The Braincept Story
I found these ads on MSN news pages, but I’m certain they also appear on Facebook.
The two ads are for the same product.
Clicking on one of them brought me here:
As usual, I wound up being asked to watch an interminable video. I decided to watch the whole thing. Its duration was 38 minutes 31 seconds.
It began by saying the cure for Alzheimer’s turns out to be this “honey trick,” that you can carry out using ingredients you probably already have in your own kitchen.
It said Bill Gates is intensely interested in finding the cure for Alzheimer’s, having watched it destroy his father. This proves to be true. What does not seem likely to be true is the video’s claim that Gates has invested $500 million in this one particular alleged cure.
We go on to various deepfakes of Gates, Anderson Cooper, David Muir, and finally Sanjay Gupta, all displaying the insignia of the various networks they’re affiliated with. The Gupta one would be the longest. The visuals went back and forth between his narration, animations of biological processes, and clips of various people either happy or sad, depending on whether, at the moment, Gupta was talking about the relief this product brings, or the horrors of Alzheimer’s itself.
I doubt that such clips would be included in any actual news report, but the emotional strings-pulling in this video was pretty darn intense.
So, we get several different stories about how Alzheimer’s happens. They began by blaming “memory parasites” in the brain. Then they talk about “toxic proteins,” which is more in line with the current understandings. Then they take off on a completely different tack.
They introduce a substantial deepfake of one Dr. Paul Cox. They say he works at Brain Chemistry Laboratories, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They say he went to Guam, which has an exceptionally high rate of Alzheimer’s disease (and ALS Parkinson’s — They’re alleging that this one product, being sold, cures ‘em all.). They say he found out that an industrial plant was polluting all their water with high concentrations of cadmium chloride, and THAT’S what causes these diseases.
No account is given as to how cadmium chloride is supposed to be poisoning us. No allegation that it’s present in our drinking water, or our foods. Note that the original advertisement pointed to problem foods. The video makes no mention of problem foods.
Paul Cox is a real person; Brain Chemistry Laboratories is a real place, and it’s in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; and Dr. Cox did go to Guam, and did find there what he thought were causes and cures for Alzheimer’s. But they have nothing to do with cadmium chloride. To quote from, in my view an overly optimistic article about his discoveries:
“Dr. Cox would eventually discover that cyanobacteria, the same lifeforms that make green algae, produce a natural toxin called BMAA that was seeping into trees on the island. The trees would then grow seeds rich in the toxin — seeds that were eaten by flying fox bats, which in turn were hunted by locals for protein.
“The BMAA was then poisoning the locals and causing, as Dr. Cox put it, deaths from neurodegenerative diseases in ‘every family’ that he spoke to.”
Well, back to the story from our deepfakes.
Deepfake Sanjay proceeds to tell us that the cure for Alzheimer’s is twofold. Says he got this from Dr. Cox. First, one must stop any further damage to the brain cells. The ingredient that does this is sidr honey, which he says can only be found in the Himalayas. Wikipedia says it comes instead from Yemen. Anyway, in the brain, sidr honey encapsulates the cadmium chloride molecules and facilitates their elimination from the body, by normal processes. Note that one is not likely to have sidr honey in one’s kitchen, nor to find it at one’s supermarket. Second, to restore the already-damaged cells, one needs Bacopa Monnieri. This, in short, restores the damaged brain cells. The plant is very common, but you’re not likely to find it in your kitchen or local supermarket, either.
The Wikipedia article about it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacopa_monnieri) says, “In 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned manufacturers of dietary supplement products containing Bacopa Monnieri against making illegal and unproven claims that the herb can treat various diseases.[3][4][5] There is inconclusive evidence of it improving cognitive performance and memory, and its safety and effectiveness remain uncertain.”
But, anyway, our video tells us those are the two ingredients one needs, sidr honey and Bacopa Monnieri. And we’re offering you a product where you can get them both in one place.
It’s called Braincept.
Apparently, it was previously called Neurocept.
The video says it’s not sold in any store or pharmacy; the only place you can get it is through this web page.
The last ten minutes or so of the deepfake Sanjay Gupta presentation get into a really hard sell. These ingredients are hard to source, he says, and supplies of the product are already low; and when the current supplies run out, it’s going to take them six months to obtain the new product, during which time you won’t be able to get any at all. So, you’d better get it now. There are additional incentives for the first 25 persons who respond, and additional incentives for the first eight. And to make sure the product is affordable for anyone, Sanjay Gupta himself, personally, is contributing half the price.
Here is a podcast by someone else who obviously watched the same video; for me personally, it has almost too much sarcasm to be useful:
And here is Sanjay Gupta’s, the REAL Sanjay Gupta’s, own podcast on the subject:
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Postscript: On August 9, I submitted complaints about this to both MSN.com and the Federal Trade Commission, and attached a copy of this post. I never heard back from either of them, but also have never seen an ad for Braincept since.
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