Mr. Miller, how does GNLD conduct scientific research, and why is it different?

John:  "Well, the company's evolved over the years. When the company started back in 1950's there was a little bit of science and a whole lot of insight. That was basically the foundation of nutritional supplements. It made sense, but there wasn't a whole lot of science to substantiate it at that time. The science grew...and it became apparent to our company's leadership that we needed to grow and stay in front of that wave of new knowledge. So in the mid 1970's, Don Pickett, the founder of Neo-Life, the core company of GNLD, went out and hired Dr. Arthur Furst to be a consultant. This is the first nutritional company that we've known of anywhere in the world that took a scientist of that caliber on staff to help them keep up with science. But, as that happened, science continued to evolve and expand into the '70's and into the '80's...primarily because the NHANES studies...where we had huge epidemiology. All of a sudden we had billions and billions of bits of data .

The scientific arena started to expand very rapidly. By then our competitors were saying "We've got a scientist on staff, too."  But we had already evolved, and we were building the Scientific Advisory Board just to keep up, and that became a group of anywhere from as few as six to as many as nine people who were devoted to collecting information. But, as you know, there's continued to be an explosion - literally an exponential expansion of material that's available to the scientific arena. Plus, our goals and our needs have expanded as well. Now, we need to talk to geneticists...now we need to talk to environmental toxicologists...we need to talk to microbiologists...we need to talk to anthropologists ...and we need to have all these people available because you have to ask so many questions and be aware of so much data to stay at the leading edge. You know, you find in the '90's, and as we turn the decade, a lot of companies coming out and saying "We've got scientific advisory board, too."

We've already evolved to the next level by creating a Global Science Network. The Scientific Advisory Board is at the core; but there are literally hundreds of scientists in dozens of disciplines all over the world hooked up to our network at any given moment.

I'll give you an example: Dr. Carughi is the secretary of a group called Fenwick. Fenwick is the polyphenol research and investigative group. Basically it is 25 of the world 's leading polyphenol researchers - flavonoids and things like that...the top minds in the world. Now, we have for the last several years, been sponsoring that organization. We fund through our scientific budget their newsletter getting published - a big expense. And we host a breakfast when they have their meetings. We do the same with the Carotenoid research group. Because of that, we have got an interaction going on. Dr. Carughi is in touch with those people all the time. They're using our flavonoid extracts in their laboratory research, and we're using their laboratories to do research on our products. They'll come to us with an idea that says: "We want to look at the bio-availability of flavonoids", and they've got this idea. We look at it, and say "That's good!  We'll provide you all of the material and what we'd like to do is to add this little partition to the study."  Now they've got a grant maybe for $200,000 to do a study...and we take another $25-50,000 and expand a partition in there. So we get that sort of information.

We're at the "leading edge" - this is where it's happening!  This is the think tank.  It's where the mistakes are made, but also where the revolutionary breakthroughs - the leaps of knowledge - are made. That's what keeps us at the forefront. You can't do it with six, eight, ten, or even twenty SAB members. It's much too broad an area of research ... much too high in intensity of materials.

So we have this group all over the world that is involved in monitoring this for us. We get regular reports from geneticists who go to genetic meetings and come back and feed us reports...regular reports about what goes on at the FASEB meetings...regular reports about what goes on at International Life Sciences meetings in Europe, and Africa, and Australia--from all of these people that participate in our networks. They feed it back in, they look at it, they read it, and they say "I think this is important. I think this is a good idea. I think we ought to try this." And we get what they think....right fresh off, as close as you can get it to the source.

 Tell us a little about where you get your information, because I get approached all the time with all these marvelous products that have one or two doctors after them, and now they have a whole line of products developed to market.  How is GNLD different?

John:  Well, as you know, anybody who wants to spend some time today can go to the literature and read and find and study and come up with a carrot oil beta-carotene product. Carrot oil's been around for a long time, and there are a lot of scientists out there who will tell you they can put it in those sorts of products. They're for hire, and you can hire them to make those sorts of products, and that's fine. Really, that's something that we were capable of doing back in the mid-80's and just really never felt like it was what we wanted to do, because it didn't represent the state of our knowledge and understanding. And it also didn't reflect what we believed to be the "lifetime nutritional supplement" parameters that we put in place. When we put products together, we assume people might take them for their whole lives, and we look at them on that scale. While they are trying to find the next fad, we are trying to find the next fact, so we can add something that's going to help somebody for the rest of their lives. So there's a lot of companies out there who will throw these formulations together for you.

The approach that we take, and I said it at the meeting today, is that we don't like to just know what scientists know. I mean that's in the books...you can read that...anybody can do that. We like to know what scientists think. And the way we do that (and we've done it for years and continue to this day) is to participate in the scientific frontiers. We have co-sponsored dozens of scientific meetings. We were co-sponsoring meetings about natural anti-oxidants before they could get funding anywhere else. Now every company and their brother will throw money at it to get the association for being involved with the meeting. Ten years ago, GNLD was the only one putting up funds for some of these meetings.The scientists know that, and they respect us...so when we get together with them, we get an open invitation to go to, say, the USDA Research Lab back in Beltsville, Maryland--the new Carotenoid lab back there. We have an open invitation. Dr Carughi can go back there anytime she wants and sit down and talk with them and watch what's going on, and they tell us everything there is to know. The reason is that in the past they have used our technology as their research tools, and now that they've expanded this, they still involve us, because they know we are still at the leading edge. Some of the new things we are doing are absolutely amazing!  We've been looking at the total anti-oxidant potential of Carotenoids, and we have found ways to free more of the total antioxidant potential in carotenoid-rich foods than anybody has ever before. Matter of fact, probably five times better than we do it already, and we're already the leader in that area.

So, it's because of that association...because they trust us...because they respect us...that we have developed a Global Science Network that includes people like researchers at the USDA and Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, the UNESCO group (we're doing a research project with them in South Africa now), plus universities and major scientific minds all over the world...because they know that we are committed...because they know that we do it right...because they've seen us go through the peer review process...because they've seen us do things other companies can only hope to do...and because they've seen our dedication and our commitment to quality. They've seen the results for nearly twenty years. This puts us on the inside track."