Member- Aug 21, 2014
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the only thing that would worry me from Mercola.com is if they or their lunatic CAM buddies weren't being harassed constantly by state and federal authorities
These people aren't being singled out because they are on to some secret cure; they're being singled out because they are peddling snakeoil and dangerous misinformation in a pandemic.
There aren't very many things our government is doing right now that I approve of as strongly, as making life hard for the Dr. Brownsteins and Ron Mercolas of the world.
I realize that this is one area where you and I are diametrically opposed, and so I have stayed out of much of this, but I'm going to take the time to respond to any and all Mercola related suggestions with vitriol and anger, because I believe he is a deeply reckless person with no moral compass who has made a career out of exploiting desperate people, and this forum is crawling with them.
Scammers, scammers, crooks crooks and scammers. Clearly animals are not psychic or my cat would be waiting for me to feed him every night.
edit: I will immediately cede that there are also plenty of credentialed MDs who have made careers out of exploiting people with misinformation. The existence of shitty doctors doesn't let other snake oil salesmen off the hook.
These things are complex; if they told me they were going to start flurodating water here, my first question would be "using sodium fluroide, or using hexafluorosilicic acid bought dirt cheap as industrial waste from Aluminum manufacture?" -- most people are not aware of the distinction, nor are they aware that a lot of that hexafluorosilicic acid is sourced from Chinese post-industrial and not necessarily tested as well as you'd hope.
Raising flags on issues like these is important, and a function of real journalism. Mercola isn't a journalist, he's just another peddler who knows a little bit more than the average person about some of these things, and then uses that to generate fear which he leverages to sell products that generally aren't really relevant to the issue at hand.
Reading about the "real" risks of these things is not hard to do (ex https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1462901113000087 ) but you need to go look the research horse in the mouth, not listen to the fast talking salesman with the dotcom e-commerce site masquerading as a "health portal". (My own takeaway on this particular issue is that I wouldn't bat an eye at USP NaF, and I would not want to drink water treated with postindustrial fluoride for all the reasons that article outlines).
That's not what the letter says at all, it says that he cannot offer services which claim to treat or cure any disease without having a scientific basis for doing so. This applies to anyone offering medical services in the US. He has the right to blog and express his opinion about these treatments; he has the right to offer other treatments which are medically approved, and he EVEN has the right to offer treatments which aren't medically approved as long as he doesn't make unsubstantiable claims about them. I can't think of a lower reasonable bar for alt-med.
These people aren't being singled out because they are on to some secret cure; they're being singled out because they are peddling snakeoil and dangerous misinformation in a pandemic.
There aren't very many things our government is doing right now that I approve of as strongly, as making life hard for the Dr. Brownsteins and Ron Mercolas of the world.
I realize that this is one area where you and I are diametrically opposed, and so I have stayed out of much of this, but I'm going to take the time to respond to any and all Mercola related suggestions with vitriol and anger, because I believe he is a deeply reckless person with no moral compass who has made a career out of exploiting desperate people, and this forum is crawling with them.
Scammers, scammers, crooks crooks and scammers. Clearly animals are not psychic or my cat would be waiting for me to feed him every night.
edit: I will immediately cede that there are also plenty of credentialed MDs who have made careers out of exploiting people with misinformation. The existence of shitty doctors doesn't let other snake oil salesmen off the hook.
These things are complex; if they told me they were going to start flurodating water here, my first question would be "using sodium fluroide, or using hexafluorosilicic acid bought dirt cheap as industrial waste from Aluminum manufacture?" -- most people are not aware of the distinction, nor are they aware that a lot of that hexafluorosilicic acid is sourced from Chinese post-industrial and not necessarily tested as well as you'd hope.
Raising flags on issues like these is important, and a function of real journalism. Mercola isn't a journalist, he's just another peddler who knows a little bit more than the average person about some of these things, and then uses that to generate fear which he leverages to sell products that generally aren't really relevant to the issue at hand.
Reading about the "real" risks of these things is not hard to do (ex https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1462901113000087 ) but you need to go look the research horse in the mouth, not listen to the fast talking salesman with the dotcom e-commerce site masquerading as a "health portal". (My own takeaway on this particular issue is that I wouldn't bat an eye at USP NaF, and I would not want to drink water treated with postindustrial fluoride for all the reasons that article outlines).
