It’s an age for con men, says Intelligencer columnist Sarah Jones.
Quackery is at least as old as the United States, but today’s quacks “have learned to manipulate regulatory loopholes to sell fake cures to the masses,” she says.
Jones points out that a Joe Rogan podcast fan may hear commercials for “Alpha Brain,” created by a “Rogan friend” who got sued last year for deceptive advertising.
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Jones said snake oil salesmen now proliferate in U.S. government.
“Before Mike Huckabee became our ambassador to Israel, he advertised Relaxium, an herbal supplement whose makers falsely pledged it would help a restless nation sleep,” Jones writes. “Other supplement-makers see a champion in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who not only opposes vaccines but has said the Food and Drug Administration should free the nation from the ‘aggressive suppression’ of dubious vitamins and herbal substances.”
She noted Kennedy even hired David Geier to conduct federal studies into “the debunked link between autism and vaccines, though authorities once punished Geier for experimenting on autistic children in a basement laboratory.”
But Kennedy “and his ilk” aren’t limiting themselves to the mere pseudoscience promotion. They’re undermining scientific research at the same time, Jones said.
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“Funding cuts and layoffs are weakening major institutions like the National Institutes of Health and the FDA, which were established to monitor our food supply and medicines for safety. The administration has canceled research grants to universities, slowing the pace of innovation. Scientists searching for cures and treatments for Alzheimer’s, various cancers, and genetic diseases say their work is in jeopardy,” she said.
And this is delivering results, she added. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found 86 percent of Americans felt confident in the work of the country’s scientists. That figure declined during the pandemic, and remains lower than its pre-COVID levels. Behind those numbers are hucksters who prospered during the pandemic “thanks in part to Donald Trump himself.”
At the height of a pandemic, Jones said Trump told people to inject disinfectant to fight the virus. Grifters hawked horse dewormer ivermectin and an anti-malarial drug called hydroxychloroquine, which killed at least one Trump supporter after the president touted it at a press conference.
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And while parents and some doctors are attempting to treat measles with cod-liver oil, in spite of the evidence against it, Jones said Trump nominated Kennedy ally Casey Means to be surgeon general, though Means promotes a byzantine supplement regime that he claims can reverse symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The New York Times reports one Illinois couple spent $25,000 treating Alzheimer’s the Bredesen way before figuring out it doesn’t work.
Jones said Trump’s pseudoscience may outlast him if lawmakers refuse to take on what she calls “a predator’s market” of exploitation.
“Without robust public institutions and a health-care system that prioritizes care over profit, mistrust will fester. Americans will lead sicker and shorter lives, and the next pandemic may be even deadlier than COVID,” Jones said.
Parents will blow money on quack treatments “or sacrifice their children to scam artists,” she said.
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“Fighting Trump means fighting MAHA and, with it, the quack and the huckster. Rebuilding the federal government and closing regulatory loopholes will cost nostrum-makers some cash, but it’s the only way to make America healthy at last,” she said.
Read the full Intelligencer report at this link.