Loniten: Imminent death
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Not only is it a risk that Sam Cohen of IHRB sells Loniten without a prescription, it is also a problem that he should recommend it at all. A leading medical site says that Loniten tablets are not approved for hair growth. Check out the warnings under Precautions in Point 11: Unapproved use at Drugs.com. Loniten is no child’s play. First, it is not approved for hair. It is a serious drug to treat blood pressure for patients who have no other option. Loniten is the last resort.
Indeed, Loniten is Minoxidil. And although Minoxidil is approved as a topical liquid solution to be placed on the scalp, it is not approved to be taken as a tablet by mouth. This would be like using petrol to remove dirt from your finger, and then deciding to drink the petrol, expecting it to do the same thing. The differences are dire. And so it is with tablets versus a topical (on top of scalp) solution.
Anyway, this article shows how Sam Cohen is dead-set responsible for prescribing Loniten. Sam always says that he has nothing to do with medications. He blames doctors for prescribing medications to his clients. This will not wash, because here we have conclusive evidence that Sam is the brains behind the use of Loniten: a dangerous non-approved drug that could kill people, especially when he sells it without a prescription (despite also selling it with a prescription on occasions).
Sam Cohen encourages the use of Loniten, yet he never warns the clients about the dangers. He never tells clients that they could suffer heart failure within days if they are not suited to Loniten, and if they do not take two other supporting tablets. Drugs.com says that, apart from Loniten needing to be administered under grave warnings, the same warnings used for Loniten must also be given for anyone using regular Minoxidil lotion. Sam never gave me any such warnings. He has sold Loniten and Minoxidil to others without so much as asking about their blood pressure. Experts warn that Minoxidil should never get into our system. Yet, Sam ensures that it does get into our system. First, by adding the non-approved Retin-A which rips the skin open so that the topical Minoxidil does get into the system. Second, by peddling Loniten tablets. Sam sells topical lotions at up to 15% when the approved limit for men only is 5%. So go figure how 15% plus Retin-A plus Loniten is not a recipe for disaster, bordering on death.
The warnings that are printed on a sheet by his first pharmacists of Melbourne, is withheld by Sam and never given to the client.
DOES SAM ACT AS THE DOCTOR?
Let us see if Sam can point the finger at doctors. The evidence below shows that Sam is the man running the show and directing and prescribing the non-approved medications. He tells everyone that he is not a doctor, and he does not want the responsibility of being a doctor. He desperately wants someone else to cop the blame, in case anything should go wrong.
Sam wrote on my document that I should obtain Loniten and take half a tablet. This shows that he is the one who is really directing the medical aspects of the treatment, and he uses the doctor as a formality. Sam (not the GP) is recommending Loniten.
The newer IHRB forms have Loniten pre-printed. Note that Sam mentions the dosage. Therefore, he cannot say that he only wanted Loniten to crush them into the topical solution. This is clearly to be taken by mouth. Sam places the word Minoxidil in brackets to mislead GPs, especially in the letter below in Point 5. He misspells it here as LonOten. I would not be surprised if he does this on purpose to make it harder for GPs to consult their MIMS books.
The possible use of Loniten is printed on every IHRB contract. So Sam Cohen can’t say that the GP prescribed it, as if he had nothing to do with recommending it. On side 2 of every contract, he has Loniten as a pre-printed item. He noted that I might need to use Loniten. If the authorities inspect all his client files, they will see that all his client contracts have some reference to Loniten tablets and their usage. Sam uses the question-mark to say that we might need Loniten in the future. This is his back-up to boost any client not responding to his Retin-A Minoxidil combination.
Despite telling Sam that my GP and my Specialist warned against Loniten, he still persisted with a misleading email to tell me that Loniten is approved by the TGA to help hair regrowth. The TGA does not approve the tablets for hair regrowth. Also, the TGA does not approve Retin-A with Minoxidil. This shows the irresponsible medical advice from Sam. His email said, ‘Out of thousands of customers, I have only had 2 old ladies told by doctors not to apply Minoxidil + Retin-A. (These are approved by the TGA & FDA to help ‘hair re-growth’). So are Proscar & Loniten (Minoxidil tablets).’ This is wrong, and extremely dangerous. It is misleading and stupid, and puts people’s lives at risk. He is completely wrong.
This yellow Post-it note is from Sam to my GP. Sam is asking for 300 tablets of Loniten which last 600 days (yet I only had 150 days to go, so what would he have done with the remaining 450 tablets?). Above, Sam says that Loniten is Minoxidil. Indeed it is. However, in this letter to my GP, he is trying to mislead the GP by saying that Minoxidil is listed with the TGA. This is underhanded. Loniten/Minoxidil-by-mouth is not approved for hair loss or hair growth. So in this regard, it is not listed with the TGA. Pure alcohol might be listed with the TGA, but that does not mean that it is approved as a beverage! The same analogy applies.
Sam’s price list on his company letter-head, has Loniten as a product he sells, showing it to be a staple product, as part of his normal treatment. In any case, he is not allowed to be selling any such medications, with or without a prescription. How can IHRB act as a reseller of drugs? He profits from it, and he directs the dosages, and he withholds the warnings, and he gives dangerous advice. Sam uses the GP as a formality, and as someone to blame.
THE ROLE OF THE PHARMACIST
In my opinion, it was negligent of IHRB to encourage clients to use Loniten. Loniten is not approved for hair growth, and can be dangerous. Mr Cohen would have known that fluid-retention could pose a serious risk. Any pharmacist dispensing Loniten without asking to see the patient, and without enquiring about a patient’s heart condition, and without checking if the patient is taking a low-salt diet along with a diuretic, is failing in his duty of care. Most clients do not understand that Minoxidil must not get into the system/body. Yet, mixing it with Retin-A, whose sole purpose is to force Minoxidil into the system/body, is risky. Clients do not realise that 5% Minoxidil is the approved limit, so anything over 5% for men (2% for women) needs serious investigation (even though I know that Mr Cohen has sold women higher dosages and even lied to them about Minoxidil being safe to use while pregnant). Yet Mr Cohen operates a mail order business, where he can take on clients without ever meeting them, and without the pharmacists ever meeting them. Despite this, Mr Sam Cohen sells Retin-A as well as Minoxidil well above 10%, which is a serious over-prescribing of non-approved medications with serious side effects, not to mention the Finasteride concoction with Saw Palmetto that Sam sells and promotes at high dosages using non-approved Proscar which he also sells! Collectively, that is a massive injection into clients whom the pharmacists never meet, for clients who are never given proper warnings. (By the way, 15% Minoxidil should sell for around $70. Sam sells it for $900. Who profits? How can IHRB sell this stuff? If it were allowed, why don’t we all start selling popular drugs? Just too mind boggling for words. Also I was later led to believe that the second pharmacist had no idea that Sam Cohen was giving the wrong medications to clients. The pharmacist said that he understood from Sam that each client was under the care and supervision of a GP. The pharmacist said that he had no idea that Sam Cohen was misleading people.)
HOW SAM EXPLAINS IT
When I asked Sam about Retin-A, he played it down and said that it was Vitamin A. He tricked me into thinking that it was something normal and good. We have been trained into thinking that vitamins are good things. When I challenged Sam about using Loniten, he played it down and said that it is Minoxidil, as if, don’t be so daft, it’s just Minoxidil, and Minoxidil is approved and don’t ask silly questions… He proceeded to discredit my doctors, saying that doctors do not know anything. He told me to get rid of my doctors and use one of his Sam-friendly doctors.
He then showed me a 23-year old study, sponsored by a pharmaceutical company with pecuniary interest, showing that Loniten was used in a study. However, that was specifically for Alopecia Areata which Sam knows is a condition that affects less than 1% of the population, yet he submitted the study to CTTT as if to suggest that Lonitin is a normal product. They study does not endorse the use of Loniten. On Sam’s website, he has a ‘hair facts’ sheet wherein Sam notes that Alopecia Areata affects less than 1% of the population; so why did he submit it to the CTTT as part of the argument as to why he conned me? I do not have this condition? But that was his way of saying look, in America decades ago, someone looked into the possibility of using Minoxidil in the body to see if it helps people suffering from this rare condition. What has that got to do with the price of kebab?
Dear reader, there are many other irregularities, such as Sam changing the dosages, which all proves that Samuel Faraj Cohen is directing the show, despite him always blaming the doctors.
P.S. IHRB is the name of the Institute of Hair Regrowth and Beauty run by Sam Cohen of 105 Pitt Street Sydney which has now moved to Leichhardt. It is also written as Institute of Hair Regrowth & Beauty or Institute of Hair Re-growth & Beauty.
