to any browser and type in “Longevinex” and “amazon.com” and view the results below the sponsored postings.   Longevinex® is nowhere to be found.

    At one point in time BRI Nutrition brazenly posted the Longevinex® trademark at the top of its Amazon order page at Amazon.com.  Appeals to Amazon.com attorneys by Longevinex® management to remove this blatant diversion of online traffic were ignored.  Amazon.com is a $10 billion company.  A small company like Longevinex® would be tied up in court fighting such a giant.

    The Washington Post wasn’t going to give any free publicity to a product Amazon.com couldn’t financially benefit from.  Longevinex® did not sell at Amazon.com over concerns it would be giving away its customer list to a competitor by selling indirectly through Amazon.com.

    Political Polarization And Product Marketing

    That intentional oversight by the Washington Post foretold what was to come.  Now a Pittsburgh, PA CBS-TV affiliate reports a social media effort to identify and boycott companies that are led by owners who are friendly with one side of the political aisle.

    Forget science.  Forget price.  Consumers will now make their product selections by the world view of their makers.  Gatekeepers like physicians or even the FDA are being cast aside.  Consumers are now being urged to directly boycott companies that don’t go along with their personal political leanings.

    Maybe manufacturers will now have to market two products, one for each side of the political aisle.

    It appears Amazon.com is offering different resveratrol-based products that appear to have similar graphics on their packaging.  It appears Amazon.com is providing consumers the top three or four listings in a product category when all roads lead to brands covertly owned by Amazon.

    In 2016 I wrote:  “the best-marketed resveratrol pill will be the one that offends the fewest people and displaces the fewest jobs and would be the least offensive to doctors, dentists, immunologists, researchers, drug companies, public health authorities, green revolutionists, population controllers, government budgeteers and life insurers.  That would be a resveratrol pill that doesn’t work.”

    If science sold dietary supplements, Longevinex® would be the best-selling supplement.

    Of the 531 brands of resveratrol pills on the market, less than 1% have undergone any lab dish, animal or human studies.  Who cares about safety and effectiveness.  Political polarization may push out brands of superior products for extraneous reasons.

    Opposition from health professionals

    When a report of an 80-year old woman who re-gained her eyesight in only three days after taking Longevinex® was aired on a Las Vegas TV news program (the woman says she had tried 18 other brands of resveratrol), local eye doctors shunned the report and said Longevinex® was still unproven and the local medical board sent doctors into a public meeting over the news report and told the management of the hotel that hosted the meeting never to rent out its facilities again to health quacks.

    Organized medicine had circled its wagons.  It was going to protect its source of income and wasn’t going tolerate competition even if it meant 30,000 people a year who fail conventional treatment would have to face irreversible legal blindness without any hope of a cure.  Eye physicians make billions of dollars injecting medicine directly into the eyes to save sight at the cost of $1000 an eye.  A far less expensive pill would not be tolerated.

    Eventually Longevinex® filed a petition with the FDA to conduct a real-time study of patients who failed conventional medical treatment for advanced macular degeneration.  A 90-day evaluation period for the petition turned into 3 years and was roundly rejected by the FDA.  During that time period, another 90,000 Americans may have needlessly gone blind.

    Overcoming false allegations of scientific fraud

    Then resveratrol pills had a heart attack of their own.  In January of 2012 came the filing of scientific fraud charges against prolific resveratrol researcher Dipak K. Das.  Without financial remuneration Dr. Das had been conducting animal lab research using branded Longevinex®, though Longevinex® did underwrite some of the costs of his published studies.

    Dr. Das was a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and had written over 500 articles, 117 which pertained to the red wine molecule resveratrol.  His primary area of research was cardiology.  Given that it would be unethical to perform studies using inactive placebo pills in human cases of heart disease, Dr. Das was confined to animal research.

    Dr. Das reported that resveratrol, and more so Longevinex®, protected the heart from damage caused by a heart attack.  He showed that resveratrol/Longevinex® could potentially turn a mortal heart attack into a non-mortal event.  After his untimely death, other researchers using the same dose of resveratrol he used, came up with the same results as Dr. Das and vindicated this discredited researcher.  But the damage had been done.  Thousands of resveratrol-pills users abandoned these red wine pills.

    In the same year that scientific fraud charges were launched against Dr. Das, Dr. Nate Lebowitz, a preventive cardiologist in Ft. Lee, New Jersey who routinely prescribed Longevinex® for his patients, reported a Medicare audit of his practice revealed he had no patients who had experienced a second heart attack since being placed on Longevinex®, a remarkable achievement.

    Changing demographics; does Longevinex® have a future?

    What I am saying is there will be no real human progress.  As a society we are now at the point of diminishing returns.

    Right now, Baby Boomers abound, and too many of them have or will develop macular degeneration.  But what happens when the Gen-xers and Millennials enter their senior years and develop macular degeneration?  Will they be so committed to social advances over their own welfare to only purchase products that fit their world view, regardless of product efficacy?

    If the future American population lives on guaranteed income checks (looks like the insolvent Social Security fund is going to have to morph into something like that to prop up incomes in the retirement years), will government just decide to pay for resveratrol pills?  Imagine government buys Amazon.com.  In case the prospect of a socialist society hasn’t crossed your mind, it is in process as you read this report.

    Right now, America lives in an age of fascism.  Its heritage is that of an elected republic.  But that is only a fading memory.  Fascism is when commercial interests buy off government.  Think mandatory vaccination.  Think Medicare paying for drugs, not dietary supplements.  Think pervasive snooping on all Americans so a database of what Americans consume can be developed for consumer product companies.  America would be a completely controlled consumer economy so that stock market chart would be a straight line across.

    Some futurists predict oligarchs will continue to gain more and more wealth and influence government to pay for goods and services they produce or render, with funds deposited from government going directly into their commercial coffers.  Nobody will make any independent consumer decisions, the collective will.  Or choices will be narrow, like what is now offered at COSTCO.  AI packaging will signal a nearby storehouse that a bag, can or box is empty and a fresh supply will be automatically re-ordered and shipped to your home, even placed on the shelf for you by a robot.  Then everything will cost nothing and the value of everything will be zero.

    If anybody can figure out a future business plan for Longevinex® that factors for these profound changes in our society, please submit an outline of your plan forthwith.  Longevinex® may never be put to the test to prevent mortal heart attacks or blindness.  Anybody who tries will be accused of scientific fraud.  Without those diseases, a lot of jobs are lost.  Longevinex® may end up being the greatest product that never was.  Something to ponder in this age of a completely controlled society.  Just wait till the individual income earning capacity will be determined by the intelligence of your robots.  And you mean you didn’t see this coming?

    It was Winston Churchill who said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of its blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”

    By the way, there will be no longevity seekers, no anti-aging pills.  Your lifespan will be pre-planned.  You will be extinguished on time to satisfy life insurance actuaries, who will search for outliers who live over and above their pre-programmed expectancy.  But will the human programmers dare divulge to you your expiration date?

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