I’m not the first person to come across this story about Ben Carson, but the truth about Ben Carson’s ties to the ‘glyconutrient’ Mannatech movement are troubling.

Even if you listen to his entire defense of his ties to the snake oil Mannatech product line, it’s clear he’s been fooled, and I can’t imagine considering anyone promoting this stuff being fit to be President of the United States.

You see, while Ben Carson has been making a name for himself opposing Obamacare, he’s also being a paid spokesperson for Mannatech, which he did from 2004 right up until last year, when it became politically inconvenient for him to continue.

Mannatech is a ‘multi-level marketing’ scam, selling quack supplements as miracle cures. Greg Abbott, then-Attorney General of Texas and himself a hero in standing up to Barack Obama, had to charge the company over its illegal schemes, centering on their claims that their ‘glyconutrient’ products prevent and cure disease.

So where does Ben Carson fit into all of that? Well, he continued to endorse Mannatech for 6 more years after the Texas case, and he himself has been making the kinds of claims that Mannatech was taken to court over. Listen to his own words on Newsmax just this year:

Let me put it this way: Personally, I’ve been taking them for more than a decade and since I’ve been taking them I almost never get sick, and I used to get sick a lot.

Now, Ben Carson is no longer a paid spokesperson for Mannatech, so that’s not an illegal thing for him to be saying. However the fact that he’d push this belief, that Mannatech’s supplements have disease fighting powers, is to be repeating a false claim that conservative champion Greg Abbott – who beat the President’s amnesty fiat – had to sue over.

Yup, he’s a doctor. Smart experts aren’t immune to falling for snake oil schemes. Linus Pauling, one of the most important biochemists of the 20th century, himself late in life fell into a Vitamin C fad. He would promote people taking Vitamin C in levels far beyond that which the body could even absorb, claiming it would have curative effects.

Carson, like Pauling, has fallen for a scheme. We can’t afford to have someone like that be President, any more than we’d support a Scientologist. Ben Carson is unfit to be President.