The Healing America Summit 2024: alt-health, reich-wing politics, conspiranoia, and utter lunacy

 

I have written repeatedly on this Whirled about the unholy marriage between Scamworld and (reich-wing) politix, but the Healing America Summit -- which began May 16 and lasts through May 22, 2024 -- is not only serving up steaming piles of MAGA politix and Scamworld (particularly the alt-health sector of Scamworld), but also a hefty dose of conspiranoia and outright lunacy.

As we collectively and apprehensively grope our way through what millions of folks, for various reasons and with a wide range of emotions, view as the End Times, we can take profound (dis)comfort in knowing that there is no shortage of "experts" (i.e., grifters, scalawags, and scoundrels) offering to take us by the hand and the wallet to lead us out of fear and darkness and into their sales funnels. With increasing frequency, and more often than not under the auspices of a central grifter, these unsavory players are joining forces to pummel us with their propaganda.

There was, for example, The Truth [sic] About Cancer Live! convention back in October 2021, which featured Eric Trump and several alt-health/conspiracy crapitalists as speakers. And there's the ongoing ReAwaken America Tour, a conspiranoid Christofascist movement that was born in Oklahoma during the height of the pandemic, and has continued to spread its virulence in the years since.

And now we have the Healing America Summit, which began on May 16, 2024 and continues through May 22. The English-challenged web site says it all in the opening blurb:

USA & THE WORLD GOT CRAZY LIKE NEVER BEFORE AND WE ARE EXPERIENCING A CHALLENGING TIME!
Vaccines, Immigrants, Transhumanism, War, NWO... Bible Prophecies of End-Time & 5D consciousness rising...
The Summit offers you true science, real insider knowledge, natural medicine & Energy healing for YOU to SUCCEED in this time!
Join for FREE. www.HealingAmericaSummit.com

A smirking German huckster and "healer" named Michael König-Breuss is the host of this to-do. Here's what he tells us about himself on the Healing America Summit site:

Why do I organize this Healing America Summit?
I work as a spiritual healer like my grandfather. I knew in 2006 already, that „the mandatory vaccination with nano chips to track, manipulate or even switch of people“ will come. I saw presentations of this technique on TV already in 2014. I heard of plenty Pharma insiders how Pharma companies reduce people on purpose, how the money system is working, how Rockefeller / Rothschild are giving orders to politics in the USA & worldwide, how Chemtrails & Frequency manipulation is used and so on…. I always wanted to help people. With Covid it was enough and the Idea was born, to organize an Online-Summit to inform and wake up the people that are ready to be awakened. NOW it’s time to WAKE UP and take ACTION.

On a "Get To Know Michael" link, he adds more autobiographical details.

After living a life as spiritual Skiguide & Tourguide, I started 2006 as an energetic therapist – healer. Already my grandfather was a healer for over 40 Years, who helped even people in the hospital when Dr. couldn´t help anymore.

I am specialized expert in clearing – releasing peoples energy field of KARMA & foreign energy (old death experiences, fears, curse, black magic, demons…) and teacher for SOUL LANGUAGE – LIGHT LANGUAGE – TALKING IN TONGUES, probably the oldes [sic] Frequency healing technique on planet earth!

Since the COVID plan-demic started, I realized the ability, to significantly alleviate COVID-vaccination & COVID-testing sideffects. In the best case, i was able to eliminate them altogether.

Autum [sic] 2020 a client with migraine, aggression, depression, inner darkness, sucidal [sic] thought [sic] got a distance treatment of me via Zoom.

During the treatment I could see with my „inner eye“ a small black „Nano-Chip“ in her troght [sic]/ neck! Shocking in the first moment. But it could get taken out by SOULLANGUAGE ENERGY-HEALING work. After that happened, ALL her problems were gone in the same moment!

After that, I have helped many people with problems, that started AFTER PCR testing & COVID vaccination. These were people with enormously distressing physical, emotional and mental symptoms & problems. Depression, aggression, suicidal thoughts, headaches, migraines, foreign body feeling in the troat [sic] and whole body, unsuccessful clearing of throat, meaninglessness in life, inner darkness and restlessness, being cut off from the source, sweating, trembling and many more were symptoms that could be solved.

These things and the health problems associated with them were largely gone afterwards.

My endeavor is that with my help and gifts, people can be freed from their vaccination symptoms and can live “normally” again, AND realize the power of ENERGY, BELIEVE, HEALING & DIVINE POSSIBILITIES.

…and realize, that it seems to be a BIG plan of the divine, to wake us people UP! To get us MOVE FORWARD, UPWARD to our „true potential“.
From heart to heart,
Michael

With creds like that, you just know you're in good hands.

Of course we've heard it all before. Along with the hackneyed hype about energetic healing and other pseudo-mystical arts, plus the requisite conspiranoia about nano-chips and the NWO, the core of König-Breuss's message is simply a post-pandemic variation on the traditional New-Wage/McSpirituality theme about a bold new era of human possibility and evolution -- you know, the eternal dawning of the Age of Aquarius that the conspicuously enlightened have been yammering about for at least three generations. (As quoted above, one of the opening blurbs of the Healing America web site mentions "5D consciousness." Hmmm... 5D: fith dimension? Hey, wasn't it The Fifth Dimension that made a top-40 hit of the song from the musical Hair, "The Age Of Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In?")

My rhetorical question, and I've asked it many times, is this: When is the dawn finally going to give way to actual sunshine? Your guess is as good as mine, and my guess would be "never."

Meanwhile there's still bank to be made by promoting oneself as a wayshower or lightworker or truth-teller or savior or bearer of exclusive life-saving (mis)information. And don't think that König-Breuss isn't going to take full advantage of that.

Only the best people
The speaker lineup for the Healing America Summit includes everything from anti-vaxxers to intergalactic ambassadors to American reich-wing traitors. Here's what it says about this list of luminaries on the "summit" web site:

Your speaker [sic] are leading experts from around the WORLD.

Medical doctors, scientists, lawyers, US-Sheriff, US-General, TV-speakers, medical researchers, WHO-experts, pharma insiders, historical & political experts, healer, coaches, fitness influencer and more… They will tell YOU:

HOW the „BAD BOYS & GIRLS“ harm YOU day & night, mentally, emotionally & physically.

DETOXIFICATION possibilities of the COVID-Vaccine / PCR-Tests / Shedding by a MEDICAL WAY and on an ENERGY HEALING WAY.

The plan of the DARK SIDE, and the higher plan of the „DIVINE“ & EVERYBODY'S SOUL.

The „NEW NORMAL“ of the pharma lobby, big tec, NWO...

HOW YOUR „NEW NORMAL“ for YOU can look, if YOU take responsibility for YOUR OWN BODY, MIND, SPIRIT and SOUL!

SOLUTIONS if YOU like to learn and RISE ABOVE!

This "summit" first came onto my radar when, though officially blocked from doing so, I took a peek at the Facebook feed of one of the featured speakers, another German huckster/"healer" named Leonard Coldwell, whose English writing rivals that of Michael König-Breuss in its illiteracy. If you've been hanging around here for a few years you probably know Coldwell as a cancer quack, conspiracy loon, racist, and neo-Nazi who tried for years to kill this blog and even, at one point, tried to get some of his more fanatical followers to harm me. Coldwell's topic for the Healing America Summit is... well, let me let him tell you himself. (Spoiler: Apparently there are bad people out there who are trying to eliminate the entire human race.)

Dr. Leonard Coldwell
Founder of Instant Based Medicine System. Cancer healing expert

Worldwide Conspiracy to eliminate the Human Race - and what we can do about it

I do this work for 52 years and have the highest cancer cure rate in the world

25 mega best selling books in 29 languages. My own TV and Radio shows 26 Million listeners and regular viewers.

Before censorship my videos on Youtube had 2.3 Billion views. I as the Keynote Speaker on EVERY Health Freedom Expo

If you like to see some testimonial videos: [links]

...I just got off a life interview in Australia with Kate Kate Shemirani kateshemirani@tntradio.live

Attached my latest book the only Cancer Patient Cure – Confidential   900 Million books sold

Here's a link to a video. It's just a teaser, but in that teaser you get the gist of Quack-o Coldwell's "medical" wisdumb: he claims that medicine is a belief system rather than a science and that doctors even admit they don't know anything, with the implication being that he has all of the solutions that medicine can't offer. Meanwhile his interviewer and fellow countryman König-Breuss, is nodding and smirking in agreement. By the way, if you want to know the truth about Coldwell's "credentials," you'll find it in a concise form here, and in a more expanded form here (scroll down to the section with the sub-head, "Lenny's creds, such as they are"). [Spoiler: Coldwell is not a doctor, and never has been.]

Other speakers at the "summit" include:

Storm Dillenschneider [not to be confused with Stormy Daniels ~ CC]
Daughter of The Most High God, Mrs. Elite Universe 2024, stand Advocate against Fentanyl

Alas, Storm's lofty description on the home page is just a setup for disappointment. Her actual "bio" is essentially an announcement of her [2022] campaign for city council in Lee's Summit, Missouri. Boooooring. And apparently outdated; I seriously doubt that her speech at the Healing America Summit will have anything to do with a two-year-old political campaign in Lee's Summit.

More than likely her spiel will be political, though, as one of Storm's other credentials, which I had to go Googling (actually, Bing-ing) to find, is that she is a Trumpette and is apparently very involved with the movement to re-elect the Mango Mussolini -- which comes as no surprise whatsoever. On a May 15, 2024 Facebook post Storm shared a meme celebrating a dinner party that included Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. The lead blurb on the meme said, "I feel the Presidential air again, everytime [sic] I enter Mar-a-Lago. Could it be my ESP is confirming what we all expect to be true?"

I'm thinking that maybe the "Presidential" air is actually something she smelt rather than felt, but what do I know?

Christie Hutcherson
Women Fighting for America to help take back America

[Topic] Enemies at the Gate- Can america [sic] Survive the Coming Conflict?

Christie Hutcherson is the Founder, President, and Spokesperson for Women Fighting for America LLC. (WFFA). She is widely recognized as a geopolitical security expert and sought-after speaker with broad connections into the Freedom Movement. 100+ Border Ops Missions. 2,500+ Miles on the Border.

Christie is a front-line fighter for freedom. She is one of the only Americans who has traveled the entire 2,000 miles of the southern border and hundreds of miles of our forgotten northern border in her quest to save America. Christie has led 100 plus border missions establishing Women Fighting for America as a clear leader in exposing and fighting the corruption on our borders.

She has seen firsthand the devastation of illegal immigration, child and human trafficking, organ trafficking, massive amounts of lethal drugs entering the United States, and the atrocities committed by the transnational criminal organizations.

Support the Fight with Women Fighting for America and Christie Hutcherson!

Sounds like a bad case of Border Derangement Syndrome, Christie.

She helpfully concludes her blurb with Paypal/Stripe/Venmo links, which I will not share here. Those dumb enough to want to pour money into Christie's grift machine can look up the links themselves.

Eesha Patel
Galactic Embassador [sic] for the Galactic federation

[Topic] Galactic Experiences for Visionary Leaders

Eesha Patel specialises in the field of Galactic Consciousness. Eesha is here to facilitate the connection between humans and our Galactic Family.

A profound awakening and contact experience in 2015 set Eesha on a journey of exploring consciousness. In her current role as Galactic Ambassador, Eesha liaises with over 20 different galactic races, humanoid and non-humanoid, and facilitates these connections for visionary leaders and pioneers of the New Earth. Through her powerful interdimensional connections, Eesha lends her services of activation and channelling to assist other leaders in bringing through powerful visionary tools, techniques, and technologies for healing and our greater evolution.

Eesha’s vision is peaceful open contact with our galactic family by 2027 and her mission is to lead this global level awakening through her teaching, speaking, facilitation, and courses. Eesha’s galactic contact work has been featured in prominent media worldwide. Eesha Patel is available for mentoring, consultancy, and speaking. You can connect with Eesha Patel at eeshapatel dot con. [emphasis and intentional typo mine. ~ CC]

And no reich-wing/alt-health/alt-facts grift-fest would be complete without...

General Mike Flynn
Retired United States Army lieutenant general. 24th U.S. national security advisor of the Trump administration.

[Topic] We are in WW 3. Nobody will come to rescue us! No General, no white heads [??? ~ CC], no Trump. WE, the people need to change it!

Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was the 24th U.S. national security advisor^[3] for the first 22 days of the Trump administration.[Note to Mike: you forgot to take the Wikipedia footnote out. ~ CC]

Ret.  President @ Resilient Patriot LLC Special Assistant to the POTUS, National Security Advisor @ United Stat es Government Presidential Campaign National Security Advisor @ Republican Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump Chairman and CEO @ FLYNN Intel Group INC. Director and Commander @ Defense Intelligence Agency / Joint Force Component Command, ISR Assistant Director of National Intelligence, Partner Engagement @ Office of the Director of National Intelligence Assistant Chief of Staff, G2 @ US Army Director of Intelligence @ International Security Assistance Forces Director of Intelligence @ The Joint Staff Director of Intelligence @ United States Central Command

Someone forgot to add "traitor," "insurrectionist," and "QAnon nut" to Flynn's credentials. Flynn, by the way, is a co-fonder of the ReAwaken America Tour mentioned above.

And that's just a very small sampling of the featured shriekers at this gathering of grifters. For the complete lineup, see here.

Now, if you are concerned about costs, or about the hassle of making travel and lodging arrangements, you needn't be. The Healing America Summit is 100 percent online -- all you have to do is sign up -- and, best of all, it's 100 percent free.

And worth every penny, no doubt.

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Covidiocy and the new waves of anti-vax lunacy

 Over the years I've written a few times about the anti-vaccination, or anti-vax, movement, mostly in conjunction with some of the Scamworld hucksters who perpetually sound the (false) alarm about vaccinations chiefly in the service of promoting their own frauducts, flopportunities, and general quackery and crackpottery. (Leonard Coldwell and Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, I'm looking at y'all.)

For years the hero of the anti-vax movement was a disgraced former doctor named Andrew Wakefield, an arrogant Brit whose work regarding the dangers of vaccination has been soundly debunked. To this day, however, fervent anti-jab believers defend him and falsely claim that he has been completely vindicated. In their eyes, he's nothing short of a saint.

Well, move over, Wakefield: the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has injected fresh new triple-doses of crazy into the anti-vax crusaders and conspiranoids, who are all over the Internet with dire warnings about the deadly dangers of COVID vaccines. Among these Covidiots are rising stars such as a right-wing rabble-rouser named Bret Weinstein, and a veterinary virologist named Vanden Bossche. One of my favorite journalists and commentators, Jef Rouner, has taken aim at this newest wave of dangerous anti-vax nonsense (link is in the next paragraph). I first discovered Jef's work when I was writing a post about the fact-checking web site Snopes a few years ago, and came across Jef's guide to arguing with Snopes deniers. I've been reading his work ever since.

What the hordes of anti-vax zealots apparently don’t realize — and that Jef deftly documents in this June 29 article for the Houston Press — is that Saint Wakefield’s own anti-vax crusades were motivated far more by money than by any genuine concern about public health. And Jef makes a good case for the exact same thing being true for today’s loudest voices in the fight against COVID-19 vaccines, like the aforementioned Weinstein and Bossche.

Whenever Jef writes just about anything, he gets a volcanic mountain of responses from various types of crazies, and his writings about COVID are apparently no exception.

Two months ago, I implored people to get vaccinated against COVID instead of taking horse dewormer, and my email has been a circus train of screwballs ever since. By far, the largest number of messages I get implore me to seek out the work of Bret Weinstein, a “professor in exile” and podcaster. I did just that, and I now believe the world is now in the beginning stages of Andrew Wakefield 2.0...

Following this, and for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the history, Jef goes into the story of Wakefield's folly, and then segues into the current darlings of the anti-vax lunacy legions, Weinstein and Bossche.

It's pretty obvious that these alarmists all love attention, which as I've often said is its own powerful form of currency, particularly in today's shallow social-media-dominated "culture." But like all hucksters and scammers, they also love real money. Concludes Jef:

The people who claim that current vaccination efforts are harming us, such as Weinstein and Vanden Bossche, do not appear to be arguing in good faith. It looks like a con, an old one at that, and we fall for it at our peril.

Amen to that. Here's that link again.

Related on this Whirled:

• March 2020: Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the conspiranoids & fraudsters -- I wrote this when the pandemic was still pretty new. Not a whole lot has changed, except for the millions of deaths from COVID-19 (worldwide) that have occurred since then.
• March 2020: The Lie-land of Dr. Trudeau: Kevin Trudeau joins the ranks of the corona-crapitalists -- Talk about someone who promotes "health" advice and conspiracy narratives solely in the service of lining his own pockets; serial scammer Kevin Trudeau has been the master of this art for decades (even from prison). Pretty early on, he jumped on the COVID crisis as an opportunity to once again market himself as a one-of-a-kind source for seekrit information that "they" don't want you to know, and that you could only get from him (and you could find out more if you joined the seekrit club he founded, GIN (the Global Information Network)). Never mind that everything he wrote was a repeat of various conspiranoid narratives that were growing wild on the banks of the online fever swamps. He took all of that crap and branded it as his own.
• April 2020: Lockdown, schlockdown -- Kevin Trudeau is still pooping out COVID-19 nuggets from Camp Cupcake -- More of the same corona-crapitalism. Through a proxy, Trudeau wrote quite a few of these missives -- although interestingly enough, he's been silent recently, about COVID and everything else, since he's been on "home release."
• April 2020: "Dr." C: the "C" is for Covidiot -- Cancer quack, fake doctor, faux-tivational speaker, right-wing nutcake and alleged predator Leonard Coldwell is one of the most hysterical voices among the anti-vaxxers. It's too bad for his sick and bloated ego that most of the world hasn't heard of him, but in any case, his Covidiocy (and general idiocy) are pretty typical of the science-denying, conspiracy-swallowing masses who are both amusing and dangerous.
• April 2020: Bless this mess with MMS: phony church (and possibly a phony president?) tout bleachy cure-nothing for COVID-19 -- More quackery, this time involving The Former Guy in the White House...
• August 2020: Oleandrin: Are Trump and cronies trying to crapitalize on a new phony COVID-19 cure? -- And still more quackery, involving the same Former Guy.
  
  
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Hysterical "Health Ranger" gratuitously attacks Dr. David Gorski -- again

In light of the endless foul stink bombs generated over the past year by the Oaf of Office, #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump, it may be tempting to dismiss the foibles of Scamworld as relatively minor matters, comparatively speaking. Even so, Scamworld is still this blog's main beat, and although, as I've noted previously, Herr Twitler has sucked a lot of oxygen from this pitiful little outpost of the blogosphere, Scamworld remains a matter of consequence both here and in the larger world, as do the New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health gurus who keep that big sick machine humming. Given today's milieu they are doubly consequential in the cases where Scamworld and politix intersect, and since several of this blog's least-favorite snargets are Trump fans, that intersection is pretty busy these days.

Anyway. This isn't the newest of news, but it's less than two weeks old, so just in case you missed it....

One of Donald Trump's most histrionically vocal sycophants is pseudoscientist and conspiracy monger Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, whom we've snargeted here numerous times before. Adams loves him some Trump and has even written that in order to save a divided America from civil war, Trump should do everything possible to "shut down" the subversive, evil left, apparently by imprisoning them and destroying all of their media. Now, as I've noted before, Adams could just be playing the role of provocateur in order to get clicks and sell his numerous frauducts to stupid right-wingers, and it's possible that he does not really believe that freedom of expression should be totally destroyed in the US. But you never know with these alt-right types.

Another thing to know about Adams is that he is irrationally and hysterically anti-vaccination -- in fact, that's another one of his pet causes, perhaps even more beloved than the cause of keeping his nose well-browned from rooting around up in Trump. On January 20 of this year, Adams posted about a threatening email that a deranged vaccine advocate apparently sent to another vocal anti-vaxxer, Suzanne Humphries, M.D. (Not-Doktor Leonard Coldwell, another alt-right lunatic who's considerably stupider and more evil than Adams, but is just as enamored of Trump, copied and pasted Adams' post for his own "blog.")

The email Dr. Humphries claims to have received is a blatant, expletive-filled death threat, but instead of treating it as an aberration the anti-vaxxers, including Adams, are reacting in their usual way, conflating an isolated loony with the entire "pro-vax" movement. Since the email is crude and only marginally literate, it could hardly be expected to be the work of professional propagandists from Big Pharma, but that is exactly what some of the alarmed anti-vaxxers are suggesting (just read some of the comments on this post on the Vactruth.com site).

Don't get me wrong. I'm certainly not claiming that Dr. Humphries is wrong to be alarmed; she should take every due precaution to protect herself. But tossing the sender of this lunatic threat into the same category as the millions of health professionals, scientists, researchers, and ordinary folks who don't practice the anti-vax true religion is either (1) ignorant; (2) misinformed; (3) disingenuous; or (4) just plain stupid. Indeed, the anti-vax movement is characterized by all four of those factors -- it's a big tent, so big that it even has room for Donald Trump -- so take your pick.

If the Health Danger had just stuck to his anti-vax message in his January 20 post, it wouldn't have grabbed my attention, but he apparently felt compelled to drag Dr. David Gorski, who writes the excellent Respectful Insolence blog under the name "Orac," into the drama.

After quoting -- in full -- the offending email received by Dr. Humphries, Adams added, gratuitously (and out of courtesy for Dr. Gorski, I have removed Adams' embedded links):

This threatening, psychopathic language, by the way, reminds me of Dr. David Gorski, an extremely dangerous, sociopathic vaccine-pushing doctor who viciously attacks and lies about anyone trying to expose the truth about vaccines. Dr. Gorski’s colleague, Dr. Farid Fata, was indicted by the FBI for cancer treatment fraud and is now serving 20+ years in federal prison. Dr. Gorski worked alongside this cancer fraudster and evil criminal in the Detroit area, with links to the Karmanos Cancer Centers.

Natural News has previously reported Dr. Gorski to the FBI and has named him as one of the six most sickeningly evil propagandists currently operating in the realm of medicine. He currently works for the Karmanos Center Center in Michigan and spends his work hours editing Wikipedia to savage “vaccine truthers” by posting false, defamatory and slanderous information on their Wikipedia pages. Dr. Gorski is a surgical oncologist who scars black women for profit and pushes deceptive cancer propaganda on the public, much like his colleague Dr. Farid Fata also did before he was arrested and indicted for multiple felony crimes.

This is far from the first time that Adams has defamed Dr. Gorski (see this April 2016 post, f'rinstance, under "Mike Adams defames Dr. David Gorski"). On the very ill-named TruthWiki, which Adams has claimed is an "objective" alternative to that evil bastion of liberalism, Wikipedia, Dr. Gorski has even been gifted with special tags and categories (e.g., "lunatic blogger"). Now, that's real objective. On many occasions Dr Gorski has addressed these false accusations against him, but it does no good; Adams just keeps hammering away.

And make no mistake: As biased, untruthful and irrational as they are, Adams' defamatory rants against Dr. Gorski have exerted their influence on the search engines. Actor William Shatner was even fooled by Adams' nonsense last year when doing "research" on Gorski and the vaccination issue (see "Captain Kirk goes berserk." There's also a link to the Respectful Insolence post about the matter.).

So despite Adams' longstanding whines about Google suppressing and oppressing him, the world's favorite search engine has in fact been one of his greatest enablers.

What you probably won't be hearing from Mike Adams -- or Dr. Suzanne Humphries, for that matter -- is that Dr. Gorski is just as alarmed and disgusted about this email as any anti-vaxxer. And he stated this in no uncertain terms on a January 24 blog post on Respectful Insolence. Wrote Gorski/Orac:

OK, full stop right here. If you’re a pro-vaxer and want to make death threats against anyone, even antivax loons like Suzanne Humphries, you are not on my side. I don’t care what your reasons are. I don’t care if you weren’t serious. I don’t care if it was your idea of a sick joke. I don’t care if you were just trying to rattle her (which you clearly succeeded in doing in a spectacular fashion in this case). I disavow you. I condemn you. I spit on you. I hope the authorities find you, even though I know the chances for a successful prosecution in these cases are low.

Now here’s the thing. I know of no pro-vaccine advocate who feels otherwise. I know of no one on our side who approves of behavior like this directed against antivaxers—or anyone else. We don’t want this sort of stuff being associated with our side, because it’s wrong. We don’t need it, because we have science on our side, and anything like this hurts our cause, not helps us...

Following that, Gorski reproduced the email in its entirety, as Adams and the anti-vax web sites had done. He then added:

Yes, this is utterly vile and despicable, and it just goes to show that there are assholes and disturbed people everywhere, and not all pro-vaxers are pure in motivation and behavior. Regardless of where they came from, such threats deserve only our contempt. Even if this idiot was not serious and was just trying to frighten or rattle Humphries, he (and it’s almost certainly a he) deserves nothing but contempt.

On the other hand…

Am I alone in thinking it…odd…just how eager antivaxers are to publicize this? I’ve gotten the occasional death threat before, albeit, admittedly, none quite so long and extravagant. I’ve never publicized them. I rarely mention them. I know a number of skeptical bloggers who’ve had the same experience. I’ve known skeptics who’ve had stalkers. They rarely mention the issue.

Yet, here we have Suzanne Humphries proclaiming the issue to the world. We also have the Health Danger weaponizing this e-mail against me...

And "weaponizing" is exactly the right word for what Mike Adams is doing to David Gorski. (I will say, though, that it's not really surprising that antivaxers, and indeed many of the most vocal alt-health advocates, are eager to publicize threats against themselves, both real and imagined. In the shrill video he made about the threat against Dr. Humphries, Mike Adams also brings up the fallacious "dead holistic doctors" conspiracy narrative -- which I initially wrote about in this August 2015 post, and then again in July 2016 (under "Dead holistic docs conspiracy rages on"). The alt-health hysterics never miss an opportunity to push that contrived story, which is part of a larger false narrative: that of the Brave Maverick Doctor.)
 
Gorski reiterates that all of the claims Adams made about him in his latest post are lies, as is the insinuation that Gorski would ever write anything resembling that email. He adds that he despises whoever made those threats against Suzanne Humphries, and then wonders if Dr. Humphries would do him a solid and "do the same thing regarding Mike Adams' campaign of lies and defamation" against Gorski.

"I won't be holding my breath," he writes. And given that Humphries seems to be allied with Adams (judging from at least one of her Facebook posts from April 2016), I think Dr. Gorski is wise to hold his breath:

It looks like Natural News is filing a legal complaint that names "Orac", the self-proclaimed sci-blogger whose real name is David Gorsky [sic]. I'm sure his backers will get him the most aggressive attorneys and spare no cost on cutting him loose from the charges. Most of us vaccine critical doctors have been on the other end of his pen...

Much more recently -- on January 19, to be exact -- Dr. Humphries posted on Facebook about the death-threat email, saying that "the opposition is losing its mind."

I still think that Dr. Gorski may have the grounds for a seriously good defamation case against Mike Adams, but then again, I don't blame him for not wanting to waste time, money, and energy on the lunatic fringe of the anti-vax movement. Keep on blogging, Orac.

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Vaxxed: Robert De Hero v. the conspiracy loons

Note: There is an update to this story; see below.
~CC, 13 April 2016

Even as this isn't normally a political blog (except when it is), it's also not your average skeptical/pro-science blog, though I pretty much lean towards those camps on most issues. Clearly I am not a scientist, professional researcher or medical practitioner of any type, so when I snark about scammers who claim expertise in these areas, my focus is generally on the Scamworld aspect of their shenanigans rather than on a deconstruction of the claims they make regarding health and science issues. Write what you know, in other words, and even though I don't have the deep knowledge of how Scamworld works that, say, Salty Droid does, I can pretty much tell a scam or scammer in the New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health areas when I see one.

That said, one current story with a strong scientific/health angle has grabbed my attention: the anti-vaccination or anti-vax movement's attacks on actor Robert De Niro. De Niro is being lauded as a hero by some for making the decision not to air the discredited anti-vax flick Vaxxed at his Tribeca Film Festival, apparently making that decision based upon some rational input. Or maybe he was kinda shamed into his decision (which is not the same as intimidation)... but he should be ashamed for pushing the film before he did any research. Regardless of his motivation, I'm pretty much leaning towards the "hero" p.o.v. where he's concerned. [NOTE: I have since changed my mind. ~CC, May 2016]
 
As per usual in cases like this, some very stupid and/or irresponsible people are slamming De Niro for his decision. Not surprisingly the incident has added new fuel to the already raging anti-vax conspiracy fires... or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that it has given a shot in the arm to the conspiracy theorists, giving rise to a whole Internet full of whining about "censorship" and even more dastardly deeds.

 
There's this, for instance, in which the writer speculates that De Niro was "threatened."

And this bit from the ill-named "Truth Kings" blog, speculating about an elaborate conspiracy that even includes Hillary Clinton.

There are dozens more examples on the Interwebz; you can easily find them.

I find it endlessly amusing, though also annoying, that whenever someone says or does something that the fanatics don't agree with, they automatically assume that the person is either being paid off or that he or she was intimidated/threatened. The facts don't matter if the story is good.

I also find it amusing that Loony Leonard Coldwell has accused De Niro of being a "coward," when Coldwell has displayed nothing but cowardice in his efforts to silence his critics -- suing them, lying about them, and doxing them in an attempt to get others to harm them on his behalf, while remaining in hiding himself. Or, as UK blogger Longdog so aptly put it in a recent post, "...Lenny YOU are the spineless coward." 

Not surprisingly Coldwell is a virulent anti-vaxxer, just like his current political idol Donald Drumpf, who has said some truly idiotic things about vaccinations and autism. Coldwell himself has frequently claimed that there is no such thing as a safe or effective vaccine, and has even suggested that doctors and parents who insist on vaccinating kids should be tried for attempted murder. 

Coldwell has no medical or scientific credentials at all, but that has never stopped him from making the most outrageously stupid declarations about health and science matters.

On the other hand, here's a truly qualified professional's view about the Tribeca/Vaxxed drama. The author is Orac, aka Dr. David Gorski, who has been patiently reporting and debunking the anti-vaxxers for years.

And here's an earlier post from Orac, focusing on the hysterical coverage of the De Niro drama by Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, who is bigger on sensationalism than he is on nuanced truth.

But I don't expect the conspiracy fires around this one to go out any time soon. Because, you know...the facts don't matter...

PS ~ Have I mentioned lately how great it is to have Salty Droid back in operation?

Related reading:

• On this Whirled: Snopes v dopes (and the "dead holistic doctors" conspiracy drama)
• On RationalWiki: Big Pharma (esp. the phenomenon of the Brave Maverick Doctor)

Update 13 April 2016: Maybe he's just bowing to pressure from nutcakes and trying to play both sides, but Robert De Niro went on NBC's Today show this morning and seemed to try to score a point or two for the nutty side. Even though he stated that he is not anti-vaccine (he's just "pro-safe vaccine"), he says he now sort of regrets pulling Vaxxed from the Tribeca Film Festival, and he thinks people should see it and make up their own minds. The father of an autistic son, DeNiro cited tales of parents of autistic kids who seemed all right until getting vaccinated, and then "something just changed overnight."

When one of the interviewers asked him if that had been the experience with his son (who is now eighteen), De Niro hedged and said he didn't really remember, but that his wife sure noticed something. In essence he said he pulled the film from the festival because he didn't have time or energy to deal with the controversy, but will revisit it when he has time. Overall, despite the interviewers pointing out that the anti-vax p.o.v. -- and the film, as well as Andrew Wakefield -- had been discredited, De Niro seemed to be leaning in favor of the anti-vaxxers, mentioning "hysteria" and "knee jerk reactions" from the scientific community, without saying anything about the hysteria and knee jerk reactions of the anti-vax contingent. But at least maybe he'll win the praise of idiots like LoonyC. Nice work, Bob. Here's a link to a vid of the interview. The Vaxxed part begins at about 2:15.



Update 25 May 2016: It appears that my wordplay with De Niro's name in this post's title is increasingly inaccurate. Here's Orac at Respectful Insolence.