Health Canada probes weight-loss company

Slimwell promotes debunked diet using pregnancy-hormone

Sprinkled with inspirational messages, the come-on from Slimwell’s stylish website seems enticing: lose weight partly by injecting a pregnancy hormone that will curb hunger, preserve muscle tissue and let the fat melt away.

Clients can even inject themselves with the prescription medicine at home and never see a doctor, a representative assures by live chat.

“You don’t need to go anywhere,” she says. “We try to keep it convenient.”

What is missing from the Calgary-based company’s site is mention of the fact that human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) has been repeatedly debunked as ineffective in reducing excess pounds, leading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, American obesity doctors and others to warn against its consumption.

If people succeed at shedding weight, experts say, it’s only because of the ultra-low-calorie diet that accompanies the hormone shots.

Now Health Canada is investigating Slimwell — which has clinics in Calgary and Markham, Ont., and promises mail-order service far beyond — for false and misleading advertising of a prescription drug.

Derived from the urine of pregnant women, HCG is mainly approved as a fertility treatment, with the government-endorsed product monograph stating it should not be used in weight loss.

Advertising a drug for a nonapproved application is against the law and Health Canada has demanded “corrective action,” Renelle Briand, a department spokesman, said Friday.

Meanwhile, a cursory Internet search suggests Slimwell is far from alone, with several other clinics across the country providing similar programs, part of a revival that may stem from positive coverage of HCG by television’s controversial Dr. Oz show. Health Canada has taken similar action against four other purveyors of the diet in the last 18 months.

And yet, unlike the FDA, it has not issued a blanket statement against using HCG for obesity.

“Bluntly, the data says it’s useless, and the policies say don’t (use it) — at least in the U.S.,” said Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an Ottawa-based obesity expert.

Dr. David Lau, a University of Calgary endocrinologist and former president of Obesity Canada, said he was shocked to see the company operating in his hometown.

“I’m quite disappointed and amazed that even in my neighbourhood they actually have billboards on the street advertising weightloss injections,” he said. “This is to me totally unscrupulous.”

But Slimwell’s medical director said his company is offering a new form of the diet with added medical supports and diets geared to individual patients. Early evidence gathered by the firm suggests that it does, in fact, help people cut fat but not muscle, and reduces the “perception” of hunger, said Dr. Tony Bruno.

The vast majority of clients lose at least 25 pounds in 40 days, he said, while many have posted glowing testimonials on the Internet.

“Obesity is the greatest silent killer in Canada,” said Bruno. “Our goal is not to mislead the public, our goal is to be cutting-edge leaders in combating obesity.”

The diet was first developed in the 1950s by a British doctor, Dr. Albert Simeons, coupling injections of the hormone with a diet of 500 calories a day.

Simeon’s theory was that the hormone ensures weight loss occurs only from fat tissue, leaving muscle intact, while also curbing appetite.

But a succession of studies found no evidence HCG plays such a role. An oft-cited 1995 “meta-analysis” of previous research concluded HCG “does not bring about weightloss or fat-redistribution, nor does it reduce hunger or induce a feeling of well-being.”

Reviews by the American Society of Bariatric Physicians in 2009 and by South Carolina’s Presbyterian College in 2013 came to similar conclusions.

The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons actually ushered in a regulation in 1987 that said doctors should not prescribe HCG for weight loss.