Patricia Cole, a distributor in Inverness, Fla., said the juice helped her beat Hepatitis C. Once word spread in her neighborhood, she quickly ran out of juice for herself, and she got sick again.

Now, she says she'll make sure to never again run out of the juice, which sells retail for $42 a bottle.

"I'm totally amazed by the noni business. You know it has to be doing something. You can sell anybody something once, but to keep selling it, it has to be doing something."

And there are thousands of testimonials exactly like Cole's.

It explains why there are more than 250 companies that now market noni juice, including Springville-based Neways, and why the Hawaiian state government has given money to noni farmers there to kick-start the industry.

Even McClatchey admits there is something about the juice he can't explain.

"I don't think this is a snake oil; there's something to it. The truth is, I expected this to come and go, and it hasn't," he said. "It's held on longer than I expected. There's something to it that nobody can explain."

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Contributing: Associated Press

E-mail: jhyde@desnews.com