#2739: Jennifer Daniels

Raymond Damadian was an MD, a pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging, religious fundamentalist and young-Earth creationist) where the latter position was based not on any evaluation of that science (which would not touch upon his area of expertise) but on incoherent religious ramblings and paranoia. But Damadian is also dead.

 

Jennifer Daniels is another one-time MD gone rogue, and though she is still alive (as far as we know), she is no longer an MD, having surrendered her license in response to being confronted with the legal dimensions (having her license revoked) of her absolutely batshit nonsense claims about health and medicine; indeed, Daniels had been in trouble with the New York Department of Health over her claims and behaviors for a long time before surrendering her license. According to herself, though, she “had her medical license suspended due to not prescribing enough drugs and truly healing her patients,” which is demonstrably a bald-faced lie. She currently resides in Panama, where she produces books, radio shows, and videos; sells supplements; advises clients as a health coach; and provides “Holistic Mentoring Consultations”.

 

Daniels is perhaps best known for her advocacy for turpentine, no less, which according to Daniels is the Fountain of Youth and able to cure a wide range of conditions (including a number of fake ones) but which according to reality is poison with no recognized or plausible benefit for any condition whatsoever. Among the conditions turpentine was supposed to be able to cure, according to Daniels, was chronic Candida; now, it is technically true that patients after taking turpentine would no longer suffer from chronic Candida, but that would of course be for the reason that none of them had chronic Candida in the first place. Chronic Candida is a fake disease.

 

Daniels allegedly got the idea of using turpentine from asking African-American patients if their slave ancestors had an affordable miracle cure that cured everything. In the beginning, she tried it herself, and it is worth quoting her description of what happened at some length: “I think my IQ went up like 50 points, I could just feel it, all this mental energy and understanding and clarity, just like when I was 10 years old, everything was very clear and focused. I said WOW what a feeling. I did some math problems, I said this is pretty good.” Since she had heard that turpentine could cause seizures, she went on to determine the maximum safe dose: stopping when she felt a little twitch or “even softer than a twitch.” Then she gave it to her family. How Daniels obtained a medical degree in the first place is a very, very good question –Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have things to answer for.

 

As for scientific evidence, Daniels refers to a review study from France that doesn’t at all say what she claims it says. In general, however, Daniels is “not much of a fan of research”. The reason she gives for not being a fan is “because every research project I’ve been involved with, I’ve been asked to falsify data.” Given her general grasp of things (and level of honesty), we suspect that she might have misunderstood some instructions and the distinction between falsifying a hypothesis through testing and making up data.

 

If you are going to use turpentine, you have to follow her instructions, however: First, you take her Vitality Capsules, which according to her “clean out the bile ducts and the gall bladder system as well as the small intestine, large intestine”, promote circulation and contain “no chemicals”. Then you must to follow her diet instructions (organic, and abstaining from GMOs and “dead food”). And then turpentine will be so successful that Daniels, according to herself, stopped using antibiotics in her practice (but if you experience some worries here, Daniels reassures us that “[t]here is no medication that turpentine interacts with”, a claim she pulled directly out of her ass and for which she has no evidence or tests to back it up). She has also recommended turpentine for children; indeed, children should start getting turpentine in castor oil when they reach 30 pounds to prevent Candida and parasites.

 

Moreover, turpentine ostensibly improves eyesight (users were, according to Daniels, able to discard their reading glasses) and resolves tinnitus, and it helps with diabetes by healing the pancreas – it will ostensibly allow Type I diabetics to lower their insulin dose. That said, Daniels’s recommendations aren’t limited to turpentine; she can also give you thicker and less gray hear: “use minerals, small willow flower, and shou wu”.

 

Apparently, according to Daniels, “Liver time is 1-3 AM; lung time is 3-5 AM.” We’ll just leave that there without comment.

 

Oh, and she is of course anti-vaccine: “There is no vaccine or injection Dr. Daniels recommends.”

 

Diagnosis: It’s hard to imagine that she is unaware of the ridiculousness of her claims, but it probably doesn’t matter, since at this level, stupidity becomes indistinguishable from malice. Completely bonkers, but contrary to what you’d probably think: there are people to listen to this kind of stuff.

 

Hat-tip: Skepdoc