Sugar pill distributors threatened with prosecution

3.00pm

Distributors claiming a sugar pill can help people suffering from HIV will be prosecuted and face hefty fines and possibly jail, a Health Ministry official said today.

Health Ministry Medsafe compliance team leader Peter Pratt said it was extremely worrying that distributors had appeared to be advertising Ambrotose as being able to help people with HIV, cystic fibrosis, cancer, arthritis, down's syndrome and other illnesses and diseases.

"Anyone we find making the claims we will pursue for prosecution," he told NZPA.

Mr Pratt said it was not illegal to sell the sugar-based pill, but it breached the Medicine Act if false therapeutic claims were made.

Should it be proved that false claims had been made, a jail sentence of up to six months could be imposed. An individual making the claims could be fined $20,000 and a company $100,000.

Ambrotose is made from eight sugars, aloe vera and vegetable extracts and was developed by the Texas-based company Mannatech, which has an "aid relief" arm called MannaRelief.

Mr Pratt will meet a company representative today to discuss the allegations.

He said the company had strict rules about what could be said about the pills and he understood that if it was found people were breaching company rules they would lose their distributorships.

Meanwhile, the pills could not be withdrawn but must be accurately advertised.

"All I can do is make sure they can't make the claims."

"This kind of behaviour preys on vulnerable people and uses the making of therapeutic claims to sell the product when these products, if they wanted to legally make those claims, would have to be registered as medicines and have all that evidence scientifically scrutinised to ensure its validity."

Ambrotose, which costs about $300 a month, is being sold through a pyramid-type scheme.

The ministry had been alerted about the alleged claims after two complaints within the past fortnight.

New Zealand Aids Foundation executive director Kevin Hague said yesterday he was "staggered" to hear there were more than 200 people selling the pills in New Zealand.

The Aids Foundation rejected a request last year to endorse and sell the pill, and take part in a clinical trial.

"Over the years there have been very many of these essentially 'snake oil' solutions to HIV," Mr Hague said.

"People have come to us with cures like injecting blood with hydrogen peroxide, and one woman periodically sends us letters claiming to be able to cure people of HIV by giving the right electro-magnetic frequencies and beaming rays into people."

Mr Hague said the foundation was angry that sick people and people with children suffering from illnesses and disease could be taken in by the claims attached to the pills.

He said the claims amounted to "cynical exploitation of the desperate and vulnerable".

New Zealand Medical Association chairman John Adams said lives could be put at risk if people believed the alleged claims and stopped taking prescribed medication.

"I would hope that people would be sensible enough not to do that, but of course if people develop the idea it would be good for a condition... then of course I'm very concerned that people's lives will be put at risk."

He said people suffering serious/terminal illnesses were often not as rational as they would normally be.

"It's a huge problem when people who are distributing or selling substances make misleading or false claims about them that fill people with false hope and induce people to buy them when they have no scientific basis for the effects on the illnesses that they are claiming."

Dr Adams said there were similar previous cases -- such as claims that green mussel extract Lyprinol helped to cure cancer.

"There was this spurious report that it cured cancer and I think a lot of people did buy it on that understanding.

"It's not right that people who are vulnerable are open to this kind of false, misleading claim or marketing."

Dr Adams said the law protected consumers in this case but said moves towards a joint therapeutics agency with Australia would be positive.

He said Australia already had some regulation of complementary medicines.

- NZPA

Feb 14, 2003: