Convicted U.S. felon's "Cures" tops book charts #1 BEST SELLER

[underpants]

I saw an ad for this book and I thought for a second the guy in the picture was Aiden Quinn not the infomercial guy in the fake Charlie Rose studio

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050822/od_nm/media_cures_dc

NEW YORK (Reuters) - He went to prison for fraud and was ordered by the U.S. government to stop touting health products on infomercials, but Kevin Trudeau's book "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About" is a bestseller.

Trudeau, who for years sold snoring remedies and memory enhancers through long-format commercials dressed up as talk shows, says he is a consumer advocate battling the "unholy alliance" of drug companies and government regulators.

The book -- whose back cover says "Never get sick again!" and "Learn the specific natural cures for herpes, acid reflux, diabetes ... cancer ... and more!" -- has topped the Publishers Weekly nonfiction bestseller list for the past three weeks.

In September, Trudeau agreed to pay $2 million to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission lawsuit over his claim that "Coral Calcium" could cure or prevent cancer but admitted no wrongdoing. Trudeau agreed to stop marketing health products, but he was allowed to market books.

Trudeau, 42, was jailed for 22 months in the early 1990s over credit card fraud -- something Trudeau dismissed as nothing more than a youthful indiscretion.

[Squatch]

1. Goes to show that people will buy anything.

There's a sucker born every minute.

[Mizmoon]

2. It's a sad comment on the level of trust people have in medicine today

I could write a book on why people go for this fraudulent type of shit instead of trusting medicine. A lot of it is medicine's own fault. See the Vioxx case for an example. Or eugenics. Or psychosurgery. Or the Tuskegee experiments.

[mike_c]

4. unfortunately, that doesn't excuse snake oil salesmen like this guy....

eom

[Mizmoon]

5. Clearly I wasn't trying to

eom

[mike_c]

6. Oh, I didn't mean to imply that-- it was just a general comment....

:hi:

[Dogmudgeon]

3. "Cures" they are not

Kevin Trudeau puts the "bank" in "mountebank".

Most of Trudeau's book contains well-known folk remedies that can be easily found on the Internet. Not likely to be dangerous, but not likely to be very effective, either.

I guess he learned his lesson -- they won't throw you in jail for peddling books the way they will for peddling snake oil.

--p!