Comment and Opinion

Joseph Mercola

This site won the Anus Maximus Award in the 2006 Millenium Awards. This was the citation:

One of the headlines on Joe Mercola's alternative medicine web site when these awards were being judged said "Red Hot Chili Peppers May Cure Type 1 Diabetes" It was followed by the words "A breakthrough discovery could lead to a natural cure for a disease previously thought to be incurable. ...". The link led to a page on the Mercola site with the same heading where Mercola reported on a study of mice where injection of capsaicin (or a related peptide) into the pancreases of specially-bred mice resulted in temporary reversal or inhibition of some of the precursors of diabetes. Please note that these mice are designed to get diabetes, they did not consume "red hot chilli peppers" in any form whatsoever, and they were mice, not humans. The research was not looking for a cure for diabetes by injecting a chemical derived from capsaicin - the objective was to examine the role of certain pain-detecting pancreatic cells in the development of diabetes.

In Mercola's comments he starts off by saying "Nearly 75 million Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes, and while only 5 percent have the Type I version, its supposed incurability makes it by far the more challenging form of the illness. So this new research is potentially great news for Type I diabetics. Type 2 diabetes, of course, is already virtually 100 percent curable with natural methods frequently described on my site". It goes without saying that there are no methods described on the site which provide a "virtual 100 percent" cure for diabetes. He then goes on to suggest that the discovery of capsaicin and its action on pancreatic pain cells will not be good news for the pharmaceutical companies, using the words "However, the good news is that this may end up having nothing to do with the drug companies. Seems like once the protocol is worked out, it may be something the average lay person will be able to implement". Yes, that's right - the average person will be able to extract a peptide from peppers and inject it into his own pancreas. Oh, by the way, capsaicin "can also be useful for preventing and treating cancer". Of course it can. It's natural.

You might think that I am biased against Mercola just because he tells lies about diabetes cures, but let's look at his "causes" of autism.

Pasteurised milk - http://www.mercola.com/2003/jul/2/pasteurized_milk.htm

Fluoride - http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/25/tooth_decay.htm (when consumed by pregnant women)

Aluminium - http://www.mercola.com/2006/apr/11/there_are_more_toxins_in_vaccines_than_mercury.htm

Mercury (of course) - http://www.mercola.com/2004/nov/3/mercury_vaccines_medicine.htm

MMR (of course) - http://www.mercola.com/2001/jan/28/mmr_autism.htm

Malnutrition - http://www.mercola.com/2004/jun/26/autism_malnutrition.htm

Lactose - http://www.mercola.com/2004/jun/26/autism_malnutrition.htm (it goes with the malnutrition)

Glutamine - http://www.mercola.com/2004/may/1/glutamine.htm (makes autism worse)

"An excess of grains, sugars, underground vegetables, and any fluid other than water" in the diet - http://www.mercola.com/2000/may/21/ritalin_prozac_adhd.htm (Mercola lies about achieving "near miraculous improvement" by following his advice.)

I could go on, but what's the point? Mercola is prepared to push any form of lie, nonsense or quackery if it can help him to sell things. At least he's consistent about something.

Autism! Solved! (4/1/2005)

Everyone will be pleased to know that the cause of autism has been positively identified. The definitive answer was published on Dr Joseph Mercola's web site, and therefore, according to proponents of alternative medicine, it must be true. A close associate of God has spoken. And what is this amazing news, you ask. It is that autism is caused by drinking pasteurised milk. Just in case you missed that, autism is caused by drinking pasteurised milk. I announced the good news to an alternative medicine forum in the following words:

Mercola says Wakefield, Haley and others are wrong!

Dr Joseph Mercola, the man who cannot be wrong, has declared, by implication, that leaky-gut believers like Dr Andrew Wakefield and mercury-does-everything researchers like Professor Boyd Haley are wrong.

It seems that autism is caused by drinking pasteurised milk.

Responses from Drs Wakefield and Haley about this demolition of their positions are expected shortly. Both are expected to apologise for misleading people all this time. Well, Dr Wakefield might apologise, but we all know Dr Haley's record for this sort of thing.

News at http://www.mercola.com/2003/jul/2/pasteurized_milk.htm

The first response I received was to point me to another page on Mercola's web site where he said that autism was caused by mercury in vaccines, but I didn't accept that as a rebuttal because all it told me was that Mercola is an opportunistic hypocrite and I knew that already. The next response (from a Boyd Haley disciple) was to accuse me of lying because nowhere in the referenced URL are the names Wakefield or Haley mentioned, and therefore Mercola could not be disagreeing with them. When I explained, slowly and using short words, that contradicting someone is disagreeing with that person even if no names are mentioned, I was told "When you state what others said, you best use their own words, not your so called *deductive reasoning*". Sometimes even I am amazed at my patience, but this is a perfect example of why people believe nonsense. It is because sometimes they simply can't understand the difference between sense and nonsense.

Speaking of chicken pox ... (11/2/2012)

I was looking at a Facebook page for an organisation committed to providing better health to people and the advertisement at the right appeared. Joe Mercola is an opportunistic quackery salesman who has never seen a disease he can't make money out of by offering a cure. Sometimes he even offers a range of mutually exclusive treatments, but that doesn't bother him as long as there is money to be made. He won the Anus Maximus Award in 2006 for his nine causes of autism, some of them known only to him (pasteurised milk?) but all with a tailored cure.

Every time I think that I have seen the lowest point that filth like Mercola can attain I am reminded that perhaps there isn't a bottom. Perhaps it goes down as far as the edge of the universe.

Some more good news. Maybe. (27/7/2019)

This popped up on Twitter:

I'm sure this decision has nothing to do with Facebook's stated intention of removing anti-vaccination and medical quackery pages. Just a coincidence, surely. Of course, as Mercola can't open his mouth without a lie coming out, nobody should believe this until his Facebook presence disappears. Also of course, his wife would probably still be around with her own brand of madness and mendacity to act as a proxy.