Until last week, the University of Oklahoma researcher Hsueh-Kung Lin served on the scientific advisory board of a company with important news for a world fearful of Ebola: The deadly virus is no match for its therapeutic oil treatments.
One problem: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t agree. The FDA has declared the company’s claims to be unsubstantiated and therefore misleading in a world facing predictions of more than a million Ebola infections within a few months.
“Unfortunately, during outbreak situations, fraudulent products claiming to prevent, treat, or cure a disease almost always appear,” the FDA said last week in an advisory rebuking Young Living Essential Oils, which Mr. Lin advised, and two other companies.
Mr. Lin, an associate professor of urology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, was not alone. Young Living Essential Oils also listed Olivier C. Wenker, a professor of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine at the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, as a member of its scientific advisory board.
And another of the companies cited last week by the FDA, doTERRA International, listed its scientific advisory board as including two registered nurses in the adult-emergency department at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The FDA citations raise a question: Why are medical professionals affiliated with major American research universities serving on the boards of such companies?
‘Out of Options’
Mr. Lin, in an interview, offered his explanation. He said he was a personal friend of D. Gary Young, the founder and chief executive of Young Living Essential Oils, and was the only member of the company’s scientific advisory board who was not being paid.
Young Living Essential Oils, according to an FDA letter of complaint, offers oils with such names as “Cinnamon Bark,” “ImmuPower,” “Eucalyptus Blue,” and “Ylang Ylang.” The company’s sales materials tout the oils as treatments for conditions that include Parkinson’s disease, autism, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, heart disease, dementia, multiple sclerosis, and Ebola, the FDA said. The claims all lack official validation and are therefore illegal, the agency said.
Mr. Lin said he knew nothing about whether therapeutic oils had any effect against Ebola.
A native of Taiwan, Mr. Lin said his mother prepared traditional Chinese herbal medicines during his childhood, and he is now interested in applying modern research methods to determine what might be the active ingredients in such preparations and to discover whether claims about their effectiveness have scientific merit.
But he admitted frustration that potential sources of financing, including the National Institutes of Health, have repeatedly declined to support such work. Although not paid by Mr. Young, Mr. Lin said he hoped his affiliation with the company might win him attention in the battle for research money.
“I don’t want them using my name to make money, but I want to expand the idea” of studying essential oils, Mr. Lin said. “As far as my concerns” about the company’s claims about Ebola, “I don’t know, I don’t know—I’m out of options right now. Nobody wants to support my research. I don’t know,” he said. “I probably am thinking about giving up altogether.”
Mr. Lin’s research opportunities, in fact, may now narrow even further. The professor did not notify the University of Oklahoma of his service with the company, as is required for such affiliations, said M. Dewayne Andrews, senior vice president and provost of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
“We will follow our faculty-handbook procedures and deal with this matter as a personnel matter according to appropriate policies and procedures,” Dr. Andrews said in a written response to The Chronicle’s inquiry.
Such disclosure requirements are now commonplace at American universities, said Arthur L. Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University. Failure to comply is “a huge ethical breach that probably would either get you off that board or off the faculty,” Mr. Caplan said. Mr. Lin’s name, in fact, was removed from the company’s website last week, shortly after he and his university were questioned by The Chronicle.
‘Dangerous Nostrums’
For companies looking worldwide in pursuit of eager customers, Ebola is a particularly gruesome and plentiful opportunity. It spreads through bodily fluids and can remain latent for several days before attacking multiple organ systems and producing external bleeding and death. Its mortality rate in West Africa, where it is now hitting hardest, appears to be around 50 percent. There is no known vaccine or cure, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that infections could reach 1.4 million by January.
Another of the companies cited last week by the FDA, the Natural Solutions Foundation, had some marketing success in Africa with a different product, Nano Silver—nanometer-sized silver particles mixed with water—by getting the government of Nigeria to try it as a possible cure for Ebola.
At the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, a spokesman, Ron L. Gilmore, said that Dr. Wenker, the other researcher listed on the Young Living Essential Oils board, had retired and was not available for comment. Mr. Gilmore said he had no further details, including when Dr. Wenker had retired or whether the university had been aware of his listed affiliation with the company. He added that M.D. Anderson would ask the company to clarify Dr. Wenker’s status in the listing on its website.
A spokesman at Vanderbilt, John Howser, said that the two nurses listed on the doTERRA board had not served with the company “for the past year,” and that one of them was no longer with the university. Following questions from The Chronicle, Vanderbilt obtained a promise from the company to act within 24 hours to remove the two names from the advisory-board listing, Mr. Howser said on Friday.
The nurses, Tonya R. McBride and Teresa G. Sturges, have also been listed by Vanderbilt as leaders of an in-house “Wellness Committee” responsible for the introduction of “certified pure therapeutic grade essential oils” throughout their department.
The oils are “naturally antimicrobial, antibacterial, antiviral,” according to a committee document on Vanderbilt’s website that shows more than a dozen smiling hospital staff members, including physicians, posing with bottles of the oil, diffuser machines, and promotional signs.
Mr. Howser said university policy required employees to obtain permission to establish and maintain relationships with outside organizations, but in a written response he did not answer the question of whether such notification and approval had occurred in this instance.
Cases of university faculty members and other staff members serving on the boards of companies making dubious scientific claims appear to be rare, Mr. Caplan said. But given the significant reputational risks, he said, institutions should watch closely for such activities, especially at times of high-profile public-health scares such as those involving Ebola and, previously, SARS and MERS, two acute respiratory conditions.
“Universities should be very concerned,” Mr. Caplan said, “if someone is using their prestige to endorse-hype-promote hooey, scientific nonsense and dangerous nostrums, and elixirs and crackpot cures.”