Forgive me, dear readers.

Ever since Mike Adams, the crank who runs and “alternative health” empire and a website with as much traffic as the NIH website, started targeting me two months ago with a series of libelous posts, I haven’t mentioned him much, for the simple reason that I don’t want to drive any traffic his way. Also, after his having posted 25(!) articles targeting me over the last two months, the most recent just this weekend, I realized that addressing him directly is too much like wrestling a pig in mud. You get dirty, and the pig likes it. However, yesterday, Adams outdid himself in a way that I had never seen before and in so doing revealed that families of patients wronged by a different kind of quack than the alternative medicine quacks usually discussed here recognize an opportunist when they see one. Adams’ reaction to these patients’ rejection of his offered “help” provided me with the most deliciously intense sensation of schadenfreude I can recall feeling in a long time.

The “different kind of quack” to whom I refer is Dr. Farid Fata. Dr. Fata, as you might recall, is an oncologist who was caught three years ago scamming Medicare and Medicaid by administering chemotherapy to patients for far longer than they needed it or even by administering chemotherapy to patients who didn’t need chemotherapy at all, some of whom didn’t even have cancer. Incredibly, he pulled in tens of millions of dollars a year with his scam. Fortunately, Dr. Fata was convicted and locked up for a very long time, never to practice medicine again. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of patients who were harmed by Dr. Fata out there, and the legal proceedings on behalf of these patients seeking compensation continue to grind on three years later.

The most frustrating thing about Adams’ tirades against me have not been his actual tirades. After all, that he saw fit to post 25 attacks against me in a little more than two months is something that a skeptic can only view as a badge of honor, regardless of the problems it causes. To be called insane, brain damaged (due to vaccines, of course), and basically the ruler of health topics on Wikipedia (I'm not even an editor there) by Mike Adams is a badge of honor. It means that, over the years, I've really been effective in countering Adams' lies; otherwise he wouldn't bother with me. Even Adams’ explicit attempts to drag my cancer center’s name through the mud in his rants against it, his intent obviously to prod my cancer center leadership into pressuring me into shutting up—to its credit, it hasn't done so—wasn't anything I haven't experienced before, albeit not to this degree. No, what’s been most despicable is that, over and over, Adams has tried to link me with the evil that is Dr. Fata. Never mind that I never met the man, much less worked with him. Never mind that Dr. Fata never had privileges at my cancer center. Never mind that I have nothing but contempt for Dr. Fata for what he has done and publicly expressed that contempt when he was first arrested. Unfortunately, another reason for my contempt is that Fata could not have provided a more useful greedy, chemotherapy-pushing villain for cancer quacks every where to point to if he had tried. Dr. Fata is the living embodiment of everything Mike Adams rants about the "cancer industry"; so it's not a surprise that Adams loves to try to use him to attack science-based medicine and sell his supplements.

Given that I'm not exactly a famous or highly influential figure, I don't know why Adams singled me out for more relentless attacks than pretty much anyone other than Kevin Folta and Paul Offit. Whatever the reason, Adams has been relentless in trying to link my name to Dr. Fata. This, perhaps, will allow you to understand why I found Adams’ latest post, Health Ranger threatened by Dr. Fata chemotherapy victims group after attempting to donate immune-boosting nutritional supplements to its members, so hilarious. I must admit to laughing out loud when I came to Adams' statement, "This is not a satire piece." The story begins 8 weeks ago or so, when Adams, perhaps inspired by me, perhaps not (I don’t know, although at the time he was in the middle of his first, most intensive wave of attacks on me), decided that he would offer to Dr. Fata’s patients his Nutrition Rescue Vitamin C from his Natural News Store in powder or capsule form, which he advertises as “100% non-GMO, China-free vitamin C sourced from Scotland,” all, to “boost the immune systems” of patients “harmed” by chemotherapy. It was an obvious publicity stunt, with Adams claiming that vitamin C would reverse the adverse effects of chemotherapy on the body.

So what happened? This:

File this in the category of "no good deed goes unpunished." After making a nationwide pledge to donate large volumes of immune-supporting vitamin C dietary supplements to victims of Dr. Farid Fata's criminal cancer treatment fraud, I have now been directly threatened by the delusional leaders of the Patients and Families Treated by Dr. Fata group for daring to offer humanitarian assistance to their members. Over the last eight weeks, since announcing my Nutrition Rescue donation program, myself and my staff have been repeatedly and persistently attempting to donate over $20,000 worth of non-GMO, laboratory verified vitamin C dietary supplements to victims of Dr. Farid Fata, the criminal cancer doctor now serving 45 years in prison for committing massive medical fraud. Despite my long track record of making huge non-profit donations to victims all around the world (see the timeline and links below), the response to our attempted donations from the self-proclaimed "leaders" of the Dr. Fata victims group has been nothing short of sheer derision bordering on psychopathic lunacy. Today the leaders of the group hilariously threatened to report me to the FBI for daring to try to donate nutritional supplements to them.

Again, forgive me, dear readers, if I can’t help but note the irony here, given that Adams reported me to the FBI and my state attorney general two months ago for...what? Don’t ask. It was incredibly ridiculous. Now Adams is complaining when someone threatened to report him to the FBI? Delicious. I’ve never met any of the leaders of this group, but now I sure as heck would like to. As much as they’ve suffered at the hands of the quack Dr. Fata, they appear not to have lost their appreciation for science- and evidence-based medicine.

Of course, this being Mike Adams, he just can’t leave well enough alone and let it go, even though that's exactly what he should have done. These are, after all, patients and families who have suffered enormously at the hands of a greedy and evil doctor. Some died as a result. In other words, they are exactly the same sort of people whom Adams claims to champion with his "natural healing" advocacy. Even if they refused him, if Adams really cared about them the way he claims that he does, the correct thing for him to do would have been to keep his big fat trap shut. Is that what he did? Come on! This is Mike Adams we're talking about! Let’s just put it this way. Adams brags about his “long track record of year after year of making very large donations of food, nutrition and food education grants to children, expectant mothers, families in developing nations and victims right here in the United States” and how he had “reached out with a sense of compassion, healing and a selfless attempt to help fellow brothers and sisters who had been victimized by a treacherous cancer fraudster,” and then in the same paragraph refers to Dr. Fata's patients, cancer patients who have suffered enormously because of his fraud, the “bedrock of victimhood insanity” and of exhibiting behavior bordering on "psychopathic lunacy." Stay classy, Mike. Stay classy.

Adams isn’t finished, though:

These cancer fraud victims, you see, have been told by some ignorant doctor that vitamin C is worthless. And they've been so brain damaged by Dr. Fata that they still believe whatever medical lies brainwashed doctors tell them. Nobody has told them that chemotherapy strips vitamin C and other nutrients from the body leaving patients in a state of nutritional deficiency. They aren't interested in hearing that. They just want to be victims for as long as possible, it seems, while attacking and threatening anyone who might actually try to help them. It makes me genuinely wonder: Just how badly did Dr. Fata's illegal chemotherapy damage these people, anyway? (Seriously, that's not a flippant insult. I am genuinely concerned that "chemo brain" side effects have damaged the brains of these people beyond any ability to reason, and I don't know how to help them anymore...) And keep in mind that if McDonald's had offered to donate $20,000 in Chicken McNuggets to this group, they would have no doubt welcomed it with open arms, celebrating the McDonald's corporation as being "compassionate" to cancer fraud victims.

I’m not that doctor who told Dr. Fata’s victims that vitamin C is useless for the simple reason that I’ve never met any of them. However, if any of them had approached me, I would have told her that Adams was massively overselling any potential benefits of vitamin C and, also, to run, not walk, away from him. Notice, though, how it’s not enough to refer to Dr. Fata’s victims as the “bedrock of victimhood insanity,” but Adams has to say they are brain damaged due to the chemotherapy they received. He is just that narcissistic. He really can’t imagine that someone who isn’t insane and/or brain damaged would turn him down. He really can’t imagine that someone who isn’t insane or brain damaged would see through his offer, which appeared to me to be nothing more than some very obvious self-promotion, a means of promoting himself and his website by attacking the “cancer industry” and doing something that can be sold as doing something good for Dr. Fata’s victims. He really can't believe that anyone who isn't insane or brain damaged would disagree with him in any substantive way.

Of course, it never occurs to Adams that these are people who have been horribly wronged. They trusted Dr. Fata, and he betrayed them. Some have had family members die because of their trust in Dr. Fata. No doubt, since then, they’ve likely been approached by all manner of opportunists and fraudsters with glib promises. It would be not be the least bit surprising (to me, at least) if they were very cautious about people approaching them for anything—even to the point of being a little paranoid, because they don’t want to be victimized again or even just taken advantage of or used as a promotional tool. It would be completely understandable if that were true. One has to wonder how Adams approached them. Reading between the lines, it sounds as though he and his staff were relentless, which to me would send up red flags right there. Also, if you’ve ever seen Adams in his videos, you know he puts out a creepy vibe that instantly makes one not want to trust him. Whatever happened, I’d be very curious to hear the other side of the story.

Not satisfied with calling the victims of a cancer fraudster insane and brain damaged for having had the temerity to turn down his offer, Adams next pivots to urging the members to get rid of the leaders of their group, referring to the victims of Dr. Fata as a cult:

Some people just want to be victims, it turns out. Or they want to rule over victims they can control. It's sick, demented and even cult-like in its influence over whatever human victims can be preyed upon. For whatever reason, the cancer industry seems to attract the most sick-minded victim predators of all, which is exactly why Dr. Farid Fata was able to get away with earning millions of dollars by exploiting innocent patient victims in the first place. Somehow, the cancer industry just seems to attract people who are willing to play an active role in their own victimization... and I really don't get it. Doesn't compute!

And then actively trying to shame leaders of a group of cancer patients defrauded by a greedy cancer quack before lecturing them that they should be thanking him for being such a fantastically generous guy:

To those leading the Dr. Farid Fata victims group, you should be ashamed of yourselves. You are fools -- if not psychopaths -- and you betray the interests of the 1400 victims you falsely claim to be assisting. You have taken 1400 victims of the cancer industry fraudsters and have made it worse for them. Do you have no ethics or morals whatsoever?

Funny, but that’s exactly the same question I’d ask Adams to his face if I were ever to meet him. I'd ask the same thing of Adams' sycophantic followers, most of whom are agreeing with him totally in the comments, one of them even going so far as to write, "I'm thinking they may feel that if they are "cured," they will have no Lawsuit..." (Again, stay classy, there.) Unfortunately, I know what the answer is, given Adams' willingness to attack cancer patients defrauded by Dr. Fata because they appear to have seen through his “generosity.” In fact, it’s hard for me to decide who is worse: Dr. Fata or Mike Adams.