Ben Carson Lied: Video Proof Carson Backed Maker Of Bogus Cancer Pill That Only Makes You Fart

Ben Carson was caught in “one of the most convoluted, nonsensical, bald-faced lies of the entire campaign,” in the words of one journalist, during Wednesday night’s CNBC Republican 2016 Presidential candidate’s debate when he flatly denied his involvement with the multi-level marketing firm Mannatech, which makes a nutritional supplement that has been touted as a cure for cancer, as well as autism and other severe conditions.

As far back as 2007, ABC’s 20/20 investigative news program reported on Mannatech and the science that it claims to be behind its products. One scientist quoted by 20/20 told the program that the ingredients in Mannatech’s main product, Ambrotose — ingredients called “glyconutrients,” which are basically nothing but sugar — are essentially useless.

“It doesn’t really do anything except increase flatulence,” Dr. Hudson Freeze of Burnham Institute for Medical Research told the program.

Mannatech says that it does not claim that its products cure cancer, but 20/20 found that Mannatech sales associates told potential customers that the product was “a miracle cure that could fix a broad range of diseases, from cancer to multiple sclerosis and AIDS.”

Mannatech even used photos on its website of a three-year-old boy who suffered from Tay-Sachs disease — a genetic condition that destroys nerve cells — claiming that the company’s products alleviated the boys condition. The photos stayed on the site until 2004, long after the boy had actually died.

The company paid $7 million to settle a lawsuit by the State of Texas over what Christine Mann of the state’s Health Services department called “a particularly egregious case of false advertising,” according to the conservative political magazine National Review.

“Carson’s interactions with Mannatech, a nutritional-supplement company based in suburban Dallas, date back to 2004, when he was a speaker at the company’s annual conferences, MannaFest and MannaQuest,” National Review found, in a report published in January of 2015. “He also spoke at Mannatech conferences in 2011 and 2013, and spoke about ‘glyconutrients’ in a PBS special as recently as last year.”

The video viewable at the top of this page is an informercial-style interview with Ben Carson, conducted by Mannatech.

And yet, when Carson was asked at the October 28 debate in Boulder, Colorado, about his connections to the shady nutritional firm, he stated, “I didn’t have any involvement with them.”

He went on to slam the question as “total propaganda.”

The CNBC moderators noted that Carson’s picture appeared on the Mannatech website until about one week ago, along with a video in which he backed Mannatech products, but Carson waved off the statement, saying, “They did it without my permission.”

After that the CBNC moderators were not able to pursue the line of questioning due to booing from the audience.

However, the evidence that Ben Carson did indeed have “involvement” with the company, including the above video, remains plentiful and publicly available

Even during the debate, Carson referred to Mannatech supplements as “a good product.”

Below is another video, from 2004, in which Carson claims that his prostate cancer symptoms “went away” after he took Mannatech products.

In 2011, Carson delivered a keynote address at a Mannatech event in which he boasted that Mannatech had contributed a portion of the $2.5 million required for him to receive an endowed chair at Johns Hopkins University. But his campaign now calls that 2011 statement “a legitimate mistake.” Video of Carson’s remarks at the 2011 Mannatech event can be viewed below.

According to a Wall Street Journal article earlier in October, Carson received $42,000 from Mannatech as recently as 2013 for a single speech.

At Wednesday’s debate, despite claiming to have “no involvement” with Mannatech, Ben Carson acknowledged that he “did a couple of speeches for them,” also acknowledging that Mannatech paid him for the speeches.

[Featured Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images]