ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Tierra Marketing, a dietary supplements distributor raided armed FDA agents last year in a Jonathan Wright-style raid, has defeated the FDA in federal court, but the victory is bittersweet for Tierra owner Rodger Sless.
In late June, a U.S. District Court jury here found Sless not guilty on 11 counts, including the importation and sale of unapproved new drugs and counterfeit drugs. The jury failed to reach agreement on four other counts. The U.S. Prosecutor will not appeal the case.
The court ruling, however, is small solace to Sless. “I’ve been basically been put out of business FDA,” he says, noting that he has lost 70 percent of his business and has huge legal fees to pay. “It’s just a shell of a business.”
In May, Sless filed a civil suit against David Kessler, FDA commissioner, Donna Shalala head of Health and Human Services, and Spencer Morrison, the FDA agent in charge of the April 1993 raid, for loss of business and punitive damages. Morrison also led the raid against the Tahoma Clinic of Jonathan Wright, M.D.
Tierra, based in Albuquerque, was one of the few U.S. distributors of Gerovital (GH3). It supplied the supplement to nearly 400 stores. Though no illnesses have been tied to GH3, developed in Romania in the 1950s to slow the aging process, FDA has long insisted it has potential harmful side effects.
With guns drawn, FDA agents raided Tierra on April 8, 1993, and seized all inventory, computer equipment and records. Sless says he lost between $ 250,000 and $ 300,000 in business.
Sless chose to fight FDA rather than accept an out-of-court settlement and incurred more than $ 100,000 in legal costs along the way. Among his counsel was physician-attorney Nancy Lord, the Libertarian party’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992, who moved to Albuquerque from Atlanta to take the case.
Both Joan Priestly, M.D., executive vice-president for Citizens for Health, and Mary Ruwart, Ph.D., a senior scientist in drug development for the Upjohn Co., a leading pharmaceutical company, testified that GH3 was a pro-vitamin, not a drug.
After the trial, jurors “warmly greeted Sless and his attorneys,” according to the Albuquerque Journal. Jurors “worried that so much a part of our lives is going to be cut out,” said one juror.
“They saw this as a bigger issue than Rodger Sless,” Sless says. “They saw it as an incursion Washington. They saw it as federal people stepping in and saying how New Mexico citizens could choose to live.”
Sless has received all his confiscated material back from FDA, but says he won’t sell any more GH3. “FDA is vindictive when they lose. They’d probably just come after me again. I’ll leave GH3 to the Europeans to distribute.” he says. Tierra is still distributing Premier Labs and Advance Sports Nutrition products.
Donations to the Rodger Sless Legal Defense Fund may be sent to Citizens for Health, P.O. Box 1195, Tacoma, WA, 98401.