Here's an excerpt from damned Mercola's damned wiki. He's a damned crackpot. I swear, these people who post his crap couldn't find their ass with both hands if their hands were made of iron and their ass was a magnet.
Views and controversy
Mercola operates Mercola.com, which he has described as the most popular alternative-health website on the internet.[4] Aside from the main site, it also hosts various 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 a variety of alternative medicine treatments and dietary supplements.[2] The site promotes a number of 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:[4]
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."[19]
In 2016, Mercola agreed to pay up to $5.3 million restitution after federal regulators complained that he made false claims about tanning beds that he sold.[20]
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[10][21] and strongly criticizes influenza vaccines. Mercola is viewed by many as an anti-vaccine propagandist.[22] 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.[10] He co-funded an anti-vaccination ad in Times Square in 2011.[22]
Mercola has asserted that thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, is harmful due to its mercury content.[23] Thimerosal has been removed from most vaccines given to young children in the U.S., with no effect on rates of autism diagnosis.[24][25] Extensive evidence has accumulated since 1999 showing that this preservative is safe,[26] 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."[26][27]
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.[28][29]
Mercola claimed that inhaling 0.5-3% hydrogen peroxide solution using a nebulizer could prevent or cure COVID-19.[30][31] A tweet from Mercola advertising this method was removed from Twitter on April 15, 2020, for violating the platform rules,[31] but he continued to make these claims on other platforms, including during a speech at a major conference of anti-vaccination activists in October.[28]
Other views
Other controversial views Mercola supports include:
Dietary recommendations on food consumption that often put him at odds with mainstream dietary advice.[19]
Advocacy on the labeling and health of genetically modified food,[32] 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.[33][34][35][36]
Opposition to homogenization, claiming that homogenized milk has little nutritional value and contributes to a variety of negative health effects,[37] despite scientists considering that belief "tenuous and implausible",[38] stating "Experimental evidence has failed to substantiate, and in many cases has refuted, the xanthine oxidase/plasmalogen depletion hypothesis."[39]
Questioning whether HIV is the cause of AIDS, claiming manifestations of AIDS (including opportunistic infections and death) may be the result of "psychological stress" brought on by the belief that HIV is harmful.[citation needed] The scientific community considers the evidence that HIV causes AIDS conclusive.[40][41][42][43] Mercola.com has also featured positive presentations of the claims of AIDS denialists, a fringe group which denies the role of HIV in causing AIDS.[2]
Claiming cancer risks arise from mobile phone radiation,[44] which is pseudoscientific.[45]
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."[46]
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,[47] in 2006, Optimal Wellness Center chlorella and coconut oil,[48] and in 2011, Meditherm Med2000 Infrared camera, which had no approved evidence for use as a diagnostic or therapeutic device.[49]
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.[50]