9 ms·

Paper about Herbalife-related patient death removed after legal threats

444 points by computer23 6y ago

3131s 6y ago
Is there any way that lawyers can be sent to jail for making egregiously bad legal threats? Does it ever happen?
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Idk about jail but I assume there is a risk of being disbarred.
  - tdy721 6y ago
    But if a cop breaks the law, he goes to jail right? Know anything about that one? XD Edit: Sorry. This is a crazy comment. Cops go on the Brady list and are forced to work in low income neighborhoods. I knew that. Wait, but that’s crazy?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The rules of federal procedure has a rule for this, rule 11. It’s designed to punish lawyers or litigants who either bring unsupported cases, or otherwise misuse various aspects of the federal court system. Rule 11 allows for federal judges to directly sanction bad-faith actors, up to paying their opponents fees. Like many rules designed to reign in those with power who misuse it, it seems that it isn’t applied very often.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Yes, it appears to be very rare. Otherwise Guliani and the rest of the "Elite strike force" legal team would be fully sanctioned by now.
  - grumple 6y ago
    US law does not matter to law firms in Delhi...
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      In the past, the US has indemnified all Americans for being sued in jurisdictions with bad defamation laws. So assuming you don’t have any business in India, a fair response is “sue me in America, or <bleep> off”.
  - pas 6y ago
    "up to"? That should be the minimum.
- jlgaddis 6y ago
  I wish. Until that becomes common (or even possible), the best alternative we have available is to make sure that the companies and legal teams do not succeed in their ultimate goal. That objective, of course, is to create a "chilling effect" or, to put it bluntly, get people to shut the fuck up. If they don't want $thing known, the best way to fight back against that is to make sure that as many people as possible know about $thing. In other words, introduce them to the Streisand effect.
- tdeck 6y ago
  Some states have anti-SLAPP laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
markdown 6y ago
Ooof, if mere Herbalife can get Elsevier to do this, one wonders what science about the oil industry, tobacco, sugar, etc has been concealed by Elsevier.
- RobertRoberts 6y ago
  Or any pharmaceutical company...
- bzb6 6y ago
  There is nothing “mere” about Herbalife.
- rndgermandude 6y ago
  Herbalife has had revenues of almost $4.9B in 2019 and $311M of net profit. They aren't really a small player that I would call "mere". They'd be a Fortune 600 company - around #550 - if they weren't officially incorporated on the Cayman Islands and therefore technically not a US company.
  - markdown 6y ago
    So there are 550 better resourced companies in the US alone, with the leading ones making $270B to Herbalife’s 5?
    - rndgermandude 6y ago
      Sure, and there is also roughly 10.75 million companies in the US alone with worse "resources" by that metric, although we're talking revenue here not resources. Having a cool $300M of essential "fuck it" money (net profits) per year, to mess with your enemies if you want, is substantial too.
userbinator 6y ago
Any link to a copy? I think Streisand Effect needs to happen to this one. (Removing content usually just makes people more interested in it.)
- colincooke 6y ago
  It's still on sci-hub for now: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jceh.2018.08.002 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jceh.2018.08.00...
  - ac29 6y ago
    Some of that stuff is pretty thin - you'd expect to find 16s rRNA (microbial genetic material) in just about anything that contains biological material like herbs. The isolation and sequencing process for this type of material amplifies what is found in the sample by many orders of magnitude using techniques like PCR, so presence alone doesnt mean much - it certainly doesnt mean there were live, pathogenic bacteria in the sample (there are other, better tests for clinically relevant pathogens). I spent quite a few years doing metagenomic research, and let me tell you, bacteria and bacterial genetic material is everywhere. Most of the rest of the article I couldnt comment on, though I found it a little funny they list Humulus lupulus as a "suspected toxic component" - thats hops, the same hops used to make beer (also used in cosmetics and other products). Matricaria chamomilla is also listed as a suspected toxin. Its chamomile, the flower used to make the relatively common tea.
    - abbyphilips 6y ago
      Bacterial and fungal contamination is quite common with plant derived dietary supplements. Ideally a microbial count should be performed. We did not expect to see various bacterial profiles in a vacuum packed food supplement. Also, Bacillus subtilis contamination in Herbalife has been reported before (Stickel et al, Journal of Hepatology). Please see this paper on plant origin dietary supplements and contamination potential. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6362155/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6362155/ This can actually promote spoilage and can lead to damaging consequences. Hops use other than in Beers - such as direct consumption has been shown to be toxic to animals and also adverse events have been noted in humans.Chamomile is usually safe, but its interaction with other herbs and herbal metabolites could lead to systemic toxicity. This is always a concern with polyherbal formulations.
Bellamy 6y ago
I did not know that one can settle a pyramid scheme in US. Good to know.
- hsuduebc 6y ago
  I really love how they settle up pyramid scheme with government especially.
TruthHurts44 6y ago
This is a fight that the firstcels should be fighting, instead they prefer to focus on genocide proponents being able to upload videos on youtube. Priorities.
computer23 6y ago
Here is a Google drive link to the paper and related correspondence: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WukaGm8FfVWXyNulpc601ppyUEJ9j0R7?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WukaGm8FfVWXyNulpc60... And John Oliver did an exposé on Herbalife's business practices: https://youtu.be/s6MwGeOm8iI https://youtu.be/s6MwGeOm8iI
placer 6y ago
This happened back in the 1970s when some researchers tried to get follow-up information about whether alcoholics can moderately drink again. Here’s what happened: The paper Sobell 1973 made the bold claim that alcoholics could moderately drink again if given the right kind of therapy. So, other researchers asked: What was the long-term outcome with those patients supposedly engaging on “controlled drinking”? So this research team including one Pendery asked Sobell for the list of patients so they could perform a proper follow-up. The Sobell researchers refused to provide the list. The Pendery team managed to get the list anyway. The Sobells then sued Pendary and their team to stop them from using the list. After some litigation, the Pendary team got the Sobell lawsuit dismissed and then followed up with those supposedly moderate drinking patients. Out of the 20 patients the Sobell study claimed were moderately drinking, only one arguably was still moderately drinking a decade later. Four of those “moderate drinkers” died from drinking too much. Eight were engaging in out of control drinking. Six were completely abstinent from alcohol. And one could not be found, but appeared to be “gravely disabled”. No wonder the Sobells tried to block the follow up study with lawsuits: Because it showed that those “moderate drinkers” were no longer moderately drinking. After a lot of effort, the Sobell lawsuit(s) were dismissed and the truth won. References: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/02/science/showdown-nears-in-feud-over-alcohol-studies.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/02/science/showdown-nears-in... https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/28/us/alcholism-study-under-new-attack.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/28/us/alcholism-study-under-...
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > After a lot of effort, the Sobell lawsuit(s) were dismissed and the truth won. The truth? Especially in anything related to alcohol/substance abuse, there most often is no objective "truth", as there are a lot of religious / moralizing standpoints involved. Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, has been shown to be more morals than science: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr... What does help however is "housing first": https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-programs-resources/hpr-resources/housing-first-supports-recovery https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-programs-resources/hpr-r... Kinda makes sense, given that many people on the streets basically self-medicate either existing untreated mental health problems or the (enormous) stress that comes with living on the streets.
jrockway 6y ago
Probably time to relax the laws on defamation a little bit, to prevent cases like these. The laws date from a time when access to media was hard, and just getting your thing published was an impossible amount of work. Now that we have social media, it's not clear that we need the law to "protect" us here. If someone writes a hit piece about you, can probably get more people to read your defense. That's new, and the laws haven't been updated to account for that. (Unlike more pressing issues facing society, this one doesn't require spending money, or passing a Constitutional amendment, so it feels within reach!)
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  First time I've encountered this opinion, and this makes so much sense. Thanks :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zaroth 6y ago
  Seems like exactly the wrong approach. New technology makes false things you write about someone easier to discover and more likely to be read in the future by, e.g. a company considering hiring you. Defamation is more damaging to the average nobody than it ever could have been 50 years ago. If anything the laws should be strengthened.
- curryst 6y ago
  I disagree, for the same reason that forums typically ban trolls rather than just let them be. It takes an order of magnitude more effort to defend against a claim than it does to make the claim. I could hypothetically accuse you of being a rapist right now. I can just pick a random day I say it happened, let's say last February 23rd. Cool, it took me about 30 seconds to come up with that. Let's say I then blast that all over Twitter and Facebook. Are you okay with having no legal recourse? Are you okay with "jrockway is a rapist" being one of the top Google results for your name? Maybe it's better, maybe you did really well and your rebuttal is the first Google result. I would still be really uncomfortable that my first Google result is me attempting to say that I'm not a rapist. That's assuming people will even read your defense. There are some classes of accusations where you will be tried in the court of public opinion before you are even aware, and your attempts at defense will only be interpreted as further evidence that you are guilty. The rise of Fake News accusations should tell you exactly how much telling the truth is going to help your case. Rape is a particularly heinous thing to accuse someone of, but I chose it specifically because of the "believe the victim's narrative" messaging that surrounds it. Accusations of a crime fall under defamation laws, and so long as they don't file a police report about it, defamation is the only law I'm aware of that it would violate.
jacquesm 6y ago
Herbalife is a cult masquerading as a business. The members are indoctrinated to the point that the term brainwashing probably applies and the group is extremely litigious and vengeful against those that leave, much like any other cult. I've seen the parents of a good friend be sucked in to this, their whole life revolves around that trash and they are up to their necks in debt because of it. It's as if Scientology, multi-level marketing and homeopathic treatments had an evil child.
tinus_hn 6y ago
Coincidentally the group of people who would fall for Herbalife is similar to the group of people who believe insane anti vaccine theories.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
I can really feel the tide turning in the health industry right now. Up until this point, we often looked to add things to our diet to increase our health (whole grains, fiber, antioxidants, minerals, supplements, etc, etc). The evidence from things such as intermittent fasting is suggesting the path to better health is to remove from our diet and abstain from food, not the other way around. Removing all grains from your diet is probably vastly more healthy than adding whole grains.
tim333 6y ago
I think Herbalife may get a bit of a Streisand effect here. I never would have heard about them having toxic product issues in India without the legal threats.

444 points by computer23 6y ago

3131s 6y ago

Is there any way that lawyers can be sent to jail for making egregiously bad legal threats? Does it ever happen?

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Idk about jail but I assume there is a risk of being disbarred.
- tdy721 6y ago
  But if a cop breaks the law, he goes to jail right? Know anything about that one? XD Edit: Sorry. This is a crazy comment. Cops go on the Brady list and are forced to work in low income neighborhoods. I knew that. Wait, but that’s crazy?
ashtonkem 6y ago
The rules of federal procedure has a rule for this, rule 11. It’s designed to punish lawyers or litigants who either bring unsupported cases, or otherwise misuse various aspects of the federal court system. Rule 11 allows for federal judges to directly sanction bad-faith actors, up to paying their opponents fees. Like many rules designed to reign in those with power who misuse it, it seems that it isn’t applied very often.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Yes, it appears to be very rare. Otherwise Guliani and the rest of the "Elite strike force" legal team would be fully sanctioned by now.
- grumple 6y ago
  US law does not matter to law firms in Delhi...
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    In the past, the US has indemnified all Americans for being sued in jurisdictions with bad defamation laws. So assuming you don’t have any business in India, a fair response is “sue me in America, or <bleep> off”.
- pas 6y ago
  "up to"? That should be the minimum.
jlgaddis 6y ago
I wish. Until that becomes common (or even possible), the best alternative we have available is to make sure that the companies and legal teams do not succeed in their ultimate goal. That objective, of course, is to create a "chilling effect" or, to put it bluntly, get people to shut the fuck up. If they don't want $thing known, the best way to fight back against that is to make sure that as many people as possible know about $thing. In other words, introduce them to the Streisand effect.
tdeck 6y ago
Some states have anti-SLAPP laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...

markdown 6y ago

Ooof, if mere Herbalife can get Elsevier to do this, one wonders what science about the oil industry, tobacco, sugar, etc has been concealed by Elsevier.

RobertRoberts 6y ago
Or any pharmaceutical company...
bzb6 6y ago
There is nothing “mere” about Herbalife.
rndgermandude 6y ago
Herbalife has had revenues of almost $4.9B in 2019 and $311M of net profit. They aren't really a small player that I would call "mere". They'd be a Fortune 600 company - around #550 - if they weren't officially incorporated on the Cayman Islands and therefore technically not a US company.
- markdown 6y ago
  So there are 550 better resourced companies in the US alone, with the leading ones making $270B to Herbalife’s 5?
  - rndgermandude 6y ago
    Sure, and there is also roughly 10.75 million companies in the US alone with worse "resources" by that metric, although we're talking revenue here not resources. Having a cool $300M of essential "fuck it" money (net profits) per year, to mess with your enemies if you want, is substantial too.

userbinator 6y ago

Any link to a copy? I think Streisand Effect needs to happen to this one. (Removing content usually just makes people more interested in it.)

colincooke 6y ago
It's still on sci-hub for now: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jceh.2018.08.002 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jceh.2018.08.00...
- ac29 6y ago
  Some of that stuff is pretty thin - you'd expect to find 16s rRNA (microbial genetic material) in just about anything that contains biological material like herbs. The isolation and sequencing process for this type of material amplifies what is found in the sample by many orders of magnitude using techniques like PCR, so presence alone doesnt mean much - it certainly doesnt mean there were live, pathogenic bacteria in the sample (there are other, better tests for clinically relevant pathogens). I spent quite a few years doing metagenomic research, and let me tell you, bacteria and bacterial genetic material is everywhere. Most of the rest of the article I couldnt comment on, though I found it a little funny they list Humulus lupulus as a "suspected toxic component" - thats hops, the same hops used to make beer (also used in cosmetics and other products). Matricaria chamomilla is also listed as a suspected toxin. Its chamomile, the flower used to make the relatively common tea.
  - abbyphilips 6y ago
    Bacterial and fungal contamination is quite common with plant derived dietary supplements. Ideally a microbial count should be performed. We did not expect to see various bacterial profiles in a vacuum packed food supplement. Also, Bacillus subtilis contamination in Herbalife has been reported before (Stickel et al, Journal of Hepatology). Please see this paper on plant origin dietary supplements and contamination potential. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6362155/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6362155/ This can actually promote spoilage and can lead to damaging consequences. Hops use other than in Beers - such as direct consumption has been shown to be toxic to animals and also adverse events have been noted in humans.Chamomile is usually safe, but its interaction with other herbs and herbal metabolites could lead to systemic toxicity. This is always a concern with polyherbal formulations.

Bellamy 6y ago

I did not know that one can settle a pyramid scheme in US. Good to know.

hsuduebc 6y ago
I really love how they settle up pyramid scheme with government especially.

TruthHurts44 6y ago

This is a fight that the firstcels should be fighting, instead they prefer to focus on genocide proponents being able to upload videos on youtube. Priorities.

computer23 6y ago

Here is a Google drive link to the paper and related correspondence: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WukaGm8FfVWXyNulpc601ppyUEJ9j0R7?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WukaGm8FfVWXyNulpc60... And John Oliver did an exposé on Herbalife's business practices: https://youtu.be/s6MwGeOm8iI https://youtu.be/s6MwGeOm8iI

placer 6y ago

This happened back in the 1970s when some researchers tried to get follow-up information about whether alcoholics can moderately drink again. Here’s what happened: The paper Sobell 1973 made the bold claim that alcoholics could moderately drink again if given the right kind of therapy. So, other researchers asked: What was the long-term outcome with those patients supposedly engaging on “controlled drinking”? So this research team including one Pendery asked Sobell for the list of patients so they could perform a proper follow-up. The Sobell researchers refused to provide the list. The Pendery team managed to get the list anyway. The Sobells then sued Pendary and their team to stop them from using the list. After some litigation, the Pendary team got the Sobell lawsuit dismissed and then followed up with those supposedly moderate drinking patients. Out of the 20 patients the Sobell study claimed were moderately drinking, only one arguably was still moderately drinking a decade later. Four of those “moderate drinkers” died from drinking too much. Eight were engaging in out of control drinking. Six were completely abstinent from alcohol. And one could not be found, but appeared to be “gravely disabled”. No wonder the Sobells tried to block the follow up study with lawsuits: Because it showed that those “moderate drinkers” were no longer moderately drinking. After a lot of effort, the Sobell lawsuit(s) were dismissed and the truth won. References: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/02/science/showdown-nears-in-feud-over-alcohol-studies.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/02/science/showdown-nears-in... https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/28/us/alcholism-study-under-new-attack.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/28/us/alcholism-study-under-...

mschuster91 6y ago
> After a lot of effort, the Sobell lawsuit(s) were dismissed and the truth won. The truth? Especially in anything related to alcohol/substance abuse, there most often is no objective "truth", as there are a lot of religious / moralizing standpoints involved. Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, has been shown to be more morals than science: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr... What does help however is "housing first": https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-programs-resources/hpr-resources/housing-first-supports-recovery https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-programs-resources/hpr-r... Kinda makes sense, given that many people on the streets basically self-medicate either existing untreated mental health problems or the (enormous) stress that comes with living on the streets.

jrockway 6y ago

Probably time to relax the laws on defamation a little bit, to prevent cases like these. The laws date from a time when access to media was hard, and just getting your thing published was an impossible amount of work. Now that we have social media, it's not clear that we need the law to "protect" us here. If someone writes a hit piece about you, can probably get more people to read your defense. That's new, and the laws haven't been updated to account for that. (Unlike more pressing issues facing society, this one doesn't require spending money, or passing a Constitutional amendment, so it feels within reach!)

marcus_holmes 6y ago
First time I've encountered this opinion, and this makes so much sense. Thanks :)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zaroth 6y ago
Seems like exactly the wrong approach. New technology makes false things you write about someone easier to discover and more likely to be read in the future by, e.g. a company considering hiring you. Defamation is more damaging to the average nobody than it ever could have been 50 years ago. If anything the laws should be strengthened.
curryst 6y ago
I disagree, for the same reason that forums typically ban trolls rather than just let them be. It takes an order of magnitude more effort to defend against a claim than it does to make the claim. I could hypothetically accuse you of being a rapist right now. I can just pick a random day I say it happened, let's say last February 23rd. Cool, it took me about 30 seconds to come up with that. Let's say I then blast that all over Twitter and Facebook. Are you okay with having no legal recourse? Are you okay with "jrockway is a rapist" being one of the top Google results for your name? Maybe it's better, maybe you did really well and your rebuttal is the first Google result. I would still be really uncomfortable that my first Google result is me attempting to say that I'm not a rapist. That's assuming people will even read your defense. There are some classes of accusations where you will be tried in the court of public opinion before you are even aware, and your attempts at defense will only be interpreted as further evidence that you are guilty. The rise of Fake News accusations should tell you exactly how much telling the truth is going to help your case. Rape is a particularly heinous thing to accuse someone of, but I chose it specifically because of the "believe the victim's narrative" messaging that surrounds it. Accusations of a crime fall under defamation laws, and so long as they don't file a police report about it, defamation is the only law I'm aware of that it would violate.

jacquesm 6y ago

Herbalife is a cult masquerading as a business. The members are indoctrinated to the point that the term brainwashing probably applies and the group is extremely litigious and vengeful against those that leave, much like any other cult. I've seen the parents of a good friend be sucked in to this, their whole life revolves around that trash and they are up to their necks in debt because of it. It's as if Scientology, multi-level marketing and homeopathic treatments had an evil child.

tinus_hn 6y ago

Coincidentally the group of people who would fall for Herbalife is similar to the group of people who believe insane anti vaccine theories.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

I can really feel the tide turning in the health industry right now. Up until this point, we often looked to add things to our diet to increase our health (whole grains, fiber, antioxidants, minerals, supplements, etc, etc). The evidence from things such as intermittent fasting is suggesting the path to better health is to remove from our diet and abstain from food, not the other way around. Removing all grains from your diet is probably vastly more healthy than adding whole grains.

tim333 6y ago

I think Herbalife may get a bit of a Streisand effect here. I never would have heard about them having toxic product issues in India without the legal threats.