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Banish Psoriasis for Good

A review of the eBook, Banish Psoriasis for Good, by Katy Roberts. Whether the advice in the book can banish psoriasis is open to question, but it will definitely banish money from your wallet.

I bought this book so you don’t have to. Seriously, that’s how bad this “eBook,” Banish Psoriasis for Good, by Katy Roberts, is. When writing a review, one is supposed to find something good to say about the subject, but honestly, there’s nothing here. It is consistently and completely bad, and I’m not just talking about the numerous spelling and grammar errors.

At only 35 pages, it’s more of a pamphlet than a book, and it would have been even shorter had it not been for all the double-spacing (and even triple-spacing!). To make matters worse, most of it is available for free, elsewhere. The first sections consist of general information about psoriasis and autoimmune diseases, and then one is treated to a copy of what appears to be an older verion of much of the text of the Banish Psoriasis homepage itself. It is only on page 20 that the author begins to discuss the allegedly secret method for “banishing” psoriasis.

To compound the error of providing free information at a cost, most of the eBook is plagiarized from the free resources. At least 55% of the text is copied, with perhaps a word or two changed here or there (for example, changing “lupus” to “psoriasis” while discussing autoimmune diseases), with no attribution to original sources. The general psoriasis and immune disease information is at least 80% copied. And what isn’t copied is largely wrong.

I first noticed the plagiarism when reading the descriptions of some of the suggested products. I thought to myself, this sounds like ad copy. Doing Google searches for a few choice phrases proved that my suspicions were correct, so I decided to go through almost the whole book. While I expected the medical disclaimer to be boilerplate text, copied a zillion times over the years, I didn’t expect to find so much of the rest of the eBook copied. A list of sources can be found at the bottom of this page (and I can’t say it is complete).

One can reliably identify the original text within Banish Psoriasis by the presence of spelling, punctuation and/or grammatical errors along with more of a first-person voice which happens to use ten-cent words in ways that may or may not be completely wrong. The idea that all autoimmune diseases probably have a single common cause is particularly ludicrous.

What’s the Secret?

The Web site mentions a “secret technique” that keeps psoriasis away forever, but the eBook itself doesn’t contain the word “secret” at all, nor any hint that any particular thing it discusses about treatment is the secret mentioned on the site. The site also mentions a three-step remedy, but the three steps in the eBook are just arbitrary divisions, without any step-like instructions (nothing like “do step one for two weeks, then step two for a month,” etc.).

The author suggests that a person use all of the following things:


The author offers possible sources for some of these things, along with some dosage information that is completely worthless unless you buy the same brand and have the same symptom levels as the author. As the eBook’s own disclaimer states (in not the same words), it is ridiculous to think that anyone reading this stuff will experience the same remissions as the author, especially when the treatment regimen is as vague as it is.

The author also suggests positive affirmations (and asserts that subliminal messaging really works) and urges everyone to go out and buy self-help CDs and tapes (so 1980s!). And the occassional detoxifying juice fast (or detox tea), even though the Web site practically screams “no dangerous diets” (and just what toxins are being eliminated, anyway?).

Interestingly, the overnight miracle mentioned on the Web site is nothing more than a combination of Willard Water and olive leaf extract under occlusion with plastic cling film. The author appears to be completely unaware that occlusion alone can bring about impressive results, at least temporarily, saying she did it to avoid making a mess of her sheets.

So it is important to note that I am not saying that none of this stuff can work to treat psoriasis. In fact, there is a growing body of real medical research on Omega-3 fatty acids (not so much for the other things) as anti-inflammatories, which is how steroids work against psoriasis.

What I am saying, in no uncertain terms, is that the advice given in the eBook isn’t worth the paper that you might print it out on. If this is the result of years of research, then the author must be the worst researcher I have ever encountered.

Really, there is nothing in the book that’s secret or even new and interesting. Anti-psoriasis claims have been made for all of the specified products for years. The idea that putting a bunch of wildly speculative claims together in an eBook rife with plagiarism is worth thirty bucks is insane.

Who is Katy Roberts?

Who puts a photo of themselves on the Web and names the file “pretty_middle_aged_woman.jpg?” Nobody who cares about whose face is in the photo, that’s who. And it seems that the person who created the Web site for Banish Psoriasis doesn’t care, because that same photo appears on another Web site advertising an eBook called Banish Shingles for Good, and the photo is alleged to be of a person named Andrea Mathews, instead of Katy Roberts.

Kevin Brown registered the banishshinglesforgood.com domain name. While the registrant of banishpsoriasis.com is hidden, if you click one of the “order now” links, and then click the “Cancel and return to healthalternatives@q.com” link on the PayPal order screen, you’ll get to an uninitialized Web site, purehealthalternatives.com, which was also registered by Kevin Brown.

Note also that if you go to the Psoriasis Outbreaks page on banishpsoriasis.com (see below), the “Back to Main Page” link leads to banishgenitalherpes.com, which was also registered by Kevin Brown.

It might be reasonable to conclude, given the above, that Kevin Brown is Katy Roberts (and Andrea Mathews, and who-knows-how-many other women writing “Banish…” books). Unless Katy Roberts and Andrea Mathews had the same grandmother.

Other problems with the Web site

The eBook is bad enough, but the site which advertises the eBook is worse. It mentions surgery and antibiotic treatments for psoriasis as if they were the standard of care, which does little but show off the author’s massive ignorance of psoriasis and its therapy. It mentions colon cleansing as if it were a normal part of treatment (even “doctor recommended”). And of course it’s full of doctor-bashing, claiming that your doctor won’t tell you what’s in the eBook because he won’t make any money, which is ironic because the author of the eBook won’t tell you what’s in the eBook, either (because he won’t make any money). Really, your doctor won’t suggest this regimen because it appears to be almost completely untested and unrealistic.

Given the rampant plagiarism in the eBook itself, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the main page itself is a copy-and-paste job, with some other disease name switched out for psoriasis and a psoriasis-related sob story added in. Because the plagiarism doesn’t stop at the eBook:

The page titled “Psoriasis Symptoms” (linked at the very bottom of the main page) also mentions surgery as a treatment option, but that’s because the page is actually “Symptoms of Ulcerative Colitis,” by Patsy Hamilton, with every instance of “ulcerative colitis” replaced with the word “psoriasis.” The “Back to Main Page” link takes one to banishpsoriasisforever.com, a parked domain with hidden registration data.

Similarly, “Psoriasis Outbreaks” ludicrously claims that psoriasis is highly contagious and caused by a herpes virus. That page is actually “How to Treat Genital Herpes Naturally,” by John B., with “genital herpes” replaced by “psoriasis.”

Psoriasis patients should find this sort of willful deception to be insulting. The author is counting on you to be lazy and ignorant.

The author is also counting on you to just not think. The statement that $29.95 is a “low introductory price” should set off alarms in everyone’s heads. The eBook is supposed to contain a cure for psoriasis! What, then, are we being introduced to? The eBook is supposed to be it, the end, period. This is not the first book in some “Psoriasis Book Club,” for which we’ll have to shell out more for future purchases.

Besides, Google helpfully identifies another version of the main page which offers the eBook at $19.95, a “one time special discount” (you can only view the page once, the author has put Show Stopper on it). In fact, the $19.95 version claims that $29.95 is “full price,” which would mean that it being a “low introductory price” is just false.

The Guarantee

This part is good. And it works. The Web site offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee, with no questions asked. When I ordered the book, I received an impersonal email from healthalternatives@q.com, thanking me for my purchase and giving me a receipt number. Later, I replied to that email, politely stating that I was not satisfied and asking for my money back. In under two hours, I got an email from PayPal saying that someone named Mary had refunded my $29.95. Not Katy or Kevin (or Andrea, or even Patty, see below). Mary. Mary with the healthalternatives@q.com email address. My, what a tangled web we weave…

(Had I logged into my PayPal account right after I bought the book, I would have learned I had paid this Mary person, and not Katy Roberts. PayPal identifies Mary as the payee, a “verified” name.)

Anyway, I got my refund (no questions asked). So at least that much of the whole Banish Psoriasis site is honest.

Patty’s Psoriasis Blog

Someone allegedly named Patty started (and seemingly abandoned) a blog with the above name, and made a single post to it in January 2009 praising the Banish Psoriasis eBook, but seems to have received a different edition than mine. Patty thinks the eBook “thoroughly explained deficiencies that the majority of psoriasis sufferers suffer from,” but a truly thorough explanation, in my book, doesn’t consist of bald assertions of truth.

Really, Patty’s blog reads like yet another advertisement for the eBook, and not like what a regular person might say even if presented with a cure for a life-long condition. What did Patty have, anyway? I don’t know, but red patches which get “little veins” on them doesn’t sound like any psoriasis that I’m familiar with. And the fact that Patty’s blog is being heavily advertised itself is bizarre, when it’s nothing more than a testimonial for Banish Psoriasis, unless it is part of the marketing for that book.

Don’t listen to Patty. There is absolutely no need for anyone to spend money on this book.

Links

Sources of Banish Psoriasis Content

The information provided here is not medical advice. This is not a self-help web site. Seek professional advice before beginning, ending, or changing treatments for any disease or condition. See the legal info page for more information.

This page created on 20090524, and last modified on 20100517.
Copyright © 2000 by Dave W.

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