Response to Bevan Potter Letter of November 14, 2008

Preface: In last month's Ashwin two prominent cases of trademark theft were documented. Again, the very subject is unsavory -- one we would prefer to gracefully ignore, but it simply cannot go unaddressed. As we have repeatedly stated, we are the regular recipients of complaint letters we get from consumers who purchased "Cansema" from other online vendors -- did not get the intended result -- and then are surprised to discover in the aftermath that they were deceived.

They thought they were purchasing the original, authentic product.

They thought they were purchasing Cansema_®.

Instead, they were purchasing an imitation from an online source that is, without authorization, using our registered trademark, one which -- on the internet alone -- we have been using since 1995 (one year before even the Internet Wayback Machine began recording our site information in 1996).

The cases of consumer fraud that have resulted from this trademark theft is so massive that we had to create a Fake Product Compensation Program -- not because we claim responsibility for the fraud, but because the sheer number of its instances demands that we respond. [We could seek legal redress if it were not for the fact that in at least one case (that of bloodrootproducts.com) the fraud is supported by the U.S. FDA. -- which we cover elsewhere on this site and document in the upcoming publication of Meditopia_®.]

We understand why Cansema_® is a candidate for the most trademark-violated product in the history of internet commerce -- it works and is endorsed by numerous practitioners. If Cansema_® had not set the standard in the alternative cancer field, it would not have attracted so many imitators.

People who commit fraud don't like getting exposed.

So . . . it wasn't surprising when we received even angrier letters from those we have uncovered who engage in this activity. In the case of Toby McAdams (bloodrootproducts), we even duplicated a recent extortion letter.

In the aftermath of last month's revelations, we received a letter from Bevan Potter of Health CentreForce of Australia, ostensibly writing on behalf of Elaine Hollingsworth (we duplicate the letter, character-for-character, in its entirety below, adding only paragraph numbers for clarity. We will not go into the details of Elaine's activity because we covered that last month.)

Ideally, my response to Bevan Potter should be private. Our relations were very cordial at one time and began after his cancer was cured with a combination of real Cansema_® and his own home grown aloe vera -- (the benefits of which I discuss in our product page for Acemannan). Bevan's original testimonial letter (Jul., 2003) is provided in full.

However, because there are so misrepresentations within the body of this letter -- bold, audaciously and provably false information masquerading as fact -- I am forced to conclude that Bevan Potter has been telling others the same thing.

I respond in my "open letter" response below. --- GC

November 16, 2008

Greg Caton
Alpha Omega Labs
Casilla 09-04-99 P
Guayaquil, ECUADOR

Dear Bevan,

I am in receipt of your email of November 14, 2008.

I had hoped to avoid this kind of confrontation, but there's just too much "truth-twisting" going on from me not to respond -- and from what I can gather I have to believe these misstatements have been circulated for years now. Without any encouragement from me you have stretched Pinnochio's proverbial nose so that we can now measure it in light years.

Enough is enough.

Since there are gross misstatements in every single paragraph of your letter, I will address them in order:

Miscontruing Relationship. -- (para. 1) -- The connection between the activities of Elaine Hollingsworth and Health CentreForce are far beyond conjectural, as I detail in my comments to Paragraph 2 below -- and throughout the rest of my response. Let's permit the reader to determine if I am, indeed, "out of line."
Your limited connection to Elaine Hollingsworth. -- (para. 2) -- Did you write this for literary effect? Because it's provably not true . . . In fact, a simple viewing of Elaine's site shows that she vigorously promotes "Cansema" from your company as a skin cancer treatment -- and unless we make the improbable assumption that dogs and not people are the readers of her web page -- her open promotion of your trademark-violating product as a treatment for both humans and animals is unquestionable. Moreover, despite her knowledge to the contrary, she indicates that people can get Cansema® from your company, since Alpha Labs is closed . . . This is adding insult to injury -- and, of course, both of you know this to be false. Conversely, Elaine prominently figures into your web site. [Note: I have downloaded these pages and temporarily put them on my site only to prevent the destruction of the evidence.]
Misleading Statement as to Mutual Links -- (para. 3) -- Whatever links might have been created on the Alpha Omega Labs to your site (health.centreforce.com) were within the context of general information -- or, as an alternative site for similar products at the time of our closure. It is patently misleading to compare this to Elaine's site, where, again, she promotes your product -- where, again, you violate our trademark -- where, again, you represent something as authentic, when, again, it is not . . . Elaine Hollingsworth is knowingly committing fraud, and I wouldn't know this had we did not have extensive emails between us where I came to know that she exclusively and knowingly promotes a product called Cansema -- which she knows to be the property of Alpha Omega Labs -- all the while telling people that we are closed down and that Cansema® is only available from CentreForce . . . Of course, you don't think this is wrong -- or a defrauding of the public. I can see this now. But I believe most people will and do.
False Statement as to Permissions -- (para. 4) -- Yes, Jason Eaton was given permission to download the entirety of Alpha Omega Labs and post it to the general public. In those days, we had not yet uncovered the conspiracy behind my arrest, the destruction of our lab, or the operation of FDA agents to steal our intellectual property for use by a competitor -- collecting bribes, I am sure, just as Mike Adams reveals in his recent article, the result of extensive journalistic investigation ("FDA Running Extortion Racket: Natural Supplement Companies Threatened with Arrest if They Don't Pay Up").
I gave instructions to key AO Labs' employees to take down the site until I could get a better handle on what was going on. Still . . . I wanted the information to be available on the internet. But there is an essential and obvious difference that you conveniently omit. It was never Jason's intention to steal our trademark, sell product and say that it came from us when it didn't, or lie to the public and say that I had given him formulas when I clearly had not . . . You -- by contrast -- have done all those things.
You speak as if you were given permission to use our materials because you were an AO Labs' reseller or distributor. You were never an authorized distributor -- evident by the distributor roster we had on our site prior to my arrest. But let's take things to the "enth degree" and assume as a thought experiment that you were. Any manufacture of a product is going to want their distributors to have access to as much information that is useful to their consumers as possible. Alpha Omega Labs was and is no different. But to say that our initial permission to allow the use of materials to resell product automatically conferred permission to continue to use the materials to sell imitations -- which are not the same, even though you say that they are, is just absurd.
It is everything I can do to contain myself when you say that you've been doing this since 2003 -- so, essentially, "What's the problem?" It reminds me of George Bernard Shaw's famous quote, that there is no atrocity which does not acquire the veil of legitimacy the longer it continues unimpeded. In other words, the longer you can get away with something, the more likely it is to be accepted as legitimate. Applied specifically to Health CentreForce what you convey is: "Hey . . . I've been stealing your materials, your name, your trademark, your artwork, your ad copy -- hell . . . I've even gotten away with telling people that you gave me your formula(s). And since this has been going since your imprisonment, why is it an issue now?"
No thought is given to the fact that when an herbalist finds himself in prison for three years -- on charges so mind-blowingly fictitious that even the sentencing judge puts his disgust on the record, he has more pressing issues to attend to than the violation of his intellectual property halfway around the world. Now that I am able to address these matters, you are upset.
Tough.
I intend to air the facts in this case whether it is convenient to your business affairs or not.
Argument to Justify the Theft -- (para. 5) -- This is just too rich . . . your argument proceeds thusly : "I was only helping you by stealing your materials so that the good name of Cansema® was kept alive while you were in prison." What rubbish. The good name of Cansema was never in jeopardy, and because of the rapacious actions of a few bribe-taking FDA officials it now has more legitimacy than anything that I could have done on my own. I appreciate your feigned philantropy, but the fact is that during my imprisonment we were able to refer thousands of people to other reliable makers of escharotic salves -- most notably Two Feathers (which has since been closed down by the FDA because it was competing with their favorite maker of adulterated, counterfeit Cansema, bloodrootproducts.com) and Can-X. None of these other makers of escharotic products -- some of whom got formulary advice from me personally -- felt the need to violate our trademark. One reliable maker of escharotic preparations in the States is NativeHealingHerbals.com. They call their product "Black Salve." I taught them how to make it before the move to Ecuador. You don't see them calling their product Cansema®, do you?
You are caught in a Chinese finger-puzzle of your own making . . . and the more you attempt to justify your thievery . . . and the theivery of Elaine Hollingsworth, the tighter will be its grip. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet and I don't think it's unreasonable that you be expected to find a way to construct them into product names -- just like all the other reliable makers of herbal products I know -- that don't just happen to be the same as our trademarks.
You state that you coordinated with my office while I was in prison, innocently communicating your intentions throughout the pilferage of our site materials and trademark. I have communicated extensively about this with both Cathryn, my wife, and Tabetha, then my Personal Assistant. They both vehemently insist that your account is highly fictionalized -- and, mind you, there is no way you could have communicated with my office without either of these individuals knowing about it. Moreover, I have scanned the entire 100,000+ archive of letters, using all pertinent keywords, and nothing even close to what you represent ever took place.
So the obvious emerges. Either (1) you're knowingly making it up, or (2) you believe what you're saying and have altered the facts within your own mind to make your own actions palatable. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. You have been deceiving the public for 5 years -- and no amount of fact-shifting is going to change that. The only thing you communicated with my office in the aftermath of September, 2003, was with Tabetha. You indicated that you had a friend who was a pharmacist and that you were going to have the product analyzed so that you could start making and selling it.
There is nothing in our records that would support your historical revisionism.
What you have done is underhanded -- and your arguments to justify only make it more revolting.
Without CenterForce's Confiscation of AO Labs' Intellectual Property, The Name of Cansema® Would Be Dead. -- (para. 6) -- You now reinforce your position that you confiscated our property for our own good.
In this, your letter provides a disturbingly high dosage of Orwellian doublespeak. You say that there were only "other adulterated products with the name of Cansema from the companies you have named on your web site." This just isn't true. We even recommended that our customers purchase Cansema-like products from Two Feathers, Can-X, and others. You are inferring that our recommendation of other products would have meant that "Cansema would be dead." But this is a non-sequitor. How would Cansema be dead if we recommended other excellent products to our customers because ours was not available?
I have to think that you composed your letter without considering its illogical implications.
Worse still is its audacity. Who gave you the right to steal our property in the first place -- whatever your twisted rationale? Who said it was alright for you, or Toby McAdams, or any of the other half dozen entities (and that's only who we know about) that use similar arguments to justify their theft, to do this?
Bevan -- I group you and CentreForce with these other reprobates because your actions are no different. Given the evidence in hand, I care not whether this earns a degradation of respect . . . from you -- or anybody else.
"It is not all about making money . . . (para. 7)
You're right. It isn't.
But for you -- it is . . .
. . . otherwise, why would you have to lie to people and tell them that we gave you our formula(s), or permission to use our trademark . . . or work with Elaine to get videotape of us promoting Cansema® when you knew good-and-well that this was subterfuge to deceptively get us to endorse your pirated version of our product?
Wait . . . I know, I know . . . it was for our own good.
There are a LOT of people in this business who don't make any money at all -- they don't even sell products -- but they take risks in referring people who are making a difference. One example is Bob Hurt's site (Alternative Cancer Treatments).
But you don't fall into that category -- so just stop it.
Your attributing such risk to being in this business is disingenuous.
You chose to do this . . . no one is making you.
The making and selling of pirated product has paid you handsomely.
You can stop bragging about what martyrs you and Elaine are.
Harming One's Reputation By Exposing the Truth. (para. 8)
If what you say is truth . . . if Elaine Hollingsworth truly is "one of the most respected people on earth in the alternative health care field," then given the evidence I have in hand that she was thoroughly and unmistakeably caught in intellectual property theft, then perhaps we should redefine "respect."
Gary North -- who has a Ph.D. in history and was a vocal figure during Y2K, has often said, "You should always beware of 'respectable' people . . . because they are usually beholden to the corrupt institutions that are the source of that respectability."
You make an issue of the risks that Elaine Hollingsworth assumes in "exposing the corruption in modern medicine," making no mention of the fact that this is her business. This is your business. And the fact that both of you have so forcefully put forth arguments justifying the indefensible only demonstrates that there are no motivations in your actions outside the narrow confines of money-making.

I could be challenged for being mistaken in my conclusions -- perhaps successfully -- were it not for the fact that the evidence so clearly speaks for itself -- evidence that is further supported by your own email.

Greg Caton

Alpha Omega Labs

Guayaquil, Ecuador

November 16, 2008