Defending a Diet Pill

By Daniel Eisenberg

It shouldn't come as a great shock that Michael Ellis is a little testy about the news media. While his weight-loss supplement Metabolife 356 is expected to generate $1 billion in sales this year, critics claim it can have damaging side effects, ranging from nervousness to strokes. To make matters worse, reporters recently discovered that Ellis, a former cop who started Metabolife in 1995, was convicted in 1990--and sentenced to five years' probation--for his small role in a methamphetamine-manufacturing ring.

Until recently, Ellis fought back against the press the old-fashioned way--issuing forceful denials and filing the occasional libel lawsuit. Last week, though, he launched an unprecedented pre-emptive strike. With ABC's 20/20 preparing a segment about his San Diego-based diet empire, Ellis took out a full-page ad in the New York Times and other newspapers, directing readers to a website newsinterview.com where they can see the newsmagazine's full, unedited interview with him, before ABC airs its own snippets.

Ellis claims ABC is preparing an unfairly negative report. "We started giving them medical experts around the country, and they didn't want to interview them," he says. When he was interviewed by correspondent Arnold Diaz, Ellis insisted on making his own videotape. "It was more like a deposition than an interview," says Ellis, who claims ABC is retaliating for a lawsuit he filed against ABC Boston affiliate WCVB, which aired its own critical series on Metabolife in May. "Not only is that false, it's silly," says Eileen Murphy, spokeswoman at ABC, which plans to air the report in the next few weeks. "This is an invasion of our editorial process."

Metabolife claims to help people lose weight by speeding up the body's metabolism, using a combination of caffeine and the herbal stimulant ephedra. While two university studies have endorsed Metabolife's effectiveness for weight loss, scientists say its long-term safety requires further scrutiny. The Food and Drug Administration, which has limited power to regulate herbal remedies, has tried in vain to institute tougher labeling and dosage rules for ephedrine dietary supplements like Metabolife. Ellis and his peers have lobbied heavily to block such oversight, claiming the FDA is basing its concerns on anecdotal evidence.

Journalists, meanwhile, are worried that Metabolife's tactic could set a dangerous precedent, encouraging subjects to air their interviews online or even give them to a rival news organization. "It could put you at a competitive disadvantage," says NBC Dateline executive producer Neal Shapiro, who fears the episode could encourage sloppy journalism, as reporters rush their stories out to avoid being beaten. Some TV news executives are considering whether they should require subjects who tape interviews to sign an agreement not to distribute the material beforehand. And some skeptics wonder about Ellis' commercial motives in the whole episode. Everybody who logs on to his site is, after all, a potential customer.

--By Daniel Eisenberg. With reporting by James Willwerth/San Diego

With reporting by James Willwerth/San Diego