- [Blair] So I want to
start this video by saying
this was not supposed to
be the next MLM I was going
to be putting under the
microscope and taking a look at
and doing one of these longer form videos.
This content and everything I
have found about the backstory
on this company and owner
is so long and detailed
that I had to cut this
video into two parts.
But don't worry, I'm not
gonna hold you indefinitely
on the line forever.
Part Two should be coming out
in a couple days to a week at max.
I am literally still writing that script
and it is still growing as we speak.
So Young Living is a company you all know
and probably dislike mainly
for their business practices.
But I was recently mentioned
and linked to a video
by NikkieTutorials with people telling me
she was promoting them.
- Lately, thanks to my mom,
I've been into essential oils.
I have the Young Living
sort of like diffuser
and right now I have
PanAway, I have Cinnamon Bark
and Energy and those three
are everything together.
- [Blair] And I'll be
honest, I was super shocked.
I really used to enjoy Nikkie's
content and I look at her
as a generally wholesome
but smart businesswoman.
So you can imagine my
shock when I found out
she would promote something
like Young Living on her channel
and I'm obviously not the only one.
(upbeat music)
I am very concerned that someone
with a platform that large
would promote a company and
product that is so against
what Nikkie's message is to her fans.
Young Living like many MLMs
is a company that thrives
from sucking money from naive
or unsuspecting individuals
trying to earn extra income
but who most will ultimately
fail and lose hundreds
or thousands of dollars
in the process.
Nikkie has always tried
to stand behind an image
of being positive and promoting self-love
and I found it extremely
difficult to understand
why she would promote such a company
whose values are so oppositely aligned.
And just to clarify,
since I've been working
on the script for a while now.
One, NikkieTutorials is a
massive beauty YouTube channel
here on the platform and
additionally since this has been
brought to her attention,
she did in fact apologize
on Twitter for promoting Young Living
and said she did not realize
what she was promoting
and the fact that she has
addressed that issue is fantastic.
But I still see this as
a learning experience
that we can all gain
some kind of insight from
and her misstep with showing
this company to her millions
of fans helped to spur the
production of the script.
So hey, that's the thing.
Now, for those of you who
are not new to the channel,
you know I regularly cover
MLM topics on the channel
every Monday for multi level
Mondays and you guys know,
I've been doing that
for almost a year now.
And you also know I am no
stranger to covering lawsuits
brought on by these companies
either with Young Living
actually being one of those lawsuits.
But there are many, many people out there
who don't know what an MLM
or multi level marketing is
and there are many impressionable
fans of NikkieTutorials
that will follow and buy
into whatever she says
without knowing the
real world repercussions
of giving them their hard-earned dollars.
And so that will be the
subject of today's video.
We are going to go down the
rabbit hole of Young Living
and uncover the quack of
a medical professional
they call the founder and
what they've been doing wrong
for years and why the people
but especially influencers
should not be promoting
these kinds of companies
or at least not, if they
care about their fans.
So sit down, buckle up and get comfy
because this is going to
be one hell of a ride.
So to understand Young
Living, especially to those
who are unfamiliar with MLMs
or multi level marketing,
let's get some terminology out of the way.
And as per usual, I will
have all my sources linked
in a placement file in
the description box.
So if you want to dig more
into depth into my sources,
you are more than welcome
to, so let's get into it.
One of the most confusing
things to define when talking
about these companies is the
difference between direct sales
and multi level marketing and
to understand that we need
to briefly look at three business models.
One is direct sales, two
is multi level marketing
and three is a pyramid scheme.
Direct Sales and pyramid
schemes are essentially opposite
ends of a spectrum and
MLMs sit in the middle,
taking a little from both models.
This is why I often say
that MLMs ride a gray line
between a legal business model
and an illegal business model
which often gets them into trouble
or shut down for their practices.
So with direct sales, you
have a seller that often works
as an independent contractor
and as a direct representative
of the company, although
they are not an employee.
And they sell or demonstrate
products traditionally
in like a traveling salesman
type sense but more recently,
through the rise of the internet,
they integrate social media.
And they earn a living
by taking a percentage
of the sale of their products.
Pyramid schemes, on the other
hand are a federally illegal
business model in the United
States and are illegal
in many countries around the world
including the Netherlands
where Nikkie is from.
Their focus is making money
from low level sellers
buying into the company
and those above them
otherwise known as an upline
and will gain a profit
from those low level sellers
and not from the product being sold.
In almost every pyramid scheme,
there is a premise of having
to have a startup cost or
a certain amount of money
you have to invest in to the company,
for example, a startup kit.
And now for an MLM, an MLM takes from
both the direct sales
model and a pyramid scheme
to build its own unique model.
What it does is take the direct sales idea
of having independent
contractors selling a product
and the sellers make a small
cut from selling the item.
But it also takes from the
pyramid scheme and the fact that
the upline in these
companies earn a profit
from recruiting new members below them
and not just their sales.
And as certain people move up
in the chain on these MLMs,
their focus often shifts
from selling the product
to selling a dream to recruit new people
and in return, they earn a
profit from those people.
And this is where many of
these companies get fined
or shut down for being a pyramid scheme
and this is why I find
MLMs to be so problematic.
When in a smaller scale, they
can easily hide in the shadows
and avoid being labeled
as a pyramid scheme
but as they get bigger,
their true colors show
and it becomes obvious that
they're masquerading as an MLM
but in all reality, they have crossed
into pyramid scheme territory.
So now with those
definitions out of the way,
let's begin to feast on today's
subject of my examination
from a pyramid against pyramid schemes.
Let's begin unraveling the
issues with Young Living.
(soft music)
- Gary Young, the founder
of Young Living said
that he healed from crippling paralysis
using only essential oils.
- Because Young Living makes
their entire brand identity
on being natural and God-given
and derived the ingredients
of the highest quality.
- Because there is a
distinction and a legal loophole
between saying that these oils
cure cancer and things like
if I had cancer I would use
this oil, this oil and this oil.
- All the claims that
Young Living distributors
try to make about what these
oils can do for your health,
none of them are scientifically proven.
- You can't say on one hand
that your company is all about
like natural, God-given
oils to help people's health
and then turn around and
support the needless slaughter
and mistreatment of these
creatures that God made.
- That there are people
opposing what we know factually
to be good medicine, things like vaccines,
things like cancer treatment
and they are replacing
those with essential oils.
- Upon realizing that it's
a cult, I was relieved
that I got away before
it was too late for me
but I also became incredibly worried
about everyone I know who's still in it.
- [Blair] So what is Young Living?
Young Living is an essential oils,
multi-level marketing
company based around the idea
of promoting holistic well-being
through using essential oils
as part of your daily routine.
One of their most notable
products is the Thieves oil blend
they created and whose independent
sellers have made claims
that the oil performs
better than cleaning agents
and can even help get blood
stains out of your carpet
after your child was murdered.
Yeah, I'm serious, this was a real post.
This is just a snapshot of the mess
we're about to encounter today.
Now when we dig into Young Living,
we really need to examine
its eccentric founder,
Donald Gary Young and the
impression he left on the company.
And to truly understand a
company and its beliefs,
I think it's important to look at
who founded the company and why?
So who is the man who would
eventually create the company
involved in trafficking
charges, pyramid scheme claims,
cash action lawsuits, all
while touting the appearance
of being holistic and healthy?
Well, Donald Gary Young
is noted as a businessman
who specialized in essential
oils and pseudo-medicines.
On their website, they say the following
about their beginnings.
Our community of wellness started in 1993
when D. Gary Young and Mary
Young developed their first
organic herb farming and
distillation operation.
At the time, Gary Young
had already discovered
the incredible power of essential oils
but because the quality of
available oils varied so greatly,
he'd been unable to fully
harness their potential.
Now, something you'll notice
here is the company refers
to him as D. Gary Young and all
over Young Living's website,
they won't call him by his
full name, which I found weird.
He also dresses in lab coats
and attempts to look like
a doctor even though he's
not a medical professional.
And I believe they refer
to him as D. Gary Young
as an attempt to make
him look more reputable
than what he is.
If you are quickly skimming by
it looks like Dr. Gary Young
and I think this purposeful
rewording of his name to give
the impression that he's
something that he is not
is just scratching the
surface of how this company
positions itself to deceive
its sellers and buyers.
So throughout this video,
I will be referring to him
only by his full name, Donald
Gary Young and I'm not letting
that subtle deception
slipped past me or you.
This man has a complicated
and carefully crafted history
of exploiting people and
situations around him
to gain a fake authority.
When I began digging into
his past, he moved to Canada
in his late teens and early
20s with the intention
of homesteading or the principle
by which one gains ownership
of an unknown natural resource
by performing an act of
original appropriation.
Now, the timeframe is
unclear but based on the fact
that he was born in 1949
and a supposed accident
that was said to have
happened in his late teens
and early 20s, I'm going
to assume it was somewhere
around 1969 give or take a few years.
And it was during this time
that he actually suffered
from a near fatal logging
accident that caused him
to be temporarily wheelchair bound.
And this is also where he initially claims
to have started experimenting
with essential oils
that assisted in his recovery.
In 1980, we know he enrolled
in a therapeutic massage
program at the American
Institute of Physiogenerology.
However, he only took a few
classes which he then abandoned,
completing only a third of the work
and left with an unpaid student loan.
Now, I tried to look up
what physiogenerology is
and the only results that
came up were all related
to Donald Gary Young,
so I found that to be super suspicious.
But based on roots of words,
we can discern the following information.
Physio is a Latin root word meaning nature
or natural or physical.
Generology was the much
harder root word to figure out
as all searches were
redirecting me to genealogy
which comes from the Latin word genealogia
meaning the making of a
pedigree or the study of family.
Gen is a term for general and
ology refers to any science
or branch of knowledge.
So based on that combination of words,
I can only conclude that he went to study
the general natural
knowledge which most likely
had information about holistic practices
but with the massage therapy angle.
Following his departure from that school,
he claimed to have
received a doctorate degree
in Naturopathy in 1985 or a
form of alternative medicine
that employs an array of
pseudo-scientific practices
branded as natural, non-invasive
or promoting self-healing.
I'm going to let it slide that
it takes about eight years
to actually complete education
for a doctorate but like, okay.
In 1982, he also was apparently operating
an unlicensed clinic
in Spokane, Washington.
So that knocks off a couple more years
but we'll get to that in just a second.
Now, there might be an angry
Young Living Essentials Oil
peddler preparing to write me a nasty gram
about how this proves he's
a doctor and not lying
and that I'm just
purposefully agitating people
by calling him Donald Gary Young
instead of placing a respective
Dr. prefix to his name.
And maybe he was extremely
gifted and was able to finish
his degree early because he's
such a prodigy in his field.
Sure.
My issue is that the
university isn't actually real.
The university Donald Gary Young attended
is called the Bernadean University.
The university is known as
a mail order diploma mill
where you give them a
certain amount of money
and they mail you a certification.
This university was not
accredited by the U.S. Secretary
of State as a legitimate
college and that degrees
from that location are
essentially useless.
As a matter of fact,
when state investigators
looked into this university,
they found it operated
out of a small office with no classrooms
that had four faculty
members who were essentially
paper graders and that
only one of them actually
even had a high school diploma.
Investigators also found that
law books, Joseph Kadans,
founder of this university,
claimed to have written
were merely an incomplete
compilation of texts
written by other authors
which Kadans had copied
on Xerox machines.
After Kadans died, the
business was moved from Nevada
to California where it is
still currently in operation
just outside of Los Angeles
and I don't know about you,
but I've never seen a university
that only has one employee
and makes $86,000 a year but here it is
still withering in the
shadows to this day.
And this is the fantastic,
wonderful, totally legit college
that the founder of Young Living,
Donald Gary Young graduated from.
There is his great authority
that founded a very scientific
and accurate company, if you say so.
So now we get to start
talking about how things go
from deceptive to dangerous.
In 1982, Donald Gary Young
opened the unlicensed clinic
in Spokane, Washington as
I had mentioned earlier.
This was a pseudo-medical clinic,
one of the first of many
he would attempt to do
in his lifetime and this
one offered a variety
of unlicensed treatments
to include childbirth,
claims that he could detect cancer
with a simple blood test and treat it.
These would all generally
fall under medical procedures,
typically performed by an
actual medical professional
and not someone who was at this time
didn't even have the crappy
paid for fake degree.
He was just out and about being careless
with people's lives.
I found an article from
the Spokane Chronicle
dated Thursday, October 7th of 1982
about Donald Gary Young killing
his own infant daughter.
In the article, it says Donald
Gary Young's daughter died
during a failed water
birth performed by him.
He tried to have his wife
give birth in a whirlpool bath
and kept the baby submerged
underwater for a whole hour,
effectively drowning the
newborn under the waters.
The daughter was birthed
at his medical facility
which we will get into because that place
is a medical nightmare
but back to this article.
After an hour, an ambulance was called
because his wife was hemorrhaging
and because the baby was not
breathing and Donald Gary Young
was almost responsible
for two deaths that day.
When the medical professionals
and police arrived on scene,
they reported medical
equipment on the premises
to include an examination
table, a heating lamp,
blood pressure equipment, rubber gloves,
a suction unit and clamps
but when an ambulance driver
passed the facility later that
day, he claims to have seen
equipment being removed from the building
and that when police revisited
the location hours later,
there was no equipment to be
seen and Donald Gary Young,
even denied being in
possession of such equipment.
At the time, the death
was ruled as accidental
although I have no idea how
you accidentally keep a baby
underwater for an hour and
expect to have positive results.
And as a little bit more
of a confusing tidbit,
in the concluded coroner's
report, it was actually stated
that if his daughter was
not submerged underwater,
she would have been alive and healthy
and there were no signs of a stillbirth.
So, just saying.
Just about six months after
the death of his daughter
at his facility, Donald Gary
Young was finally brought
to a minor amount of justice.
I found an article from
the local newspaper,
the Spokesman Review and found an article
from March 10th, 1983
called arrest results
of attempt to police all professions.
And let's take a look at
what this article had to say.
The arrest of a Spokane
man for practicing medicine
without a license is the
outgrowth of a new attempt
by the State Department
of Licensing to police
all registered professions,
an agency official said Wednesday.
Ron Weaver, chief of
investigations for the professional
and administrative licensing
divisions said his unit's
efforts to include checks
of real estate dealings
and sale of securities.
Donald Gary Young, 33, E1221
29th was arrested at his home
about 2 p.m. Tuesday by city
police following a joint
undercover investigation with city police.
Young was charged with one
count of practicing medicine
without a license, a gross misdemeanor
punishable by up to a year
in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Young, who is being represented
by Spokane attorney,
Carl Maxey appeared before
superior court judge,
John J. Ripple, Wednesday
afternoon and was released
after posting a $500 cash bond.
State licensing authorities
joined the investigation
after receiving a request
from prosecuting attorney,
Donald Brockett, who
asked the state's Board
of Medical Examiners for
assistance, said Weaver.
According to city police, the
investigation was initiated
about two weeks ago.
Weaver said that two undercover agents,
one from the city police and the other
from the department of
licensing's investigative unit
contacted Young about his services.
The state's investigator
is a registered male nurse,
Weaver said.
According to information filed
in the Superior Court here,
Young allegedly offered to deliver a baby
and to treat cancer.
Young's daughter died during
childbirth during an underwater
birthing technique in a whirlpool bath
at a former East Spokane
health club last September.
City homicide detectives
investigated the case
but authorities ruled
the death was accidental,
official said.
So, there is Young
Living's future founder,
a bad, medical con man
who had already managed
to accidentally murder his own daughter.
Let's not skip over these
juicy details either.
This article states
that Young was a subject
of an internal investigation against him
and in their undercover sting,
he promised to the state's investigator
to deliver the baby and to treat cancer.
Both are claims you cannot make or do
especially when without a license.
Donald Gary Young pleaded
guilty to practicing medicine
without a license and was charged a fine
and placed on a suspended
probation for a year
which I feel is an incredible injustice.
Now armed with the death
of an infant under his belt
and a shiny new printed
fake doctorate degree,
Donald Gary Young made his
way down to Tijuana, Mexico
where he opened another clinic
and claimed to be a natural Pathak doctor.
Now, I casually mentioned
earlier that he claims
to have started experimenting
with essential oils
during his recovery from
the logging accident
in the late 1960s to early 70s.
But in his personal blog,
he wrote a post in 2015
regarding his experience with this clinic.
He claims in 1985, he
was approached by a woman
and her sister about essential
oils and aromatherapy.
And I quote, these are his written words.
"I said, 'Aromatherapy?
"Oh, been there, done it, no,
thank you, not interested.
"I could see by her
body gestures and energy
"that I had insulted her somehow.'
"So I said, 'Well, at
least in my experience,
"I see no value in them.'"
And that's a little bit of a
hot take against essential oils
when he also claimed
essential oils are what helped
to expedite his recovery
process post logging incident.
Huh, wait, I know I heard
that somewhere else too.
Oh, wait, that's right, his obituary.
See, he passed away in 2018,
just so we're clear about that
but that doesn't negate anything
he did during his lifetime.
However, in his obituary,
it says the following,
"After five years of logging and ranching,
"Young suffered debilitating injuries
"in a serious logging
accident and was confined
"to a wheelchair with no
expectation of walking again,
"which caused him to endure
years of pain and depression.
"Channeling the cowboy
spirit of not backing down,
"it was on this path where
Young's personal journey began
"as he wanted to learn everything he could
"about natural healing and
where he was introduced
"to essential oils."
You know, I hear it's pretty easy
to keep your story straight
when it's the truth.
So, I guess this is just
another oopsie, right?
Just like his daughter, right?
But back to this Mexico
clinic that he opened up now.
So Donald Gary Young's clinic offered
detoxification treatments
from cancer and lupus
and what did he use for
these cancer treatments?
Laetrile and if you're a
non-medical professional
like myself, you want to
know exactly what this is.
Laetrile is a chemical compound
derived from apricots pits,
raw nuts and lima beans and therefore,
it had an amazing appeal
for the alternative medicine communities.
Unfortunately, when the
compound is ingested
into the human body, the
compound transforms into cyanide,
which is a toxin that can kill.
And without careful medical supervision,
these doses can cause
cases of cyanide toxicity
and ultimately death and
these treatments caught
the attention of the Los
Angeles Times in 1987,
who made their own investigation
into this treatment center.
In this new treatment center,
prospective patients were told
to prick their fingers on two
glass slides and then mail
the slides and $60 to the
clinic to be diagnosed.
To account for inflation,
if you were to pay for
that same test today,
it would cost you $135.85.
So these were really
not cheap initial tests.
But how was a reporter
going to test the validity
of these tests and diagnoses provided
by Donald Gary Young in his quack clinic.
Well, they sent an animal
blood on the slides,
specifically a cat and sure enough,
the clinic's health
educator, Sharon Reynolds,
who also cast horoscope
readings for patients
for whatever reason examined
the slides of cat blood
under the microscope and
concluded she found evidence
of an aggressive cancer
as well as liver problems.
She also claimed the
cancer had been present
for four to five years.
So the reporter went in person
and the tests were redone
using the reporter's blood.
Sharon's new diagnosis changed
from an aggressive cancer
to latent cancer but
she did remain adamant
about there being liver dysfunction
and pancreas and thyroid problems.
Her solution to cure the
reporter of these problems
was a supervised program of
cleaning, detox and rebuilding.
The detoxification program at the clinic
which consisted of
colonostics, a special diet
and a various nostrums cost
$2,000 per week, paid in advance
an at-home program was
also available for $90
plus about $400 worth of
vitamins and supplements
that Donald Gary Young
sells through his apparent
vitamin company that
he owned in California.
The Los Angeles Times decided
to challenge the clinic
one more time with another
set of blood samples
but this time it was chicken blood
from a local poultry shop.
With chicken blood, however,
there is a major difference
between it and human blood.
Something that can be easily identified
through a magnifying glass.
The red blood cells in
chicken blood are oval-shaped
and have no nuclei which
is drastically different
from the round, non-nucleated
cells in the blood of animals.
This shape change would
be an immediate red flag
that something was wrong
but that chicken blood
was diagnosed as a human blood
and they claimed there
was liver inflammation.
The Times additionally said
the chicken blood slides
to an actual doctor, Dr. Faramarz Naeim,
the Head of Hematopathology,
sorry if I butchered that,
department at the UCLA Medical Center.
He was able to immediately
identify the blood correctly.
When he was told why he was
asked to examine the blood
and asked his thoughts about these tests.
He said that the blood slides
used for valid diagnostic
purposes needed to be
thinly smeared and stained,
so that individual cells
could be clearly seen
under a microscope, which
these slides could not do.
Dr. Naeim and other
blood analysts point out
that information from such
examinations is limited
and is normally used in
conjunction with other medical data
in researching a diagnosis.
And he finally concluded that
the slides being prepared
were not smeared and the cells
were just lumped together
which would prove to be ineffective
to use as a diagnosis tool for anything.
When the news reporter
confronted Sharon Reynolds
with their evidence and
revealed the blood origins
her defense was that she'd
never seen chicken blood before.
So she would not have known.
And when questioned about
her initial diagnosis
about the cat blood, she stood by it.
The cat was later taken to a vet
and deemed to be medically healthy
and had none of the ailments
described by Sharon.
The clinic in Mexico would
be shut down a year later
and that's to no one's surprise.
That was all the preliminary
information I had to present
just to get you to the
start of Young Living.
I think looking at the founder's
morals and code of ethics
speaks strongly as to what
the foundation of the company
will be built on and based
on the current analysis
of Donald Gary Young's
past, Young Living was going
to be built from the foundation
of a man who was charged
for practicing medicine
without a medical license,
drowning his own infant daughter,
getting fake medical
licenses to trick people
into believing he was a
doctor when he was not.
Falsely treating patients for
illnesses they didn't have.
Claiming to cure cancer
with uncontrolled substances
known to lead to cyanide toxicity deaths
and this would be the person
that would start Young
Living Essential Oils.
And so this is where
I'll be ending Part One
of this two-part video on
Young Living Essential Oils.
Now that we have a more clear picture
of who the man behind the brand really is,
make sure to let me know your thoughts
in the comment section down below
and make sure to be back
when we wrap up this mess
in a couple days with
a bow and take a look
at the full scope of mistakes
made by Donald Gary Young
and his empire of lies that he built.
Thank you all for watching this video,
make sure to hit the Like and subscribe.
If you guys want to join the
channel and become a member,
make sure to hit that Join button
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who is already a member.
And if you want even more content from me,
make sure to pop open that description box
where you can find all the
links to all of my social media,
second channel, Discord server, Subreddit,
Twitch and a ton more good stuff.
Again, thank you all for
watching today's video
and I'll see you in
the next one, bye guys.
(upbeat music)
