Those weren’t the only extraordinary claims Dr. Guerrero made. He also “promoted the product as, among other things, an effective treatment, cure, and preventative for cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes, and as a means of achieving substantial weight loss of up to 80 pounds in 8 months,” according to a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission. In addition, the FTC noted, Guerrero and his associates “claimed that Supreme Greens can be taken safely by pregnant women, children—including children as young as one year old—and any person taking any type of medication.”
If anyone cared to look closely, however, there were a couple of problems with Dr. Alejandro Guerrero’s claims. First, he wasn’t a doctor of any kind—not a medical doctor, as he admitted in the infomercial—or a doctor of Oriental medicine, as he claimed to business associates, according to a sworn affidavit. The FTC would eventually bar Guerrero from ever again referring to himself as a doctor. In truth, Guerrero’s degree was a master’s in Chinese medicine from a college in California that no longer exists.
The other problem, of course, was that Alejandro Guerrero’s Supreme Greens was a sham. Total nonsense. Modern-day snake oil. “This is just out and out quackery,” says Barrie Cassileth, a bona-fide PhD in medical sociology and the founder of the Integrative Medicine Service at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who helped the FTC investigate Supreme Greens.
