- Amanda Mary Jewell, a British woman who worked from Ecuador, appeared on Facebook a few months after she was banned.
- Jewell promoted the unlicensed drug GcMAF, claiming without evidence that it can cure conditions such as cancer and autism.
- Facebook previously dismissed her after an investigation by Business Insider, but she came back under an alias and founded a new group that grew to nearly 1,500 members.
- Business Insider stated that her alias – MaryJayne Watts – and Jewell are in fact the same person, although Jewell later denied knowing about Watts.
- In an email exchange in July, Jewell, like Watts, recommended a woman spend more than $ 12,000 on GcMAF to help with severe lung cancer.
- When Facebook was again warned about their activities, Watts’s and the group’s page were deleted.
- In a message to Business Insider, Jewell denied the sale of GcMAF, or breaking the law in any capacity.
- Visit the Business Insider website for more stories.
A woman who used Facebook to advertise an unlicensed drug as a miracle chance made it back to the platform after she was banned.
Amanda Mary Jewell, a British woman who worked from Ecuador, was able to rebuild part of her audience for the substance, called GcMAF, despite previous action against her.
She was removed once again after Business Insider warned Facebook.
Jewell made strange claims about the properties of GcMAF, saying it can cure cancer and autism. In fact, it has no proven medical use, and regulators in the US and UK told Business Insider that people should not use it.
Some people who used it reported painful side effects, according to evidence from a trial of the drug in the UK.
Business Insider wrote about Jewell’s activities in October 2019, at the time she was running a closed group, called GcMAF Oracle, with about 7,000 members, and had a personal account under her real name.
Facebook removed both after Business Insider pointed out that they violated the platform’s policy banning medical misinformation.
In the months that followed, however, Jewell reappeared on Facebook under the alias MaryJayne Watts.
She also ran another group, this time called The Healing Oracle. Before closing, it had at least 1,470 members, and was also used to promote GcMAF, which could cost tens of thousands of dollars.
A screenshot showing the admin page for The Healing Oracle, a Facebook group. The group later grew in size to at least 1,470 members, but has since closed down Facebook.
Facebook
A Business Insider investigation found that Watts and Jewell are the same person. Watts’s profile photo was a picture of Jewell, and her posts described life in Ecuador, where Jewell is based.
A number given to Business Insider for Watts was answered by a woman who identified herself as Jewell. The names of their groups and the content shared in them were also almost identical.
Jewell initially answered questions about the Healing Oracle group and confirmed that she was an administrator before joining.
However, in response to later questions about the Watts alias, Jewell replied, “I do not know Watts’ wife.”
When Business Insider highlighted the Healing Oracle group on Facebook, it deleted the group, as well as the MaryJayne Watts profile.
After the pages went down, an associate, Martin Buckwell, posted from the Watts account that “her return to Facebook is short-lived and her profile has been deleted once again.” His account was later also taken down.
‘Private Chat Email’
While it was live, one post in the Healing Oracle group said, “If anyone is interested in immunotherapy, including GcMAF and medical marijuana, please let us know.”
It was posted by Buckwell, also a manager of the group.
“That’s me,” replied a father in Australia, explaining how his partner’s breast cancer had spread to her lungs.
The man was emailed “Mary” – the alias – for a “private conversation”.
Meanwhile, Jewell made medically dubious claims, seeking to back them up with articles from a website, also called Healing Oracle. Jewell himself has no known medical qualifications.
One said, “Here’s just one example of how GcMAF has cured the rarest of cancers.”
Another said, “It works amazingly well with Autism.” It linked to a post claiming that a boy with severe autism had gained the ability a few days after taking the drugs.
Posts in the Healing Oracle Facebook group claiming to show results from the use of GcMAF.
Facebook
Fiona O’Leary, an autism campaigner in Ireland, said she had flagged the group on Facebook twice before – in May and earlier this month – but the group remained alive.
Bogus medicine is flourishing in a pandemic
O’Leary – who has been campaigning against medical traffic information for years – said groups were growing faster during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many cancer patients have disrupted their regular treatments because health care efforts to fight the coronavirus have led to more people seeking unproven treatments.
O’Leary said: “We’ve seen such a huge increase in pseudoscience over the last six months because of COVID – that’s leaking into cancer in these groups because these people want to hurry up and get better.”
The charity Cancer Research UK said patients may be particularly vulnerable to unproven therapies they read online.
Martin Ledwick, the chief information officer, told Business Insider: “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Emma Dalmayne – another campaigner – misses Jewell under a pseudonym. Dalmayne shared messages with Business Insider including GcMAF price lists, and details on payments and shipping costs for the drug Jewell emailed her.
A course of $ 12,000, made in Bulgaria
In the exchange, Dalmayne posed as a patient with lung cancer. Jewell advised her to buy $ 12,000 worth of GcMAF bottles from a supplier in Bulgaria, to inject over the course of three months.
Jewell said a stage 4 cancer patient would have to buy 36 bottles for a cost of € 290 each (about $ 340). The total cost, according to a price list sent by Jewell Dalmayne, would be € 10,440 or $ 12,300.
A price list received by campaigner Emma Dalmayne, showing the cost in euros of various GcMAF products. The repetition and inconsistencies are part of the original document.
Courtesy of Emma Dalmayne
The emails also include instructions to pay a company called Vigor Life, with details about bank accounts in Smolyan, a Bulgarian ski resort on the Greek-Bulgarian border, where Jewell once ran a hotel.
Business Insider tried to contact Vigor Life but could not find any evidence of a company with that name in Bulgaria.
It is not clear what relationship Jewell has with the suppliers of GcMAF. In her statement to Business Insider, she denied the sale of the drug.
Drug regulators say: Do not use GcMAF
The drug, the full name for which is GC protein-derived macrophage activating factor, is not approved by the UK’s MHRA regulator nor by the FDA in the US.
This means that it is illegal to mark it as a medicine in either country.
“GcMAF products may pose a significant risk to human health and [we] advise people not to use them, ‘said an MHRA spokeswoman.
“In general, a company must first demonstrate that its drug product is safe and effective before it can be on the market,” said Jeremy Kahn, an FDA spokesman.
British businessman David Noakes, the drug’s top profile lawyer, was jailed for 15 months in 2018 for, among other things, producing GcMAF. He is also awaiting trial in France.
The claims against Noakes included marketing the treatment as a cancer “cure”, which raised more than $ 10 million from its sales.
During his trial, the court heard that some of his GcMAF clients complained of side effects, including headaches, nausea, and abdominal pain – with one requiring several trips to the hospital.
Facebook’s response
Business Insider flagged Jewell’s latest account and group on Facebook, along with messages from Buckwell’s account.
Both personal profiles and the group were taken down later.
“We allow the sale of non-medical or pharmaceutical drugs on Facebook,” a company spokesman said.
“We have removed the group and taken action on the accounts that came to our attention,” Facebook added.
On a WhatsApp call, a woman answering a number for MaryJane Watts confirmed that she was Jewell. She denied that the Healing Oracle group belonged to her, but confirmed to be a driver.
They also claimed that they had no knowledge of their personal account of the platform before joining.
In a later message, she wrote: “I do not sell products from any group. Just like I do not want crime in one country.” She later wrote to know that Watts knew, and then stopped responding to Business Insider messages.
Business Insider contacted Buckwell for comment, but has not yet received a response.
