Lively Debate

This post was inspired by seeing a Marine's post on Kuro5hin: Marine fights Altovis charges.

With slick commercials designed to look like those of FDA approved drugs and the supposed cure to a nonspecific disease that everyone has (who is not tired?), I have to grudgingly admire Altovis as the pinnacle of the craft of selling snake oil.

It turns out that the same company, Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, that makes Altovis makes Enzyte and Avlimil. If you haven't watched commercial TV lately, Enzyte is marketed as "natural male enhancement" (penis pills) with a series of slick commercials full of double entendre.

The non-specificity of Altovis for fatigue may only be exceeded by the non-specificity of their new product: Numovil for memory loss. Who doesn't forget things? Beware. Evil marketing genius at work.

There is an Enzyte class action lawsuit against the makers of these products claiming that they billed customer's credit cards without authorization. Corey Nahman's summaries of Altovis, Avlimil and especially Enzyte do a good job of documenting the complicated billing procedures that trick people and form the basis for the class action lawsuit. They also do a good job of explaining how BPN is very careful not to claim that their products actually do anything.

Acording to this article, the company employs 800 people and will make $260 million dollars this year. After reading this, I have to wonder, is it only in America that the headline here is "entrepreneur makes tons of money selling snake oil."

Quack Watch has a wealth of information about nutritional supplement scams.