True Hope / Synergy Now Takes On Health Canada

True Hope, otherwise known as The Synergy Group of Canada, has filed a Statment of Claim in Federal Court on Wednesday May 28th, 2003 against Health Canada.

True Hope is a controversial promotion of a vitamin product known as EM Power directed to the mentally ill as a "miracle cure" for bipolar illness, schizophrenia, fibromyalgia amoung others.

True Hope, in its present form, has been around since about late 1999, and is the product of two southern Alberta lay people putting together a vitamin preparation and promoting this to the mentally ill. The basis of the "discovery" seems to be that such a preparation, in an uncontrolled way, has an effect on behaviour of pigs. There is no scientific basis for such a conclusion.

The product is sold in Canada and apparently now in 7 other countries through an 800 number going to a Raymond, Alberta based call centre. The call centre has "treated" mentally ill volunteers answering phones and acting as "True Hope Assistants". The product is believed to be manufactured in Utah.

Many academics and the mental illness community have increasingly been extremely concerned about the manner which the product is marketed, the defient nature of the proprietors, the risks to the mentally ill by being encouraged to go off their prescription medication (there have been several documented hospitalizations from using this product), and the clear connection to unapproved, flawed research at various North American universities.

Health Canada has received many complaints about True Hope since 2000, and it appears they have finally taken some action by seizing shipments arriving in Canada at UPS.

True Hope is asking in their lawsuit that an injunction by granted to prevent Health Canada from such action. The basis appears to be that EM Power is "not a drug" but a natural product so the Food and Drug Act should not apply.

Rainbow Investigations has been part of a team looking at the entire True Hope / Synergy story. We applaud that finally Health Canada has chosen to do the right thing and go after this promotion which puts so many of society's most vulnerable at risk.

Read up on the entire story - click here to read the Statement of Claim filed by the True Hope group.

To read the response to this matter by Healthwatcher. net (authors of Pig Pills, Inc.), click here.

To read the entire True Hope story, go to www.pigpills.com and order your copy of Pig Pills, Inc.

The next stage in this matter will be Health Canada's response to the Statement of Claim. We hope to have that on or around June 15, 2003.

Ron Reinhold.

Date of Story: Sunday, June 01, 2003
Story Posted By: Ron Reinhold
Source: Ron Reinhold

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