Ralph Moss looks at new MLM scam

Peter Moran

Where Noni distributors go when they "die"? From Ralph Moss,
who never found an alt cancer cure he didn't like (until the
advent of Hulda).

Quote---

A FRIENDLY SKEPTIC LOOKS AT MANGOSTEEN

When I wrote "Cancer Therapy" in the early 1990s, I had the
bright idea of putting my mailing address in the book in the
hope that some readers would send me information on new
treatments. Little did I imagine that such communication
would become a torrent of proposals. Today, hardly a day
goes by without my being made aware of some new "cure."
Would that a fraction of these panned out as well as
proponents claimed!

One of the latest in this long line is an exotic fruit drink
called mangosteen, or XanGo. Mangosteen should not be
confused with mango, an entirely different plant. It is part
of a group known as the Guttiferae, a family of mainly
tropical trees and shrubs that secrete an acrid yellow
resinous juice. Mangosteen's scientific designation is
Garcinia mangostana (Campin 2004). It is reputedly named
after a French explorer, Jacques Garcin (1673-1751). In
Europe and North America, the most recognizable member of
this family is the popular herb, St. John's wort.

No one knows exactly where and when the mangosteen was first
cultivated. One botanist, Julia F. Morton, believes it
originated in the Moluccas and the Sunda Islands. Yet there
are also wild mangosteen trees in the forests of Malaya.
Some experts say the trees were first domesticated in
Thailand or Burma. But in the 19th century, botanists
brought seeds to Europe and America. Valiant attempts were
made to cultivate the 18-foot high trees in Africa, the
Caribbean and central America. But the plant is considered
"ultra-tropical" and sensitive: nursery seedlings die at 45º
F. In fact, there are few if any mangosteens growing in the
continental US. A lone American tree in Florida was said to
have yielded a single fruit...and then died. That was the
beginning and end of the American mangosteen "industry."

But attempts continued to bring mangosteen to Europe and
America as a food. "Despite the oft-repeated Old World
enthusiasm for this fruit," says Morton, "it is not always
viewed as worth the trouble to produce. In Jamaica, it is
regarded as nice but overrated; not comparable to a good field-
ripe pineapple or a choice mango."

The mangosteen fruit is the size of a small apple, purple
colored, with a hard rind. Inside there are typically five
to seven seeds surrounded by a sweet, juicy cover (or aril).
The pulp, which is said to resemble a pineapple or peach in
taste, is reputed to be a very delicious food - in Asia it
is sometimes called the queen of fruits in honor both of its
flavor and its economic importance.

Uses in Traditional Medicine

For many years dried mangosteen fruits have been shipped
from Singapore to Calcutta and then on to China for
medicinal use. As to its many uses in folk medicine, here is
what botanist Julia Morton has written:

"The sliced and dried rind is powdered and administered to
overcome dysentery. Made into an ointment, it is applied on
eczema and other skin disorders. The rind decoction is taken
to relieve diarrhea and cystitis, gonorrhea and gleet [a
watery discharge, ed.] and is applied externally as an
astringent lotion. A portion of the rind is steeped in water
overnight and the infusion given as a remedy for chronic
diarrhea in adults and children.

"Filipinos employ a decoction of the leaves and bark as a
febrifuge and to treat thrush, diarrhea, dysentery and
urinary disorders. In Malaya, an infusion of the leaves,
combined with unripe banana and a little benzoin is applied
to the wound of circumcision. A root decoction is taken to
regulate menstruation. A bark extract called 'amibiasine',
has been marketed for the treatment of amoebic dysentery."

Morton also writes that "[t]he rind of partially ripe fruits
yields a polyhydroxy-xanthone derivative termed mangostin,
also beta-mangostin. That of fully ripe fruits contains the
xanthones, gartanin, 8-desoxygartanin, and normangostin. A
derivative of mangostin, mangostin-e, 6-di-O-glucoside, is a
central nervous system depressant and causes a rise in blood
pressure." A more complete listing of constituents is given
at ethnobotanist Dr. James Duke's informative and useful
Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases (Duke 2004).

We can conclude then that mangosteen has many uses in folk
medicine, and as such, it can join a fairly long list of
plants that can be considered as promising sources of new
medicines.

XanGo on the Go

In this age of frenzied commercialism, entrepreneurs are
always on the lookout for ways to make it big in the natural
medicines market. Under such conditions, however, new
medicines of botanical origin cannot be developed or tested
in an orderly way.

A common feature of the way in which natural medicines such
as mangosteen are promoted is the use of network marketing.
This involves the retailing of products through the use of
independent distributors. These distributors are then
encouraged to build and manage their own sales force by
recruiting, motivating, supplying, and training others to
sell products. Compensation in such arrangements includes
the distributor's own sales as well as a percentage of the
sales of his or her entire "downline" (i.e., all those
people signed up by an individual, who in turn go on to
become salespeople). The term network marketing is virtually
synonymous with the older but now somewhat disreputable term
'multi-level marketing' (MLM).

Network marketing turns mere consumers into determined
marketers who aggressively sell their product, often to
their own friends, relatives and neighbors. The more people
they can recruit into the growing network the more money
they themselves make. A sophisticated marketing blitz,
including books and pamphlets, seemingly objective
newsletters, press releases and chattering websites, inflate
the importance of a product, creating a buzz that only dies
away when the huge supply of potential customers and
salespeople is finally exhausted. Or when, as it has on
occasion, the government finally steps in. But the essential
requirement for a successful MLM operation of this sort is a
kernel of promising-sounding scientific evidence, coupled
with a credible and compelling story, a compliant doctor
willing to underwrite the concept, and finally some patients
(who may themselves be distributors) willing to testify that
the product led to astounding cures.

Aloe vera, colloidal minerals, gingko biloba and ginseng
were all popularized in this way. But perhaps the most
memorable example of a network marketing stampede is noni
juice, a once totally obscure Polynesian fruit that became
the basis of a huge industry. Tahitian Noni International,
formerly called Morinda, last year claimed to have passed
the two billion dollar sales mark! This is the sort of
performance that makes get-rich-quick artists drool.

The techniques of network marketing, honed through decades
of trial and error, are now being used by a Utah-based
company to position mangosteen as the latest "miracle cure"
craze. The price of their XanGo mangosteen juice is
currently $37 per bottle (or four for $100). You have to ask
yourself: who on earth would pay that much for a bottle of
fruit juice, no matter how delicious it might be? The reason
the marketers can succeed in selling juice at this price is
obvious: when people are suffering from medical conditions
for which there does not appear to be much hope, or for
which the orthodox medical recommendations are too toxic or
expensive, they will actively seek alternatives. And then
someone, oftentimes someone they trust, such as a friend or
neighbor, convinces them to give some new product a try.
Products such as mangosteen exploit humanity's
understandable desire to discover simple and painless
solutions to intractable problems.

Now that the commercial ball is rolling an increasing
number of mangosteen brands are reaching the market. But
for the time being the market leader is XanGo
(www.myxango.com). A visit to their website triggers an
audio webcast from a very pleasant sounding young lady, who
assures us that "by integrating the Internet, teamwork, and
personal mentoring, MyXanGo.com provides you a vehicle to
improve the areas of your life that are most important to
you, and we do it for FREE."

I listened in amazement to her polished spiel and the brazen
intrusiveness of this message. I was particularly amused
when she said, "You should know that this message is not
about selling." Right. "It's not about false claims and
outlandish statements." Sure. "It's about sharing facts to
help you decide if now is the right time in your life to
consider XanGo." Really.

The rhetoric gets even more effusive. A March 2004 press
release from one seller proclaims: "Mangosteen is now on
an unstoppable march to conquer the world" (Goss 2004).
Put this way it sounds rather ominous.almost like a
cross between Osama bin Laden and the Attack of the
Killer Tomatoes.

Xanthones

As stated, one requirement for a successful network
promotion is that there be at least a kernel of scientific
truth around which exaggerated claims can be assembled. As
with noni juice, mangosteen is not entirely without
scientific documentation. The problem, as usual, is that the
claims for mangosteen are inflated till they far outpace
what has been established through careful experimentation.

Some mangosteen promoters have mined James Duke's famous
ethnobotanical database for confirmation of their product's
value. And, indeed, Dr. Duke confirms that the plant
contains several interesting components. But so do
thousands of other plants in his voluminous database. For
most of the chemicals contained in this fruit (such as beta-
mangostin, catechins, cis-hex-3-enyl-acetate, gamma-
mangostin, gartanin, garcinones) the database lists NO
particular biochemical activities. Only the compound called
"mangostin" seems to have some scientific backing for its
antibacterial, antiseptic and fungicidal properties (Recio
1989). Yet scores of mangosteen websites now cite Duke's
database as scientific justification for this product. In
reality, Dr. Duke has absolutely nothing to do with any
mangosteen distributor and is not particularly enthusiastic
about the product.

Much is made of the xanthone connection. According to the
MyXanGo.com website: "There are over 200 xanthones in
nature. Each xanthone can have specific effects on the
body. What's remarkable about the mangosteen is that there
are over 40 xanthones identified in the pericarp, or rind,
making it the single most xanthone-rich source in the
world..Only six of the xanthones have been studied in
depth. While we don't know fully why the mangosteen works
on such a wide variety of physical conditions, we know it
has to do with being the world's most potent source of
xanthones. Each xanthone has its own effect, and when
combined, they take on a synergistic quality that supports
the health of the entire body."

But all of this is speculative. It is undoubtedly true that
there are many xanthones (a kind of antioxidant) in
mangosteen. In fact, according to the Merck Index (11th Ed.,
p. 5613) the first scientifically defined substance to be
derived from mangosteen was the xanthone mangostin. This was
isolated by a German scientist named Schmid in 1855. In
1979, mangostin was found to have significant anti-
inflammatory and anti-ulcer effects in rats (Shankaranarayan
1979). Yet although mangosteen's xanthones have been known
for almost 150 years, there are still only 19 PubMed
articles on these xanthones and none of these articles
concerns the use of xanthones in the actual clinical
treatment of human disease. So I would say the jury is still
out on their effectiveness in treating anything.

The main XanGo website also claims that the antioxidant ORAC
(oxygen radical absorbance capacity) value of mangosteen is
the highest of all edible plants. "It is so potent that
literally I know of nothing else in the supplement market
that can possibly come even close to it," says J. Frederic
Templeman, MD, a Georgia family practitioner who is
interviewed at the MyXanGo website. Many other XanGo-
promoting websites repeat the claim that while the previous
champion, prunes, have an ORAC value of 7,000 per ounce,
mangosteen has an ORAC value of 17,000 to 24,000.

Yet XanGo sites claim that "a new champion" has been born in
the worldwide contest for ORAC supremacy. But where in the
scientific literature is the ORAC value of XanGo published?
The source of these numbers is hard to track down. For
instance, the Sunsweet prune website states that 100 grams
(3.5 ounces) of prunes have an ORAC value of 5,770. While
the ORAC values for most fruits and vegetables have been
determined by standard laboratories and published in
scientific journals, this is not so for mangosteen. I have
not seen independent confirmation of these confidently
promulgated claims. However, even if we assume for the sake
of argument that the figures cited are indeed accurate, it
must be pointed out that merely having an astronomically
high ORAC value does not in and of itself confer any
particular advantage. Not all antioxidants that are
confirmed as present in the laboratory can be absorbed by
human beings. And there is a limit to how much we can
benefit from an inc reased intake of antioxidants.

According to Dr. Ronald Prior of the US Department of
Agriculture Research Service at Tufts University, Boston,
Massachusetts, "a significant increase in antioxidants of
15 to 20 percent is possible by increasing consumption of
fruits and vegetables, particularly those high in ORAC
value." However, in order to have a significant impact on
plasma and tissue antioxidant capacity one can only
meaningfully increase one's daily intake by 3,000 to 5,000
ORAC units. Any greater amount is probably redundant. That
is because the antioxidant capacity of the blood is
tightly regulated, says Dr. Prior. Thus there is an upper
limit to the benefit that can be derived from
antioxidants. Taking in 25,000 ORAC units at one time (as
reputedly occurs with mangosteen) would be no more
beneficial than taking in a fifth of that amount: the
excess is simply excreted by the kidneys.

TO BE CONTINUED, WITH REFERENCES, NEXT WEEK

--Ralph W. Moss, PhD