FTC Charges Hormone-Replacement Marketers
The Federal Trade Commission has lodged complaints against seven online marketers of alternative hormone replacement therapy products and settled with six, the commission announced last week.
According to the FTC, the marketers made unsubstantiated claims on their Web sites that their natural progesterone creams could treat and/or prevent osteoporosis, uterine cancer and breast cancer. In some cases, the marketers misrepresented clinical testing data, the FTC said.
Products the marketers sold included ProBalance and ProBalance Plus transdermal creams; Elation Therapy Natural Progesterone Cream; Preserve Progesterone Cream; Progesta Care Plus; EST progesterone cream; Restored Balance progesterone cream; Serenity for Women Natural Progesterone Cream; Nature’s Precise Cream; Eternal Woman Progesterone Cream; and Pro-Gest Body Cream, the FTC said.
Six of the sellers have signed consent orders barring them from making such unsubstantiated claims in the future. The seventh did not respond to multiple attempts at contact by the FTC, and that case will now be heard by an administrative law judge, the FTC said.
The six who signed consent orders were Lawrence A. Jordan and Stephanie L. Jordan, principals of Springboard and Pro Health Labs of Spring Valley, CA; Robert Rutledge, an officer of Elation Therapy, Inc., of Marietta, GA; Merilou Barnekow, principal of Women’s Menopause Health Center, Surfside Beach, TX; Robert Burns, manager of The Green Willow Tree, LLC, Asheville, NC; David Martin, an officer of Health Science International Inc., Port Orange, FL; and Shelly Black, principal of Progesterone Advocates Network, Trabuco Canyon, CA, the FTC said.
The FTC said it identified the marketers by searching for Web sites that advertised products claiming they were a natural alternative to hormone replacement therapy and could prevent cancer and osteoporosis. The commission said it sent warning letters to 34 such Web site operators and all but seven changed their claims.
