Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Another Quack Moment!

This was a recent Press Release from Luxor that I came across.


Salugen, Inc. (http://www.salugen.com/), a leading personalized health and wellness company (Read as A rip you off fly by night snake oil company), announced today that its personalized nutritional support program (Read as a Money shakedown for bogus science) for the world's leading spas and their guests -- SpaGen (http://www.spagen.com/) is now available at the Nurture Spa at Luxor (http://www.luxor.com/).





Where do these press releases come from? Let the buyer beware. Because this VIP deal stands for Very Immediate Profits!!!!


-Steve

2 comments:

Brian Meshkin said...

Dear Steve -

This is just not a fair statement. I really enjoy your blog and have commented previously (see link - https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6173393362223742012&postID=2267329423294071851).

But to suggest that Salugen is "snake oil company" and that SpaGen is some scheme is just untrue. I would be happy to provide you with greater detail on our Company and on one of our products, SpaGen.

So you know, Salugen is a personalized health and wellness company that leverages our thirty years of research in genetics published in over 350 scientific publications to deliver DNA-customized nutritional solutions based upon patent protected genetic tests. Obviously a blog is not the best vehicle for disseminating comprehensive information, but let me share with you a few quick facts:

1) The SpaGen survey assessment which looks at health, diet, lifestyle, and Rx interactions/depletions related to nutrients has passed due diligence with the nation's largest PBM which is planning on using it for their own employee base.

2) The SpaGen DNA test is performed in a high-complexity, CLIA-certified laboratory which has been around for over 12 years. Hardly a fly-by-night snake oil company.

3) Our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Kenneth Blum, leads our research and development effort and studies to support what we do have been published in JAMA, Nature, Science, Lancet, etc. (hardly discredited rags)

4) Our nutritional supplements are manufactured in facilities that are either licensed by the FDA for pharmaceutical manufacturing or exceed those standards.

So, I would ask that before you rush to judgement about what we do, please take the time to be as thorough as you are in other areas of your blog. I would be happy to elucidate more on how we genotype and customize nutrients.

For example, based upon the MTHFR C677T mutation involved in the metabolism of folate, ultimately converting it into 5-methyl tetrahydrolate folate which is an enzyme that converts homocysteine into methionine, there is a published, randomized, double-blinded placebo-controlled study to demonstrate that by giving a tailored amount of folate (3x the recommended dietary intake) that you can reduce the risk for the nation's largest cause of death by 2.4 times. Not to shabby, eh?

Talk to you soon,
Brian Meshkin
(from Salugen)

Steve Murphy MD said...

Brian,
I ask that you forward me your researchers' abstracts and data on supplementation and disease prevention as well as their punlished data on genetic polymorphisms and their role in nutritional inadequacy. I would also love to see the journal citations of replication studies carried out by your team. I will happily review these and make an evidence based commentary after I receive these. I don't make rash statements unless I have done some due diligence. Nutrigenomics is in its infancy. we are not talking about the perfect being the enemy of the good. We still don't even know who the enemy is.
Take Care
-Steve