#3072: Cass Ingram

A.k.a. Cassim K., A.k.a. Dr. K., A.k.a. Kaasem Khaleel, A.k.a. Cass Igram

 

Cass Ingram is a disgraced former osteopath who lost his Illinois medical license in 1999 for “unprofessional, unethical and dishonourable conduct” – apparently charging a patient inappropriately for nutritional supplements – and has gone on to become a semi-recognized purveyor of nutrition-related woo and pseudoscience, and for making wild and unsubstantiated claims about alleged near-miraculous health benefits of various ‘natural cures’.

 

Cass Ingram

Ingram, sometimes addressed as a “nutritional physician” (which means nothing) or a “doctor who has given answers and hope to millions through lectures on thousands of radio and TV shows”, has written a number of books like The Cure Is in the Cupboard, which makes a long series of unsubstantiated claims about supposed benefits of oregano oil to treat, well, more or less everything from allergies to the flu. And yes, extracts of oregano oil do have antimicrobial effects in a test tube (as do a number of things), which means nothing, but Ingram predictably tries to run a couple of complete courses with the claim. And of course Ingram would promote products sold by North American Herb & Spice Co. LLC, a company run by … Ingram himself and one Judy Kay Gray; the company was eventually sued by the FTC for its bogus claims. Elsewhere, Ingram has praised e.g. “black seed oil” as a miracle cure and raw hemp oil as a wonder product. Other titles from his hand include The Black Seed Miracle; The Body Shape Diet: What your hands, face and figure say about your metabolism, nutrition and hormonal status (even experienced health morons should pause a bit over that title, but they probably don’t: morons!) and The Cure Is in the Forest: The Healing Powers of Wild Chaga Mushroom, Birch Bark, and Poplar Buds – The Forest’s Most Powerful Natural Medicines. There are other titles, too; he is somewhat prolific.

 

And if you wondered whether Cass Ingram is anti-vaccine, why, yes: of course he is anti-vaccine. During COVID, for instance, Ingram produced a somewhat popular video (discussed here) claiming that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines can “cause death and disease through GMO shedding” (oh, yes) and that also unvaccinated people are being exposed to “toxins” that cause sudden deaths, miscarriages, placenta dysfunctionality, “fist-sized blood clots” and menstrual cycle disorders just by “being around vaccinated people”: “There had been some fatalities from contact with the vaccinated,” alleged Ingram, and “this does not mean hugging and kissing, necessarily. It means being in the same room, in the same elevator.”

 

Kaasem Khaleel

You might have thought Cass Ingram was just yet another scam-adjacent pusher of faddish woo and pseudoscience. But when duty calls, Cass Ingram logs out of his woo channels to become Kaasem Khaleel, host of the (now defunct) website nodisinfo.com and author of books like Wrongly Blamed, The Real Facts Behind 9/11 and the London Bombings, which, as the title suggests, does not trade in facts about the 2005 London Bombings or about 9/11 but rather the most egregiously insane conspiracy theories. Khaleel is the kind of conspiracy monger who travels the neo-nazi and Holocaust denialist website circuit to argue that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax and that the Boston Marathon bombers were framed by Mossad, whereas the victims – there were a substantial amount of injured but surviving witnesses, remember – are liars, Satanists and Zionists for refusing to go along with his conspiracy theory.

 

His website was, for a while, a not entirely insignificant source of conspiracy theories and misinformation about all sorts of things, from JFK to celebrity death hoaxes. However, it was shuttered after his Sandy Hook hoax conspiracy theories drew some attention also outside of conspiracy theory circles for posting pictures of the children killed in the Sandy Hook tragedy to promote anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

 

Diagnosis: Sometimes we encounter people who, although they promote woo and pseudoscience, actually do quite a bit of good in other areas. Cass Ingram is not one of those people.