Using a Tyvek mask and protective socks with yellow boots, FBI investigators recently raided a medical construction of the Detroit subway to gather evidence of an alleged fake remedy sold for COVID-19.
It looked like a drug theft. Authorities cordoned off the front of the building, took boxes and enlisted local police to protect the area.
But it’s not a fraudulent lab seized by illicit substances.
In this case, officials were investigating a suspicious trend related to a nutrient discovered in orange juice, broccoli and strawberries:
Vitamin C.
Also known as ascorbic acid, this strong antioxidant has become a matter of faith, controversy and even the average government repression of the pandemic. It has also become more popular than ever, reaping benefits from devout and ideal accusations about its opposite effectiveness of COVID-19, even if it doesn’t even have the strength to cure the non-unusual cold.
Why your new boss can let you paint from anywhere: more and more corporations see the possibility of letting new recruits paint from afar, even once COVID-19 fades
2 COVID Americas: We expect an extension of federal unemployment and a recovery. It’s savings and expenses.
“I don’t know of any other nutrients that cause such emotion,” said Dr. Daniel Monti, president of integrative medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
Consumers have demonstrated this with their wallets, adding some that put it in their veins or load tablets. Sales of vitamin C supplements increased to about $209 million in the first part of 2020, 76% more than it was last year, according to a Nielsen study.
In the federal case near Detroit, Dr. Charles Mok was rated with fitness care fraud and is accused of the pandemic as an opportunity to qualify insurers, adding to Medicare, for high-dose intravenous vitamin C infusions that the government says has been “fraudulently represented as COVID-19 remedies and preventive measures.”
His case attracted researchers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And the FBI, who were dressed in protective devices during the April raid to protect against exposure to COVID-19. Mok’s next hearing date is scheduled for September.
Since April, the Federal Trade Commission has also sent at least 37 precautionary letters to fitness clinics and wellness centers across the country, accusing them of exaggerating similar IV infusions with higher doses of vitamin C.La FTC regulates deceptive business practices and accused clinics. illegally marketing such treatments to save you or treat COVID-19, a proven remedyless illness or rescue.
Some of the statements were braised. “Research shows that high doses of vitamin C are effective in opposition to COVID-19,” said the LaCava Center for Integrative Medicine in St. Charles, Illinois, as the FTC’s warning in April. “CALL US TODAY TO PROGRAM YOUR VITAMIN C IV WITH 50% DISCOUNT!”
The FTC told the company and others to avoid such accusations because they lacked sufficient clinical evidence.
Since then, companies have withdrawn their COVID applications, although they often still offer such intravenous remedies to decorate immunity and health in general, many experts consider them questionable.
These remedies are sold for around $200 and are sometimes considered safe for patients to obtain under proper medical supervision. But there are risks. They are not scientifically proven, which means that consumers can spend their cash on a service that would possibly work or not.
Selling hope: Stem cell companies offer unstable drugs for COVID-19
Goodbye $600: Do you think another $600 in unemployment will last until the end of July? Think again.
So why take such care for a domestic household that can be removed from a grapefruit?
Because it’s a form of hope opposed to worrying about fatal coronavirus, medical experts say. And that hope is greater even if the claims about his powers are unreliable, false or unwelcome, at best productive, productive without further evidence from experimental clinical trials, according to experts in nutrition and medicine.
Vitamin C still has its champions. Take the case of film and television specialist Greg Fitzpatrick, actor Ben Stiller’s double. Fitzpatrick attributes his recovery from a prostate cancer diagnosis in 2016 to a replacement in nutrition and a normal intake of vitamin C. “
“Can you turn out? I guess not,” Fitzpatrick told USA TODAY. He said he believed in that “with all my heart.”
Vitamin C “has been studied very rigorously,” said Alexander Michels, study coordinator at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, which studies the role of nutrients in human health. “The molecule, ascorbic acid, is easy to paint and has homes that make it difficult to understand. Therefore, it has a long history of misunderstandings in the medical clinic and medical practice.
Clinical trials involving remedies with COVID-19 vitamin COVID-19 are underway and will possibly take years to reach successful conclusions. Thomas Jefferson’s Monti team aims to see if vitamin C IV can help save disease progression and have to put patients in ventilation.
“If I ever received treatment for COVID, I would push to do my own check for vitamin C IV, not because there is existing evidence that I would do something, but because I think there is a credible mechanism that this could, ” Monti said.
Monti and other physical care experts say that most other people sometimes get all the vitamin C they want through a lot of completion and vegetables, which helps their immune formula and overall fitness.
But when the pandemic occurred, other people sought that intake of larger doses would only protect the opposite framework of the new coronavirus, echoing a similar theory that has spread in popular culture since 1970.
At this time, vitamin C evangelist Linus Pauling published his e-book “Vitamin C and the Common Cold,” which argued that a larger dose could be just greater defense, a perception that is now considered questionable as more productive and at worst discredited.
Fifty years later, confidence has once again dispersed globally.
In January, incorrect information was already disseminated on social media before the pandemic closed the U.S. economy. In one example, a Facebook user pleaded with the Philippines to “replenish” vitamin C to save COVID-19, among other tips. This message was shared at least 15,000 times, but was eventually reported for false information.
In early March, 21% in the United States had the idea that taking vitamin C “probably” or “definitely” prevented infection and 26% were uncertain, according to a national probability survey cited in a disinformation about the disease conducted by Harvard Kennedy School.
On Instagram, actress Marla Maples, President Donald Trump’s ex-wife, is among those who endorse it.
“Now I’m getting an infusion of vitamin C (IV),” he said in a March 13 article that showed he was receiving an infusion. “I’ve been doing it intermittently for a few years, but right now I think it’s actually more vital because of the spread of coronavirus and influenza and other viruses that we probably wouldn’t even know in our world. You can immune formula now. Take your liposomal vitamin C if you have the chance and can find someone to produce vitamin C drops, I would look for it.”
Maples responded to a message asking for comments on their website.
In late March, the Australian government made the decision to make public an unspecified report that high doses of vitamin C intravenously could be favorable in controlling cOVID-19 infection.
“We reviewed this report and found that there was no false clinical evidence of the use of this vitamin in COVID-19 control,” the Australian Therapeutic Products Administration said.
In the United States, fitness care corporations have begun paying to receive merit from intravenous therapies, reporting positive effects in China on the COVID-19 remedy. After the FTC took strong action, many reduced claims.
In the case of the Detroit area, Dr. Mok’s Allure Medical Spa, founded in Shelby Township, “has filed at least 98 claims with insurance companies, adding Medicare, related to vitamin C infusion healing facilities presented to patients as an alleged COVID-19 remedy and preventive care,” according to the federal offender’s complaint that opposed him. His lawyer declined to comment.
These corporations are for profit and do not participate in experimental clinical trials to identify clinical evidence on vitamin C.
In these clinical trials, intravenous vitamin C has been shown to be promising in sepsis remedies and tumor safe, Monti said.
On the other hand, many wellness centers and naturist practices still offer unproven intravenous vitamin C therapies, claiming that they have immunity and fitness with antioxidants.
“Higher blood levels of vitamin C can be achieved with an intravenous infusion than with an oral intake, and that would be the argument of intravenous administration: an immediate build-up in blood levels that exert an acute antimicrobial effect,” said Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive medicine and founding director of Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at Yale University. “I am aware of any genuine evidence of earnings, so it is illusions and desires about the beneficiary component, and opportunism and exploitation over the supplier component.”
The law on which these injectable vitamin C products are sold and distributed is also cloudy.
Only one vitamin C injection product has been approved in the United States through the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the protection and efficacy of drugs. This product is Ascor through McGuff Pharmaceuticals and is only approved for the short-term remedy of scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency.
However, welfare corporations that sell intravenous treatments do not treat scurvy and do not necessarily require a prescription, depending on the dosage. Several said they got vitamin C from preparation pharmacies, which don’t seem to sell Ascor and can get vitamin C elsewhere, derived from corn.
Last October, the FDA even took the ruling to take into account a warning that read, “All other ascorbic acid injection products are new, unapproved drugs that will not be distributed in interstate commerce without a new FDA-approved drug application.”
So how do those other vitamin C injections comply with the law?
“This is a very confusing factor and has been at the center of adjustments and evolution of compound pharmaceutical legislation and regulations for many years,” said Nicholas Hoang of McGuff Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Ascor.
The FDA did not respond to a request for clarity. Pharmacies known to offer these products to wellness companies did not return messages, nor did naturopaths experienced in intravenous therapies.
Preparation pharmacies have some legal leeway to tailor medicines to people, as do doctors who can produce approved medicines for uses other than MMA. But it’s unclear how the vitamin C IV industry with the FDA, or much of the science surrounding vitamin C for consumers. Overall, Monti said, vitamin C has provoked strong claims from leading scientists for decades, as well as strong arguments against others.
“If (consumers) take it and see a positive effect, who can dismiss their experience?” Michels from Pauling High School said in an email. “On the other hand, science is very, very lagging behind. Consumers, doctors and scientists think they know everything there is to know about vitamin C, but the maximum of them has an incomplete picture. Even those who have faithfully read their lives to read this vitamin admit that they know very little about it”.
Follow journalist Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: [email protected]