Obesity guru paid £10,000 to promote ‘fake test’ diet spray Sensaslim
By Jo Mcfarlane
3rd July 2011
A doctor at the forefront of the Government’s anti-obesity drive was paid £10,000 to promote a controversial slimming spray whose makers are being investigated by consumer watchdogs.
Dr Matthew Capehorn, 41, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum, appeared in videos for Australian company SensaSlim.
SensaSlim says its £26 spray helps people lose more than two stone in a year.
But last week Australia’s consumer watchdog froze a SensaSlim bank account amid reports its research on the spray had been fabricated.
Dr Capehorn has now distanced himself from the spray, saying: ‘I’m a little embarrassed, quite frankly. I have been very naive.’
But SensaSlim retaliated
by alleging he had withdrawn because it would not pay him £450,000. He has twice travelled business class to Australia for SensaSlim presentations of their research.
The National Obesity Forum is understood to have considered accepting £250,000 from SensaSlim in return for the company becoming a corporate sponsor.
Dr Capehorn, from Rotherham, called himself SensaSlim’s research director on a YouTube video.
SensaSlim claims 20 years of research into the spray culminated in a clinical trial by the Geneva-based Institut de Recherche Intercontinental that involved nearly 11,500 participants in more than 100 countries.
But the company failed to produce clinical data from the trial, said to have been carried out online.
Australian media claimed pictures on the institute’s website purporting to be staff members turned out to be experts working at the St Paul Lung Clinic, in Minnesota, in the US.
The address given for the owner of the website is the HQ of a separate company that organises conferences.
Dr Capehorn said SensaSlim used video footage of him to promote it without his consent.
He said: ‘I have no idea whether the product works or not. In theory the ingredients have been shown to have an effect on appetite in other studies. But the fact is they have never shown me any clinical data.
‘I saw some research paper but I had never heard of the authors and when I tried to contact the institute in Geneva, I couldn’t track them down.’
He admitted being paid £10,000 but said: ‘I may have been paid but I’m out of pocket now from having to take legal advice and other expenses.’
David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘SensaSlim came to talk to us as potential sponsors but it was all a facade.’
Alexander White, SensaSlim’s UK legal representative, said: ‘Dr Capehorn stated that if he was paid £450,000 he would continue to support our product. If we did not pay him he was withdrawing and blaming the data.’
SensaSlim Australia’s legal adviser Terry Harrison alleged Dr Capehorn had been paid £25,000, plus £670-a-day expenses in a 16-day trip. He denied that watchdogs were looking at whether research was fabricated.
He added that Dr Capehorn had been offered 350,000 pages of data but said he did not have time to read it.
Mr Harrison said that SensaSlim was global and that the Australian arm had ‘no involvement or input’ in the clinical trials but did not doubt their authenticity.
Last night Dr Capehorn was unavailable to answer these allegations, despite repeated attempts to contact him.
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