Veterans Target Of Mold Lady

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Mon, Aug 31, 2009 09:07 PM

August 27, 2009 issue

Articles

Veterans Target Of Mold Lady

http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-i-2009-08-27-199154.112113_Veterans_Ta\

rget_Of_Mold_Lady.html

by C.

Staff Writerwrite the authorAugust 27, 2009

The woman who thrust herself into the center of the Oak Ridge Elementary School

environmental mystery, terrifying parents, is at it again.

May, a self-proclaimed " mold expert " who drove the news coverage of the

longstanding health problems at Oak Ridge for weeks, trying to get herself hired

as an expert witness and to sell $345 medical tests of questionable validity to

worried Oak Ridge parents, has moved on to another target audience: elderly,

ailing veterans.

On August 11, May appeared on Veterans for Veteran Connection, an internet radio

program, selling the same test kits for Agent Orange exposure. Agent Orange is a

pesticide chemically unrelated to mold and was used as a defoliant during the

Vietnam War.

On the show, May claimed that the test kits are approved by the US State

Department, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Federal Emergency Management

Agency (FEMA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). " We are

approved to do the testing for Agent Orange T-2 toxin for all government

agencies in the US, " she said of her company, Warbler of Illinois. T-2 is a

toxin found in mold and is chemically unrelated to Agent Orange.

All that sounds impressive, but May, as usual, didn't provide anything to back

up either her personal qualifications or the claims she made for the test she is

selling. She said the Warbler of Illinois lab is in Pontiac, Illinois, in a

secret location. On the show, as in Guilford County, she repeatedly turned down

requests to verify her credentials and those of her purported laboratory by

saying they were deep government secrets. When she was operating here, she

refused to provide her resume, the number of the patent she claims to hold on

the urine test, any US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for the

test, or proof of Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) registration

for the claimed laboratory – a registration that is required for labs offering

medical tests in the United States.

May also claimed that the test would benefit Gulf War veterans, World War II

veterans and Korean War veterans. " Same toxin, same test, " she said.

That angered some of the listening veterans, who said May was comparing apples

and oranges and trying to sell a test to as many veterans as possible, whether

or not they were exposed to any chemicals. One veteran said, " I don't think they

had problems with an overgrowth of foliage in the Gulf War. "

May interjected herself into the Oak Ridge debate this June, calling reporters

and parents and identifying herself as " the international mold expert, " " the

international health and safety expert, " a " Department of Defense bioweapon

expert " and claiming connections with OSHA and the EPA. She also claimed to be

an OSHA-certified mold expert, to have written the OSHA regulations governing

mold and chemical contamination in the workplace, and to have secret connections

that could get Oak Ridge parents millions of dollars to build a new school. She

didn't back up any of those claims with evidence.

May made wild health claims that went far beyond any symptoms actually reported

at Oak Ridge, which included headaches, nosebleeds, sore throats and dizziness.

She told parents that mold found at Oak Ridge " basically is AIDS by inhalation, "

and, " You do not expose your child to a room full of cyanide – I'm telling you,

you have a room full of cyanide. " She also told parents to expect funerals.

At the time, a spokeswoman for OSHA said she could find no record of May being

involved in any of the agency's rulemakings, and that OSHA had no certification

for mold experts – so May could not be one.

On the radio show, skeptical veterans grilled May about her qualifications and

the claims she made for the purported urine test, and the president of a

veterans group later said he thinks she's a fake.

" Her laboratory doesn't exist, " said Jim , the president of

California-based Veterans for Change, which lobbies for veterans benefits. " The

test she's trying to sell is only a sterile urine bottle, and you can buy one at

any pharmacy for less than $5. This is the third time since we've founded the

organization that we've found someone trying to scam veterans. If they're doing

harm, we try to stop them. "

May's resume lists a bachelor's degree in nursing from Lakeview College of

Nursing in Illinois. It also lists an OSHA accreditation as an instructor of

construction safety and health, and an OSHA/EPA accreditation as a hazardous

materials site manager. None of those claims, even if true, would qualify her to

sell medical tests or to act as an expert witness in a lawsuit, and May has

provided no example of any lawsuit in which she has acted as an expert witness.

A spokeswoman for OSHA in Washington had already debunked the mold

certification, saying it didn't exist. And Jim , the director of OSHA's

Office of Training and Educational Programs, part of the OSHA Directorate of

Training and Education in the agency's regional office in Arlington Heights,

Illinois, said the other OSHA certifications May has claimed don't exist either.

said, " OSHA does not accredit nor certify individuals. "

The FDA found no listing for May or her company in its approval databases for

biological tests.

" As far as we can tell, we haven't cleared or approved any devices or tests like

that, " said Peper Long, a spokeswoman in the FDA press office. " Nothing that

could make those claims. These tests would need CLIA and FDA approval if they

were going to be sold to the public. If she is marketing it as FDA approved or

FDA cleared, it's not. In general, a medical device isn't legal if it hasn't

been approved by the FDA, and it can't be marketed in the US. "

There is no listing for Warbler of Illinois or May in the FDA's CLIA database.

Myler, a spokeswoman in the Chicago regional office of the US Centers for

Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the CLIA program, said the Warbler of

Illinois lab would have to be registered under CLIA.

" That's correct, " Myler said. " If they're reporting results back to a clinician,

and it evaluates health, it has to be under CLIA. "

Myler said the Warbler test could be a case of " sink testing " – so called in the

medical industry because they are offered by companies that pour the samples

down the sink, then provide whatever test results a person wants, or no results

at all. " It's amazing how many people will send $400 to people on the Internet, "

she said.

There are waivers to the requirements for FDA approval and CLIA registration,

and it is conceivable that the Warbler of Illinois test could fall under one of

those waivers. But such waivers are public, not secret, and May should be able

to provide them if they exist. To date, she has offered neither any approvals

nor any waivers, and in an interview with The Rhino Times in June, she seemed to

know nothing about the FDA and CLIA approval processes.

May's air of secrecy contrasts sharply with the way legitimate testing

laboratories operate – in public. The Warbler of Illinois website lists no

address for the company, and May won't identify the site of the laboratory, the

company's employees, their qualifications or the methodology of the claimed

test.

FDA, OSHA and medical experts asked about testing laboratories said they knew of

no cases in which the location of a laboratory was a secret.

, who said he has worked for a company that held Department of Defense

(DOD) contracts, said he knew of no cases of such secrecy – and if one existed,

he would expect it to be nuclear manufacturing, not urine tests.

" If you're granted a contract, especially with the DOD, there is no language

that demands that any laboratory or manufacturing facility remain secret, " he

said. " It just doesn't happen. "

On the radio show, May claimed veterans have won benefits from the US Department

of Veterans Affairs, but wouldn't say how many such cases there were, or provide

examples, despite repeated questions on that issue from veterans. " I don't keep

track of that, " she said.

On the radio show, as in Guilford County, May claimed that any profits from the

sale of the tests would go to three orders of nuns, which she wouldn't name,

because she said the nuns wanted that kept secret. But Warbler of Illinois is

registered with the Illinois Secretary of State's Office as a for-profit

corporation, and is not on the US Internal Revenue Service list of 501©3 or

501©4 nonprofit groups. It would be unusual for a corporation whose financial

goal was to benefit three orders of nuns to be set up as a for-profit

corporation, subject to normal federal and state taxes.

In Guilford County, May claimed that a long-available cholesterol drug could

cure the symptoms of toxic mold exposure, and on the radio show, she made the

same claim for the same drug for Agent Orange-related illnesses. It's a claim

doctors we've talked to have heard nowhere else.

May claimed to have a patent on the test, but searches of the US Patent and

Trademark Office database found no patents with May listed as the inventor or

assignee of a patent or the legal representative of a patent holder. The

database lists two patents under the name " May, " one by an Oklahoma woman

for a livestock restraining gate and one by a California woman for a face

pillow.

An effort to talk to May about her claims was rebuffed. A call to the phone

number on her business card, which she identified in June as her cell phone

number, and which she answered when she was in Guilford County, was answered by

a woman who certainly sounded like May, who The Rhinoceros Times interviewed for

an hour in June and who spoke at length at public meetings here. The woman acted

as if the phone were an office line.

" She's in a business meeting, " the woman said after learning that the call was

from The Rhino Times. " She can't come to the phone. " Told that her voice seemed

recognizable as May, she hung up.

A few minutes later, a man who identified himself as Chuck Marlow, a " gofer " in

the company, called back, claiming that the woman who answered the phone was

May's sister. He refused to give the company's address or the location of its

lab. " I'm not supposed to give out information, " he said, also hanging up.

In June, May answered questions about her company not with references to

legitimate sources, such as government agencies, physicians or academic studies,

but with references to a strange collection of people she said would vouch for

her, including her attorney, someone she knew in college and a low-level

employee in an Illinois state agency whom she said couldn't talk on the record,

because Illinois has a law making it illegal for government employees to talk to

the press. Illinois has no such law, which would be unconstitutional on its

face.

The mayor of Pontiac, Bob , appeared on the radio show with May and a

group of veterans from Pontiac town hall, saying the town had been working with

May for months to try to get her to locate a lab there. spoke as if the

lab did not yet exist, at least in Pontiac. In a story in the Pontiac Daily

Leader on August 12, was quoted as saying Warbler of Illinois had a

clean bill of health in regard to government contracts, but didn't specify any

contracts the company had.

Contacted later by phone, Pontiac City Administrator Karls angrily

refused to answer any questions about May or Warbler.

" We're still in the preliminary stages with her, " Karls said. " We deal with

companies all the time, and until something is ready to be announced, we don't

discuss those things. "

May was scheduled to go back on the radio show at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, August 25.

Veterans groups were prepared for her this time, and arranged for doctors,

people who had researched May's history and a woman who said that May had

defrauded her of $1,500 in a California workers compensation case to participate

in the show.

May, possibly sensing a backlash, didn't show up to defend herself or her

company.

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