The Diet Crimes of Metabolife

The rags-to-riches tale of how an illegal methamphetamine manufacturer became a legal methamphetamine manufacturer.

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Links!

• How the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 Weakened the FDA
• Mad About Metabolife
• Stimulant Propels Diet Empire
• The dangers of the herb ephedra - Harvard Health 
• An Historical Review of Steps and Missteps in the Discovery of Anti-Obesity Drugs 
• Weight Loss the Herbal Way: No All-Natural Silver Bullet
• Over-the-Counter-Strategy - The Washington Post 
• Anxious Pill-Maker Puts ABC Interview on the Web
• A 'Neutral' Comment, a Company's Tough Reaction
• Metabolife Intern., Inc. v. Wornick (S.D. Cal. 1999) 
• Ephedra hearings in the US House of Representatives 
• Expert Panel Finds Flaws In Diet Pill Safety Study
• Letter Urging a Criminal Investigation of Metabolife - Public Citizen 
• Perspective; Regulation of Dietary Drugs Is Long Overdue
• No Limit, for Now, on a Dieting Supplement
• U.S. Bans Dietary Supplement Linked to Number of Deaths

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

Transcript

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[Maintenance phase theme]

Michael: What do you have?

Aubrey: I'm not tagging us in. [Michael laughs]

Michael: I was hoping I could-

Aubrey: What the fuck?

Michael: -just do that and you wouldn't notice.

Aubrey: You thought I wouldn't notice?

Michael: The problem is I literally don't know what Metabolife is. Is it a shake?

Aubrey: No, it's a pill. It's a diet supplement.

Michael: Ah, Okay.

Aubrey: I can't express to our listeners how many weeks of thinking about--

[laughter] 

Michael: Actually, it has been more than a month. I could have Googled at any moment.

[laughter]

Okay, tell me if this is problematic. Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that will help you lose 10 pounds, but you will be grinding your teeth for days.

Aubrey: Honestly, yes.

Michael: Is that the twist of the episode that I spoil it because it's methamphetamine?

Aubrey: I'm Aubrey Gordon.

Michael: I'm Michael Hobbes.

Aubrey: If you'd like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com/maintenancephase. [laughs] Oh, the tiny repeating machine is back. Or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. 

Unison: It's the same audio content.

Aubrey: Yeah. There he is. Michael.

Michael: Aubrey.

Aubrey: Today, we are talking about one of the most popular diet pills of the Y2K era 90s into Y2K. The name of it is the Metabolife 356.

Michael: Wait, are they wrong about the number of days in the year? 

Aubrey: No. That is exactly the thought that I had every time I saw the fucking name, Mike, I was like, “Do you mean 365? Do you mean every day? Do you mean Metabolife every day?”

Michael: Is that because you get nine cheat days? 

[laughter]

They're like, you can't do it 356 days.

Aubrey: No.

Michael:  It's once a month you can just go nuts.

Aubrey: 356 was the number that the lab assigned it when they were formulating it.

Michael: It's the name of the founder John 356.

Aubrey: We are beginning our story in the mid-90s. By this point, the 80s and 90s sort of fitness craze has grown into a massive industry. This is the era of Buns of Steel, of "Stop the insanity!", of Sweatin' to the Oldies. This is also a time when the popularity of MLMs are on the rise.

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Aubrey: At this point, the burgeoning wellness industry is championing supplements and vitamins become much more widely used, they move from a thing that crunchy granola hippies do to a much more mainstream thing. This is when we get Flintstones vitamins and that kind of thing, right?

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Aubrey: And anxieties about weight are on the rise, mostly in an individual way at this point, and in a cosmetic way. So, Michael, I'd like you to imagine this with me. It's 1994. You're watching TGIF, and between an ad for SlimFast and maybe like a Pop It.

Michael: Are those snack bracelets that killed 3,000 children?

Aubrey: Yes. You see this ad?

Michael: "With drug abuse spiraling, the federal government has created special units to combat what they believe could be a more serious problem." It's like soldiers tooling up, getting their gear together.

Aubrey: Yeah, it looks like a scene from Heat.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. "The action is the juice." Okay? They're breaking into a house. They're like SWAT teaming into this giant McMansion.

Aubrey: They're disarming the security system. There's some night vision footage.

Michael: It's all very serious. Very Osama bin Laden.

Male Speaker: "Free Drug Enforcement-- oh."

Male Speaker: Oh, God.

Male Speaker: "Hey, it's only vitamins."

Michael: "What the hell? 

Male Speaker: It's only-- It's only vitamins. 

Michael: “The FDA is conducting raids against natural vitamin users. But vitamins are not drugs. This harassment must stop."

Male Speaker: Vitamin C, you know, like in oranges.

Michael: "Protect your right to use vitamins. Call Congress now." What? Okay, this is a bizarre ad. So, they're breaking into a house, the SWAT team going in, and then it's Mel Gibson.

Aubrey: Jump scare. Gremlin surprise. It's Mel Gibson.

Michael: In the kitchen in a bathrobe, I guess putting vitamins in his water or something, or taking a vitamin and they like “They're arresting him.”

Aubrey: Putting vitamins in his what?

Michael:  Or like whatever. I don't know.

Aubrey: Do you know how vitamins work?

Michael: It's too early for this. My brain is not awake yet.

Aubrey: Listener, it's 10:20 AM.

Michael: All right, all right, all right, all right all right. 

[laughter]

Don't unmask me. 

[laughter]

But it's like they're basically lying to you here and creating a scenario that I assume does not actually exist.

Aubrey: No. Not one single solitary case that I'm aware of, of anyone's house getting broken into for possession of vitamin C.

Michael: Yeah. Vitamin fucking C, which has been on the market for many decades at this point.

Aubrey: This is an ad that is bankrolled by the supplement industry designed to astroturf the idea that supplements are overregulated and that the government is on the precipice of some really perilous overreach, right?

Aubrey: Yeah. There's a little bit of backstory here. In the 80s and early 90s, Congress had considered a number of bills that would have increased FDA oversight and requirements of supplement manufacturers. One of them would have standardized labeling for supplements and would have required ingredient disclosures at a more detailed level.

Michael: Oh, tyranny. That's actual government tyranny.

Aubrey: No one was talking about raids, right? No one was talking about confiscating supplements. No one was talking about charges for possession of supplements. They were talking about a label that tells you what's in it.

Michael: It's so funny, like RFK Jr.'s whole fucking thing is pushing back. It's like the conspiracy of Big Pharma and stuff. But it's like the supplement makers are such fucking scammers, dude.

Aubrey: Yep.

Michael: They don't even have to have fucking vitamins in their vitamins. They can just tell you anything.

Aubrey: Those sort of coordinated lobbying efforts in the industry first really bore fruit with the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.

Michael: DSHEA.

Aubrey: I've been saying DSHEA.

Michael: DSHEA away, as they always say on [Aubrey laughs] [unintelligible [00:06:24] they are talking about drug relations.

Aubrey: The DSHEA recategorized dietary supplements as food instead of drugs.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: So, it was drafted primarily to do one thing: to define dietary supplements and exempt them not only from the FDA's drug approval process, but from an FDA approval process at all. So, supplement makers do not have to prove that an ingredient is safe before taking it to market.

Michael: Love this.

Aubrey: And it meant that the FDA could only restrict a supplement ingredient if it posed a, "significant and unreasonable risk" if used as instructed.

Michael: So, the whole point of the law is give the FDA less power over this.

Aubrey: Yep. It is functionally like almost complete deregulation of the supplement industry. Yeah, you don't know that what they put in there is what they said they put in there. You don't know that it's not contaminated with something like lead. You don't know that it is as potent or as non-potent as they say it is.

Michael: You're just trusting Gwyneth with your long-term health. And Gwyneth is the best-case scenario, honestly.

Aubrey: It was signed into law by President Clinton in October of 1994. DSHEA was co-sponsored by Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, and Orrin Hatch, notorious trash can Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah. One of the longest-serving trash cans in Congress. For both Harkin and Hatch, both the Democrat and the Republican, one of their largest campaign contributors for both of them was previous Maintenance Phase subject and weight loss super MLM, Herbalife.

Michael: Oh, really?

Aubrey: Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Michael: What was the like stated argument for this?

Aubrey: That supplement makers should be able to like do what they need, unencumbered by government incursion.

Michael: It's just like hollow anti-regulation.

Aubrey: Yeah. They should be free to innovate. And it's like general God deregulation shit. And it's like 1994, right? So, we're like coming in hot off of Reagan and H.W. Bush.

Michael: But think about how much less often Mel Gibson is getting raided in his home for having a vitamin supplement in the middle of the night.

Aubrey: This is the other thing that I do want to say about the fucking Mel Gibson ad is that is also indicative of how much fucking money they had. Mel Gibson was arguably the biggest movie star in the world in 1994, and they are hiring him for a TV ad.

Michael: Yeah. That in itself. You should call Congress and be like, “Whatever they want, don't give it to them. These people have too much fucking money.” [laughs]

Aubrey: Listen, sugar tits. Yeah.

[laughter] 

So, this is the environment in which Metabolife goes to market.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: It was a multi-level marketing company that, like Herbalife before it, sold “Herbal weight loss supplements”

Michael: That's always a good sign when you can't buy it at a store or from a normal place. You have to call up somebody and their website doesn't say what they do or what it costs.

Aubrey: That's how you know it works.

Michael: When a friend from high school asks you to sell it.

Aubrey: It was started by Michael Blevins and Michael Ellis, two dudes from the greater San Diego area who had been childhood friends.

Michael: They're not gays, are they? I don't have to be mad at gays.

Aubrey: No, they're not homosexuals.

Michael: Because then I would have to support it, [Aubrey laughs] especially if they were under 5'8".

Aubrey: You just start yelling, representation matters! [laughs]

Michael: Short gay Michaels. I'm sorry.

Aubrey: At the time that the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act passes, Ellis is bouncing around from one job to another. He reportedly worked for a time as a chauffeur, a real estate agent, and a private investigator.

Michael: Oh, no.

[laughter]

Aubrey: Oh, no is correct, Michael.

Michael: I'm just like, red flag, red flag, red flag.

Aubrey: Again, there are two co-founders. There's Michael Ellis and Michael Blevins. Michael Ellis went on to write a book about Metabolife and he also became the face of the company. So, we're going to focus more on him because we've heard more from him. In the book, he writes about a couple of his prior jobs in the 1980s before founding Metabolife. The first is as a police officer for the National City Police Department near San Diego.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: He writes at some length about how competitive the application process was, that there were 300 applicants for three open jobs, and that he made the cut.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: But he also says he just needed the money and that, quote, "A job with a gun sounded interesting."

Michael: Cool. You had me at I wanted a gun. That's it. I want to buy your weight loss supplements. I'm already in.

Aubrey: When he talks about the neighborhoods he policed, it is also not great. He has long passages about how run-down the streets and buildings are. He goes on at length about the scourge of street gangs that are predominantly Latino. On one of those calls to the "Gang banger war zone."

Michael: Nice.

Aubrey: He ends up chasing someone who he says starts threatening to stab him and his partner with a screwdriver.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: Michael Ellis goes on to shoot this person, who collapses and stops moving. According to Ellis, this young man is permanently disabled as a result.

Michael: Is he telling this as like a “I'm a hero” story?

Aubrey: This is his story of being like, this is how I learned being a cop was not for me. But it's very odd that in the book, he only really talks about the impacts on his own emotional state.

Michael: Right, right.

Aubrey: He doesn't really grapple with the life this dude could have lived or the effect on his family or the implications for the community. There's no existential anything. It's like, I shot someone and I felt really bad, and I didn't want to feel bad anymore.

Michael: I can't believe a pathological individualist would go on to sell weight loss supplements.

Aubrey: In 1990, after leaving the police force, Michael Ellis faces drug charges.

Michael: Wait, what?

Aubrey: So, he was charged because he had rented a house for the express purpose of cooking meth in it.

Michael: My meth joke is true.

Aubrey: Your meth joke is so much truer than you realize.

Michael: Wait, he's literally cooking fucking meth. And then he goes on to sell a weight loss pill.

Aubrey: He and Michael Blevins, his future co-founder, rented a house, hired a cook, and attempted to make meth.

Michael: They hired a meth cook?

Aubrey: They hired a meth cook.

Michael: [laughs] You hire a meth cook? Writing the ad on Craigslist? 

Aubrey: It sounds like he was like, neither one of them was very good at being a drug kingpin. [Michael laughs] Ellis rented a house that the owners were trying to put on the market. So, they kept getting things set up to cook meth, and then they'd get a notice from the landlord that like, “Hey, some buyers are coming by,” and-- [crosstalk] 

[laughter]

Michael: You have to put a blanket over the meth lab.

Aubrey: They have to dismiss and put it all away.

Michael: That's like the sitcom version of Breaking Bad. Like, “We got to hide the meth lab again.”

Aubrey: It's just Heisenberg shrugging and looking into the camera like ooh.

Michael: Dude. That's so funny. That he couldn't even cook the meth himself. He had to delegate it. It was such a calculated plan, like I'm going to be a meth kingpin, that he like hired it. It's like opening a bakery or something. Well, now I have to hire some bakers.

Aubrey: To their credit, both Blevins and Ellis turned themselves in and pled out.

Michael: So, the cops eventually found them, and then they were like, “Yes, we did this,” and then got a plea deal.

Aubrey: Again, this is a place where we don't have digitized records of other reporting from the time so much.

Michael: Wait. So, in his book, he says for no reason, he just marched into the police station, said, “Hello, I'm cooking meth.”

Aubrey: He was like, “We had a conversation about it. We decided it was the right thing, and we wanted to be upstanding guys.” And so, we turned ourselves in and was like “That did not happen”.

Michael: No fucking way. No. 

Aubrey: A couple of fucking San Diego dirtbags are turning them in? Like, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Michael: "Excuse me, officer. Excuse me. I stole something yesterday. I just want to let you know that I broke the law so you can punish me."

Aubrey: I cannot tell a lie.

Michael: [laughs] Yeah, he must have gotten caught.

Aubrey: Michael Ellis is sentenced to probation, and Michael Blevins is sentenced to prison as the guy who hired the cook and transported the meth. So, while Michael Blevins is in prison, Michael Ellis starts Metabolife.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: He's like, with my experience in meth, I went into diet supplements.

Aubrey: Yep, correct. So, the story that Michael Ellis tells about this, sort of in the press throughout and in his book, is that he developed Metabolife while his father was undergoing cancer treatment to help him combat fatigue and negative symptoms.

Michael: Does he have any background in chemistry or anything? No, he's like a random guy.

Aubrey: He's a cop, a chauffeur, a PI.

Michael: What does that mean? Like, I developed? How would you even do that as like a random civilian?

Aubrey: He doesn't say. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Aubrey: In 1992, he starts selling it. Initially, he starts marketing it as a bodybuilding supplement at gyms in the sort of Gold's Gym era.

Michael: And it's a weight loss thing or it's a muscle building thing?

Aubrey: Right now, he's saying it's a muscle building thing, but that doesn't work. So he goes, “It's for weight loss.”

Michael: Those are opposite things, which is very funny.

Aubrey: One of them helps you put on weight. The other one helps you takeoff weight. Correct. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Aubrey: The active ingredient is marketed as Ma Huang, a Chinese herbal supplement. That's true.

Michael: That's an actual herb.

Aubrey: That's an actual herb. Metabolife uses Ma Huang as an appetite suppressant, but historically in Chinese medicine, it was used as a cold remedy.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: The historical herbal use of Ma Huang is to make a tea out of the leaves that are not distilled down and crushed into a capsule and all of that kind of shit. Metabolife distributors are telling you to take this every day.

Michael: Right. That's why I take Mucinex every day, to make me feel a little bit healthier.

Aubrey: Right. It would be like if you were like, I'm taking NyQuil every fucking day of my life.

Michael: It's so funny thinking back on this time when you could just say like it's ancient Chinese ingredient, and everybody like, “Ooh.”

Aubrey: That is the entire Herbalife model, right? And the entire Metabolife model. We now have two MLMs that are just like doing the full like ancient Chinese secret fucking bullshit.

Michael: Totally.

Aubrey: Metabolife distributors tell really extraordinary stories about its effectiveness in weight loss. Eating whatever you want, still losing weight, blah, blah, blah.

Michael: Amazing. Wow, I feel incredible.

Aubrey: They also brag, after the passage of DSHEA, they advertise that "We're the only weight loss supplement that's lab tested for safety."

Michael: Oh, what? But also, they can just fucking say that because there's no regulation. They can just fucking lie.

Aubrey: Yes. Correct, correct, correct. And you called it. It's both Ma Huang, 12 milligrams of Ma Huang in a Metabolife caplet, and 40 mg of guarana concentrate. That's caffeine, baby.

Michael: Wait, is it guarana?

Aubrey: So, it's about one espresso shot's worth of caffeine.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: As the business is getting started, as an MLM, Michael Blevins, he who is in prison, starts recruiting distributors in prison.

Michael: Wait, really? Use your networks, baby. Get those Facebook messages out.

Aubrey: I had real conflicted feelings about this. It's an MLM, so it is garbage from top to bottom. They are selling a product that is garbage from top to bottom. And also, famously, the people who make money in an MLM are the first people to get in the door.

Michael: So, in this case, the prisoners got like rich off of it. They're like the first 10 people.

Aubrey: So, I was like, “Is this redistribution of wealth?” [Michael laughs] And I was like, “No, they're recruiting from their fucking networks.” They're fucking over people that they know.

Michael: And the first 10 prisoners might make money, but the next 90 prisoners don't.

Aubrey: Once Metabolife launches as a weight loss supplement and as an MLM in 1995, the business grows really big, really fast. In the first couple of years, its already turning a profit in the millions.

Michael: No way.

Aubrey: In the first two years. In 1999, just four years after the launch, they report $1 billion in sales.

Michael: I guess they just got in early after this law got passed. There's probably like a vacuum that they were able to fill and just making these insane health claims before essentially everybody started doing that. It was a crowded market.

Aubrey: Yes. And it's not the only one using Ma Huang. It's one of the most popular ones, but it's not the only one. There are also brands on the market. You may remember these. I definitely do Xenadrine EFX?

Michael: No.

Aubrey: Hydroxycut.

Michael: I may have even taken that one for a while.

Aubrey: And one called, and I quote, "Herbal Ecstasy."

Michael: It'll make you lick someone else's face, but it's herbal. Wait, I'm looking. I Googled. I want to see their logo-- [crosstalk]

Aubrey: It's bad.

Michael: At this time. Oh, it's so bad. Metabolife, it's like bright yellow, and there's like seven different fonts happening.

Aubrey: There's a little gold seal, red font, and it just says "diet" in big letters.

Michael: Yeah. "Herbal formula to enhance your--" and then it's like the font goes up like 50 sizes and it says "diet." Oh, and "Provide energy **", it is a super small print.

Aubrey: All of these brands also get a big boost in 1997, a big windfall.

Michael: From the release of Entrapment, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery.

Aubrey: Everybody wanted to look like her snaking through those lasers.

Michael: Snake through the lasers.

Aubrey: No, the boost that they get in 1997 is that fen-phen is pulled off the market.

Michael: Oh, right.

Aubrey: So, fen-phen, miracle drug that stopped people's hearts, and a thing that we have done a previous episode on. If you would like to know that story, go back and listen to the fen-phen episode.

Michael: It is a miracle that with a single pill, you can stop your heart. Incredible-- [crosstalk] 

Aubrey: Jesus fucking Christ.

Michael: Humans have been working on that for so long. So amazing.

Aubrey: That winds up being quite a boon to the industry. You've got all these people who were on fen-phen who are really dejected that it's like off the market because it didn't stop their heart. What the fuck? 

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. 

Aubrey: And they're looking for something else. And actually, these things you can get cheaper, and at the gas station, you don't even need to get a doctor involved. You can get it from your neighbor.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: So, these are now some of the biggest sort of like pill makers in the country, right? And they have a bunch of fucking money. So, their ads are all over TV.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: So, we are going to watch a Metabolife ad from 2000.

Michael: Fuck Yes. 

[Video starts]

Male Speaker: You want to buy some Metabolis?

Female Speaker: Is it laboratory tested for safety? 

Male Speaker1: No, but it's cheaper. How about some Metabol?

Male Speaker2: Does it have the same proprietary herbal blend as Metabolife 356? 

Male Speaker1: No, but it's got all the same herbs. 

Male Speaker2: I don't think so.

Male Speaker1: Well, what about a watch? You want to buy a watch? 

Female Speaker: Don't be fooled by imitators. Metabolife is number one for a reason. Laboratory tested for safety and clinically proven for weight loss-- [crosstalk] 

Michael:  It’s an ugly label.

Female Speaker:  Only available through Metabolife retailers and distributors. Call for the location nearest you.

[Video ends here]

Aubrey: So, for the listener, what is happening is that there is a guy wearing a trench coat who opens his trench coat and it's lined with fake bottles of Metabolife.

Michael: He's up late at night meticulously sewing the extra pockets into his trench coat. He's like, “I got to be able to open the flap.”

Aubrey: This drug dealer has dedication. [Michael laughs] Yeah. So, they're doing this weird thing where they're implying that their competitors are A, shady, and B, drugs, and they are not drugs.

Michael: It's so funny for them to complain about fly-by-night counterfeit producers.

Aubrey: Yeah. They're like, “Take it from us, a fucking cop who disabled someone, but also a guy who doesn't cook the meth, but does hire the guy who cooks the meth.”

Michael: Because you just made this up too. You're just like, “You're just as much of a drug dealer as people selling counterfeit Metabolife.”

Aubrey: Well, Michael, the drug dealer plot thickens, because the active ingredient, Ma Huang, is better known in English as Ephedra.

Michael: Wait, what's Ephedra?

Aubrey: Ephedra is the name for the plant. The plant has sub-compounds called alkaloids called ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.

Michael: Oh, that's the meth shit. That's the shit you can't buy without ID anymore.

Aubrey: Yep. Correct.

Michael: Dude. That's the shit. Whenever you're sick, if you get like, what is it called? Mucinex D or some shit, it's full-on crack cocaine. It's like the shit that you have to go to the store and like ask for the thing behind the counter. I did this once because the suggested dose or whatever is two of them. And I was like, “I've never taken this before. I'll take one.” I felt like I could like lift a fucking Volkswagen.

Aubrey: Yes.

Michael: I'm like, “They tell you to take two of these fucking things.”

Aubrey: So, for Americans who bought cold medicine before like the mid-2000s, you will recognize the brand name Sudafed. You can still get it? It's behind the counter.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: It's short for pseudoephedrine. That's what it was. In addition to its Chinese medicine use as a cold remedy, it was also used in the US for the same purposes. Until the 1980s, ephedrine was an over-the-counter cold and allergy medicine.

Michael: I bet it clears out your fucking sinuses. Your heart is beating 300 times a minute.

Aubrey: Yeah. So, ephedrine does in fact constrict your blood vessels and speed up your heart. For people with asthma, that means that it helps reduce the swelling in their airways and can genuinely be helpful for respiratory stuff. But it was ultimately banned by many, many states because of the safety risks and the risk of dependence.

Michael: And it was also the basis for cooking meth, right?

Aubrey: Yes. Pseudoephedrine, as one of the sub-compounds, was absolutely like a key ingredient in cooking meth, which is what ultimately got pseudoephedrine banned.

Michael: That's why you have to show your ID, because you can't just go into the store and buy 300 packets of it, because then they assume you're cooking a shitload of meth. And I believe it's not sold in the EU at all anymore.

Aubrey: There was a high risk of dependence.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: There are major safety risks for selling something over the counter that speeds up your heart. Are you kidding me?

Michael: I only took half the recommended dose. What if you took twice the recommended dose? It felt like you could like really hurt yourself. I was like, “As soon as I took it,” I was like, “Why is this legal?”

Aubrey: You know, we mentioned that this is predominantly used as a respiratory thing in the US in the '80s. I will say that they, honest to God, learned about the weight loss effects of ephedra during asthma research. So, they're doing some research into the effects of ephedrine on asthma, and the researchers are like, “Man, these asthma patients are getting real skinny.”

Michael: They're tripping balls and they're fighting and biting each other all the time. But look how trim they are.

Aubrey: Very svelte, skinny mini. 

Michael: God. 

Aubrey: On the less intense end, ephedrine users can experience jitteriness, anxiety, and insomnia.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: On the more intense end, ephedra does increase your heart rate, it does increase your blood pressure, which in turn can lead to cardiac events, stroke, all kinds of acute, really scary things. And on top of all of that, ephedrine users may even experience hallucinations, seizures, and psychosis.

Michael: Nice.

Aubrey: Also, there are people with ephedra allergies who might experience their throat closing up, hives, like that kind of thing. And on top of all of that, ephedrine, like the methamphetamine that it is then used to make, people can develop a tolerance really quickly to a small amount and they need to up their dose. So, very quickly, in order to get the same effects, people have to take more and more.

Michael: And then you're talking about long-term health and side effects and everything else.

Aubrey: Yes, yes.

Michael: You rebrand this thing that is just a pharmaceutical. You rebrand it as ancient Chinese medicine. And people think they're taking something natural and herbal, but I mean, everything is natural when you think about it.

Aubrey: There are lots of parts of the natural world, not to get all Werner Herzog on it, but like, there are lots of parts of the natural world that are trying to kill you.

Michael: It's all just marketing to be like, “Ooh, it's Ma Huang. It's very natural and ancient.” It sounds like it's just fucking drugs. You're just like taking drugs.

Aubrey: Yes. And the ingredient listed on Metabolife isn't just Ma Huang, it's Ma Huang concentrate.

Michael: [laughs] Right. So, it's just like it's a fucking drug. You're taking Sudafed.

Aubrey: Yeah. You're taking ephedrine.

Michael: Also, didn't you say earlier that Metabolife is Ma Huang and caffeine basically.

Aubrey: Right. So, research found at the time that the combination of ephedra and caffeine marginally increased weight loss over ephedra alone.

Michael: Well, yeah, probably. Fuck. Hell yeah, you're on crack.

Aubrey: But caffeine, like ephedra, also increases your heart rate and your blood pressure. It also increases the likelihood of those side effects and particularly the like vascular and cardiac effects. So, adding caffeine to this is really like pouring lighter fluid on the risk side of it.

Michael: Yeah, totally. And also, this is something that you would want on a warning label of like, this is habit forming. You can fucking overdose on this stuff. I mean, you can overdose on caffeine. Yes. Again, this is the perfect argument for the fucking FDA to regulate this shit.

Aubrey: Michael, leave me with my Panera lemonade in peace.

Michael: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. You could like really hurt yourself.

Aubrey: So, unsurprisingly, knowing all of this, adverse reaction reports started to roll in within just a year or two of Metabolife's launch. Metabolife comes onto the market as a weight loss supplement in 1995. And by 1997, there's this massive wave of adverse reaction reports.

Michael: It's like, I only lost three pounds and I murdered my entire family. [crosstalk] normal.

Aubrey: So, the early adverse reactions that come in show reports of sudden hypertension in people without existing cardiovascular conditions. As with Herbalife before it, a lot of people didn't report their adverse reactions, right? Some assumed that because it was listed as herbal and because Metabolife touted that they were lab tested for safety, that it couldn't hurt them. So, they didn't think to report that. They're just like, “Weird mystery hypertension.” Others assumed that their weight already put them at ill health. So, they blamed their weight and not the medication. Again, Metabolife is launched in 1995. By 1996, multiple states are already proposing full or partial bans on ephedra.

Michael: It's fucking crack. It's crack.

Aubrey: When fen-phen is taken off the market, it's September and just immediately thereafter, ephedra supplements like Metabolife start marketing themselves as, "herbal fen-phen."

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: By November, two months later, the FDA is already issuing official warnings about ephedra use and the dangers of ephedra. Still, the product continues to grow. The business continues to grow. And by 1999, the FDA reports over 1,000 adverse reactions, and 35 of those are deaths.

Michael: Wait, what? People died?

Aubrey: 35 people have died in four years that the FDA is tracking.

Michael: What?

Aubrey: Yes, correct.

Michael: How do we pull fen-phen and we didn't pull this shit? This is fucking crazy.

Aubrey: So, of course, this leads to a wave of lawsuits. There are class action suits from consumers. There are suits from distributors, many of whom are also consumers. But there are also lawsuits from Metabolife.

Michael: Wait, what?

Aubrey: They start suing people.

Michael: Wait, what, who?

Aubrey: So, as these adverse events grow and more states consider bans on ephedra, so too does the negative media coverage as it fucking should. And when these negative news stories crop up, Metabolife often files suit for defamation.

[laughter]

Michael: Again, great sign that you're running a real business. You're selling a useful product [00:30:44].

Aubrey: In his book about Metabolife, Michael Ellis writes about this wave of lawsuits, and his reactions are nutso.

Michael: Send it, send it, send it, send it.

Aubrey: No, I'll send you a quote in a minute. But just as a preview, he has a passage, and he talks about his power combo to prep for depositions.

Michael: Is it like seven Metabolife’s?

Aubrey: It's a bunch of Metabolife pills and dip.

Michael: [laughs] Gross, gross. He's spitting into the cup in a little room.

Aubrey: For our younger listeners, dip is Zyns, but without the teabag.

Michael: So gross, dude.

Aubrey: He does talk in the book about how much dip you can put in your lip without it showing up on camera in the deposition video. [laughs]

Michael: He's doing that with a brown liquid coming out of his mouth.

Aubrey: He talks, he's like, “I would check my lips sometimes and feel if there was like a bump. No, we're good.”

Michael: Also think about how psychotic you would feel if you're on caffeine and like dollar-store meth and fucking tobacco. Your little heart is just like a little shrew. 

Aubrey: Right. I imagine the effects being somewhere on the cocaine spectrum.

Michael: I would not want to give a deposition in that state. Disaster. Someone asks you like, what's your address? And you start talking about your screenplay idea.

Aubrey: So, I just sent you a little passage from the book of him talking about his attorneys and depositions.

Michael: I'm going to add little spitting sounds [spitting sounds] [crosstalk] 

Aubrey: No, don’t please don’t. 

Michael: [laughs] No, he has to do it every couple seconds.

Aubrey: I don't like it.

Michael: He says, "Most of the attorneys I've met in my long string of legal battles fall into one of two categories. Either they work their asses off, or they do the opposite of work their asses off." Oh, he's a good writer. Wow. This is just singing.

[laughter] 

Aubrey: He really paints a picture.

Michael: "The reason they could exist in either of these ways is that they've basically created their own industry. In other words, the legal world is so complex, so convoluted, that you now need an attorney for everything from defending yourself against trumped-up lawsuits to filing paperwork at the office. Lawyers just help you get through the fog, a fog they created. Throw in the fear that gets propagated by the justice system, and you can't help but want to hire a whole team of lawyers. That's the ultimate job security right there." I love how you're also just a dick to your own lawyers. What do I need you for?

Aubrey: Oh, my God. The way he writes about-- he's like, one of my lawyers was real fat. He was real Baby Huey type where you like “Gross.”

Michael: Oh, good stuff wow. Yeah.

Aubrey: But also, he thinks lawyers are grifting.

Michael: Yeah, I know. I know. How dare they? [laughs]

Aubrey: He thinks everyone is grifting all the time. It is a self-justification narrative. Right?

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: I'm just doing what everyone's doing.

Michael: Also, lawyers only have ultimate job security if you're constantly getting sued for people dying. [laughs] 

Aubrey: The reason they have job security is in fact Metabolife.

Michael: Maybe if you sold a product that helps people or adds to their life rather than killing them, maybe you wouldn't have this problem.

Aubrey: All of that legal activity increases media attention, which publicizes some more troubling aspects of ephedra products. There's more and more media from more and more outlets. It is frankly too many to sue.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: Yeah. And that includes this 1999 coverage from the New York Times talking to a researcher who tested ephedra products on the market. That researcher's name is Dr. Gurley.

Michael: Dr. Gurley said, “Most ephedra users who become ill can blame their own stupidity for going well over their recommendations on labels.” But he and his colleagues have tested the potency of a dozen ephedra products and found that the amount of active ingredient in some brands varied by as much as 130%. Most contained less ephedrine than the labels claimed. But Dr. Gurley is still troubled. "As a consumer and a pharmaceutical scientist, it was an eye-opening experience," he said. "You can't trust what's on the label." Yeah, dude, they're varying by as much as 130%. So, you might be getting 10 mg or 23. Yes, that's huge.

Aubrey: Yes.

Michael: Also, the fact that most of them are under what the label claimed is also bad. I mean, like, it's not like people need more ephedrine, but it's like, “Yeah, if you're selling 10 mg of something, it should have fucking 10 mg in it.”

Aubrey: So, by the end of the 90’s, there's a growing number of adverse reactions, a growing number of deaths, a growing list of side effects. It's not just the sort of jitteriness and hypertension stuff. It's cardiac events, it's psychosis. And that is when 20/20 decides to film a piece about ephedra and Metabolife.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: In 1999, 20/20 films 72 minutes of interview with Michael Ellis for this piece. The segment they run is under 15 minutes, and it includes about one minute of Ellis' interview. In the press, Ellis says that the interview felt, "more like a deposition."

Michael: Because you were dipping? Because you had-- [crosstalk] 

Aubrey: [laughs] a diposition.

[laughter] 

Michael: That's what I call [crosstalk] not dipping so much.

Aubrey: So, after the interview, he was like, “Oho, the fix is in. This is going to be a hit piece.” So, Metabolife cooked up a wild strategy.

Michael: You can't say "cooked up" in this episode.

Aubrey: Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Michael: Like, zing.

Aubrey: 20/20 recorded the interview and filmed it. So did Metabolife. This was a relatively common practice at the time. They were afraid that the edit was going to be unfavorable, so they came up with like a pretty wild and innovative solution for 1999 purposes. They decide to upload the uncut interview on a standalone website.

Michael: This has become more common since then. Yeah.

Aubrey: And then they sink $2 million into an ad campaign, buying full-page newspaper ads in the Post and the Times and TV spots, including some TV spots during 20/20.

Michael: That's actually good. Okay.

Aubrey: Being like, “Go to this website and see the full uncut interview.”

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: The website, Michael, is televisioninterview.com.

Michael: What? Dude. Sit on that domain. That domain's probably worth millions.

Aubrey: I should also say Michael Ellis' website, after all of the Metabolife stuff, is like, mjellis1.com.

Michael: [laughs] realmichaelis.com. Yeah. 

Aubrey: When the interview airs, it's focused on Metabolife's claim that it is, "lab tested for safety." As it turns out, and as 20/20 reports, their “Studies have extremely small sample sizes,” they have high dropout rates, and in one case, they couldn't account for the contents of the bottles in what was supposed to be a blinded trial.

Michael: We think we're giving you Metabolife. We're not sure.

Aubrey: These meth cooks can't do anything right. [Michael laughs] Ellis in the book writes about the 20/20 interview, and his account is bananas. The tone is 100% like the fix was in from the beginning.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: The chapter title on this scenario is called "Hindsight is 20/20."

Michael: Got him.

Aubrey: He writes about every aspect of it. He's like, these fuckers are so shady. For example, he talks about, the interviewer from 20/20 is getting in makeup for TV and Ellis is like, “Who's going to do my makeup? Is there somebody to do my makeup?” Interviewer is like, “No.”

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: And Ellis writes, “I get it. I thought, he's Kennedy and I'm Nixon.”

Michael: I know, dude. Or you could sell a product that doesn't kill people. I don't know.

Aubrey: Or you have $1 billion in sales. You could hire a makeup person.

Michael: You get some concealer.

Aubrey: You could do it.

Michael: You go to Sephora.

Aubrey: He also says that a bunch of Metabolife execs came to watch the filming of the interview.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: And that they burst into applause after filming because Ellis was so good and he made the 20/20 interviewer look so bad.

Michael: Why didn't you put that on your TV?

Aubrey: He takes issue with the editing. He's like, “We recorded 72 minutes, and they only aired one minute.” And I was like, “Do you know how editing works?”

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: In the book, he writes, "I guess everything else just made me look too good to air." The entire segment ran for 14 minutes. So, in his head, he thought it was going to be a full hour on Metabolife.

Michael: He thought it was going to be a live interview with you, just like a verbatim interview.

Aubrey: Yeah, a sitting fucking president, like, we are just going to dedicate an hour.

Michael: Although, does he say that it's not true? Like, they made substantive allegations against him about the lab testing and stuff? Because ultimately the interview doesn't really matter if the allegations that they're making are true, then like what is the interview even supposed to fucking say?

Aubrey: It's very funny because there are some press pieces that come out after this where they talked to Michael Ellis, and they're like, “When they said this thing, do you think that was fair?” And he was like, “Oh, sure.” [Michael laughs] And they're like, “What about this thing? When they made this allegation, was that a fair thing to go after?” And he was like, “Well, it's true.”

Michael: He's like, “Yeah, our product is not tested.”

Aubrey: But anyway, “There was one incident that he wrote about where I was like, “Okay, so now he's just lying.” So, I'm going to send you a passage from his book. He's talking about Mr. Diaz in this. That's the interviewer from 2020.

Michael: It says, "Mr. Diaz. We heard the producer say, would you like to meet Mr. Ellis's mother? Diaz turned around to glare at me. “Fuck Mrs. Ellis,” he said. And without another word, he stalked away. In one microscopic instant, my mood changed from triumphant to enraged. It took every ounce of my effort not to chase him down, grab him, and beat the hell out of him. I mean, who in his right mind would say something like that to an old woman, to a man's mother? For me, Diaz's slight was the turning point. The point when I decided that the media had harmed my family for long enough. From that moment on, I would remain on the offensive. I'd had enough of rolling over." When he said "Fuck your mom" to my face. I was like, “That's it. This is a real thing that happened, and I'm super mad about it.” [laughs]

Aubrey: Two things. One, I do not believe that this happened.

Michael: There's no fucking way this happened. No way.

Aubrey: And two, when were you rolling over?

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: When you were suing TV stations for covering your product?

Michael: I've been in situations where someone's like, do you want to meet my friend? Or like, do you want to say hi to my mom? And I like definitely don't want to do that. I'm not going to be like, “Fuck your mom.” Yeah. There's no way. There's no way an actual professional in a setting like this would say "Fuck your mom." There's no way.

Aubrey: The only way that that's coming out of my mouth is if your mom is like Kristi Noem.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Aubrey: So, the 20/20 piece, as it aired, included some interviews with doctors and researchers who had researched Metabolife. One of those doctors worked for Columbia University's hospital, St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital. In the piece, he was asked a factual question, which was, did your research definitively prove that Metabolife was safe? He said, no.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: For Metabolife, that was unacceptable. They hired a private investigator. They dug up some allegations against one of his old supervisors who had been alleged to have doctored research. Metabolife then reached out to 20/20 to pass it along and like “Make sure you were aware,” pretty heavily implying that this doctor was in on the bad acts of his supervisor.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: They also start calling people at the hospital where he works. They say, “Again, we just want to make sure you knew that this guy was mixed up in this shit.” Like, you're fully just trying to get this guy fired.

Michael: And also, for this guy saying like a boilerplate thing. "Did you prove that it's safe?" Any researcher would say no, because there's no way to prove that something is safe.

Aubrey: Right. That is a factual statement. Yeah. Did one single study prove definitively that any substance was perfectly safe? No.

Michael: Any responsible scientist would answer in that way.

Aubrey: So, on top of that, once again, they take out newspaper ads accusing this scientist of working for a competitor, because he had also conducted research separately on SlimFast.

Michael: Oh, what? Well, that's also normal.

Aubrey: So they're like, “He's trying to fix the market for SlimFast. He's just-- [crosstalk] 

Michael: That is like a normal, right? 

Aubrey: So, they're arguing that he's an operative for SlimFast who's trying to undercut Metabolife's success. That's sort of the implication. It wasn't just scientists that they were doing this for. They were hiring PIs on plaintiffs in their lawsuits.

Michael: No way.

Aubrey: And in his book, he alleges that many of them were feigning disability and feigning their reactions. 

Michael: Good stuff. Good [crosstalk]. That’s great. 

Aubrey: They were walking around just fine. They seemed good to me. I saw the pictures blah, blah, blah.

Michael: Oh, my God.

Aubrey: So, as you can tell, there's like trouble in paradise. All of that media attention leads to more government action. The FDA brings Michael Ellis in for questioning about the negative side effects of their products, which they downplay, and about how many adverse reactions the company has heard about through their customer service line. They say it's in the hundreds that diverges sharply from the FDA records, which are over a thousand. There are congressional hearings. Ellis is called to testify, and he invokes his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. So, he shows up, but he doesn't testify. And by 2002, the DOJ launches a criminal investigation into Metabolife.

Michael: Again, why do these companies still exist?

Aubrey: They are trying to determine whether or not executives understood the danger of their product and the risks that it posed to consumers. And by this point, according to FDA records, Metabolife users have reported 95 heart attacks-,

Michael: Oh, wow.

Aubrey: -69 strokes, 70 seizures, 91 cases of high blood pressure, and 81 deaths. And that is what's reported.

Michael: Is that bad? Is that--

Aubrey: 81 deaths. Is that bad? From a diet pill, from an over-the-counter diet pill.

Michael: But how do those people look? But how do they look?

Aubrey: They look amazing.

Michael: Are they like ropey?

Aubrey: Still that same year, the same year that the DOJ criminal investigation launches, the FDA declines to take action on ephedra and says that they're waiting for more studies. While all of this is happening, the IRS is also investigating Michael Ellis for hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax evasion.

Michael: Oh, wow. Yeah, of course. Of course.

Aubrey: So, this comes to a head when the IRS raids one of Ellis' houses, and he depicts them in the book as absolute supervillains. He has different like little pet names. He doesn't know the names of the agents who raid this house. One of them has a battering ram, so he calls him Rammy. And there's another one who, he says “He can smell alcohol on his breath, so he calls him Drunky.”

Michael: That's not even good.

Aubrey: He says that his wife was crying the whole time, which I absolutely believe. “If my house got raided, I would cry and then barf and then cry and then barf and then barf and then cry.” He writes, "When they had finished with the safe room, they searched every other room in the house, beginning with the bedroom where Drunky immediately started rifling through Monica's underwear drawer."

Michael: What?

Aubrey: "Holding each piece up and laughing. 'Ooh,' he would say, 'look at this one. I wonder what it cost.' Laughter. All of this happening right in front of my wife."

Michael: [laughs] It's like the least reliable narrator we've ever had.

Aubrey: One million percent. Where he's like, woo, holding up his wife's underwear. I was like-- If these guys are doing raids, they see that is so much more interesting than underwear.

Michael: Yeah. There's no way. Yeah.

Aubrey: They're not stopping to comment on “This woman has underpants.”

Michael: This woman has a crotch.

Aubrey: He also really leans into how the IRS agents raiding his house were armed. At first, that gave me pause. IRS agents with guns is just a wild fucking image. But then I learned what they found in the raid, which was a hidden safe with a million dollars in it and guns.

Michael: No way.

Aubrey: He again had been previously convicted of a felony, or he pled guilty to a felony. So, he's barred from owning guns.

Michael: Also, a million dollars in cash in the safe is fucking crazy.

Aubrey: Here is his explanation.

Michael: He says, "At the time of my conviction back in 1991, I knew that I could no longer possess firearms. So, I asked a federal agent friend of mine what I should do with the two handguns that I already had. So, I gave my guns to Monica, my girlfriend at the time, explaining to her that I couldn't have access to them no matter what. She promised that she would keep them away from me. And to that end, she bought a safe that only she would know the combination to. She put several things in there with the guns, including her paper copy of the safe's combination." Oh, don't put it in the safe. Long story short, for the three or four years leading up to the raid, we couldn't access that safe even if we wanted to.

Aubrey: So, there are a few things to note here. One, he's alleging that everything in the safe was his wife's and that the safe belonged to his wife.

Michael: What about the million in cash? 

Aubrey: Hers, according to him.

Michael: She's frugal. She's very frugal.

Aubrey: He's fully throwing his fucking wife under the bus.

Michael: Although I don't think that's like a useful loophole. Like, you do have access to guns, but they're your wife's. I don't think that like works.

Aubrey: And you bought them. When you know that you can't do that. And you're married, so everything that is hers is also yours my guy, unforged, unforged for you. As part of the fallout from this, they raid Ellis' home. They also raid Blevins' home. Michael Blevins goes back to prison on gun charges. Starts the company with a prison sentence. His exit from the company is also a prison sentence. And Michael Ellis ends up going to prison for lying to the FDA.

Michael: It's actually so weird that he didn't just go to the federal authorities and tell them that he was breaking the law, [Aubrey laughs] because that's what he usually does.

Aubrey: So, once again, as before, Michael Ellis pled guilty. He was sentenced to six months in federal prison and a $20,000 fine.

Michael: Wait, what?

Aubrey: Six months and a $20,000 fine for a guy whose company made $1 billion in one year.

Michael: But that's the thing of convicting people for lying to the FDA or whatever, when it's like the product that he sells is trash. Because the actual problem here is basically this previous law. That means that they don't have to label anything.

Aubrey: Correct.

Michael: They are operating within the law, but the law is fucking bad.

Aubrey: Yes, agree.

Michael: Also, he dips. I feel like go to jail. Just go to jail for dipping.

Aubrey: Go to jail just for the dip. Just for your fucking [unintelligible 00:49:40].

Michael: Anytime you have it. If I catch you with it, you're going to jail.

Aubrey: It also turns out, through this sort of increased government oversight period, that the company was falsifying its taxes, cooking its books, and concealing over $93 million in four years.

Michael: Whoa. Okay.

Aubrey: Their accountant, Michael Compton, admits to federal authorities that he did cook the books at the behest of company executives.

Michael: No way.

Aubrey: And when the story broke about the company's tax evasion, Compton died by suicide.

Michael: No way.

Aubrey: Michael Ellis writes about this in his book. And he goes, “It's a real shame.” And that's it. 

Michael: That’s it, okay.

Aubrey: Again, it's not unlike the shooting when he's at the police force, where you're like-[crosstalk] 

Michael: What a bummer.

Aubrey: You don't seem to be grappling with this with any level of depth.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: For hiding $93 million, the company is assessed a $600,000 fine.

Michael: What? Come on, dude.

Aubrey: After Michael Ellis is released from prison, he publishes his book. That's in 2008. I have not told you this whole time what the title of the book is.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: The title of the book is The Metabolife Story: The Rape of Cinderella.

Michael: What?

Aubrey: Yeah.

Michael: Yes. What the fuck does that even mean?

Aubrey: Like, we were a Cinderella story.

Michael: Oh, and they were raped by the IRS 

Aubrey: And our company was raped by the federal government.

Michael: That is rape? no. Oh my god.

Aubrey: It has since, if you look for it now, it's still available as an ebook or whatever.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: It now is called The Metabolife Story: The Rise and Fall of an American Success Story or something like that.

Michael: They're like, “Make it normal, please be fucking normal.” Give it a normal title, dude. Because that title is just like, “Oh, you're a nutcase.”

Aubrey: The final straw for ephedra products comes when there is a high-profile death. So far, there have been many deaths from ephedra products, and there is one from a public figure. So, in 2003, Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler heads to spring training in Florida. Since last season, he has put on some weight. So, he starts taking an ephedra supplement to lose weight during spring training. At 23 years old, Steve Bechler, a professional athlete, collapses and dies.

Michael: 23. Holy shit.

Aubrey: As the reporting comes out about Steve Bechler's death, it comes along with, like that reporting is like, actually, this isn't the only ephedra incident for athletes. Another player for the Orioles who had previously collapsed and been found unconscious then disclosed that he had been taking ephedra supplements at the time.

Michael: That's not even the only incident for the Orioles.

Aubrey: There are also adverse reactions for Korey Stringer from the Minnesota Vikings, Devaughn Darling, a linebacker for Florida State, a college student. The list goes on. There are many, many more. 

Michael:  That is wild.

Aubrey: This is popping up in sports media. So, it's no longer like government accountability reporting, and it's no longer like, "women's media" reporting. It's now getting in front of sports fans who are like, “Hey, wait a minute. What the fuck? Sorry. What? Huh?”

Michael: Wait, how much is the meth that I can go to the store and buy?

Aubrey: Like, there's a big outcry following this death. According to the Nutrition Business Journal, US ephedra sales in 2002 were $1.28 billion. And by 2003, the year that Bechler died in the spring, sales fell to $510 million.

Michael: Okay, 50% hit. More than a 50% hit.

Aubrey: Metabolife is trying to defend themselves. They're trying to like save face a little bit. So, they put up a statement on their website about Bechler's death, and they're like, “He was overweight and he was exercising strenuously in the heat. So don't do that.”

Michael: Everyone who does that dies.

Aubrey: Also do you not think fat people are taking your weight loss product?

Michael: Yeah, no kidding. Exactly.

Aubrey: Do you not think that the people who are taking your weight loss product live in hot climates.

Michael: And are also exercising? They're trying to lose weight.

Aubrey: Steve Bechler dies in the spring of 2003 and in December of that same year, the FDA finally announces a ban of ephedra.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: At the time that it is banned, ephedra represents 5% of sales of dietary supplements in the US. 5% of dietary supplements sold are ephedra, but they are 45% of adverse events linked to any dietary supplement.

Michael: Whoa.

Aubrey: Soon after the FDA banned sale of products containing ephedra, Congress moved to ban pseudoephedrine because of its role in the manufacture of black market meth. It was first introduced in Congress as a standalone bill that had some-- I can't remember the name, but it was like something like the Combating Methamphetamine Act of 2005 or whatever. Ultimately, it passed as a part of the Patriot Act.

Michael: Wait, what?

Aubrey: It was in the fucking Patriot Act. You remember how they dropped it at night and it was like a bajillion pages?

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: This was in the Patriot Act.

Michael: Dude, we should do one of those sleepcasts where we just read federal legislation.

Aubrey: So, today, many nations around the world ban ephedrine. Some also ban ephedra as a whole. The US bans both. And we also track sales of pseudoephedrine and have moved it behind the counter. Metabolife ended up filing for bankruptcy and its non-ephedra assets were sold to a new owner.

Michael: The product is still around, although they wouldn't be ephedra anymore.

Aubrey: Yes, they have reformulated with Dr. Oz favorite, green coffee bean extract.

Michael: Okay, well, at least that's fake and dumb and doesn't do anything. At least it's not scary.

Aubrey: I will say I didn't come to this one thinking that I was telling you a story about money and politics, but here we are. There's no real move today to repeal the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. 

Michael: Of course.

Aubrey: We clearly have bigger fish to fry as a nation, but it is a bad policy that puts consumers at risk, if not with ephedra products anymore, then with all manner of other shit that doesn't have to prove that it's safe before it goes on the fucking market.

Michael: For no upside, for no benefit to anyone.

Aubrey: There are supplements on the market legally that are very, very, very hazardous.

Michael: Or just full-on scams. They're selling you sawdust and you're paying 12 bucks for it or whatever.

Aubrey: Or we don't fucking know and you should know and be able to know before you take a thing.

Michael: It's totally indefensible.

Aubrey: So Metabolife isn't the juggernaut that it once was, but the system that created it remains.

Michael: By which you mean they are still raiding the home of Mel Gibson.

Aubrey:  Sure, sure, sure.

Michael: Simply for putting vitamins in this water.

[music]

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]