#962: Melonie Montgomery

Melonie Montgomery runs, maintains, and is the founder of Fenestra Research, a woo-laundering company that officially specializes in clinical trials for alternative medicine practitioners and “nutritional” products”. It’s slogan “The World Leader In Clinical Trials” seems to have been recently modified to “The World Leader in Wellness Studies”, but still offers promoters of altmed “a range of services to our clients including: Clinical Trials, Product Formulation, Product Development, Product testing and more. Contact us to see how we can help YOU.” This includes their “Optimal Wellness Test” (OWT), an “Anti-Aging & Wellness Analyzer” that is claimed “to identify and measure 34 clinical markers in human physiology to a very high degree of accuracy, and conclude the level of ‘wellness’ exhibited by individual clients with specific recommendations for improving areas of concern.” According to themselves OWT “is an analytical, mathematically based test that actually measures wellness in every organ and system of the human body to within 0.02% accuracy. What we have established is a simple, reproducible, mathematical based system to determine if a natural product is resulting in your body mover closer to or farther from Wellness parameters. […] The Optimal Wellness Analysis cannot be compared to traditional lab testing devices because nothing available today tests for wellness, they all test for disease. The typical patient in today’s world is becoming more and more aware of the need to treat the cause rather than the symptom, and that is precisely what the Optimal Wellness Test provides, while eliminating all opinion and guess work!”

Precisely. As they pretty much explicitly says, Fenestra doesn’t actually test altmed products in any meaningful sense of “testing”, but for approximately $30,000 you can get some kind of document in support of your product from a company that has “Research” in its name. They have provided “clinical research” for such products as the quantum stirwand and GlaciaNova. The results of the trials have not been published in peer reviewed journals. Accoring to Lisa Tully the “measurement of resistivity, conductivity, surface tension, specific gravity by Optimal Wellness Labs and the calculation for zeta potential and anabolic-catabolic balance provide us with a look at the ability of the nutrients to flow into the cell and the toxins and waste to flow out of the cell,” but that is probably not correct, since it does not even begin to make sense if the words are interpreted in accordance with what they mean.

Montgomery herself is a “healthcare professional with over 15 years of diversified management and marketing experience,” [no dusty postdocs or research PhDs here] and according to her website she is a Master of Holistic Nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health, BBA Human Resource Management from Trinity University Nursing Program, and expects PhD In Holistic Nutrition “in early 2006”. Clayton College is the unaccredited diploma mill from which Gillian McKeith also purchased her degree. It seems to have shut down, however, so it is unclear whether Montgomery ever obtained her “PhD” or not.

Diagnosis: I am not going to accuse anyone of fraud, so I must conclude that Montgomery actually believes she is testing and providing support for the various products she is claiming to test. Which is so breathtaking that it beggars all belief.