Ex-convict Iain Clegg promoted discredited blood detox, videos show him with patients in Auckland clinic

Pictures and video posted online showed Iain Clegg promoting health services and showed him inside an Auckland clinic. Photo / Instagram

• Iain Clegg described himself as a “health consultant” and promoted treatments criticised as “quackery” by top medical professionals.
• A whistleblower says they have laid complaints with medical authorities.
• Clegg was jailed over the death of a police officer in 2011 and was released on parole in 2015. 

A man who was jailed over the death of a police officer appears to have reinvented himself as a health guru promoting treatments that are discredited by medical experts.

Iain Clegg, who was convicted of manslaughter in 2011, plugged alternative health services on a social media page that he deleted shortly after the Herald asked him questions.

He described himself online as a “health consultant” and a “specialist in advanced detoxification and blood purification”.

A healthcare leader told the Herald that the blood screening Clegg promoted was “quackery”.

Videos posted by Iain Clegg show him handling a syringe inside an Auckland clinic.

On his Instagram page, Clegg promoted the treatments, including “green laser therapy” and blood detoxification, to nearly 6000 followers. He posted videos of himself with patients at an Auckland clinic and asked people to book through his direct messages. A now-deleted LinkedIn page in his name said he was “specialising in detoxification from today’s environmental toxins and modern medical technologies”.

The medical clinic that Clegg’s videos show him at said in a statement that it had never employed or contracted Clegg, and declined to comment further. Clegg also denied any relationship with the facility. The clinic has now also removed its own social media page.

“I don’t work at a clinic, but I’ve personally experienced and promote[d] powerful protocols that have made a real impact,” Clegg said in a social media message to the Herald that he subsequently deleted.

Some of Clegg’s video posts – which the Herald has copies of – showed him handling syringes, using medical equipment, and taking blood samples and appearing to discuss screenings with patients.

A whistleblower, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Herald they had laid complaints against Clegg and the clinic with medical authorities and police. The whistleblower claimed patients were being charged for expensive “detox” treatments that lacked medical legitimacy.

The Ministry of Health said it could not confirm whether it had received a complaint about any individual.

In one post Clegg reshared to his followers, a patient promoted a treatment that involved removing blood clots he claimed were caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.

“I’d recommend this to everyone, especially if you’ve had chest pains since the Covid jab like I have,” the patient’s post said.

Videos show Iain Clegg talking through a screening with a patient.

The blood screening shown in the videos is known as Live Blood Analysis (LBA) or Hemaview, which involves the use of dark field microscopy to observe live blood cells. It is promoted by alternative medicine practitioners to diagnose a range of medical conditions but is not backed by scientific evidence. LBA is often used by practitioners to convince patients to purchase treatments that they do not require.

“These people are quacks, it’s as simple as that,” said Terry Taylor, former president of the NZ Institute of Laboratory Science.

“They’re operating outside of the regulatory environment that the rest of the health system has to operate under.”

He said that a number of alternative medical centres in New Zealand were offering the treatment.

Taylor said there were legitimate ways to screen blood for medical conditions.

“We can look down a microscope at a blood flow and tell you what’s wrong with a patient. That’s not a problem. But it’s done through a proper, regulated, medical, clinical pathway.”

Taylor added: “To me, there seems to be a massive problem with oversight. There should be at a very minimum a pathologist involved.”

The Auckland clinic where Clegg was pictured said he had never worked there, and he said he only promoted the health services. Videos of him at the clinic were removed soon after the Herald made inquiries. Photo / Instagram

Videos posted by Clegg showed microscopic images of a patient’s blood. The red cells were clustered or stacked on top of each other and a practitioner indicated this was a sign of illness.

“Where [practitioners] go wrong is the interpretation of this phenomenon,” said Dr Edzard Ernst, a German-British doctor and alternative medicine researcher who has written extensively about Live Blood Analysis.

“It is the normal tendency of red cells to aggregate. It is not indicative of any of the conditions [scam] practitioners think it to be,” he wrote on his website.

Taylor said he was concerned patients would be duped into paying high prices for unnecessary treatment.

“We need to knock this thing on the head,” he said. “There’s a reason we’re regulated – because we can kill people if we put the wrong stuff out there.”

Clegg was operating in a complicated legal space. A Ministry of Health spokeswoman said taking blood samples in itself was not a “restricted activity” under the law – meaning it was not limited to registered health practitioners.

However, experts said some of the treatments being offered – such as the removal of blood clots – required a medical qualification.

The ministry spokeswoman said providers were breaking the law if they made false or misleading representations about the benefits of their services.

“They must also avoid any misrepresentation about their status, including any suggestion they are operating as a health practitioner, when offering or providing health services.”

The Herald asked Clegg, through his lawyer, whether patients and the clinic were aware of his criminal record. He was also asked through social media to discuss his treatments further.

“Nothing to discuss,” he said, before recommending that the Herald book in for a check-up. This message was later deleted.

Iain Clegg (left) and accomplice John Skinner (right) in the High Court in 2011. Clegg was found guilty of manslaughter after the death of police officer Don Wilkinson, while Skinner was found guilty of murder. Photo / NZPA

Clegg was found not guilty of murder and attempted murder but guilty of manslaughter in 2011 over the death of undercover police officer Don Wilkinson.

Wilkinson and another police officer had attempted to place a tracking device on a car outside a suspected drug lab in Mangere. They were chased by Clegg, who assaulted the unnamed officer, and an accomplice John Skinner, who shot a high-powered air rifle at Wilkinson, fatally injuring him.

Skinner, a suspected methamphetamine manufacturer, is serving a 15-year prison sentence and was denied parole in October.

Clegg was jailed for a sentence of eight years and paroled after four years, in 2015.

Isaac Davison is an Auckland-based reporter who covers health issues. He joined the Herald in 2008 and has previously covered the environment, politics and social issues.

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