Consumer Health Digest, Issue #25-03

January 19, 2025
  • Two chiropractors and their businesses banned from marketing stem-cell therapy.
  • Quantum 360 Club proprietor Aaron Phypers sued over stem cell offer.
  • Quantum University’s weirdness spotlighted.

Two chiropractors and their businesses banned from marketing stem-cell therapy. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia has banned two chiropractors who founded and operated the Stem Cell Institute of America and several related companies from marketing stem cell therapy in the future. A separate Order requires the defendants to pay a total of $5,155,146, consisting of $1,845,000 in civil penalties and $3,310,146 in refunds to defrauded consumers on Georgia’s state law claims. [Stem Cell Institute co-founders and companies banned from marketing stem cell treatments and ordered to pay more than $5.1 million for refunds and civil penalties. FTC press release, Jan 8, 2025]

The orders resolve a complaint filed jointly by the Federal Trade Commission and the Georgia Attorney General’s Office in 2021 that named as defendants:

  • Steven D. Peyroux and Brent J. Detelich
  • Regenerative Medicine Institute of America, LLC, doing business as Stem Cell Institute of America, LLC (SCIA)
  • Physicians Business Solutions, LLC (PBS)
  • Superior Healthcare, LLC (SHC).

In 2015, Peyroux, a chiropractor, and Detelich, a former chiropractor, co-founded SCIA, a company that trained chiropractors and other healthcare practitioners how to deceptively market unproven stem cell therapy. SCIA showed how to recruit patients through advertising and free “educational seminars,” and taught them how to conduct consultations. SCIA provided its clients access to a “vault” of sample advertisements rife with baseless claims of efficacy, and the appearance of being part of a nationwide SCIA network.

The defendants also used these deceptive materials and “educational seminars” to attract stem cell patients to their own chiropractic clinic, SHC. SHC charged up to $5,000 per stem cell therapy injection, with many patients receiving more than one injection. Consumers who purchased the defendants’ unproven stem cell therapy were almost exclusively elderly or disabled.

Quantum 360 Club proprietor Aaron Phypers sued over stem cell offer. Entertainment Weekly and other celebrity news sources have reported Southern California-based businessman Aaron Phypers (aka Aaron Cameron) was sued on November 13th by Rupert Perry for alleged fraud and breaching an oral contract. Perry seeks general, specific, and punitive damages, plus legal fees. [Stenzel W. Denise Richards’ husband Aaron Phypers accused of fraud in Malibu wellness center lawsuit. Entertainment Weekly, Jan 9, 2024] According to the complaint, which Entertainment Weekly reviewed:

  • Perry’s wife Elina Katsioula-Beall was diagnosed with a sarcoma in 2019.
  • Katsioula-Beall wanted to explore “alternative” treatments after standard treatments were unsuccessful.
  • Around June 2023, Katsioula-Beall met with Phypers, who pitched a stem cell treatment at his Malibu wellness center, Quantum 360 Club (Q360), as having a 98% success rate.
  • Phypers told the couple if the treatment didn’t work, he would reimburse them half the $126,000 cost of the procedures.
  • Phypers arranged multiple rounds of stem cell treatments for Katsioula-Beall that ultimately didn’t work.
  • On three separate occasions, Katsioula-Beall requested the $63,000 reimbursement before she died in May 2024. Phypers ignored all three requests but acknowledged the unpaid sum in a June phone call.

In a 2020 episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Phypers made bizarre claims about the disease process, electromagnetic spectrum frequency, and cancer protecting people from infection to which the immune system doesn’t respond. He said: “I break down stuff so you can all heal you—I don’t heal anybody, by the way. I remove blocks, discord, information.”

The Q360 Club website is no longer working. According to the last archived version of the site from 2024:

Q in Q 360 stands for the Quantum Energy Field. This field is universal. It is the field where we all share an interconnectedness and an inter-relatedness. It is a field that both responds to consciousness and emits a universal field of conscious, informed, and intelligent energy. At the level of mind and spirit, Q 360 uses this field to create balance and health.

The site claimed to help people with “the latest and most advanced frequency devices.” It did not mention stem cell or any specific therapies. The only person mentioned on the site is Aaron Cameron. The “Our Story” page ended:

We continue to research and evaluate the latest cutting edge technologies. Many countries in Europe and Canada have ongoing research into these healing modalities, such as the sounds from Wholetones, Biogeometry, Shungite, aromatherapy, programmed crystals, EMF mitigation and, of course, the Hydrogen Ion Cloud.

FREQUENCY, LIGHT, SOUND AND HYDROGEN TECHNOLOGY

Re-establish homeostasis and balance in your body, mind and spirit

Quantum University’s weirdness spotlighted. Canadian Legislator, Jody Toor, often refers to herself publicly as a medical doctor (M.D.), despite admitting she is not registered with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. Last fall, a complaint was filed with the agency that regulates so-called complementary health professionals, but Toor argued the title was appropriate as she had a degree from something called Quantum University. Science communicator Jonathan Jarry of McGill University’s Office of Science and Society decided to look into the institution and reports that Quantum:

  • is not a university, but a self-described “online ‘institution of higher learning’”
  • states in its catalogthat it is “not accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the United States Secretary of Education,” but “Earning a PhD degree allows you to use the title ‘Dr.’,” which “confirms you as an authority” and qualifies you “to become certified by many respected and prestigious professional associations, organizations, and certification boards”
  • offers “degrees” in natural and integrative medicine
  • offers a bachelor degree in holistic health with a course curriculumoverrun by nonsensical course titles such as “Mastering Singularity,” “The HeartMath Experience,” and “Quantum Physics and Health”
  • does not qualify graduates to practice medicine or perform any act that could be interpreted as such
  • has among its faculty “former scientists who veered away from the guardrails of academia so they could spout crank ideas in an unchecked environment”

Jarry concluded: “Quantum University tries to apply real concepts from quantum mechanics, a theory which helps explain how atoms and their building blocks behave, to medicine and in the process ends up teaching pseudoscientific principles.”

[Jarry J. Quantum University misuses physics to train fake doctors. McGill Office for Science and Society, Jan 3, 2024]

Consumer Health Digest is a free weekly e-mail newsletter edited by William M. London, Ed.D., M.P.H., with help from Stephen Barrett, M.D. It summarizes scientific reports; legislative developments; enforcement actions; other news items; Web site evaluations; recommended and nonrecommended books; research tips; and other information relevant to consumer protection and consumer decision-making. The Digest’s primary focus is on health, but occasionally it includes non-health scams and practical tips. Items posted to this archive may be updated when relevant information becomes available. To subscribe, click here.


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