minilink: http://is.gd/foDseG
Edit 16 November 2011 - Josephine Jones tweeted earlier today that Fitalifestyle / SeeMyCells aka Errol Denton has been added to the Advertising Standards Authority's "Hall of Shame" ('advertisers who fail to comply' pages) which didn't surprise me in the slightest. It's not immediately obvious if you're looking in the ASA's adjudications that four of them are about Errol Denton because there are so many different websites and claims involved. Three separate websites (including one on Groupon's site) were cited in four complaints to the ASA (all of which were upheld) on different 'treatments' or diagnostic tests including liquid chlorophyll and nutritional microscopy.
It was only because Josephine (see more below) Googled, found my blog and emailed me that I knew of her other complaints. I've no idea if the ASA's database flag up situations along the lines of "gee this looks familiar" but I know I mentioned within the last month to the ASA that this was actually the fourth adjudication and I suspect Josephine may have done so too, or quite possibly they've looked at our blogs.
I wonder if Jeni Barnett knows...
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Short version
The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld my latest complaint. This adjudication was against Fitalifestyle Ltd’s website which made misleading claims, yet again, about nutritional microscopy – a nonsense diagnostic tool. Fitalifestyle Ltd is the trading name of Errol Denton and there are two main websites: LiveBloodTest.com and SeeMyCells.co.uk, there’s also LiveBloodTest.webs.com.
“Fitalifestyle Ltd (Fitalifestyle) did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries”.
This is the fourth complaint upheld against misleading advertising claims made by or on behalf of Errol Denton: two complaints were from me and two from another blogger, Josephine Jones.
Previous complaints to the ASA, all now upheld adjudications
• Leaflet - complaint by me: Adjudication | Blog post this was advertising Errol Denton's LiveBloodTest.com website too
• Liquid chlorophyll from Fitalifestyle trading as SeeMyCells.co.uk - complaint by Josephine: Adjudication | Blog post
• Groupon ad for Live Blood Test - complaint by Josephine: Adjudication | Blog post - this one was particularly interesting as in addition to the misleading claims made about the intervention it seems that a lot of customers had a miserable customer experience as well and many have added their 'testimonials' on a variety of forums on the web.
• Fitalifestyle website (LiveBloodTest.com) - the most recent complaint, by me: Adjudication | (and this is the accompanying blog post)
Longer version
One rather useful thing about the internet is that it helps you draw different bits of information together. It was over a year ago that I blogged about a leaflet for Nutritional Microscopy (specifically that sold by Errol Denton as Fitalifestyle Ltd / LiveBloodTest.com). After learning more about the evidence (none at all) for the claims made I was able to put in a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority which was upheld (and I updated the blogpost).
A few months after that I got an email from blogger Josephine Jones who said that she’d put in a complaint about someone else who was offering live blood analysis. She also had a complaint against Errol’s website which was making unwise claims about liquid chlorophyll. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with selling liquid chlorophyll (I seem to remember it fluoresces in an impressively blood-red sort of way when viewed under ultraviolet light) but saying that it does anything special when consumed by people seems to be taking things a bit far. Josephine also had a complaint upheld against Groupon because they were selling live blood tests and repeating the misleading claims.
So because Josephine searched online for information on live blood testing, found my blog and got in touch I know that there are at least FOUR upheld adjudications against this individual / company’s marketing for nutritional microscopy (on a leaflet, SeeMyCells.co.uk, LiveBloodTest.com and on Groupon’s website). Probably if she'd not got in touch I wouldn't have known there were this many as I'd not have thought to search for the Groupon one.
My recent complaint, about Fitalifestyle Ltd’s web pages, included the claim that nutritional microscopy provides an “insightful view of the biological terrain” which is a phrase that appears on rather a lot of websites, including LiveBloodTest.com (it’s still there at the time of writing): http://www.livebloodtest.com/what_is_live_blood_analysis.php?gid=6
That phrase isn’t particularly problematic but I think it does suggest that all of these practitioners are getting their web content from the same place. I think someone’s done an analysis on errors in transcription that appear in various copies of the bible and other texts where monks made mistakes and people can track phrases in different versions of books. I wonder if anyone will do a similar study on this ;)
Next steps
Ongoing monitoring of the site (this can be automated in Google of course) for the misleading words and phrases and their appearance on other pages on one or more of the websites. This has happened before.
Further reading
- Edzard Ernst writing in The Guardian in 2005 on live blood analysis
- Science-Based Medicine's 2009 blog on the same topic
- Quackwatch's 2006 article (updated in 2009) on live cell analysis
Congratulations on achieving an adjudication against Denton's outrageous nutritional microscopy claims (the particular ones in question appear here on the FAQ page of the See My Cells site: http://www.seemycells.co.uk/store/index.php?act=viewDoc&docId=11).
ReplyDeleteI have tried so hard to get a result like this, having put in complaints against both the See My Cells and the livebloodtest sites. It seems my complaints were so exhaustive that the ASA simply did not have time to investigate them fully.
As you say, despite having two of my complaints against him dropped, Denton has still managed to achieve an astounding FOUR adjudications against his advertising. He has also been reported by me to the compliance team for failure to remove problematic advertising following adjudication (the claims he made about chlorophyll remain online, as does the Groupon ad).
Regarding the phrase 'insightful view of the biological terrain', I imagine it comes from either course material or perhaps some sort of manual that comes with the microscope. According to his own livebloodtest site, Errol was trained by 'Dr' Robert O Young, who is often quoted as an expert on Live Blood Analysis and Alkaline Diet sites. Perhaps it is his work.