An update on the MDX people, who are running a company that IMO is little more than a scam: I noticed that my main competitor, Jill Heidi Osborne, who styles herself as "President, Interstitial Cystitis Network", is now actively promoting the MDX tests and receiving a lot of money for it. She's even set up a separate website (bladderhealth.org) to push their $200 tests.
Amusingly, Osborne herself took one of these MDX tests but elected
NOT to treat the 3 strains of pathogenic bacteria the tests found because of fear of the side effects of the antibiotics! Yet she urges her readers to take the test, with a financial benefit to her for each test taken. And of course she knows full well that these bacteria are present in most healthy individuals, because like me she reads the latest research and knows that experts in this field state that
the GU tract is not sterile, and she knows that MDX's collection methods skew results.
Seems unethical to you? Me too, but she has a history of unethical behavior, so not surprising. Osborne incurred my wrath several years ago when she tried to shake David Wise down for money, then badmouthed him when he refused (she told me, during one of our phone calls, that she'd called Wise and asked him for a commission for each patient she referred to him, but he refused, and ever since then she's had her knife out for him, criticizing him on her forums to make sure her members do not go to him). She runs a protection racket over at IC Network — "pay me, or I'll kill your business"
Osborne, a never-married 65-year old who still lives with her parents in their Santa Rosa CA house, and spends all her spare time playing online computer games, has turned her little website into a very lucrative business, according to Dun and Bradstreet (income in the hundreds of thousands of dollars).
That's hundreds of times more revenue than this website survives on! Because I am not prepared to sell my soul, this website has a trivial revenue. I regularly consider shutting this site down because of the lack of revenue. The main sponsor, a
Quercetin supplier, recently stopped its sponsorship due to Covid-19 and the increasing range of lookalike products, which led to shrinking profits. The site has no revenue at all now, other than the membership signups, which cover only hosting and administrative fees. Running this site is basically unpaid labor. I said to my wife yesterday that I'm having one of those episodes where I seriously consider folding my tent and leaving the field to the sharks and scammers.
Osborne has all sorts of revenue streams now, as you can see at jhosborne.com, some of which are:
- Mail order supplements, vitamins, drinks and foodstuffs
- Book sales
- Annual membership fees for her quarterly magazine
- Private coaching sessions with patients that cost $100/h
- A $2.69 smartphone app that lists foods to avoid
- Google ads on every page (ugh!)
It's a big business for her. Patients are the customers, the revenue source. Helping them actually
recover is not really the point.
The ICN extracts money from its readers in numerous ways that we have strived to avoid. Instead, I give honest, fact-based advice, not platitudes and slogans. I try to get you well and send you on your way, not enmesh you in a confusing, never-ending situation where I can soak you for money.
The longer I stay in this field, the more ugly behavior I encounter.