Just posted this on the BT site - so those who visit both will see a duplicate

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Hello all

I must apologise for not having been around for a while, since the summer I more or less went to ground. In reply to this post, I want to share this account with you in the hope of saving unsuspecting souls the grief I experienced in investing in and taking the Esperanza Peptide product. In my determination to make as many people as possible aware of this red herring, this is not the first time I've shared my experience in a forum. However and unfortunately.it has incited some fairly malicious replies. I am half convinced those offering up these diatribes are in the employ of Esperanza Peptide!

I'm sorry it's so long in the tooth, however I tried to provide as much detail as I could in the hope of getting the message across.

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Esperanza in Spanish means hope. Maybe the name alone should have lit a few light bulbs.

I first heard about peptide treatment for MS about a year ago from a friend in South Africa. My initial reaction was ‘why are these treatments always so damned expensive?’ First there was the stem cell treatment by ACT, amongst others, which varied in price from $10,000 to $20,000, depending on how hard you bargained. Now there was the peptide for a mere $10,800. Then I read about Esperanza Peptide in Pathways, saw the testimonials and perhaps, naively so, thought maybe there’s something here after all.

So I rang and spoke with Gerry Gallagher. The first thing I asked him is what happens if it doesn’t work? His reply was and I quote, ‘I’d be very surprised and immediately look to see if there was something wrong with the peptide.’ During this conversation, Mr. Gallagher enthusiastically explained about the peptide, its effect on the nicotinic receptor and how that effect in turn helped enable the transmission of messages from the brain to the various muscle groups in the body. He also spent some time telling me about a chap called ‘Eddie’ who was – in his words, Esperanza’s guinea pig and had been on the peptide for some 20 odd years. Apparently Eddie was a changed man with the peptide; to quote Mr. Gallagher ‘when Eddie used the peptide you wouldn’t know he had MS, when he didn’t he was all over the place’. By the end of the conversation, I was ready to give it a go. More fool me. At no point in this or any other conversation I had with Mr. Gallagher did he stress or indeed even suggest that the peptide was not designed to recover function nor as he is at pains to point out these days, ‘[does it] …necessarily give back function which is a huge bonus’. On the contrary. There was every indication if not outright implication that the peptide would offer an improvement in (MS) symptoms, i.e., there would be a recovery of function.

Based on this conversation and what I had read in Pathways, I decided to go for it. Following this conversation I spoke with my friend Kay and told her everything I had learned. Kay too has MS and was recently diagnosed SPMS. I asked her if she would be interested in going for the treatment with me and she explained that her finances wouldn’t permit it. So knowing the effects this insufferable disease has on a person’s quality of life and believing (as I said before, perhaps foolishly so) that the peptide could somehow give a person their life back, I suggested I would pay for both of us to be treated in Troon.

I confirmed with Gerry Gallagher a date for both Kay and me to go to Troon and asked him if he would provide me with a receipt once the funds had been received via bank transfer. To this day and despite having asked no less than four times, I have never received a receipt for the £10,200 I paid to Esperanza Peptide for the treatment for Kay and myself.

Kay, I and our respective partners set out on 19th June by car for our 1:00pm appointment in Troon. Because planes and me don’t mix terribly well, we opted to drive – an 8 hour drive! Despite our satnav attempting to take us into the back of beyond, we eventually arrived and were seen at the appointed time.

Kay and I were seen together and underwent a host of tests which by now I’m sure you’re familiar with having read about them from others. I must say having sat in a car for eight hours, I was stiff as a board and could readily have used a good dose of WD40. Needless to say, by the time it came to do the tests (standing, balancing, walking) I was a basket case from having sat in one position for so long. It’s pathetic how you can become so exhausted from doing absolutely nothing!

Kay and I did the tests and were duly timed. Now as anybody with MS knows, recovery from stiffness, exhaustion and muscle fatigue is generally found with rest and repositioning. Therefore, when Kay and I first arrived, having sat in the car for 8 hours, we were hot, bothered, stiff and exhausted. The office we were in was terribly warm and we had to ask for some water and the windows to be opened. After resting for a bit whilst we waited for the initial dose of peptide to do its stuff, we were tested again and lo and behold we were both a few seconds faster. Why am I not surprised? If you’re knackered and do a physical test of any sort, you’re going to be crap. Rest for an hour or so and give your muscles a chance to recover, take those same tests again and you’ll do ‘better’ (even if ‘better’ is qualified by a matter of seconds).

Gerry Gallagher and co’s persistence in saying the peptide works based on those few seconds of so-called improvement in speed, coordination, balance, whatever is rubbish. How ‘works’ is defined is another matter. But if you should mention to Mr. Gallagher that the peptide is not working, you will have pointed out to you that it did work – based on those few seconds I mentioned earlier. Can you imagine the medical establishment approving, supporting or prescribing a treatment based on a few seconds symptom improvement? Not likely. The fact is the peptide, or anything else for that matter, works if there is a noticeable and sustained improvement, i.e., a change in function. The fact that Mr. Gallagher is stating something totally different now is perhaps not surprising given the number of people who are coming forward saying the peptide has done bugger all for them – myself included.

However, I digress. Back toTroon. Kay and I finished there about 4pm and headed back home. For myself, I felt no difference in having taken the peptide – not that day nor any day thereafter. In fact if anything, I am worst now than I was before I started the peptide. Kay however, soon began to experience contra-indications; namely, her walking (which was relatively fine with two forearm crutches) became a shuffle. Within 36-40 hours of beginning the peptide treatment, she lost the pain in her back and neck which she had lived with for more than 15 years. However, along with the loss of pain she also lost all feeling in her legs. They became totally leaden and she had to drag them around from moving her hips. In my opinion, that’s quite a serious contraindication.

As for myself, on 24th June I advised Gerry Gallagher there had been absolutely no change/improvement following the peptide treatment. His reply? ‘All bodies and the effects of MS in each body is different’. Thank you Mr. Gallagher, I wouldn’t have known that had you not told me. Interestingly, there was no mention of checking to see if there was something wrong with the peptide. So much for initial statements and assurances.

Some reading this may say I sound bitter. I am. Not bitter perhaps as much as highly annoyed. I don’t like being lied to. When Kay and I were up in Troon I specifically and pointedly asked both David Munchak (the EP doctor who saw us) and Gerry Gallagher if there was anyone who the peptide hadn’t worked for. They both were unequivocal in their answer, no. We now know this is not true. There are many cases coming to the fore now where people are clearly stating they feel they have been misled and ripped off as the peptide has done nothing for them. I am aware there are people for whom the peptide has worked, and for them I am truly pleased. What I have a problem with is not that the peptide works for some and not for others, but that I was told and assured that the peptide worked for everybody. More importantly, the nature of that ‘working’ wasn’t something which happened silently within the body, but rather was that which could and would be felt and noticed by the user. So, don’t spend an hour on the phone with me, singing the peptide’s praises telling me what a difference it will make or look me in the eye and tell me the peptide works for absolutely everyone when you know that not to be the case and then sing a different song when everything goes pear-shaped.

So in effect what I am most annoyed about is this. I was deceived. How? Firstly, I was led to believe that use of the peptide would – not might - restore some degree of function. Certainly I was not told that if it did, that would be a bonus. In short, I was not told then what is being espoused now, namely that the NeuroPeptide in the body is doing what it was intended to do initially (not necessarily give back function which is a huge bonus) but to hold back the ongoing progress of the disease in the body and to halt any new crises.

continued on Part 2 (too much text for one post, had to do it in two)...