Hydrated Fullerenes - Shameless Homeopathy Scam

This is the Ukrainian Dr. Grigoriy V. Andrievsky, who on page 132 of one of his many ill-formed works of fullerene propaganda feels the need to "correct" the famous words of Nobel Prize winner A. Szent-Gyorgyi. Who is Dr. Andrievsky? He is an obscure pseudo-scientist in the field of highly profitable homeopathy in the form of an expensive "Water of Life™" drink. Websites set up by an investor (Walter Derzko in this case) give the impression that this miracle water can cure Cancer, Diabetes and Alzheimer. Here is another such website (now a dead link). Dr. Andrievsky likes to argument from authority, and that starts how he presents himself. Look at his beard, moustache, professor glasses, name tag, logo on stylish lab coat, fancy pen and well-worn fullerene "bible". Where have we seen such a poser before?

A spitting image of UFO/sex cult leader "Raël" (Claude Vorilhon), down to the same turtleneck. This is how charlatans impress people. For lack of bona-fide evidence that helps part you from your money, they use hocus-pocus voodoo mumbo-jumbo disguised as bona-fide science (Dr. Andrievsky) or paranormal experiences (Mr. Vorilhon). Did you know that Dr. Grigoriy Andrievsky and his company IPAC lack the funds to purchase, feed and house 18 rats for five, six years? He should have abstained from buying that fancy pen and lab coat, then the world would have been able to see the proof that hydrated fullerenes are a million times superior than C60 in olive oil! These are his words: He claims that his C60FWS at a million times lower concentration attains the same beneficial effect as C60-EVOO. And he wanted us to believe that his lab lacks the money and equipment to do a simple rat longevity study with a 18 rats with his product: "Nevertheless, despite our numerous researches of C₆₀HyFn, we did not have a possibility to conduct test of its influence on life extension of animals. [...] However, at present time the sufficient conditions and finances are not available for us to carry out such works."

Hydrated fullerenes: Half a million dollar per liter

Dr. Andrievsky and his Ukranian sockpuppet "Andey" eschew no opportunity to spam for their trademarked "Water of Life" on web forums such as Longecity. Spammers usually have something to sell: Since the Baathi C60-in-EVOO rat study was published (rats were given 24 oral doses of C60 in extra virgin olive oil and they lived nearly twice as long as the control group), Andrievsky & co have been relentlessly promoting their Hydrated Fullerenes, AKA Fullerene Water Solution, Water of Life™, C60FWS, HyFn, OW, Water-with-hydrated-C60-fullerenes or C60-HyFN. Below a price list of their Water of Life™ mother tincture:

Source: http://www.ipacom.com/index.php/en/production-left/88

Grigoriy V. Andrievsky's company IPAC sells this C60-in-water solution. Their most concentrated Water of Life™ "mother tincture" is called FWS144, which is C60 with a concentration of 144 mg/l dissolved in water. If you would want to run a one-year test of its alleged medical properties on a single human being, you would need about a liter of it. I refer to Andrievsky's "Experiment D" mentioned later in this article. The liquid is sold for $425,- per ml, so a liter costs $425000,-. With close to half a million dollars per liter, this can perhaps be called a bit steep, since 144 mg of C60 costs less than three dollars and the production process of FWS144 is as simple as dissolving some C60 into Toluene, adding water, sonicating it with a small ultrasonic horn and then evaporating the Toluene. The prohibitive price of this product, paired with the patented production procedure poses the problem that noone will be able to verify Dr. Andrievsky's claims unless they enter into some kind of agreement with him first.

Consumer hydrated fullerenes are homeopathy

C60-HyFn in the form it has been approved as - a "food supplement" drink in the Ukraine - is essentially a homeopathic product because it is so extremely diluted that no effect on any organism can reasonably be expected. That we're indeed dealing with Homeopathy has been repeatedly confirmed by Dr. Andrievsky in forums and in his published material, where he strongly implies that he believes in Homeopathy.

Whereas the mother tincture (Andrievsky uses this homeopathic term or its synonym himself, e.g. on page 12 here) is sold for nearly half a million dollars per liter, the consumer of his Water of Life™ pays the equivalent of $6 for a bottle of D5 diluted homeopathically diluted mother tincture. Andrievsky is looking for investors so that soon the whole world will drink this "homeopathic stuff", as he refers to it himself.

1 ml of FWS144 turns into 70 l, which is a 70000-fold dilution, roughly corresponding to a dilution of the "mother solution" of 5X or D5 on the homeopathic scale. To give this rather arbitrary recommendation more credence (why not dilute 100000-fold, is C60HyFn such an exact science already?), the self-declared genius pretends that there is only a specific and narrow tolerance permissible of 70 to 72 liters, as if diluting 73000-fold would lose some potency as opposed to diluting merely 72000-fold. This is not science, these are Magic Numbers.

1 ml of FWS144 contains 144 micrograms of C60, and diluting it to 70 l yields 2 micrograms of C60 per liter, two millionths of a gram - confirmed by IPAC as the correct dose for the consumer and sold as a health-promoting drink in the Ukraine, and Andrievsky publicly and repeatedly claimed that this infitesimally small concentration will cure illness in people, and that he believes in homeopathic effects here and here. I quote: "WRT homoeopathy [sic], my strong opinion is that C60HyFn and its water solutions, are the excellent tool for scientific knowledge about what is the mechanisms of action of homoeopathic [sic] stuffs..." We are indeed talking about homeopathic doses here, and Andrievsky is not even denying it. He also uses the term "mother solution" here on page 12.

There, the "mother tincture" contains 0.26 mg/ml, making the "life water" a solid D5 in homeopathic terms.

The mass of C60 is 720.64 Daltons, 1.2×10^-15 microgram. That means that there are about 1 trillion C60 molecules in a ml of "life water".

This may seem a lot, until you realize that the human body contains approximately 50 trillion cells. So if you'd consume a small glass of "life water", every cell would on average be supplied with just a single buckyball molecule. How insignificant this is becomes clear when you realize that the average cell contains approx. 25 trillion molecules. One C60 molecule per cell is like seventy cents compared to all US foreign debt. Not going to make much of a difference. However, the IPAC site says that one "course" is only 1 ml of D5-diluted "life water", translating to roughly one C60 molecule per at best 50 cells, comparing as a bit more than a cent to the entire US debt.

More homeopathic mumbo-jumbo:

"Before use, it is recommended to store this final water solution with C60HyFn for 3-4 weeks, storing it in dark conditions at temperatures of 3-15 °C. As a rule, the longer this "fullerene water" is stored, the better its properties will be, (anologous to aging high-quality and expensive cognac)."

They also use the term "wise antioxidants".

We're certainly not unfairly associating Dr. Andrievsky with Homeopathy. Please refer to page 72 in his publication, where he uses Emilio Del Giudice as a prophet for his own claims and findings. Emilio Del Giudice authored a book, entitled "Omeopatia e Bioenergetica". Andrievsky specifically refers to the homeopathic beliefs promulgated by Dr. Del Giudice. We can't help but notice the amateuristic, populistic way Dr. Andrievsky's publications are put together. Many of his usually incoherent sentences end with multiple exclamation marks (page 37 etc.), contain spurious whitespace and are rife with grammatical and syntactical errors as well as typos. He liberally uses all kinds of impressive looking graphs and tables, richly sauced with scientifically irrelevant, but highly suggestive imagery such as surrealistic paintings intended to create an atmosphere of "healing". We are bombarded with literally hundreds of molecular models, absorption spectra, X-ray crystallogrpahy and structural formulas, and nothing whatsoever substantiates anything, really. His publications are not real science - they are sales brochures targeted towards the gullible public with a tendency to believe in unproven remedies, as long as there is a PhD in a white coat endorsing them - in this case, using his own studies as "proof". He not only did all the available research, he also sells the "mother tincture" for half a million dollar per liter, or the homeopathic version of it for a handful of dollars a glass in the Ukraine ($15/l), where the typical salary is a few hundred dollars per month.

The studies with pharmacologically relevant results for hydrated fullerenes have all been done by the same company that sells the product, and they usually pertain to their mother tincture that cost half a million dollar per liter. When they use homeopathically diluted concentrations, they have unremarkable results, esp. in comparison to C60 in olive oil but are hyped by Dr. Andrievsky, with the apparent aim of persuading investors and the market. IPAC's publications are aimed to impress laypeople, not at conveying scientific knowledge.

Andrievsky and IPAC's unproven health claims

1. They imply that healthy people will get healthier, when they drink their homeopathic "Water of Life". From IPAC's about page at http://www.ipacom.com/index.php/en/about-institute: "Earth, Water and People are Life that we are aiming to bring into Harmony. Every inhabitant of the Earth can improve his Life and Health by having touched our products."

2. They imply that their "Water of life can cure disease. Andrievsky's own words: "Really, if people with normal health accept or C60_OO or water solutions of C60HyFn they should not feel any essential changes. Changes will be observed when with health not everything is all right."

These two claims are the surest evidence that we're dealing with a scammer, not a scientist. They sell a homeopathic product. Homeopathy is considered a scam, pseudoscience. On top of that scam, they layered another scam, the fraudulent claim that even healthy people will get healthier when they take their product, and that their product will help cure illness. Hydrated fullerenes as sold by this company is snake oil, plain and simple. The "mother tincture" they sell is ridiculously expensive, prohibitively so. The most likely reason is to give the impression of extreme valuableness to the final consumer, the man in the street who buys their "Water of life" drink.

C60HyFn trials: Mild effects at high doses

The Baathi rat study that used C60 in olive oil showed spectacular liver-protective effects, compared to a similar study done with hydrated fullerenes, where nearly no protective effect was observed. The only mildly interesting study I could find with C60HyFn was Experiment D: Rabbits received a total of 0.4 mg/kg of body weight in two months. When consumed as "life water", the quantity of C60 administered as C60HyFn for a human being would be 28 mg (person weighing 70 kg).

28 mg administered as FWS144 (144 mg C60/l) would require 195 ml of FWS144. In quantities between 100 and 999 ml, it is sold for $425,- per ml, resulting in a 2-month treatment cost of $82875,- dollars. A one-year atherosclerosis treatment would cost $497250,-. This makes hydrated fullerenes completely unsuitable to treat similar health problems in humans, because lipofullerenes have shown comparable or better effects and they cost many orders of magnitude less.

Experiment D was performed by - who could have guessed it - Andrievsky, the same person selling the extremely expensive FWS144 product used in experiment D. But even if we believe the vague claim of "promoted the reversion of atherosclerotic lesions", substantiated by a crude black-and-white rendering of some spots on a blood vessel, it is clear that any health benefits ascribed to the "Water of Life" can only be realized for people with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare. The commercial product sold in the Ukraine, with 2 microgram per liter is a homeopathic scam that rides on these test results, because according to the IPAC website, the recommended concentration for C60HyFn as a dietary supplement is 2 microgram/l. Consumers of their beverage pay good money to get at best one C60 molecule to be shared by 50 of their cells. Anyone who understands basic pharmacology realizes that this is not going to have the slightest effect. Hence, the Ukrainian authorities approved the use of such vanishingly small concentrations as a dietary supplement, because it is obvious to anyone in the decision chain of approval that there can be no effect whatsoever on the human organism. So for the same reasons that homeopathic "medicines" are unrestricted, hydrated fullerene supplements at such low concentrations are also unregulated - because they are homeopathically diluted to the point of irrelevance.

Legitimate questions met with hostility

Another sign that something is rotten in the state of Denmark (or with Andrievsky's "Water of Life") is the way Andrievsky & co react when presented with politely phrased critical questions on a public forum. Instead of answering, they ridicule, slander and insult the person asking the question, accuse the person of trolling and sternly warn not to post anymore. Usually, when people posess valid arguments, they do not need to ressort to such techniques. This was posted in reply to my polite request for more data: "Never see such trolling in this forum )) Some 'seller and scientist of great caliber' cant do a simple math, some put a label 'homeopathy' and this is end of his arguments. Witchhunt ? ))

Noone claimed I was a "scientist of great caliber" - that was a straw man. The accusation of me not being able to do simple math remained unsubstantiated. The poster later deleted the posting, but not after Andrievsky and his cheerleaders threw all kinds of hostililty at me and told me to shut up.

Andrievsky refuses to do a similar rat study

Whereas we write on our sales page that no short-term effects can be expected, the "scientist" Andrievsky refers to some anecdotal reports on the Longecity forum (most likely due to the Placebo effect) as "Invaluable experience". He leaves no opportunity unused to claim that there are beneficial effects, and that they are wholly due to "his" hydrated fullerenes, as opposed to C60 in olive oil (lipofullerene C60). The ironical thing is that Andrievsky has no corresponding research to point to, research that shows that rats live longer on hydrated fullerenes, for example. He say that his lab never had the money to do such research. They did not have the money to buy a dozen lab rats and feed them for half a dozen years, plus a little hydrated fullerenes? Even though they did have money for many other experiments with unremarkable results? Sorry, but this seems a lie to me. I think they have done the research, and there were no positive results. Here are Dr. Andrievsky's own words, saying there was never any money and there still is no money to do a simple rat longevity test with his hydrated fullerenes: "Nevertheless, despite our numerous researches of C₆₀HyFn, we did not have a possibility to conduct test of its influence on life extension of animals. [...] However, at present time the sufficient conditions and finances are not available for us to carry out such works."

Our motives for writing this article

Dr. Andrievsky claims or admits two key things:

1. His product is in essence homeopathic, and he believes in homeopathy

2. His product prevents and cures disease and will make healthy people even healthier

Since we think homeopathy is a scam, and since we think Dr. Andrievsky is a scammer, this article fits well in a series of many other articles exposing scams on owndoc.com, our main site. Exposing scams and scammers in the health- and beauty sector is one of our key activities. However, we hold the principle that it is unethical to attack a competitor for no good reason, so we don't go around writing critical stories about random companies and people we happen to compete with. We make an exception for companies and people who attack us first though. Internet commerce is a dog-eat-dog world and if you don't defend yourself, you'll get eaten alive.

Dr. Andrievsky repeatedly claimed on popular public forums that our anti-aging product, C60 in olive oil (for which we make no health claims whatsoever), only worked because it contains trace elements of his patented and trademarked "Water of Life™". When we replied that so far, in all his 18 years of studies on water-dissolved C60 he published no evidence that his fullerene water could prolong the lives of rats, and that there was such evidence for lipofullerenes (Buckminsterfullerene C60 in extra virgin olive oil), we were bombarded with crude language, insinuations, slander and insults, intended to prevent us asking further questions. When we pressed the matter further, Dr. Andrievsky claimed that his company in all its 18 years of research never had the equipment nor the money to do such research (on a few rats..), and that this was not going to change in the foreseeable future.

We then examined in some detail the fuzzy ball of "stuff" that Andrievsky published about his water-dissolved C60, and it all turned out to be over-inflated semi-scientific fluff with no substance, wrapped in layers of impressive-sounding scientific lingo, "supported" by literally thousands of molecular models, graphs, structural formulas, literature references etc. None of it really makes much sense or is very relevant, and nowhere is there any strong evidence for any of his claims. When it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is usually a duck. We think Dr. Andrievsky uses questionable research (done by himself..) to sell a questionable product. He is free to promulgate his scientific theories, but we are free to state our opinion when someone like him comes along and starts quacking.

Update:

Two and a half years after writing this article, the scammers are trying to interest us in giving them money to "invest" in them:

Dear leaders of Vaughter Wellness.
Let me inform you that here in Ukraine we have the technology, which allows to produce stable fullerene aqueous solution. Already there is the production of bottled fullerene water.

Fullerene water has very positive biological properties and can be used as prophylactic and / or therapeutic substance for a number of diseases.

Also there is water spring, which provides water with very positive natural biological properties. The water is soft (total hardness 1.5 mg-eq / dm3), the optimum content of salts (0,35g / dm3), alkaline (pH = 7.3), and is biologically active, "living water", the structure of which is as close as possible to intracellular water of the human body.

Above mentioned water with or without fullerene could be bottled.

Probably, your company might be interested in placing orders for bottling this water (e. g. under own trade mark and for selling it in the UK).
Also, it could be possible to consider the topic related to the establishing of fullerene water resort(s) in Ukraine (e. g. in Carpathian mountains, near Black sea, near Kyiv, all with opportunities to fish and with other types of additional procedures, like honey bath / sauna) with your company's participation (share) in them.
What do you / your partners think on this?

Hoping for development of relationships I look forward to hearing from you.

With warmest regards from Ukraine and sincerely yours

(Mr.) Valeriy Kolomiyets

Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
Director of Enterprise Europe Network - Ukraine

+ 38 044 278 71 84
Mob. + 38 050 709 32 45

E. kvm-iprg@ucci.org.ua
kolomiets_v@mail.ru