Dear Consumer:

Here are some web sites that analyze his scheme. While some of the things he says are true, they are taken out of context and exaggerated. Yes the pharmaceutical companies may have a stronghold on medicine; and while the drugs may be dangerous a lot of them work to a certain degree. That doesnt mean they should charge ridiculous ammounts of money for people to use them; but that doesn't mean that they should blindly be avoided either. If Kevin's proposed natural cures do in fact work then the market will inevitably take care of itself and more people will be using them; not because some guy says they work but because it becomes general societal knowledge gained through experience.

What Kevin is doing is taking advantage of instances of government corruption to make money on his own by in turn taking advantage of the consumer. Ethically this puts him at the same, if not a worse level than the companies and the government. The only thing i would give him credit for is that he is a marketing genious who has made 2 billion dollars exploiting consumers in a legal way. Which is perfectly allowable in our country because the right of being able to say or express yourself far outweighs the danger of censoring false information.

What you as an informed person have to do is look at the totality of the circumstances surrounding his claims and be critical of what he has to say. When you do this you will notice that he has almost zero support for any of his claims and that a lot of things in his book are ultimately for his personal benefit as they always refer you back to his website where you can either buy his recommended products or join his club for $999 life time membership where you are entitled to "exclusive natural cures."

While there are a lot of problems (mostly stemming from greed) with our medical system, it is a system that for the most part works. Kevin is trying to capitalize on its flaws for his own personal gain and takes advantage of consumer ignorance to do so. As people, especially older and sick people looking for hope, claims such as his naturally arouse our curiosity and we may be inclined to deny all evidence showing otherwise to strengthen our opinions. He knows this and it is this facet of humanity that he is making his billions of dollars exploting. I also suspect that the reason he talks so much about his previous criminal history is because no matter what it did happen and it is something people will inevitably use to discredit him. Better to concede it than let it be a main source of ammunition against him. Plus everyone loves a good story on reformation.

Anyways here are a couple of web sites on Kevin... one tries to give both sides of the story, another breaks down everything he says point by point and the other is just an article about his "infomercial" history that might shed light on his true motives for doing all of this.

http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2005/07/29/trudeau/index.html

http://www.infomercialwatch.org/tran/trudeau.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau

Still, some of the things he says are true but you don't need to buy his book to figure that one out. It is mostly common knowledge. What he does is coat these true things with fantasy (you can relate it to the Catholic interpretation of Gnosticism) so they sound appealing. I remember seeing this guy on an informertial once claiming he had the cure for cancer. Not only was the method he described just ridiculous on its face but if it really was the cure for cancer then guess what? cancer would be cured by now.

One thing i learned in college that kind of relates to what he preaches has to do with toxins. In theory everything is toxic. It just depends on the dosage. For example people have died from drinking too much water because a large amount of water has a negative effect on the human body. Nevertheless this effect is only negative after a threshold amount. Yes cholrine is dangerous for the body but at certain levels it is benign (same for alcohol, pot, etc). Even pure oxygen is toxic for the body. Using his methodology implies that we should avoid almost everything in the world because it may have a toxic effect on us. In additon to all of this, everyones threshold toxic level for different substances are different in it of themselves. While it takes Ashley 3 beers to get drunk it takes me 10. While someone might get diarrea from eating a chicken someone else who ate the same chicken may not. Just because there is chlorine in the water doesnt mean its bad for you. The levels are insignificant. But how else would Kevin get you to buy the shower purifier? He is playing the same game that the pharmaceutical companies are playing but on an opposite side. It ultamitely is the same game though because underneath all those fancy claims is just the desire to get rich at the expense of other people's ignorance.

While the book does offer some nice tips to stay healthy don't put too much faith in what it says. Almost all his arguments break down under scrutiny and while they are nice to believe and make people feel good and comfortable for believing them they are ultimately a distorition of the truth which cannot be applied in any valuable context.

Anyways, read the web sites, and read the book. But dont take anythign it says for granted. If you really want to live a healthier life that starts with willpower and making better choices not putting all your faith into an inexperienced scam artist. Buying books won't get you healthy, making an effort to improve will.

Peace Health and Love

Local W.