BULLETIN: The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said this morning that the OWOW multilevel-marketing program was using agency materials on cancer research inappropriately.
OWOW is associated with Internet Marketer Phil Piccolo. The company has positioned at least two products sold MLM-style as cancer cures or treatments, including a bottled water.
On Dec. 26, the bottled-water product was touted on an OWOW affiliate’s website. The site included a link to a Dec. 21 news release by NIH about cancer research, specifically research pertaining to “a rare cancer of the digestive tract . . . linked to a shutdown in an enzyme that helps supply oxygen to cells.”
The affiliate claimed that “OWOW Water Is THE ONLY WATER that brings Oxygen to the cell from within the cell.
“Now check out this Article written almost on the day that OWOW received the exclusive marketing rights to our Oxyengenated Water,” the affiliate instructed, pointing prospects to the NIH website.
“NIH does not endorse products and this promo is an inappropriate use of a press release that has a tenuous connection to this product at best,” NIH spokesman and senior science writer Michael J. Miller told the PP Blog this morning.
How the agency would proceed was not immediately clear.
See earlier story on bizarre events that ensued after OWOW made a cancer claim about a nonwater product.
A “Non-Affiliated Support” link on the OWOW website includes no contact information for the company and no form through which prospects or members of the media can submit questions.
OWOW appears to be the successor company to Data Network Affiliates (DNA), which purported to be in the business of creating a database to help the government and the AMBER Alert program rescue abducted children.
No evidence has emerged that DNA had the capacity to help the government do anything.
Separately — and on the same OWOW-connected website — a series of videos appears. Piccolo, also known as “Mr. P.,” is featured in a video that hawks purported magnetic products positioned as treatments for everything from bruising and hair retention to preventing the surgical amputation of limbs.
Meanwhile, video viewers also are told that the magnetic products can be used to help tomatoes, vegetables and fruits grow “twice the size.”
At the same time, the products also are positioned as helpful to dairy farmers.
“Dairy farmers who feed their cows through this here unit right here produce more milk per cow,” Piccolo claims in the video.
Family pets hearing a call from the grim reaper can extend their lives if their owners use the products, Piccolo instructs viewers.
“Your pets? If you have a pet and your pet’s on its last leg[s], bring them a Magnetic Shower,” Piccolo coaches. “You won’t believe what it will do for your pet.”
See Video
“If it wasn’t for magnets, I really believe I’d be in a wheelchair right now,” Piccolo says in the video. Piccolo asserted he’d been bucked off a horse and suffered the worst bruise his doctors had ever seen — but used magnetic products to save the day quickly, heal bruising and maintain his ability to walk.
One man who suffered a heart attack was able to avoid a leg amputation by using the magnetic shower head, according to the video.
It perhaps was a good idea to purchase the product before “Monday,” because the price was going to increase, Piccolo tells the audience. The date upon which the OWOW video was recorded was not immediately clear.