Home › Blog › Stem Cells, Faked Degrees, OHS Supplements, and Murder?

I never know where stem cell wild west rabbit holes will lead when I begin these deep dives. However, I have to say that this one makes some of the other crazy stuff I’ve found look really tame. This is a story of dangerous stem cell injections, faked advanced degrees, OHS supplements, and murder. There is no way that I could make up this story if I tried. Let’s dig in.

Marc Harris, M.D., Ph.D., Ph.D., Ph.D

I’ve been digging deep into the most dangerous stem wild west character I have ever found who is Naturopath Marc Harris of Montana. Why? He’s teaching chiropractors and mid-levels how to perform blind neck injection procedures that can cause death in minutes. I don’t make that accusation lightly, but I’ve reviewed the videos from a Brimhall Wellness course that he teaches and I am deeply concerned.

A Follow-up on All of Those Degrees

You see it wasn’t enough for Marc Harris to be teaching procedures he clearly has no idea how to perform and to place people at serious risk, but as I dug into this character he claimed to graduate from High School at age 7, college at age 9, and then get an M.D./Ph.D. degree at age 13. Now anyone who actually has an advanced degree themselves would know that Marc’s self-reported academic history sounds way off. First, if he did do this, he would be the world’s smartest human outdoing a 13-year-old in Germany in the early 1800s who got a single Ph.D. (likely equivalent to a modern master’s degree). However, Marc isn’t in the record books. Hence I dug deeper.

First, a colleague reached out to a supplement company Marc works for called OHS and who describes him as Marc Harris, MD/PhDX3, and asked for proof of his credentials. He got this document back from OHS:

Two of these documents left and right of his picture are scans of his Montana Naturopathic license and a certificate from an alternative health organization, but the two documents top and bottom at first appear to be advanced degrees issued by the University of Washington in 1973 when Mark was about 12. One of the things my colleague noticed and that I missed was this little humdinger on the M.D. degree:

There’s an active cursor after “Doctor of Medicine”, which means that this diploma is not a scan like the other documents shown, but a created diploma that was screenshotted and emailed to my colleague. There’s another problem, while Charles Odegard retired in 1973 and could have been on this diploma as the UW president, there is no listed board of regent with the name of “Jerry Noe” or anything close to that name in UW’s history. In addition, it’s actually “The University of Washington” on all shown online diplomas and NOT “University of Washington” as shown. See the image of an actual diploma featured on the university registrar’s office web page:

Also, note that there are four signatures and not two and that these are signatures and not typed names. Finally, the university seal is quite different as is the color of the paper.

There is an e-diploma offered by The University of Washington that would have cost Marc $10.95:

Why didn’t he just use this service? It would have allowed anybody to go online and enter a code at the official UW website and confirm his degrees.

The final straw that broke Marc’s academic back was finally locating his date of birth on a court document, which enabled me to get an accurate report back from the National Student Clearinghouse:

Note in the red box that Marc Harris only attended the University of Washington for two months in 1987 when he was in his late 20s and never received an M.D./Ph.D. degree when he was in his teens (or any UW degree for that matter).

I also finished my investigation into Marc’s claimed Ph.D. from Colorado State University. He doesn’t have one. Someone with that name did get a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology in 1988.

Optimal Health Systems Supplements

Marc is tied in with both Brimhall Wellness (the chiropractic education provider where he is teaching dangerous injection techniques) and Optimal Health Systems (OHS supplements). OHS is a nutrition company that sells and markets Marc’s supplement line. This is their home page:

OHS uses Marc’s claimed academic credentials to provide credibility for an extensive line of supplements promoted by him at Brimhall and OHS courses:

Note above, that he is described by OHS as “Dr. Marc Harris PhD3” (red box above).

Here, on an OHS supplements page about nutrition courses for health professionals he’s described as “Dr. Marc Harris, MD, ND, PhDX3” (red box below):

Here he’s hawking methylation supplements for OHS on Youtube:

He says, “Hi, I’m Dr. Harris. I’ve got a few degrees, a medical degree, and a doctorate in biochemistry. I got interested in biochemistry in 1972 and my thesis at the time was genetic regulation and expression.”

All of this appears to be a fabrication. Not only does Mark not have an M.D./Ph.D. that I can verify, but there is also no such thesis in the University of Washington library archives.

OHS, Doug Grant, and Murder?

This is where this story takes a turn for the truly bizarre and unsettling. I was tipped off by a reader to take a closer look at the owner of OHS supplements in Gila, Arizona. Note that the guy on the left up there with Marc Harris and John Brimhall is “Doug D.” He lists himself as the owner of OHS and a formulator, but why doesn’t he have a last name? That’s just really odd.

Here is Doug in the Gila Arizona Herald in 2019:

His name is Doug Grant and that’s his third wife Hilary. What happened to wife #2? That’s where a blog turns into a murder mystery.

OHS Supplements and Manslaughter

Faylene Grant was Doug’s second wife and she was found dead in her bathtub in 2001. This was initially deemed an accidental drowning and then a suicide. However, by 2002 the testimony of others didn’t line-up and investigators began suspecting that there could be foul play. Journals written by Faylene were uncovered that suggested that she felt that God wanted her to die and that her husband Doug was also having dreams predicting her death. In addition, her journals included details that her husband, after her death should marry his 19-year-old secretary. Sure enough, just 3 weeks after his wife’s death, he married his secretary, with whom he had previously had an affair. Investigators later discovered that he was planning that wedding #3 some 48 hours after his wife’s drowning. When other aspects of the case broke, investigators decided to bring the case to trial with mostly circumstantial evidence as the crime scene had been botched by detectives. That resulted in Doug being convicted on a lesser charge of manslaughter and serving 5 years in prison. The secretary? That’s her above, Hilary Grant.

This story was so compelling it was the lead episode in Oxygen’s 2018 series called “A Wedding and a Murder “.

This is the trailer for that episode:

The Bizzaro Summary

So we have Naturopath Marc Harris who claims he has an MD, Ph.D., Ph.D., Ph.D. and who claims that he got the M.D/Ph.D. at age 13 after graduating high school at age 7 and college at age 9. He is also teaching courses in wildly dangerous injection techniques. It turns out that Marc has no actual advanced degrees that I can find, so this academic Doogie Howser story is IMHO made up. Then the guy who owns the supplement company OHS and whose company supplied Marc’s credentials to a colleague (which are fake, i.e. not a scan of an actual diploma) and who advertises Marc Harris as an MD/PhdX3, is actually an ex-con who was convicted of participating in the murder of his wife and then 3 weeks later married his 19-year-old secretary. As I always say, you just can’t make this stuff up!

Problems for Brimhall Wellness and OHS

Why did neither company that uses Marc’s academic story to sell courses and hawk supplements ever look into his claims of being the world’s youngest M.D./Ph.D.? A simple Google search would have shown no news stories from the early 70s about Marc’s world record-setting academic achievement. They could have easily run the same National Student Clearinghouse search I ran.

The upshot? I apologize for the disturbing place where this stem cell wild west rabbit hole ended up. However, I don’t find many of these stories, they seem to find me.

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile