Some guys just wanna have fun — and help people’s memories

Mark Underwood made a tongue-in-cheek offer to federal officials Wednesday — a free bottle of his company’s brain-enhancing supplement to any member of Congress or the incoming administration who has forgotten to pay taxes within the last decade.

Underwood, who is president of Quincy Bioscience, pitched his “mental stimulus package” — a play on the economic stimulus package of Congress — in a press release touting the benefits of Prevagen, the memory-boosting supplement made by his Madison, Wis., company.

In the release, Underwood points to some memory lapses by U.S. officials and the outcomes:

• Tom Daschle, the former senator from South Dakota, withdrew his nomination as head of Health and Human Services in the incoming Obama Administration early this month because he didn’t pay — until January — taxes of $128,000 over the last two years.
• Nancy Killefer, nominated for the post of Chief Performance Officer, withdrew when it became known that she had failed for a year-and-a-half to pay employment taxes on household help.
• Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in self-employment taxes for Social Security and Medicare when he was a senior official at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003.
• In September, U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (the committee in charge of writing tax policy for      the nation), forgot to pay taxes on $75,000 income he received from his rental property in the Dominican Republic.

“Our goal is to spare our elected and unelected officials in Washington the embarrassment that failing memory often brings,” Underwood said in his release.

The real goal behind the light-hearted pitch was serious: “To draw more attention to the memory disorders that exist in our country,” Underwood said during a telephone interview.  “Our goal is to genuinely help people with their memories.”

Underwood struck on the basis for Prevagen — a protein in jellyfish — as a student at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. There, he studied neurochemistry as a route to solving his family history of multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s, both neuro-degenerative diseases.

Quincy Bioscience pitches Prevagen as “brain cell protection for minds over 40.” After hitting 40 years old, most of us no longer have enough of a calcium-binding protein called “apoaequorin,” according to Quincy’s Web site. This protein regulates the amount of calcium in our brains, getting rid of the excess.

Calcium build-up in the brain can lead to memory loss, among other things. So taking Prevagen “works to replace these proteins and ensure optimal brain function,” Quincy Bioscience says.

The company footnotes its claims saying, “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

Underwood, who has not yet reached 40, takes the supplement. “You don’t have to be over 40 to recognize the benefits of it,” he said. He feels an “uplift in my brain” from the supplement, he said. “I definitely feel it when I don’t take it.”

Underwood and his colleagues have worked on Prevagen for 13 years, launching the supplement about 18 months ago. It’s their company’s first product.

“It’s taken off like wildfire,” Underwood said. “It works well. People talk about it all the time. That’s our number one source of new customers — word of mouth.”

About the only side-effect from taking the supplement is “people tell us they sleep better,” Underwood said.

And don’t worry, no jellyfish are killed to make the supplement. Underwood and his crew have figured out how to make the calcium-binding protein themselves.