Counterfeiters Galore Create
Utter Confusion Over Essiac®
As an Essiac® distributor, the question I am most frequently asked is: "What's the difference between Essiac® and all those other products claiming to be the same thing - I'm totally confused?"
It's a fair question and I sought the answer to that one back in 1993, when I desperately wanted Essiac® for my own use but couldn't find it. The answer rests as much with the integrity and ratios of the ingredients as with anything else. Source of herbs, where they are grown, is of paramount importance because there are no standards or controls in this field in North America.
With Essiac®, you can be confident you are getting the correct herbs assembled to Nurse Rene Caisse's exact specifications that she entrusted to Resperin Corporation and no other. No other product can make such a claim - good reason to suspect products that can be characterized as counterfeits, knockoffs or me too.
There's are many of counterfeiters and if there is confusion among consumers, they are the cause. Essiac® (with a ®) by any other name is not Essiac®! In saying that, I can be accused of commercial self-interest, so let me hasten to elaborate on my experience in trying to obtain the authentic Essiac® a few years ago.
It was a coast to coast exercise including a personal visit to Nurse Caisse's hometown of Bracebridge, Ontario. Like many people, I learned about Rene Caisse and her herbal preparation from an article in Homemakers Magazine in 1977, which was inspired and co-authored by Sheila Snow who lives near Bracebridge, Ontario, and was an admiring friend of the nurse.
She is also a close friend of Mary McPherson who worked with Nurse Caisse and still lives in Bracebridge. Sheila has written the "textbook" on the formula titled "ESSENCE of Essiac®" which details the contents and benefits of the herbal formulation. I have come to know Sheila and count her as a friend.
It was after the Homemaker article appeared that Nurse Caisse entrusted the formula that she had kept a close secret all her life, to Resperin Corporation.
Treated as a drug by the Canadian Government for the next 15 years, it was restricted and could only be obtained through a doctor's application under the government's Emergency Drug Release Program.
That restriction was lifted in 1993, but not before a plethora of preparations claiming to be Essiac® stole a quick market march on Essiac® Products of Campbellton, New Brunswick, which has legal title to Resperin's Essiac® properties, including the trademark.
Essiac®'s four vital ingredients are now public knowledge because they appear on the packaging. They are sheep sorrel, Indian rhubarb root, slippery elm bark and burdock root. However, their identity had leaked out over the years and eventually a version of the formula appeared in a book by Californian Gary Glum titled "Calling of an Angel". Glum's recipe became widely publicized through alternative health writers and publications and by the early 1990's had inspired a host of entrepreneurs to leap into the market with knockoffs.
Some of these people were well-meaning, others were out for the buck. The most fraudulent is an outfit in the United States selling the herbs in capsule form to unsuspecting consumers. A decoction in a capsule?
But the most enterprising and aggressive of these entrepreneurs was Vancouver radio talk show host Elaine Alexander who died of cancer April 30, 1996. She came out with her own herbal product, brazenly calling it Essiac and claiming that she had some form of legal entitlement to it from the late Dr. Charles Brusch of Massachusetts. He had worked with Nurse Caisse during the 1960's and by his own admission, she never revealed the formula to him. She supplied him with the herbs already assembled.
I have a tape of a 1986 on-air interview Ms. Alexander had with Dr. Brusch. At one point she asked him directly if he had the formula and his answer was a definite "no". He was taking Essiac® for his own purposes at that time and was obtaining his Essiac® from Resperin. During the interview he described his difficulties in getting Essiac® through US Customs. Ms. Alexander settled on the FlorEssence name after she had been legally challenged for associating the name "Essiac®" with her product. Her response to the action came through her lawyer. It was a terse 22-words: "Please be advised that Elaine Alexander has no agreement with Dr. Charles Brusch for Essiac® or the product Essiac® under another name".
A copy of this letter is available to anyone from Essiac® International, 2211-1081 Ambleside Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 8C8
I wasn't aware of all this in 1993, when I went looking for Essiac®. In every store I tried, I was handed FlorEssence and told it was the "same thing". I looked at the ingredients and two red lights went on. First there were seven herbs instead of four which left me wondering how much of the four herbs were in the package and how much was the other three. And secondly, it listed "sorrel", not sheep sorrel. (An eighth ingredient has since been added and sorrel has been changed to sheep sorrel in the labeling).
I rejected FlorEssence simply because I was skeptical of the marketing claims when the ingredients didn't measure up. This product is put out by a British Columbia company called Flora which did its best to cover up Elaine Alexander's cancer by rushing a letter to its customers and friends obscuring the illness that caused her death. The true story finally broke in the press a couple of weeks later -- a remarkably long delay for a person with such a high public profile.
I don't question that FlorEssence is a good herbal product -- it just isn't Rene Caisse's formulation as the company's promotion continues to imply. So in 1993, I did what many others have done and went the do-it yourself route. I picked up the four herbs at the health food store and boiled them up a la Glum's instructions. I drank that for a few months until early in 1994 when I spotted the first ad from Essiac® International.
I immediately called the company and spoke with David Dobbie, a research scientist who had taken over the reins from Resperin and was making Essiac® available as a shelf product with no therapeutic claims whatsoever.
One of my first questions to him was: "What's the big difference between your product and what I'm making up on my own." "Ingredients and ratios", he said. "You have no idea what you are getting. The correct ratios are definitely important and we are the only people with the proportions specified directly by Rene Caisse." He explained that there are no standards or regulations in herbal agriculture and marketing in North America so one has no idea how old the stuff is, whether its organically grown or not or indeed if the herbs are really what the label says they are. Sheep sorrel is a case in point.
This is a critical ingredient and Mr. Dobbie said it is expensive and difficult to source in commercial quantities. So substitutes such as curly dock or yellow dock are widely used. He said all Essiac® ingredients are grown in Europe -- mainly Switzerland and Germany -- where herbs have been grown for generations and standards, which are closely adhered to, are the most stringent in the world.
"Even so, we don't take any chances and do microbiological assays to confirm the identity of the herbs and their quality and to check for herbicides, pesticides and other contaminants," Mr. Dobbie said. Harvesting times are also important. For example Indian rhubarb root must be six years old, while burdock root must be from first year plants.I have been able to confirm that Mr. Dobbie's information about sheep sorrel is accurate. An Ottawa resident bought what she thought was sheep sorrel in dried form from a herbal retailer. She showed it to a herbally-wise friend who found that it was a substitute. It had large reddish triangular seed pods holding a single triangular seed that was much larger than sheep sorrel seeds. The stems were larger than the sheep sorrel plant and it failed the taste test as well --" no distinctive tang".
She complained to the store owner and he said it came from one of Canada's largest and most reputable herbal wholesalers. So this substitute is being sold as sheep sorrel in a lot of stores in Canada. The same problem exists in the United States. I became involved in promoting and distributing Essiac® as a means of getting it for myself and others because retailers were very slow to stock it. Indeed, some were downright hostile towards Essiac®, considering it an interloper on FlorEssence's turf.
From my experience with Essiac® over the past number of years, the bottom line is that I continue to be convinced that David Dobbie is providing a superior product that faithfully duplicates the decoction Rene Caisse used in her work. I don't have that confidence in any of the knockoffs. "
Return to Home Page and learn more about Essiac
Disclaimer: All information provided is not to be used to replace any proper Medical Advise and/or Prescription. All products are not to be used to replace any medication or treatment. All Information and Products are to be used in the context of Scientific/Medical study. Please conform to this Legality.