November 19, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
GUERNSEY, Channel Islands – David Noakes, chief executive officer of Immuno Biotech, is under fire after being forced to pay $15,200 to his former personal assistant after an employee tribunal found him guilty of sexual discrimination.
While Lucia Pagliarone painted misogynistic picture of Noakes as a man who would only employ beautiful women, accusations she made about legality of her administering injections to the company’s clients without medical training were more damning, in-Pharmatechnologist reported this morning. According to her testimony, Noakes told her if there was a raid by police, she “should say the injectables were a staff product for personal use.”
Immuno Biotech denied that Pagliarone was providing injections. The tribunal found no evidence “her protests about the matter contributed to her dismissal,” in-Pharmatechnologist said. However, in-Pharmatechnologist reported the tribunal found it “worrying” the company failed to investigate. The tribunal said Immuno Biotech was “a company without any documented policies or procedures that an employee could refer to,” in-Pharmatechnologist reported.
Immuno Biotech is the maker of GcMAF (Globulin component Macrophage Activating Factor), a blood product, the company claims is able to treat a range of conditions including cancer, HIV and autism. In February, investigators with the U.K.’s Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency warned people about purchasing the unlicensed GcMAF, labeled as Fist Immune, from the company website. The investigators raised the warning after carrying out an unannounced inspection of a production site in Milton, Cambridgeshire, after the medicines regulator in Guernsey raised concerns in relation to the product, the MHRA said in a statement. The blood plasma used in the making of the product was labeled “not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products,” the agency said.
“It was concluded that the production site does not meet Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards and there are concerns over the sterility of the medicine being produced and the equipment being used. There are concerns that the product may be contaminated. More than 10,000 vials were seized at this site and production of this unlicensed medicine has now ceased,” the agency said.
The U.K. government said the GcMAF product “may pose a significant risk to people’s health.”
“The advice is, do not buy medicines online from an unregistered pharmacy as you don’t know what you are getting, where it came from or if it’s safe to take. The dose could be too high or too low, or the product may be contaminated,” the government said.
During her testimony to the tribunal, Pagliarone said Noakes said he would not hire one candidate because “she is ugly and overweight.”
