The Rosacea Research Foundation & David Pascoe:
Fraud, Mismanagement of Money, Endorsement Deceit.....

Updates are being organized for this important section.  Please revisit this site to see what really happened behind the scenes at the Rosacea Research Foundation.  Rosacea sufferers have no idea what happened behind the scenes and do not realize the extent to which their money was gathered under fraudulent circumstances and how their donations were wasted.  As similar "Rosacea Foundations' are popping up to accept donations it is time that people understand what happened and prevent them from ever falling into the trap of donating to another defunct "Rosacea Foundation" that wastes your money, time and hope.  

I was the Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committeee of the Rosacea Research Foundation for close to a year.  After 6 months though it was clear that the three people who started the Foundation (David Pascoe, Artist Cloutier and David Pascoe) where committing several forms of fraud, mismanagement of donators money, and blatent endorsement deceit. So, I resigned.  Along with my resignation, half of the Board Members resigned and the entire Medical Adivsory Committee of physicians I was in charge of resigned.  This only left three people on the RRF -- the three responsible for the entire mess and mismanagement of $18,000. These three use to be close Internet friends, but I could no longer serve on a foundation that was doing so many illegal and fraudulent things.  Everyone left -- That clearly indicateds how serious the problem was and the total mismanagement by David Pascoe, Artist Cloutier and Chuck Young.  Ten people left the group permanently.  More importantly, NONE returned when they restarted.

Some Brief Highlights about the Defunct Rosacea Research Foundation:

1. This Non-Profit organization never received Non-profit status in over TWO YEARS!.  With a small foundation, it takes 3 to 4 months.  So no one received a tax break. This was the only responsibility of Chuck Young, the Vice President who was absent from the foundation after the first month.

2. When I resigned, I made it clear that I would not tell everyone how bad the Rosacea Research Foundation was -- I was leaving it up to them to try to fix it.  But, in return they must publicly offer refunds on the support group and Rosacea Research Foundation Home Page to make things right.  This was the right thing to do.  I would then let them try to learn, change their tactics and possibly make something good out of the bad.  I left the Rosacea Research Foundation and the entire rosacea world was upset and confused.  I kept my word for several days and did not release information.  Then it was clear that the David Pascoe was not going to keep his word and would not refund people's money even though this would have solved everyone's problems.  I then made my plea to David Pascoe, Artist Cloutier and Chuck Young publicly to offer refunds to donators who wanted their money back  --  they did give money back, but only to a select group -- friends and those who hassled them enough!  They lied to most people and deceived them.  They also stopped answering dozens of questions on the support group and ignored private emails.

3. As long as money was made available for refunds, no harm had been done.  However, when selective refunds where made and most denied, I made it clear that I would try to help rosacea sufferers get their refunds.  I first contacted the Better Business Bureau.  They told me that this marketing fraud and financial fraud was quite serious and should be reported to the the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection regarding the Rosacea Research Foundation.  They also suggested that I contact the Alabama State Attorney General's Office Consumer Protection Division.  I made David Pascoe aware of the seriousness of his illegal behavior.  Instead of letting the Federal Trade Commission and the Alabama State Attorney General's office start an investigation, David Pascoe immediately funded a worthless research grant that same week for $11,600.  However, the State Attorney General was then interested in the case because of the seriousness of the offenses and once David caught wind of that he sent in the remaining $4,265 so that would stop any investigation.  In the real world, you never give them one amount and then change it to a second amount.  That is a clear indication of what was happening or being covered up.  Nice move David.  This grant does not meet any of the three major criteria to fund a grant:

1. The grant must be novel -- it is not.  All of these factors have been studied
   
2. The grant has to advance our rosacea knowledge -- it does not.  What we needed was different settings and non-invasive imaging to map out blood vessels. 
   
3. The grant has to pass peer review publication -- this will never pass peer review.  In fact, less than 15% of NRS grants pass peer review which means they are not doing a satisfactory job.

4. No one knows that David Pascoe held my endorsement up for months against my will after I resigned and actually asked to keep it up for another 8 weeks -- continuing to collect thousands of dollars from unaware donators.  That is plain old fraud.  Its like going to a Michael Jordan camp to get trained by Michael several months after he quit due to unprofessional conduct and fraud.

5. David Pascoe's persistent vendetta against me was solely caused by the enormous amount of heat that he took for his management of the RRF, his refusal to answer questions on his own board about the RRF, and the banning of many members who spoke out against David Pascoe on his board.  His board became a Dicatorship.  People were quite upset for many months and he tried to divert the blame to my recent health condition.  People need to know that there are two sides to David Pascoe -- one side that acts quite innocently and seems to genuinely care about rosacea sufferers and a second side that will lie, distort the truth, and hurt the Rosacea Community.
   
    

As one prime example of this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome, please read his rave review of my book by David Pascoe prior to my resignation from the RRF.

Book Review by David Pascoe, Founder of the Rosacea Support Group:

"We first heard about Dr. Geoffrey Nase's book in February 1999. Following his introduction to what he was doing, he posted quite a few messages to the group (you can find 45 of them in the highlights). In those email messages, he gave a lot of information that would change our understanding of rosacea. His early comments dealt with a voiding steroids and alcohols, and promoted the use of moisturising oils, zinc oxide, isotretinoin and photoderm. The information left us wanting more and waiting for his book to be published.

Now, Dr. Nase has delivered in much more detail from his years of research into rosacea. The book has a definite style, somewhat `emphatic', with its judicious use of italics and underlining to drive his points home. Knowing the amount of research that has gone into the book, we would probably do well to note his highlighted points. Enough about style, what about content? Well there is a lot to read, 320 pages of text with a huge number of references. If you just sum the references in each chapter you get over 1,100 papers and articles! My pile of rosacea papers obtained from hours of surfing the net and from the Australian College of Dermatologists is just a drop in the ocean of information that Dr. Nase has read for us. This gives credence to the book being an authority that we can trust.

In the early chapters he talks about the confusion, poor diagnosis, poor treatment, and thus hopelessness for rosacea sufferers. This is surely a common path for us, symptoms do get worse over time, and with it comes negative thoughts and feelings. He talks about the progression of the disease in all sufferers, from mild flushing to persistent flushing and permanent damage. I hadn't really thought about my symptoms from this point of view. It was interesting to hear that the papules/pustules are not `acne-like' at all - they are lesions due to the effects of immune cells that have leaked out and are causing inflammation. He also makes the point that you don't have to have papules/pustules to have rosacea, but it is the flushing that we all have in common. It is great to see that we can put to rest some theories that hang around and probably detract from us beating Rosacea. He deals with H. pylori, demodex, leaky gut, sebaceous gland hyperactivity and acne.

In regard to acne he warns against many anti-acne treatments like BHAs, AHAs, retinoids, peels, harsh cleansers and alcohols.

One striking chapter is the `Recipe for Rosacea' -- short but powerful examples of how Rosacea can come to stay in someone's life. Recipe for Rosacea: now there's a set of instructions that no-one should ever follow!

In Chapter 5, I particularly liked the way that Dr. Nase lists triggers in order from extremely important to not important. This helps us sharply focus on where we should spend our time tackling the rosacea beast.

Chapters 10 and 11 go through a long list of suggested treatments. Chapter 10 goes through in great detail, listing each treatment under sub-sections titled oral, topical, laser, nutritional, surgical and preventative. He also lists for each treatment the efficacy of that treatment against 3 groups of symptoms: papules/pustules, facial inflammation/redness/burning, and facial flushing/swelling/telangiectasia.

There are several new treatments that I hadn't heard of before for eg. naproxen, ascomycin and rilmenidine. Emerging treatments sound promising, the future does indeed hold some hope for us as the professional world slowly wakes up to rosacea.

By no means is the book only about photoderm and isotretinoin, but I thought it worthwhile to mention briefly about them here.

Photoderm Section: Dr. Nase has championed the use of photoderm from the beginning of his involvement with us. In the time between announcing the book and it being published, dozens of list members have had the treatment. The majority have been quite to very satisfied with the results. Those looking to the book for a recipe to give to their photoderm practitioner will be left wanting. Photoderm isn't that simple. In expert hands great results are being seen. How you get yourself into these hands remains a key (and difficult) problem for rosacea sufferers. Having said that, here is the first place that I have actually seen an authoritative written description of the general treatment profile and usage of the available wavelengths.

Knowing that there is a growing body of published articles on photoderm, and a growing list of patient feedback is a good thing for the the progression of this treatment. Isotretinoin Section: The book goes into detail about the benefits of low dose oral isotretinoin (i.e. accutane, roaccutane). This is an area that has some good research to suggest that this form of treatment with isotretinoin can really help. I wasn't aware of such a body of thought about low dose treatment.

Dr. Nase pleads with us to to avoid dangerous treatments that are still the norm. Given the depth of background information, the book is an excellent resource to take to your doctor. Nowhere else will you find so much information about rosacea. Definitely nowhere else will you find so many conclusions with research and real world patient experiences to back it up.

Ocular Rosacea: I haven't suffered from any ocular symptoms so don't normally read up on this area. Chapters 14 and 15 discuss the reasons for ocular symptoms and available treatments. The treatment sections deal with eyelid scrubs, compresses, tears, and new gel drops. He also talks about new therapies using mast cell stabilisers, and special emerging formulations of metronidazole. In keeping with the format of the facial rosacea sections, the ocular rosacea section details oral, topical, laser, nutritional and surgical therapies.

We have heard from the book's printer that the real cost of the book should be more like $175. We have all been given a wonderful gift by Dr. Nase. I would whole heartedly encourage all rosacea sufferers to purchase a copy. This will do 2 important things. 1) you will get your hands on this authoritative text and 2) encourage Dr. Nase to continue to be our independent advocate and push the frontiers on our behalf."


-- David Pascoe

Now read the review after I revealed what was happening behind the scenes at the RRF:  Remember that 95% of my information is referenced so this is purely a pre-meditated distoration of the truth:

The rosacea community first heard from Dr. Geoffrey Nase (PhD) in February 1999. Geoffrey informed us that he was a severe rosacea sufferer and a vascular researcher. Subsequently, his background and his zeal lead him to self publish a book titled Beating Rosacea. This book introduced us to new ideas about the basis of the disease and how we can go about treating it. This web site has promoted `Beating Rosacea' for several years since it was published in 2001. Recent events necessitate a question over the reliability of the information in `Beating Rosacea'.

Recent events do not change what a medical journal or rosacea specialist stated about rosacea pathogenesis and treatment.

Most people do not know that David Pascoe, Artist Cloutier and a couple "debunkers" continue to this day to contact any physician, pharmaceutical company or skin care company that I am collaborating with to try to ruin the collaboration and subsequently rosacea advancements.  This is quite unethical, unprofessional, selfish and ultimately just hurts rosacea sufferers.  They also called and harrassed every single person on my Curriculum Vitae.  They went back 7 years through 58,000 of my posts to try to distort the posts or cut and paste them together to imply that my information was not correct.   All this while, these people are under investigation and like a bad penny, Artist Cloutier is currently under investigation by the Oregon Board of Nursing for drug use while handling patients -- a very serious offense (7/01/06). 

These people have recently pleaded for peace and reconciliation because there is still chaos in the rosacea community.  They also do not want the truth to get out about the RRF.  I will continue to be there for rosacea sufferers as a source of consumer protection and advice -- this is my training, my passion and my life.  So, these few people are pleading for peace on the one hand, but continue to be more active and attack my professional and personal life with absolute malice. If they truly wanted peace and wanted what was best for the Rosacea Community, then they would follow through with their words.  Sadly, I dont see a day in the near future where their malice will dissipate.  Now, I have made sincere attempts in good faith to come to a peaceful resolution by taking down all information about the Rosacea Research Foundation threesome & debunkers for 4 months (57 pages of facts and references debunking the debunkers).  I took the high road and thought they might follow -- but they just continued going through thousands of my rosacea posts and trying to contort them and started arguments on all boards every single time I posted.  Even worse these few people used dozens of false user names.  David, Artist and Chuck -- was this your sign of peace?  Because if so, we need to go over Webster's definition of peace.

One of the most ironic things about David Pascoe, Artist Cloutier and Chuck Young is that they have publicly stated that they thought they have no problem with the former Dr. Nase who helped the Rosacea Community for 8 years, but were troubled by the "New Dr. Nase of late".  Heck I agree with them 100%.  I would be troubled by a professional who shed light on what was happening at the Rosacea Research Foundation and called and emailed them almost every day to force them to return donators money.  They almost make their own case against them -- for 8 years I was a great asset to Rosacea and now that I was a true consumer advocate, I was deemed a problem.   

I do admit to making a mistake with the Rosacea Research Foundation and have learned from that mistake.  With my background in Grant Funding, Professional Organizations, and Academia, I should have realized how hard it would be to start up a non-profit organization with an entire Board that had good intentions, but no experience.  It is one thing to start and moderate a rosacea message board vs. starting a successful non-profit foundation.  I should have never joined the Rosacea Research Foundation in the first place.  That was truly my mistake.