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Joseph Mercola

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Joseph Mercola
Dr. Mercola - International Vaccine Conference 2009 Speech.jpg
Mercola in 2009
Born (1954-07-08) July 8, 1954 (age 67)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BS)
Midwestern University (DO)
Medical career
Sub-specialtiesNutrition
Websitehttps://www.mercola.com/

Joseph Michael Mercola (/mərˈkoʊlə/;[1] born July 8, 1954) is an American alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Internet business person. He markets dietary supplements and medical devices,[2] some of which are controversial. On his website, Mercola and colleagues advocate a number of unproven alternative health notions including homeopathy and opposition to vaccination. These positions have faced persistent criticism.[3] Mercola is a member of several alternative medicine organizations as well as the political advocacy group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which promotes scientifically discredited views about medicine and disease.[4] Until 2013,[5] Mercola operated the "Dr. Mercola Natural Health Center" (formerly the "Optimal Wellness Center") in Schaumburg, Illinois.[6] He wrote the books The No-Grain Diet [7] (with Alison Rose Levy) and The Great Bird Flu Hoax.

Mercola's medical claims have been criticized by the medical, scientific, regulatory, and business communities. A 2006 BusinessWeek editorial stated his marketing practices relied on "slick promotion, clever use of information, and scare tactics."[6] In 2005, 2006, and 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Mercola and his company that they were making illegal claims for their products' ability to detect, prevent, and treat disease.[8] The medical watchdog site Quackwatch has criticized Mercola for making "unsubstantiated claims [that] clash with those of leading medical and public health organizations and many unsubstantiated recommendations for dietary supplements."[9] Of Mercola's marketing techniques, surgical oncologist David Gorski says it "mixes the boring, sensible health advice with pseudoscientific advice in such a way that it’s hard for someone without a medical background to figure out which is which."[3]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mercola spread misinformation about the virus and pseudoscientific anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms;[10][11][12] researchers have identified him as the "chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online".[10][13][14][15] He has been warned numerous times by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for selling unapproved health products, including supposed Covid-19 treatments.[14]

Life and career

Joseph Mercola was born July 8, 1954 in Chicago Illinois.[2] His mother, Jeanette Aldridge (née Freeman)[16] was a waitress and his father, Thomas Nicholas Mercola, was an Air Force veteran who worked for Marshall Fields.[17][2] Mercola attended Lane Tech College Prep High School and went on to study biology and chemistry at the University of Illinois, graduating in 1976.[2][18] In 1982, he graduated from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine (now Midwestern University).[18] According to Mercola's website, he is a former Chairman of Family Medicine at St. Alexius Medical Center. He stopped seeing patients in 2009 to work full-time on his health products and vitamin supplements business.[3] In a 2017 affidavit, Mercola stated that his net worth was “in excess of $100 million.”[3]

Mercola lives in Cape Coral, Florida.[14] He is married to Erin Elizabeth, a blogger listed by the New York Times as one of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation.[19]

He has written two books which have been listed on the New York Times bestseller list: The No-Grain Diet (May 2003) and The Great Bird Flu Hoax (October 2006).[20][21] In the bird flu book, Mercola dismisses medical concerns over an avian influenza pandemic, asserting that the government, big business, and the mainstream media have conspired to promote the threat of avian flu in order to accrue money and power.[22] Mercola has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show[23] and The Doctors.[24]

Views and controversy

Website and publications

Mercola operates Mercola.com, which he has described as the most popular alternative-health website on the internet.[6] Aside from the main site, it also hosts blog subsites, like Healthy Pets and Peak Fitness. Traffic counting from Quantcast shows the site receives about 1.9 million novel visitors per month, each returning almost ten times each month; the number of views are roughly equal to those received by the National Institutes of Health.[2] The site and his company, Mercola LLC, brought in roughly $7 million in 2010 through the sale of alternative medicine treatments and dietary supplements.[2] The site promotes disproven health ideas, including the notion that homeopathy can treat autism, and that vaccinations have hidden detriments to human health.[2] An article in BusinessWeek criticized his website as using aggressive direct-marketing tactics, writing:[6]

Mercola gives the lie to the notion that holistic practitioners tend to be so absorbed in treating patients that they aren't effective businesspeople. While Mercola on his site seeks to identify with this image by distinguishing himself from "all the greed-motivated hype out there in health-care land", he is a master promoter, using every trick of traditional and Internet direct marketing to grow his business ... He is selling health-care products and services, and is calling upon an unfortunate tradition made famous by the old-time snake oil salesmen of the 1800s.

Phyllis Entis, a microbiologist and food safety expert, highlighted Mercola.com as an example of websites "likely to mislead consumers by offering one-sided, incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading information."[25]

Researchers say that Mercola employs teams in Florida and the Philippines who translate his posts into multiple languages and then post them to groups of websites and social media accounts.[26]:1

In August 2021, Mercola announced on his website that he would permanently remove all of his articles, but he would continue to post articles daily, which would be deleted after 48 hours.[26] Rachel E. Moran, a conspiracy theory researcher at the University of Washington said that this announcement was “[Mercola] trying to come up with his own strategies of avoiding his content being taken down, while also playing up this martyrdom of being an influential figure in the movement who keeps being targeted.”[26]

Vaccinations

Mercola has been highly critical of vaccines and vaccination policy, claiming that too many vaccines are given too soon during infancy. He hosts anti-vaccination activists on his website, advocates other measures rather than vaccination in many cases such as using vitamin D rather than a flu shot despite the data not being conclusive[3][27] and strongly criticizes influenza vaccines. Mercola is viewed by many as an anti-vaccine propagandist.[28] As of 2019, he has donated at least $4 million to anti-vaccine groups though his Natural Health Research Foundation, including more than $2.9 million to the anti-vaccination group the National Vaccine Information Center, amounting to about 40 percent of that organization's funding.[3] He co-funded an anti-vaccination ad in Times Square in 2011.[28]

Mercola has asserted that thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, is harmful due to its mercury content.[29] Thimerosal has been removed from most vaccines given to young children in the U.S., with no effect on rates of autism diagnosis.[30][31] Extensive evidence has accumulated since 1999 showing that this preservative is safe,[32] with the World Health Organization stating in 2006 that "there is no evidence of toxicity in infants, children or adults exposed to thimerosal in vaccines."[32][33]

In March 2021, an analysis of Twitter and Facebook anti-vaccine content found Mercola's to be one of 12 individual and organization accounts producing up to 65% of all anti-vaccine content on the platforms.[10] As of June 2021, his various social media channels accounted for a total audience exceeding 4.1 million followers.[34]

COVID-19

See also: Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic

In 2020, Mercola was one of the partners in a website called "Stop Covid Cold" offering advice to the public on preventing and treating Covid-19 with alternative remedies. The website includes links to Mercola's online store and puts a strong emphasis on vitamin D supplements, despite a lack of scientific evidence pointing to the effectiveness of such a treatment.[35][36] The website was taken down in April 2021 after the Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter. In May 2021, Mercola announced he would remove mentions of COVID-19 from his websites, blaming Bill Gates and "big pharma".[34][37]

Mercola claimed that inhaling 0.5–3% hydrogen peroxide solution using a nebulizer could prevent or cure COVID-19.[38][39] A tweet from Mercola advertising this method was removed from Twitter on April 15, 2020, for violating the platform rules,[39] but he continued to make these claims on other platforms, including during a speech at a major conference of anti-vaccination activists in October.[35]

He was warned by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February 2021 for selling fake COVID-19 cures.[40][41] In March, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named Mercola as one of the 12 most prominent sources of COVID misinformation in a report later cited by US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.[42]

Other views

Other controversial views Mercola supports include:

  • Dietary recommendations on food consumption that often put him at odds with mainstream dietary advice.[25]
  • Advocacy on the labeling and health of genetically modified food,[43] as well as for their elimination entirely from the market.[citation needed]
  • Claims that microwaving food alters its chemistry,[2] despite consensus that microwaving food does not adversely affect nutrient content compared to conventionally prepared food.[44][45][46][47]
  • Opposition to homogenization, claiming that homogenized milk has little nutritional value and contributes to a variety of negative health effects,[48] despite scientists considering that belief "tenuous and implausible",[49] stating "Experimental evidence has failed to substantiate, and in many cases has refuted, the xanthine oxidase/plasmalogen depletion hypothesis."[50]
  • Mercola.com has featured positive presentations of the claims of AIDS denialists, a fringe group which denies the role of HIV in causing AIDS.[2] The scientific community considers the evidence that HIV causes AIDS conclusive.[51][52][53][54]
  • Claiming cancer risks arise from mobile phone radiation,[55] which is pseudoscientific.[56]
  • Claims that many commercial brands of sunscreen increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood of contracting skin cancer with high UV exposure, and instead advocating the use of natural sunscreens, some of which he markets on his website.[2] This view is not held by mainstream medical science; in 2011, the National Toxicology Program stated that "Protection against photodamage by use of broad-spectrum sunscreens is well-documented as an effective means of reducing total lifetime UV dose and, thereby, preventing or ameliorating the effects of UV radiation on both the appearance and biomechanical properties of the skin."[57]

FDA warning letters

For numerous dietary supplement and device products over some 16 years during the 21st century, Mercola was warned by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for falsely advertising products approved to "mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure" various diseases, including as examples: 1) in 2005, Living Fuel RX(TM) and Coconut Oil Products,[58] in 2006, Optimal Wellness Center chlorella and coconut oil,[59] and in 2011, Meditherm Med2000 Infrared camera, which had no approved evidence for use as a diagnostic or therapeutic device.[60]

During the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic, Mercola, his company, and social media site were warned again by the FDA for falsely advertising the efficacy of high doses of vitamin C, vitamin D3, quercetin, and pterostilbene products to "mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure" COVID-19 disease.[61]

FTC action

In 2016, after marketing and selling tanning beds with the claims that they reduced cancer (backed by discredited studies), the Federal Trade Commission filed a false advertising complaint against Mercola and his companies that resulted in Mercola paying $2.6 million in refunds to customers who had bought their tanning beds, and agreed to a ban preventing them from ever again selling tanning beds.[14]:1[62][63]

References

  1. ^ As he pronounces his name on his own videos, e.g. [1] Archived 2021-02-16 at the Wayback Machine.
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  62. ^ Henderson, Juliana (2017-02-07). "FTC Providing Full Refunds to Mercola Brand Tanning System Purchasers". Federal Trade Commission. According to the FTC’s complaint, the defendants claimed that their Mercola brand D-Lite, SunSplash, and Vitality indoor tanning systems are safe, that research proves indoor tanning does not increase the risk of melanoma skin cancer, and that its systems can reverse the appearance of aging. The FTC’s complaint alleged that these claims are false and not supported by science. As part of the settlement, the defendants are banned from selling indoor tanning systems and agreed to provide refunds to people who bought tanning systems after January 1, 2012, and submitted a completed a claim form by October 31, 2016. Customers will receive an average refund of $1,897.
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