#505: Russell Blaylock

Russell Blaylock is one of the big legends in the most radical quackery and denialist movements, and one of the most influential peddlers of, shall we say, nonconformistic medical advice in the US (indeed, you can hardly enter any quack-related or denialist discussion, regardless of the particular topic, without encountering a reference to Blaylock – he is absolutely everywhere). Blaylock is a trained neurosurgeon, though he has retired as such in order to, instead, take up his roles as a perceived expert on nutrition and toxins in food, teeth, and vaccines. He claims that vaccines (in particular the H1N1 vaccine) are dangerous, that dental amalgams and fluoridated water are harmful to our health; and that aluminum cookware, aspartame (also here) and MSG are toxic substances causing brain damage. It is probably unnecessary to point out that science, research, and reality fail to agree with him on these points.

In particular, Blaylock maintains that vaccines cause Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's, autism (yes, the old thimerosal idea) and all sorts of ills, and has vigorously peddled this idea in various books and for Newsmax (he has a section called The Blaylock Wellness Report). With respect to the H1N1 vaccine, Blaylock argued forcefully that it may be more dangerous than the flu itself since the vaccine contains squalene, which it doesn’t contain and which wouldn’t have been a problem in any case, but reality is apparently less important for this brand of people. According to Blaylock squalene has been strongly linked to the Gulf War Syndrome, despite the fact that there was no squalene in vaccines given to Gulf War soldiers. He has also suggested that the H1N1 virus may even be man-made and purposely released by someone with the ”Illuminati Depopulation Agenda” (yes, Blaylock is a regular guest at the Alex Jones Show)

Of course there is a Big Pharma conspiracy. It is interesting that such conspiracy mongers fail to see that the Big Pharma conspiracy hypothesis is blatantly internally incoherent, but I suppose that coherence matters just as much as truth and evidence for such people. Bill Maher has claimed that he’s found Blaylock’s rants extremely convincing, but then being convincing to the ignorant is the easiest part when you manufacture a manufactroversy.

Blaylock has also thrown in his alleged expertise in favor of the amalgam scare, the idea that the mercury in amalgam fillings is dangerous – a hugely successful scare franchise started by Hal Huggins (to be covered) in 1985, and immediately popularized by sensationalist garbage TV such as 60 minutes.

Joe Schwarcz points out that Blaylock, as a good, paranoid conspiracy theorist, thinks that the social drug problem in the United States was created by the former Soviet Union ”to weaken the resistance of Western society to Soviet invasion, undermine religion and make the youth unable to resist collectivism,” and that the Soviets were responsible for an epidemic of hepatitis, AIDS, venereal diseases and highly resistant tuberculosis. Relatedly, he thinks that current attempts to reform health-care in the U.S. are being masterminded by the self-chosen ”elite” who wants to establish a New World Order and institute death panels, as elites always does. As Blaylock puts it: ”this is really not that far away from the German National Socialist Party's thinking.” Ah, the power of paranoid imagination: ”Knowing they cannot easily pass a euthanasia law or just have them rounded up and exterminated, they (the proponents of socialized medicine) use the medical-care system to speed them along to their deaths.”

He seems to cargo cult his credentials as a scientist by his membership in the crackpot organization Association of American Physician and Surgeons, listed here, and by being an editor of the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association and on the advisory board for the Life Extension Foundation.

So what should you do? Well, of course Blaylock doesn’t only identify the problem (science-based medicine); he also promotes the solution (pseudoscience), and you can buy medicine and supplements he sells under the label ”Brain Repair Formula” from his website.

These supplements can apparently treat and prevent a range of ailments, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, by maximizing ”your brain’s ability to heal and reduce inflammation.” He may, according to himself, also have found the (secret) cure for cancer. Suzanne Somers included a section on Blaylock and his cancer approach in her quackfest book Knockout.

There’s a good Blaylock resource here, and another one here; he even has his own whale.to page (though I won’t be bothered to link it).

Diagnosis: Supercrackpot and professional conspiracy theorist. Given his fame and influence Blaylock remains a huge threat to civilization, even if he doesn’t quite manage to float the mainstream in the manner of Mehmet Oz and Andrew Weil.