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WASHINGTON - A Utah company came under fire Wednesday from a House investigation and federal regulators who claim the firm falsely marketed ground tree roots as a cure for childhood obesity.

Executives of Basic Research insisted they are a reputable firm and their product, PediaLean, is safe and effective.

I don't have any problem giving this product to my children and I love them dearly, said Basic Research President Dennis Gay.

The Federal Trade Commission alleges in a complaint filed Tuesday that Basic Research had made false claims that several of its products - ranging from anti-fat topical creams and gels to diet pills, including PediaLean - could help cure obesity.

The FTC also said the company's director of scientific affairs, Daniel Mowrey, represented himself as a medical doctor. He is an experimental psychologist.

We strongly refute the FTC's assertions," Gay said. "We will contest them vigorously to every extent possible, and we are extremely confident that when all the facts are heard, we will prevail.

The FTC also targeted PediaLoss, another supplement targeted at children, and recently reached an agreement with The Skinny Pill Co. not to sell Skinny Pill for Kids, a supplement containing an herb that can damage children's livers.

Products like these should never exist, Keith Ayoob, professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on Wednesday.

Even if they cause no harm that is reported, they serve only to exploit children and their caregivers by fostering the illusion that these products work, perhaps preventing them from seeking real solutions, he said.

Roughly 1-in-6 child is overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and the numbers have more than doubled since 1980.

Subcommittee Chairman James Greenwood, R-Pa., expressed frustration at the lack of standards his staff uncovered in more than a year of investigation.

Any scam artist or group of scam artists that might want to get rich quick by preying on overweight children . . . can go to a phony lab and give them a screwball list of ingredients that don't do a thing, put the ingredients in a pill, put it in a box and make a mint, he said.

Basic Research, based in Salt Lake City, sells dietary supplements under several names. Founded in 1993, it employs more than 350 people.

PediaLean is a pill containing glucomannan, ground fiber from the konjac root. The company has sold $580,270 worth of it, but Gay said with overhead and the costs of a diet and exercise campaign developed to accompany the supplement, it has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, crafted by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch in 1994, companies can make wide-ranging claims about herbal supplements, as long as they don't make blatantly false claims or purport to cure a specific illness. The industry has exploded in Utah. Basic Research has hired Hatch's son, Paul Hatch, a Washington lobbyist whose clients include supplement companies.

Alison Hoppin, associate director for pediatric services at Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center, said changes are needed in the law that allows for unbridled and irresponsible marketing of dietary supplements with minimal standards of accountability for potential hazards," and questioned the science behind PediaLean.

Basic Research relies primarily on an Italian study from 1992 on a small sample of children. Fourteen percent of those given the pill quit the study because of abdominal discomfort or no change in appetite.

Greenwood called the Italian study laughable. Basic Research marketing consultant Mitchell Friedlander said it met the Food and Drug Administration's standards.

Friedlander's past was questioned in the hearing. In 1986, he pleaded no contest in Florida to 13 counts of marketing phony cures for ailments ranging from impotency to baldness. He served no jail time, but was sentenced to probation and agreed not to do business or live in the state.