I'm fascinated with this guy Kevin Trudeau. Multi-level-marketing watchdog site MLM Survivor calls him "marketer extraordinaire, with a more-than-checkered past," which includes a history of pyramid schemes, credit card fraud, several investigations, and a cease-and-desist order from the state of Michigan (his primary base of operations). A press release from a co-defendant, TruStar Global Media, simply calls Trudeau a "consumer activist."

You might have seen the chatshowmercial for Trudeau's book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About (the scare quotes are his; I'm guessing you're supposed to voice "they" with a big deep booming elongated vowel, Mr. Moviefone-style). You might have seen him prior to the "Natural Cures" program, advertising miracle-cure herbal supplements -- in fact, the FTC shut his ass down and had him barred from making any more commercials (i.e. "appearing in, producing, or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service, or program to the public, except for truthful infomercials for informational publications"). "Natural Cures" is part of that clause.

Evidently, he's unsavory, untrustworthy, universally hated, and by most accounts, completely full of shit. I'd be a moron not to take his "miracle cure" claims with a grain of salt. But I do think he's on to something. He's right when he says that the FDA and FTC don't have our best interests in mind, that they're sucking some major pharmaceutical-industry cock, that any hint of financial crippling to the U.S. drug trade (e.g. people crossing the border to buy medicine in Canada) just makes the pharmas even more mean 'n' nasty and predatory and paranoid about little well-meaning (legitimate) organic hoonja-doonjas that could never pose any real threat to anyone in a hundred million years. And when the pharmas are unhappy, the invisible top-brass billionaire occult is unhappy. So the FDA/FTC/pharmas will keep pushing addictive drugs that only work just enough to hold the user over until the next dose; they'll convince the user that the drugs need to be taken every day for the foreseeable future if not the rest of his life; they'll keep upping the dosage and making the user believe the only true path to recovery is more drugs. Etc. When in truth, there are often cheaper, quicker, more practical solutions: hey, maybe that thing you've been diagnosed with is actually a reaction to a food additive! Let's try a change in diet and see what happens! Great idea, but exactly the sort of thing the FDA regards as witch-doctor quackery.

Not that I entirely believe Trudeau has our best interests in mind either -- he's totally on the defensive and he wants revenge.

Whatever his motives are though, it feels SO GOOD to hear somebody on TEEVEE stickin' it to THE MAN! I almost wanna steal a copy of his book to see what else he has to say about what "they" don't want us to know!