Watch: CNN's Anderson Cooper nails the MyShillow guy, Mike Lindell, on Lindell's unfounded claims about oleandrin.
In March of this year I published a post about some of the craziness inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. I reviewed not only some of the wackier conspiracy theories about the virus, but also some of the fraudulent "cures" or unproven remedies that various hucksters were pushing. Now there's another miracle "cure," which at best is unproven: oleandrin, an extract from the extremely toxic oleander shrub, manufactured by Phoenix Biotechnology and currently being pushed by Andrew Whitney, Vice Chairman and Director of the Phoenix Biotech board. And #NotMyPresident Donald Trump, his hyper-enthusiastic mega-donor Mike Lindell of MyPillow (MyShillow?) fame, and Trump's [totally unqualified] HUD director, Ben Carson, seem to have jumped aboard the oleandrin express.
The Interwebs are on fire with the news, first reported at length on August 16, 2020 by the inimitable Jonathan Swan at Axios:
To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works.As Swan notes in his article, the Washington Post was the first to report the July Oval Office meeting.
Driving the news: The experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It's embraced by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a big Trump backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company that develops the product.
...It's part of a pattern in which entrepreneurs, often without rigorous vetting, push unproven products to Trump — knowing their sales pitches might catch his eye. Trump will then urge FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to "look at" or speed up approval.
- Lindell told Axios that in the meeting, Trump "basically said: …'The FDA should be approving it.'"
- The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
- In March, Trump personally lobbied Hahn to authorize hydroxychloroquine's emergency use to treat COVID-19.
- The FDA obliged. But in June, after a large trial, the agency revoked that authorization and warned of the "risk of heart rhythm problems" in COVID-19 patients treated with the drug.
Why oleandrin? Is there any evidence at all that it might work? Well... maybe. And maybe not. Swan continues:
A July 2020 study from the University of Texas at Galveston shows, in a laboratory setting, that oleandrin can inhibit the coronavirus in monkey kidney cells. This study has not been peer reviewed and one of the authors of the study, Robert Newman, is chairman of Phoenix Biotechnology's scientific advisory board — the company developing the oleandrin product.In an interview with Axios, Mike Lindell said that he's such a believer in oleandrin that he now has a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology and wants to make sure that every American has access to this "cure" for COVID-19. He explained that he first became aware of the botanical when Andrew Whitney called him on Easter Sunday with the news that it could cure COVID-19. Lindell then took the information to Ben Carson, who hopped aboard. Lindell claims that he has been taking oleandrin himself and has shared it with family and friends; he believes it's kept him from getting COVID-19 and has cured other people. This despite the lack of published clinical studies showing that the botanical either cures or prevents COVID-19.
- Phoenix Biotechnology's website listed Newman as the president of the company and a member of its board of directors until quite recently (Google's cache shows he held both roles as of August 12th).
- When Axios checked the website on Friday night, Newman was still listed as president. But on Saturday evening, after Axios had emailed questions to Whitney, Newman was no longer listed as president of the company; the website listed him only as a scientific adviser.
So far the FDA hasn't said the product is safe or effective for the purposes claimed by its backers. In fact Lindell said that the head of the FDA, Stephen Hahn, wasn't even in July's Oval Office meeting about oleandrin.
As for Whitney, he says he approached Lindell because he's one of the country's greatest businessmen, and he was impressed that Lindell mobilized MyPillow to make face masks.
Read the entire piece on Axios. Here's that link again.
Turds of a feather...
It's no big surprise that Mike Lindell would be pursuing the oleandrin business op, nor that he would be the conduit between Whitney and Trump. Lindell is, if nothing else, an inveterate hustledork, and he sure does love his president. From the Washington Post, May 27, 2020:
Mike Lindell is what you might get if you took the political personalities of Donald Trump and Mike Pence, shred them down in a hammer mill, mixed the aggregate together, stuffed it in a linen case and sold the product between segments on Fox News.Not to worry. In today's GOP, it doesn't really matter what your past is. Donald Trump lowered that bar into the ground. You can't even see the bar anymore.
He’s a serial As-Seen-On-TV entrepreneur and an evangelical Christian who travels the country preaching the Gospel. He’s also a mile-a-minute talker who used to own and tend a bar and is quite comfortable swapping stories for hours with anyone who will listen.
“When you hang out with Mike, he has that kind of hyperkinetic energy,” said Matt Schlapp, who runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, at which Lindell has spoken. “You might wonder, ‘Did this guy take too much cold medicine?’ ”
But Lindell swears he’s not on anything. Not anymore. He’s a former crack addict, a retired card counter with a history of bad debts, near-death experiences and soured marriages before fully accepting God into his heart. Such a past might be a liability for someone thinking about moving into a life of politics...
Nor does it probably matter much that in some respects Lindell seems a tad hypocritical: another rich bidness man who reaped the benefits of the infamous 2018 Trump tax cuts, and boasted up, down, and sideways about the new era of prosperity that Trump had ushered in -- but then, instead of letting all of those gains trickle down to his employees, he pissed on them (the employees, not the gains). This is from a May 2019 CityPages piece:
...it now seems Lindell's sugar high has come to a halt. Last week, he announced the layoffs of 150 MyPillow production workers in Skakopee [Minnesota].It certainly hasn't all been an easy road for Lindell. Back in 2017 the Better Business Bureau accused him of swindling customers, an accusation that came on top of "multiple lawsuits and burned partners," as The Daily Beast reported in April of that year.
The official rationale was the need to take production space at the facility to accommodate shipping for a new venture, MyStore.com, an “online store for entrepreneurs and inventors to sell their products.”
Left unsaid was the apparent decline in MyPillow sales, which have made the production of 150 workers unnecessary.
Not all Lindell's woes can be attributed to the larger economy. He's facing boycotts over his advertising support of Fox News bombardiers Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. He's also soured at least some customers with his business practices.
Two years ago, he was forced to lay off 140 people after complaints of false advertising. The Better Business Bureau withdrew the company's accreditation, and changed its rating from an A+ to F.
Two years later, that grade remains a F. So while Lindell may have a generous friend in the White House, it appears his customers still have some say over his continued wealth...
MyPillow, a pillow and mattress-topper company best known for its infomercials and outlandish medical claims, came out swinging for Donald Trump during the presidential election. “I’m here to give all my credibility to Mr. Donald Trump,” the company’s founder and spokesperson Mike Lindell told Fox News during an interview at the final presidential debate, where he had scored seats to support Trump.And what about those burned partners? Also from the Beast article:
But Lindell might be the rare businessman with less credibility than Trump. The Better Business Bureau yanked MyPillow’s accreditation this week and slapped the company with an “F” rating, over what customers described as a misleading ad campaign.
MyPillow has racked up years of customer complaints, from allegations of the pillow’s trumped-up health claims, to a recent complaint that reads “I want to murder Mike Lindell” 15 times and accuses the company of selling overpriced wares.
The BBB also took issue with MyPillow’s price scheme, albeit in less violent language. The consumer rights organization cited MyPillow’s ongoing “buy one, get one free” offers, which advertises two pillows—usually $49.99 each—for “half price” at $99.97. The total savings were one cent. In October, MyPillow customers filed a class-action suit claiming to have been duped by the offer.
In 2013, Salesforce sued MyPillow for $550,000, accusing the company of breaching contract and stiffing them on a $125,000 credit card bill. Earlier that year, two of Lindell’s early backers accused him of cutting them out of their rightful share in the company, which they said was a combined 42 percent.Given his troubles, it's not surprising that Lindell would be on the lookout for new business ops. "Well, gee, Cosmic Connie, that's what entrepreneurs do," you might be saying. "Even the honest ones." Point taken; and in fact for the past few years Lindell has been putting money into other ventures too, such as financing films for the theocracy -- one example being an anti-Planned-Parenthood (actually anti-abortion) documentary, Unplanned. From The Hollywood Reporter, November 21, 2018:
Lindell also has a cameo in Unplanned that's sure to raise eyebrows in certain circles, as he is seen bulldozing a Planned Parenthood site to make way for the headquarters of an anti-abortion group called 40 Days for Life. "I'm pro-life and I'm happy to do it," Lindell says.The film did respectably at the box office, though critical response was less than enthusiastic, and the American division of Planned Parenthood stated that its arguments were false. More than likely, the movie did little to change anyone's mind about abortion or Planned Parenthood.
But this oleander product may just be the Next Big Thing for which Lindell has been searching.
Ben Carson's involvement with oleandrin isn't really all that surprising either, considering that he has rock-solid Scamworld/huckster creds, even to the point of lying about his involvement with dodgy supplement MLM firm Mannatech -- a matter that was widely reported way back in 2015 when he was still a GOP presidential candidate. From New York magazine, October 29, 2015:
Last night’s Republican presidential debate was hardly lacking in demonstrable lies uttered with total conviction. One of the more audacious was Ben Carson’s claim that he never had “any kind of relationship” with controversial nutritional-supplement company Mannatech.That was then. For the past few years, Carson has been largely preoccupied with making life more miserable for the financially and residentially challenged, while continuing to spew some of his nutcakey ideas. But who says he can't do a little bit of oleandrin hustling on the side?
At the debate in Boulder, CNBC moderator Carl Quintanilla asked Carson why he had maintained a ten-year relationship with Mannatech, despite the fact that the company paid $7 million to settle a deceptive-marketing lawsuit brought by the state of Texas in 2009. The suit accused Mannatech of circulating materials that advertised its supplements as a miracle cure for Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, autism, and cancer.
"Well, that’s easy to answer,” Carson replied. “I didn’t have an involvement with them. That is total propaganda. I did a couple speeches for them. I did speeches for other people. They were paid speeches. It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of relationship with them.”
...Carson’s non-relationship with Mannatech dates back to at least 2004, when he spoke before a meeting of its sales associates, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. In that address, the celebrated neurosurgeon credited Mannatech’s supplements with curing his own prostate cancer.
“Within about three weeks my symptoms went away, and I was really quite amazed,” he says to loud applause in a video of the event.
Lest you be tempted to trust Carson's judgment on oleandrin as a plausible COVID remedy because he's an actual doctor, albeit a retired one, and that he is, after all, a member of Trump's coronavirus task force, I would ask you to consider two points: (1) the aforementioned years-long involvement with a highly questionable supplement MLM and Carson's lies about that involvement; and (2) the fact that his specialties were neurosurgery and pediatric neurosurgery (and though generally renowned, he was known to push ethical boundaries at times), the point being that Carson is not an expert on antiviral drugs or infectious diseases. And let's add a third point for the heck of it: Carson's shaky relationship with actual science (and that's putting it kindly).
And Trump? You probably know that he too has a solid Scamworld background, along with just generally being a serial failed businessman (and, of course, he and his family continue to capitalize on his presidency). But even if Trump doesn't have his pudgy fingers in the oleandrin pie as of yet, even if he has no plans to make money from it, there's a good bit of political capital that he stands to gain if the product really takes off. The political factor alone is a reasonable explanation of why Trump continued, against the advice of most experts, to push hydroxychloroquine as a COVID remedy (though there was also speculation that he had some financial interests there too), and more than likely his desire to look like a COVID hero war president sheds light on the fact that back in April, he seemed to be suggesting even more dangerous remedies.
Perhaps Trump reasons that if this oleander thing works, or even just look like it works, he could be perceived as the standard bearer for the defeat of the COVID monster. Maybe people might even forget about his gross mismanagement of the pandemic crisis.
Or maybe not.
It's all about the money (as usual)
Andrew Whitney and Phoenix Biotech are currently pursuing two avenues for their fruit of the poisonous shrub: having it approved as an actual drug to treat or cure COVID-19; or as a dietary supplement, sold with the disclaimer that the FDA has not evaluated claims made by the manufacturers and that the product is not intended to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure disease. My money is on Whitney pushing hard for the latter option, since the approval process for a drug is longer and more rigorous than that for a mere supplement.
So far FDA director Hahn, who is an MD, seems to have resisted Whitney's pressure, which I'm thinking is a good thing, given the great risks. The medical profession, aware of those risks, has reacted with alarm, as reported on Med Page Today:
The thought of another potentially dangerous compound being touted as a "miracle cure" by the Trump administration, like hydroxychloroquine, had medical experts up in arms on Twitter on Monday.It's going to be a long, long road to November 3, for many reasons. How the oleandrin story will go is anyone's guess at this point, but there's definitely reason for concern. As Jonathan Swan concludes in his piece in Axios:
"Oleandrin? Yeah that would definitely end up killing people," tweeted David Juurlink, MD, PhD, of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.
Juurlink told MedPage Today that oleandrin is "akin to digoxin. Too much can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, but the main concern is arrhythmias, which can be fatal."
Jennifer Gunter, MD, tweeted that it's "easier to kill a person with oleandrin than COVID-19" and highlighted a case report in which two people were poisoned after eating snails that had munched on an oleander plant.
Scientists around the world are in a race for cures, treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. Government regulators are investigating hundreds of products. When a biotech executive like Whitney can take his case directly to the president, it casts doubt over the scientific rigor of the drug development process.Caveat emptor.
PS added 19 August, 2020: On an interview aired on August 18, CNN's Anderson Cooper cornered the MyShillow guy re the oleandrin frauduct, coming right out and calling him a snake oil salesman. Nothing Lindell said contradicted Cooper's assessment. Among other things, Lindell flat-out lied that he has "no monetary gain here." Some highlights from the interview:
Lindell: Well, the 1,000 people are out there. I don't know if you can't find it. But I'm not a medical doctor. I just know that Ben Carson, who's on the task force, he brought it to the President, going --Watch the video embedded at the beginning of this post; if that link doesn't work, here's a direct link.
Cooper: OK. But, stop, sir. Ben Carson has in the past been paid to promote supplements and got in trouble for it in 2015. So he has a track record on that. You are telling people that this cures Covid. You have no studies to prove it. And you are saying 1,000 people were tested --
Lindell: You know what: I got my own study. When I took the -- When I've seen the test of 1,000 people that it was safe. That's all I needed.
Cooper: Sir, OK, if you've seen this test, where is this test?
Lindell: I've been taking it since April. I've been taking it since April. I have 100 friends and family -- this thing works. It's the miracle of all time.
Cooper: You said -- Sir, you said you've seen this test, where is it?
Lindell: The tests are out there. The thousand people -- phase one, phase two.
Cooper: Where is the test? Show it to us.
Lindell: I don't have the test.
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