#2947: Edward Group

Edward F. Group III is an anti-vaccine activist, conspiracy theorist, healer, quack, “industry leader and innovator in the field of natural health” (i.e. quack) and founder of something called Global Healing, which seems to be a motivational standup show with a webpage that has a prominently placed “shop” section. As for credentials, Group is an “DC, NP, DACBN, DCBCN, DABFM”, but he was nevertheless touted as an ‘expert’ or so in the anti-vaccine ‘documentary’ series The Truth About Vaccines because he is the kind of ‘expert’ that’ll see a marketing opportunity in appearing on shows like that. Beyond being “a registered doctor of chiropractic (DC)” and “a naturopathic practitioner (NP)”, his websites also boast affiliations like “proud alum of Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management” even though he didn’t graduate from any of them, doesn’t have an undergraduate degree, and only completed a “non-degree certificate program” at MIT, which according to MIT makes calling yourself an ‘alumnus’ “inaccurate and misleading.”

 

Mostly, Group promotes and sells supplements. And he has had some success, mostly due to his role as medical consultant for InfoWars. Oh yes: for years Group served as the ‘medical alibi’ for Jones’s conspiracy theories and nonsense about health and medicine (for years, Group credentials would include a ‘medical degree’ from the Joseph LaFortune School of Medicine, a Haiti-based unaccredited diploma mill; at some point, that one quietly disappeared from his websites), and he would frequently appear on the show to try to downplay claims that the products, which range from the stupid to the dangerous and stupid, are a scam (they are) and opine about vaccines (a “hidden poison”) and fungus (the root of all evil, though luckily Jones and Group sells supplements that ostensibly help banish fungi from the body).

 

Among recurring topics on the show are the alleged benefits of colloidal silver, which Jones sold as Silver Bullet. Indeed, Group and Jones advocate drinking colloidal silver (you really shouldn’t): in 2014, for instance, Group happily told the InfoWars audience that he has been drinking “half a gallon of silver, done a 10 parts per million silver, for probably 10 or 15 days” for years and claimed that the FDA at one point “raided” his office to steal his colloidal silver, because it is too powerful: “It was one of the things that was targeted by the FDA because it was a threat to the pharmaceutical companies and a threat for doctor’s visits because it worked so good in the body,” said Group, because once you’ve started lying as profusely as this, it’s hard to stop.

 

Another mainstay of Group’s contributions to InfoWars is anti-fluoride conspiracy nonsense (Jones reasoned that the government is using fluoride as a means to “cutting us off from higher consciousness”). Instead of fluoride, Jones would promote iodine products, including the “Global Healing Center’s Oxy-Powder”, which would give you a dose of iodine per serving four times higher than the maximum recommended daily dose.

 

Group would also regularly appear in ads for various InfoWars formulas, including “Living Defense”, which was promoted as a way to fend off “refugees spreading disease” (it’s one weird trick that has “the CDC is going crazy right now,” says Group.) In 2013, Group announced that “Gaiam TV has launched the first of twelve episodes of ‘Secrets to Health’ featuring myself and the Health Ranger, Mike Adams of Natural News!”, and that would have been a useful indicator of what sort of character we’re dealing with, too, if the InfoWars connection hadn’t been amply sufficient on its own.

 

Though popular with conspiracy theorists, Group’s products are indeed, like he admits, not so popular with the FDA, who has issued warning letters to Group’s business e.g. over his promotion of the nonsense product ViraZap as an “Avian Flu Treatment” (“Help treat symptoms of Flu! Strengthen your immune system” – his intended audience is presumably those who don’t recognize that those two sentences are a contradiction). Even Group’s own employees admit that the claims the Global Healing company make are “incorrect, totally circumstantial or based on incomplete evidence”.

 

Notably, Group has also been caught being a proponent of urine therapy. At a 2021 quack conference inTennessee where Eric Trump featured as a keynote speaker, Group suggested to the audience that they should drink their urine as an alternative to getting vaccinated against COVID-19 (an idea most famously promoted by “Vaccine Police” leader Christopher Key). If you wish to hear more, you can look up his segment “The Power of Urine Therapy” on the podcast hosted by batshit moron and flat-earth promoter Courtenay Turner.

 

Diagnosis: Not only instrumental in building Alex Jones’s empire, Group is also partially responsible for popularizing anti-vaccine nonsense and medical conspiracy theories among the MAGA crowd. He is, of course, a complete and utter fraud; but that doesn’t mean he isn’t also a lunatic true believer in everything false and stupid. We don’t know how his reach has been affected by Jones’s fall from grace, but his name keeps popping up in various contexts – contexts in which you really shouldn’t find yourself.