Canadian MP misrepresents data

Neuroscientist says his studies of a company's nutraceutical did not show the results claimed

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A Canadian neuroscientist says that a nutraceutical company and others have been misusing his unpublished data in an effort to support a bill in Parliament that would reclassify "natural health products" as food and would exclude any foods from being regulated as drugs.

The work in question was done by Bryan Kolb, a neuroscientist and psychologist at the University of Lethbridge, in association with–but not funded by–a Canadian nutraceutical company called Truehope on their product EMPowerplus. The research showed that the product had some effect in a rat model of stroke, and was first cited in Parliamentary testimony on April 22, 2004. "Dr. Kolb put these rats with lobotomies on EMPowerplus," chiropractor James Lunney, an opposition member of Parliament, testified before the standing committee on health. "Not only did they recover their function, amazingly, their brains actually regrew," he said, showing pictures from the research.

Lunney used EMPowerplus as an ...

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