webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Mercola, J

good on GMO then grift?

judd says #4 on substack

Disinformation abounds in the wellness community. How one anti-vax influencer broke free | PBS News

By —

Leah Nagy

TranscriptAudio

Some influencers in wellness communities are using their platform to promote conspiracy theories. We examine the social media phenomenon that's having a real-world impact. Stephanie Sy takes a closer look at how one mother was pulled into this world of disinformation and how she got out.

Read the Full Transcript

Tonight, we examine a social media phenomenon that's having a real-world impact. Some influencers in wellness communities are using their platform to promote conspiracy theories.

Stephanie Sy takes a closer look at how one mother was pulled into this world of disinformation and how she got out.

In her home yoga studio in Topanga Canyon, west of Los Angeles, Seane Corn can breathe deeply and tune out the noise.

But when she logs on to her Instagram, it's impossible to avoid it. A yoga instructor for nearly 30 years, Corn has more than 100,000 Instagram followers. but,a few years ago, she began noticing a dark change in tone on her social media.

I started to receive a lot of information from my friends just via text, online, sending me all this propaganda, Pizzagate and their talk of drinking the blood of children.

The look of the posts blended in with the other content on her feed.

They'd be beautifully curated, the font, the colors, the layout, the photography.

Corn saw that those carefully curated facades were being used to peddle conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine and QAnon, the belief that child sex traffickers and pedophiles have infiltrated the government and that President Trump was sent to stop them.

What's more, QAnon's online recruiters were specifically co-opting yoga language.

You bring up this yogic idea of, I can't be free unless my community is free.

Yes.

QAnon's motto is, where we go one, we go all.

Mm-hmm. And when I first heard that statement, it caught me in my throat. They also talk about the Great Awakening and the Great Reset. Language like this is also very much in alignment with spiritual principles. We are here to wake up.

And this was other yoga teachers and wellness influencers?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Was it the majority of them?

If I was just to look at my tight-knit group of colleagues, 50/50.

Fifty percent of your inner circle of wellness teachers and influencers believe that Donald Trump was sent here for cosmic good?

Yes, I would have to say.

Derek Beres, Co-Host, "Conspirituality": OK, let me hit record.

Derek Beres is a co-host of the podcast "Conspirituality," which examines why the wellness industry is such fertile ground for counternarratives.

The intersection between the New Age and the right-wing conspiratorial thinking, I believe, is rooted in individualism. America is an individualist culture. Everything we produce and promote is all about the sovereignty of the self, and sovereignty is one of those words that crosses over between those two communities.

And it intensified during the pandemic.

So you start looking on Instagram, and then there's your favorite yoga instructor talking about child sex trafficking, and 5G causing cancer, and the vaccine that's coming is going to give you cancer or is going to kill you.

And some people looked in horror, but some people were like, wait a second, I'm going to go this route and explore this and do my research.

That phrase, "Do your own research," is rampant on anti-vaccine forums, as well as QAnon spaces. The research often leads people to what the Center for Countering Digital Hate calls the Disinformation Dozen, responsible for some 65 percent of all vaccine disinformation spread online.

They have reached tens of millions of users.

Hi. This is Dr. Mercola, helping you take control of your health.

They include Dr. Joseph Mercola, who peddles dietary supplements to his 3.6 million followers, and has claimed that hydrogen peroxide can cure COVID-19, Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopath physician who claims that wearing a mask has negative health effects, and Sayer Ji, who runs a popular alternative health Web site and shares false claims, like that the Pfizer vaccine has killed more elderly people than COVID-19.

Heather Simpson spent years under the influence of the Disinformation Dozen. She recalls how she was drawn in.

It all started when I kind of looked into the wellness community when I was trying to get pregnant, and it was like ads started popping up for anti-vaccine issues. It was like one and the same. Like, look up wellness stuff, anti-vax stuff pops up.

Simpson soon found herself watching videos about the dangers of vaccines and approached her doctor.

He was like: "You're not one of those crazy anti-vaxxers, are you?" and like conversation dead.

All of the, I feel, gaslighting by the medical community and then them just brushing me away, like, was completely opposite from what I would find on the Internet with the holistic world. They welcomed me.

Conspiracy theories gain traction when people lose trust in institutions. Alternative theories take root, espoused by authentic and relatable influencers masquerading as truth-tellers, says researcher Stephanie Baker.

Dr. Stephanie Alice Baker, University of London: Really, what's at play here, rather than social media being the cause of this kind of anti-vaccine sentiment, is that, actually, social media creates the conditions for these trust relationships and for intimacy to be fostered to a different degree.

We have got to move away from seeing misinformation as an information problem to really seeing it as a relationship problem.

Baker has examined how social media influencers may manipulate mothers like Simpson.

What we have found is that a lot of that content was dedicated towards actually specifically targeting mothers, and trying to encourage them to refuse vaccination, and really playing on this idea that a mother's intuition is superior to the abstract professional knowledge.

Mother Heather Simpson soon became an influencer herself.

Looking back, I feel like I got reported enough for misinformation that Facebook could have and perhaps should have taken that stuff down. But it was racking up so many comments and just user engagement that, why would they?

She had discovered the magic formula that makes so many wellness influencers rich. Social media algorithms are known to push more provocative content, because it increases engagement, great for the social media companies, and for people selling false promises.

Almost everyone in the wellness community that I knew was involved in a multilevel marketing company. A lot of them are stay-at-home moms or single moms. Some of them are making $20,000 a month at this point. Some are making $100,000. And so, naturally, I fell into that.

And so I sold a product that claimed basically to detox your body.

At the time, Simpson saw the scheme as a way to gain financial freedom from her husband, whom she's now separated from.

I was just doing anything I could just to get out, just be independent and be strong for my daughter and do everything I could to make an income and get out there and get out — out of there.

Simpson eventually grew disillusioned with the wellness community, a feeling that only increased during the pandemic, and led her to publicly denounce the persona she'd cultivated.

I realized, if you're not 100 percent brainwashed, you're not — yes, you are the enemy.

COVID hit the next month, and they changed their tune to: Don't mask me. I have freedom.

And I was like: Why not? Just wear a mask. Like, it could save an entire life.

She's now not only fully vaccinated. She runs a group encouraging others to get the COVID vaccine.

Seane Corn is also fighting against the tide of conspiracy theories that have gripped her yoga community, but it hasn't been easy to take a stand. When she posted a statement against QAnon, the backlash came quick.

The vitriol was intense. The messages that I received privately were definitely violent.

Her tactic for helping fellow yogis find their way back from the conspiracy brink goes back to a basic yogic principle, engaging the student in their own healing.

I want to ask questions. Like, tell me more. Why do you believe that? And then see if we can get to the root, because the root is always going to come down to fear.

It's a process, she says, and, like the practice of yoga, a slow one.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy.

---

mojo 6 22

...In part, the breathtaking success of worldwide anti-vaccination campaigns is due to the fact that there is an entire,incredibly lucrative cottage industry devoted to pumping out vaccine disinformation.Many of the most successful anti-vaccine activists rake in advertising money from their popular YouTube channels; some further enrich themselves through sales of supplements, detox regimens, and other wellness products, the Center for Countering Digital Hate has found. Social media makes it cheap and easy to reach international customers—and international versions of popular social media platforms lack even the basic disinformation censors found in American versions. Children’s Health Defense, the prominent and influential anti-vaccine group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently launched a European version of its site. Joseph Mercola, the influential anti-vaccine osteopath, offers Spanish and French editions of his site; his videos have been translated into many languages, according to the New York Times. In a 2017 affidavit, Mercola reported his net worth to be in excess of $100 million. 

American influencers’ messages often resonate with communities that seem to have little in common with the United States, says Joe Smyser, CEO of  Public Good Projects, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that collaborates with UNICEF on studying vaccine hesitancy. Recently, his team followed the path of an American op-ed criticizing pandemic restrictions from its origin in the United States all the way to East Timor, where it took off on local social media. And when Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said he opposed government vaccine mandates, “that got a lot of traction in social networks across Vietnam,” Smyser says. “It was used to push back against the Vietnamese government and Vietnamese public health officials.”

But there is another reason that anti-vaccine content finds its way around the world, with consequences even more dangerous and pervasive than those from anti-vaccine activists. In his study, Wilson’s team found that foreign governments—particularly Russia—were amplifying all kinds of messages both in support of and against vaccines. This is a well-established destabilization tactic that leverages social media to polarize an entire population around a particularly contentious issue—Russia used it to undermine the 2016 US presidential election, for example. The point isn’t to promote any single viewpoint; it’s to sow chaos. “A lot of the time, you’ll have bots pushing six completely contradictory, mutually exclusive stories,” Wilson says. “But what unifies all of them is trying to get people to throw up their hands and say, ‘I guess it’s impossible to know what the truth is.’”

Just as Wilson was wrapping up his study, the pandemic began—and suddenly, his research took on new meaning and urgency. Around the world, social media channels were flooded with wild claims about the new disease and the tools to fight it. He watched in horror as powerful people—even heads of state—amplified the “disinformation campaigns online that have managed to blow it vastly out of the original proportion of a few individuals who were hardcore believers.”

Public Good Project/Nimbus Capture]

Which narrative takes off in any given country depends on the culture and history of the place. In May 2020, Kenyan evangelical pastor Fred Akama posted a rant on Facebook, which began “THE GATES OF BILL SHALL NOT PREVAIL.” Bill Gates “predicted that a viral pandemic would hit the world,” the post continued, with the clear implication that the philanthropist was somehow complicit in and profiting from the creation and spread of Covid. Akama also accused Gates of having unethically close ties with the World Health Organization and vaccine producers and called him an enemy of the Christian faith. He has more than 15,000 followers on Facebook.

Akama wasn’t the only social media influencer in Kenya warning about Bill Gates’ motives. “If you look at the kind of stuff that is circulating in East Africa…you find that the content seems to be very similar,” says Eric Mugendi, who works at Meedan, a San Francisco–based technology nonprofit supporting fact-checking and verification of organizations. “The kind of language that was being used and the types of people who were spreading it—a lot of times it was religious leaders,” Mugendi says, arguing that anti-vaxxers often link their arguments to Gates and liberal philanthropist George Soros. They accuse them of wanting to test vaccines’ efficacy on Africans, profit from vaccine sales, control the human population through microchipping, and prevent the growth of the African population.

“The unifying factor is encouraging distrust of elites and experts and Westerners on any level.”

Disinformation campaigns that play up nefarious motives of powerful people are common worldwide. In the United States, a widely shared video called Plandemic popularized the conspiracy theory about Gates early in the pandemic. This strain of disinformation is particularly effective in Africa because of deep-seated anxiety that Western governments want to slow population growth in the developing world, notes Wilson of Brandeis University. “The unifying factor is encouraging distrust of elites and experts and Westerners on any level,” he says.

Ultraconservative groups in Africa have a long history of spinning a variety of Gates conspiracy theories. The anti-abortion movement in Africa has employed this tactic for at least a decade. In a 2017 article in Pacific Standard, Kathryn Joyce reported on a prominent Nigerian anti-abortion activist Obianuju Ekeocha, who in 2012 spoke out against a Gates Foundation contraceptives campaign. American anti-choice groups helped Ekeocha create a new group, Culture of Life Africa. This complemented an ongoing campaign by Human Life International, a hardline US anti-abortion group operating around the world. Its mission? To spread the message that “Western governments and NGOs are using great sums of money and influence to destroy the traditionally life-loving African culture.”

There’s a convergence these days between seemingly unrelated public health issues, as many of the same US-sponsored organizations that oppose abortion have pivoted their messaging to address Covid vaccinations. One such group is CitizenGO, an ultraconservative petition mill with outposts worldwide. CitizenGO Africa, whose anti-abortion work Mother Jones covered here, is led by a Kenyan woman named Ann Kioko, who was trained in workshops by the American Leadership Institute, a conservative organization that counts former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Karl Rove among its distinguished alumni. 

In 2020, CitizenGo posted an online petition titled “Bill Gates and WHO: Hands Off Africa” intended to send a “firm message to the Bill Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization that Africa is not a test lab, Africans are people with human dignity and Africans will not be used to try vaccines whose purpose is not known.” The petition accuses Gates of having Covid vaccines “tested on Africa as he stages them [vaccines] as the only solution to the pandemic.” It also accuses Bill and Melinda Gates of attempting to control the African population via contraception and abortion. “Melinda Gates told the Washington Post she is frustrated with the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding for international ‘reproductive-rights projects,’ (READ ABORTION) calling it ‘incredibly disappointing,’” the petition read. ...

...Tenpenny has been added to the Center for Countering Digital Hate's infamous**"disinformation dozen**," a group described as "12 people it said were responsible for spreading a majority of anti-vaxxer falsehoods on Facebook."

ref report

https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_750e5af82aea4920a270b1c5a8b094c2.pdf

no lnx

KEY FINDINGS

Analysis of a sample of anti-vaxx content that was shared or posted on Facebook and

Twitter showed up to 65% of anti-vaccine content can be traced to the leading online

anti-vaxxers, who we label the Disinformation Dozen.

? Individuals were selected based upon their high social media followings and high

volume production of anti-vaccine content.

? Our sample of anti-vaccine content was shared or posted onFacebook or Twitter a

total of 812,000 times between February 1 and March 16 2021, with 65% of that

sample attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.

? In the last two months, our analysis of anti-vaxx content posted or shared to

Facebook 689,000 times shows that up to 73% of that content originates from

the leading anti-vaxxers included in this report.

? Analysis of 120,000 anti-vaccine tweets and shares during this period finds that

up to 17% feature the Disinformation Dozen.

Deplatforming repeat offenders is the most effective way of stopping the proliferation of

dangerous misinformation.

?The Disinformation Dozen -- including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joseph Mercola, and

Ty and Charlene Bollinger, among others -- continually violate the terms of service

agreements on Facebook and Twitter. While some anti-vaxxers identified by

CCDH have been removed from a single platform, comprehensive action has yet to

be taken, and most remain active on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

? CCDH’s ongoing tracking of 425 anti-vaxx accounts finds that the total following

across platforms reached 59.2 million in December 2020, an increase of 877,000

since June

https://www.counterhate.com/disinformationdozen

an 721

n o  lnx

The New York Times profiles 'most influential' purveyor of online COVID vaccine misinformation

Dartagnan and Daily Kos July 25, 2021

Many of us who maintain a social media presence have at least one acquaintance, "Facebook friend" or real-life, actual friend who has in the past year shared some type of official-sounding, medical jargon-laden post questioning the value of the COVID-19 vaccines — or worse, directly asserting or implying that such vaccines are ineffective, harmful, deadly, or will lead to untold health problems.

According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a U.S./UK non-profit dedicated to fighting online disinformation and hate, nearly two-thirds of the anti-vaccine propaganda peddled in online forums and social media can be traced to exactly twelve individuals, colloquially labelled the "Disinformation Dozen." If you are someone who spends a significant time in social media forums, the chances are high that you have seen, scrolled through or otherwise had some awareness of their activity online, be it in your local school board's Facebook feed or other community sounding boards where supposedly informed individuals trade opinions and information.

According to the New York Times, and as confirmed in the CCDH's comprehensive report profiling these individuals, the number one purveyor of this vaccine misinformation is a gentleman named Joseph Mercola, described by the Times as an osteopathic physician. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he currently headquarters his company in the state of Florida, which, as USA Today's Nada Hassanein illustrates, is rapidly emerging as the nation's predominant "hotspot" for spiking COVID-19 infections, almost entirely among those who have refused to be vaccinated against the virus.

On Saturday the Times' Sheera Frankel profiled Dr. Mercola and cited multiple examples of his work, beginning with an article he published that appeared on Facebook in February. As Frankel reports, that article, clocking in at 3400 words, "declared coronavirus vaccines were "a medical fraud" and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease." The article (now deleted by Facebook) purportedly claimed that COVID-19 vaccines "alter[ed] your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch." Spread by other anti-vaccine activists and translated into multiple languages, these assertions eventually reached 400,000 Facebook viewers.

Mercola, described as an "internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens," has, according to Frankel's reporting, published approximately 600 articles on Facebook since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement," said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. "He's a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement."

As the vaccination effort in this country approaches what can charitably be described as peak acceptance, the focus of many in the media has justifiably been on such political propaganda outlets such as Fox News, whose motivation for disseminating such lies can be attributed to political ends. It has become increasingly obvious, however, that many of those who refuse to be vaccinated (and thus contribute to the spread of COVID-19 through mutations such as the current delta variant) are having their political preconceptions against vaccinations reinforced through pseudo-medical misinformation they read online.

Several of the individuals profiled in the USA Today article (linked above via Yahoo News) illustrate the huge role social media has taken in fueling and perpetuating the COVID-19 pandemic in this country. As one physician in Florida's Calhoun county -- one of the epicenters of the recent surge in the state's COVID cases, with a current vaccination rate of only 23% -- observes, it is virtually impossible to dissuade people from believing something they read on social media about these vaccines, particularly when it carries the imprimatur of medical expertise.

"We're a small community. We all know people who passed away from COVID. When someone passes away, it's people we know," Davis said. "But I still don't feel like that overrides what people have seen on social media."

Davis has heard it all – from the myths that the vaccine will turn people magnetic to the virus being a hoax. She tries to quell fears, countering the false claims with research and data but patients often shut the conversation down.

The responses she and other medical providers in Florida hear from people who refuse the vaccine typically include assertions that the vaccines are untested, "experimental", and that there is too much contradictory information about them online. Significantly, some of these opinions are being influenced by medical providers themselves; one gentleman quoted in the USA Today article was told by his wife, a registered nurse, that "the vaccines hadn't been studied enough."

As Frankel's article points out, the general scientific and medical illiteracy most of the US population provides the perfect breeding ground for purveyors and profiteers of unreliable information. Mercola is a case in point:

[R]ather than directly stating online that vaccines don't work, Dr. Mercola's posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance.

According to Frankel's article, Mercola, who originally practiced in Illinois, began in the 1990's to shift his practice towards alternative medicine and promoting natural health cures and treatments. A prolific author, he has even had a book on the New York Times' bestseller list. As his fame (and wealth) have increased, he has developed a multinational presence through various consulting companies and offices. His selling tactics, bolstered by a Facebook following of over 1.7 million (he has a Spanish language page with one million followers as well), resort to a routine pattern, according to Frankel:

It starts with making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as that spring mattresses amplify harmful radiation, and then selling products online — from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt — that he promotes as alternative treatments.

As Frankel reports, both Twitter and Facebook have taken down and issued cautions about several of Mercola's postings, He has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission for purveying disinformation regarding the cancer-reducing qualities of tanning beds, and he has received a warning from the FDA regarding his claims of about the efficacy of vitamin treatments in treating COVID-19 infection, and for selling unapproved health products. None of these actions appear to have dissuaded him from continuing to post misinformation. Frankel cites a recent example of Mercola continuing to raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccines through his social media feed.

As noted above, Mercola is hardly the only one responsible for vaccine denialism; he is simply has the biggest audience. It's clear though, from what is happening on the ground in Florida, for example, with the widespread refusal among a susceptible, medically ignorant population to accept these vaccines (even in the face of increased infections and deaths), that this country faces an almost perfect storm of disinformation.

Fear is indeed the "mind-killer." By cynically downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic over the past year and a half, Republicans like Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and their allies in the US. Congress and state legislatures have fostered an environment where people's fears and doubts take precedence over science. Those fears and doubts are then exponentially amplified and reinforced by what they read on social media. The anti-vaccine movement has taken full advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to sow doubt and regurgitate false or misleading information.

What we are witnessing right now in this country is the predictable outcome of these two insidious, destructive, and wholly complementary narratives, almost in real time.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Research exposes how right-wing media misled viewers about the ... ›

Senator Ron Johnson booted from YouTube after violating medical ... ›

WaPo torches Ron Johnson with a full rundown of his dangerous ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Coronavirus: The human cost of virus misinformation - BBC News ›

How misinformation is distorting COVID policies and behaviors ›

Facebook and YouTube are still full of covid misinformation - The ... ›

ok, cites gorski and quackwatch  http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/February-2012/Dr-Joseph-Mercola-Visionary-or-Quack/

==

Joseph M. Mercola (born 1954) is an alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and web entrepreneur, who markets a variety of controversial dietary supplements and medical devices through his website, mercola.com.[1] Until 2013,[2] Mercola operated the "Dr. Mercola Natural Health Center" (formerly the "Optimal Wellness Center") inSchaumburg, Illinois.[3] He wrote the best-selling books The No-Grain Diet[4] (with Alison Rose Levy) and The Great Bird Flu Hoax. Mercola criticizes many aspects of standard medical practice, such as vaccination and what he views as overuse of prescription drugs and overuse of surgery to treat diseases. On his website mercola.com, Mercola and colleagues advocate a number of unproven alternative health notions including homeopathy, while promoting anti-vaccinepositions. Mercola is a member of the Political advocacy group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons as well as several alternative medicine organizations.[5][6]Mercola has been criticized by business, regulatory, medical, and scientific communities. A 2006 BusinessWeek editorial stated his marketing practices relied on "slick promotion, clever use of information, and scare tactics."[3] In 2005, 2006, and 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Mercola and his company to stop making illegal claims regarding his products' ability to detect, prevent, and treat disease.[7] The medical watchdog site Quackwatch has criticized Mercola for making "unsubstantiated claims [that] clash with those of leading medical and public health organizations and many unsubstantiated recommendations for dietary supplements."[7]Contents  [hide] 1Biography2Views and controversy2.1Vaccinations2.2Other views3FDA Warning Letters4References5External linksBiographyMercola is a 1976 graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago and a 1982 graduate of the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine (now Midwestern University).[8]According to Mercola's website, he is a former Chairman of Family Medicine at St. Alexius Medical Center. He has written two books which have been listed on the New York Times bestseller list: The No-Grain Diet (May 2003) and The Great Bird Flu Hoax (October 2006).[9][10]

In the latter book, Mercola dismisses medical concerns over an avian influenza pandemic, asserting that the government, big business, and the mainstream media have conspired to promote the threat of avian flu in order to accrue money and power.[11] Mercola has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show[12] and The Doctors.[13]Views and controversyMercola operates mercola.com, which he has described as the most popular alternative-health website on the Internet.[3] Traffic counting from Quantcast shows the site receives about 1.9 million novel visitors per month, each returning almost ten times each month; the number of views are roughly equal to those received by the National Institutes of Health.[1] The site and his company,Mercola LLC brought in roughly $7 million in 2010 through the sale of a variety of alternative medicinetreatments and dietary supplements.[1]

The site promotes a number of alternative health ideas, including the notion that homeopathy works, that Vitamin D is a "silver bullet" cancer treatment, and that vaccinations have hidden detriments to human health.[1] An article in BusinessWeek was critical of his website's aggressive direct-marketing tactics and complained of Mercola's "lack of respect" for his site's visitors, writing:"Mercola gives the lie to the notion that holistic practitioners tend to be so absorbed in treating patients that they aren't effective businesspeople. While Mercola on his site seeks to identify with this image by distinguishing himself from "all the greed-motivated hype out there in health-care land", he is a master promoter, using every trick of traditional and Internet direct marketing to grow his business... He is selling health-care products and services, and is calling upon an unfortunate tradition made famous by the old-time snake oil salesmen of the 1800s."[3]Phyllis Entis, a microbiologist and food safety expert, highlighted Mercola.com as an example of websites "likely to mislead consumers by offering one-sided, incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading information."[14]VaccinationsMercola has been highly critical of vaccines and vaccination policy, claiming that too many vaccines are used too soon during infancy.[15] He hosts vaccine critics on his website, advocates preventive measures rather than vaccination in many cases, and strongly criticizes influenza vaccines. During 2011, he reportedly donated $1 million to organizations that oppose vaccination.[16]

Mercola says that thimerosal, previously widely used as a vaccine preservative, is harmful.[17][18] Thimerosal is no longer present in most vaccines given to young children in the USA, though it is still present in some vaccines approved for adults.[19] Extensive evidence has accumulated since 1999 showing that this preservative is safe,[20] with the World Health Organization stating in 2006 that "there is no evidence of toxicity in infants, children or adults exposed to thiomersal in vaccines."[20][21]In his book The Great Bird Flu Hoax,[22] Mercola appears to take a stronger anti-pharmaceutical industry stance by accusing them of a fear-mongering marketing campaign against the public. In supporting this stance, Mercola often has wholly critical views of those working in governmental health care, as well as towards international health organizations. He argues at length that concern over swine flu and the resulting immunizations were actually false alarms put forth to terrify the public.[23] The World Health Organization reports that by August 1, 2010, about 18,500 deaths have been caused by the H1N1 pandemic influenza.[24]Other viewsOther controversial views Mercola supports include:

If you want to read a fascinating expose of this doctor read the recent :{Philadelphia Magazine:(style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color:transparent;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:transparent"):}::{ :(style="font-style:normal"):}:expose on him.:{ :(style="font-style:normal"):}:

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/will-this-doctor-hurt-your-baby/

Dr. Paul Offit, or as he is also known Paul “For Profit” Offit, is a fairly well-known and frequent commentator in favor of vaccinations who dismisses many vaccine risks and promotes vaccine mandates. But he is not just a doctor who believes that vaccinations save lives. Far from it.

Dr. Offit is also a listed inventor on a cluster of patents that protect Merck’s Rotateq vaccine and share the title “Rotavirus Reassortant Vaccine.” They include four granted U.S. patents -- US5626851, US5750109, US6113910 and US6290968 -- and two granted European patents -- EP323708 and EP493575. 

He is also the recipient of a $350,000 grant from Merck for the vaccine’s development, a consultant to Merck Pharmaceuticals and, the icing on the cake, previously served as a member of The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). 

ACIP is a 15-member panel of immunization experts, selected by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. They provide advice and guidelines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine-preventable diseases. 

As a member of the ACIP from 1998 to 2003, Dr. Offit was involved in CDC recommendations about giving rotavirus vaccine to babies. He voted “yes” three times out of four on issues pertaining to the ACIP’s rotavirus use recommendation (including, voting for his own vaccine to be included in the immunization schedule). 

To clarify, Dr. Offit voted for the FIRST Rotashield vaccine manufactured by Wyeth (monkey-human hybrid virus) approved by ACIP in 1998 to be given to all babies. He abstained from the vote in 1999 to recommend that Rotashield be removed from the market. He did not vote for the Merck Rotateq vaccine (cow-human hybrid virus) to be recommended for use in all babies -- he was prevented under ACIP/government rules from voting to recommend a product he had a personal financial stake in. 

Now, as a result of Merck’s rotavirus vaccine being added to the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule,the value of Dr. Offit’s stake in the vaccine has skyrocketed.