snake oil salesman steals deepak chopra’s act

Mike Adams borrows the King of Woo's strategy of stringing a Gish Gallop of junk science to better sell his supplements and pamphlets.

Illustration by Sven Prim

When last we left professional snake oil salesman and celebrity vulture Mike Adams, he was in the middle of an odd hybrid of a eulogy and a sales pitch after Patrick Swayze’s death from pancreatic cancer, claiming his diet of garlic and carrots could knock out the Grim Reaper himself. Now, after going berserk that an award for medical Twitter feeds is out of his hands, he decided to follow the path of all cranks after a setback and steal one of Deepak Chopra’s recent routines.

Basically, it consists of hurling out condescending and painfully ill- informed stereotypes of skeptics and scientists, collecting them into a long stream of accusations and listing them as a supposed exposition of the true beliefs of his hated enemies. Oh and keep in mind, if you like his rants, make sure you go to his South American health resort to learn super secret natural health techniques that Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know and you too can laugh in death’s face before kicking it to the curb.

Look, it’s one thing to list the beliefs of people with who you disagree. It can even be an invaluable lesson for those who want to understand both sides of a debate. But Adams isn’t interested in anything but the voices in his head and lacking Chopra’s skills in ephemeral technobabble and eloquence, his litany of the evil ideas of those who dare doubt his brilliance in all medical and pharmacological methods reads more like a spit in the face by an angry zealot. Oh and there are no links or sources to support his assertions, but that’s just fine. His fans take his word as absolute truth after applying their double standard to nonsense like this…

Skeptics believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective (even if they’ve never been tested), that ALL people should be vaccinated, even against their will, and that there is NO LIMIT to the number of vaccines a person can be safely given.

Yes, we’re all slavish believers in the magic of vaccines, so much so that the FDA requires testing of any new or modified vaccines before they’re approved and vaccines that fail to show at least 70% efficacy are deemed to be mediocre at best and usually discarded. Vaccines have also been pulled from the market the minute we hear a report about a statistically notable side-effect which has been shown to be linked to vaccines. And just to make this accusation a perfect example of Adams’ glaring hypocrisy, we should note that his regimens and concoctions have never been clinically tested due to his paranoid fear of an FDA conspiracy against him, but he assures that everything he sells is 100% safe and 100% effective. Pot, this is kettle, come in pot…

Skeptics believe that fluoride chemicals derived from the scrubbers of coal-fired power plants are really good for human health. They’re so good, in fact, that they should be dumped into the water supply so that everyone is forced to drink those chemicals, regardless of their current level[s] of exposure to fluoride from other sources.

And his source for the origin of fluoride in our drinking water are what again? Ah, right. He doesn’t need any of those pesky sources because that’s what skeptics use. Other than that, it seems like a perfectly rational and reasonable stance to say that a successful attempt to reduce tooth decay in developed nations is just voodoo by polluters and ignoramuses. Plus since no one has access to commercial water filters sold for a few bucks at your nearest supermarket, we’re all absolutely forced to drink these evil chemicals. Ok, no, not really.

Skeptics believe that many six-month-old infants need antidepressant drugs. In fact, they believe that people of all ages can take an unlimited number of drugs at the same time: Antidepressants, cholesterol drugs, blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping drugs and more — simultaneously!

Mike, you’re been talking to those strange voices a wee bit too long since just going down to a pharmacy could prove this assertion as nothing more than ignorant tripe. If it was really safe to give kids the same medication as adults, why would there be lower dose pediatric formulations? And if it was really safe to give people all the drugs in the world at the same time, why do pharmacy technicians try as hard as they can to flag adverse drug interactions and warn patients and doctors if taking an anti-depressant and painkillers could be dangerous?

Skeptics believe the human body has no ability to defend itself against invading microorganisms and that the only things that can save people from viral infections are vaccines.

And the parade of blithering inanity rolls on. There are some 1,300 bacteria and viruses that cause disease and yet, vaccines only tackle a tiny percentage of them. Plus, what is the scientific approach to colds and flu- like diseases? Take some pills to soothe the symptoms while your body kicks that virus’ microscopic tail end with killer T cells. Vaccinations are designed to prevent diseases that can cause lifelong complications or we simply can’t handle on our own as history has shown. Oh and here’s the kicker. Vaccines work only because we have such a powerful immune system since instead of defending us from disease directly they… wait for it… train our immune system how to kill them more effectively. If skeptics really believed the nonsense which resides the dusty cobwebs of Mike’s underutilized mind, there would be no scientific rationale for vaccines in the first place. This isn’t just a hit and a miss. This is not even wrong.

Skeptics believe that pregnancy is a disease and childbirth is a medical crisis. (They’re opponents of natural childbirth.)

I wonder, does he mean that kind of natural childbirth that was one of the biggest killers of women until we’ve mastered the germ theory of disease and sanitary practices? The kind that was insanely dangerous for both the mother and the baby by modern standards? And if women deliver babies safely and with much less pain, how could it possibly harm the child to be born into a medically advanced world that has cures for many of the things that will ail him or her throughout the next 70 to 80 years, vs. the 40 to 50 less than a century ago? Mike is just being an idiot at this point. Sorry, I meant more of an idiot.

Skeptics do not believe in hypnosis. This is especially hilarious since they are all prime examples of people who are easily hypnotized by mainstream influences.

As opposed to the alt med faithful who believe that anything advertised with the words “natural” or “organic” is immediately safer, better and more effective than medication that spent a decade in testing, development and had a successful public release? No, this is not another case of projection that would make Freud himself rise from his grave, point his bony finger at Adams and yell “aha!” to today’s psychologists. Not at all…

There’s more nonsense in the article but as you can see, every single statement is utterly wrong in ways that lets me know that if facts came to life in the form of a vicious dog and slammed its jaws around his nose, Mike wouldn’t recognize them if he used every working brain cell left in the wet tissue between his ears. But hey, he makes a good living off lying, scamming and slandering those who have the audacity to challenge his ideas so he really doesn’t have to be intellectually honest or scientifically sound as long as he issues the good old Quack Miranda of the DSHEA and vomits forth woefully ignorant and ridiculous caricatures of all his doubters. Until someone gets hurt and sues him for selling worthless cures and lying through his teeth that is…