GcMaf boss sent to prison for 15 months

David Noakes, 65, made nearly £8m. selling GcMaf through his Guernsey company Immuno Biotech from September 2011 to February 2015.

But products containing GcMaf are thought to cause a significant health risk and several customers suffered severe effects from the drug.

One patient claimed they almost died of toxic shock after taking the protein.

Production of the substance ended in January 2015 when investigators from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency raided a secret laboratory in Cambridge. The raid also saw the importation ban of the substance to the island.

Health & Social Care said that Noakes' conviction confirmed it was right to take action to protect the public from those who would potentially put them in danger in order to make huge sums of money.

Noakes was jailed for 12 months for the manufacture and sale of GcMAF with three months consecutive for money laundering.

He faced sentence alongside his ex-wife Loraine Noakes, 58, and two scientists, Dr Rodney Smith, 55, and Emma Ward, 44, who worked in the lab prior to the raid.

Jailing Noakes at Southwark Crown Court, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said: 'This case concerns an investigation by the MHRA into the unauthorised manufacture, sale and supply of a product called GcMaf which is claimed to be a treatment for a vast range of serious diseases including cancer, multiple sclerosis, ME, HIV and autism.

'This is a court of law and, as I have said many times in this hearing, it is not GcMaf that is on trial.

'These defendants face a criminal prosecution because they were involved in the manufacture and supply of a medicine which they knew required a licence but they chose to proceed unlawfully without one.

'I accept that each defendant firmly believed that the product had helped and would in the future help people suffering from many, some fatal, diseases but for a variety of motives they chose to manufacture and sell it in clear breach of the law.

'The evidence shows a reckless disregard for the regulatory regime for the manufacture and supply of what was sold as a medicine. Nobody could sensibly argue that scientifically created medicines should not be controlled and regulated and the tragic example of Thalidomide has been mentioned a few times over the last few days.

Dr Smith has been sent to prison for eight months for his role in manufacturing the drugs. Lorraine Noakes and Emma Ward are to be sentenced later this afternoon.