#2971: Donald Hank

Donald Hank is a columnist for RenewAmerica – or at least he was: we haven’t seen any new columns for a while – and wingnut. Most of his writings seem concerned with perceived Washington overreach and countering what he thought was fake news from mainstream media, but he did, of course, broach other issues, too, including (sigh!) gay marriage and gay rights. Responding to a decision of the Presbyterian Church to allow pastors to officiate same-sex weddings back in 2014, Hank accused them of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” and of supporting what he called “socialMarxism.” Said Hank: “This is social Marxism and we are slaves to it in the US. Isn’t it time to throw off the chains? It's all up to the people”. As Hank sees it, gay marriage “is like saying a dog is a cat” and will allow for “our culture and hence our sovereignty to be destroyed” (The mechanisms he have in mind are a bit unclear). Moreover, gay marriage is wrong because people “deep down” feel is wrong; then he cited the assassination of the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, whom historians have said was either gay or transgender: “In Elagabulus’ case, he was eventually assassinated. The people’s will was done.” So there.

 

Diagnosis: Take a moment to consider how he invokes freedom vs. slavery in the context of the issue at hand (Presbyterian Church allowing pastors to officiate same-sex weddings), and you can probably come up with a diagnosis yourself.

 

Hat-tip: People for the American Way

#2970: Hillel Handler

A.k.a. William Handler (the name he uses when he talks to Gentiles)

 

New York-based Rabbi Hillel Handler is a flamboyantly insane conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist, and likely partially responsible for measles outbreaks in New York’s orthodox Jewish communities. Now, Handler doesn’t quite view it that way; according to Handler, as expressed at a New York symposium with (a.o.) Del Bigtree and Andrew Wakefield, and based entirely on his feverish imagination, the 2019 measles outbreak among orthodox Jews was part of an elaborate plan concocted by Mayor Bill de Blasio to deflect attention from “more serious” diseases brought by Central American migrants. “We Hasidim have been chosen as the target,” said Handler; “the campaign against us has been successful.” And yes, he did claim the role of victim of persecution while simultaneously, and without irony, accusing Central American immigrants of spreading disease, a type of hoary gambit … he should have some awareness of, shouldn’t he? He did, however, claim that Bill de Blasio is a “nasty German” and a “very, very sneaky fellow” and asserted that it was therefore “in his DNA” to hate Jewish people.

 

But yes, that’s Rabbi Hillel Handler for you. Handler views his status as a Rabbi as a sort of mechanism that grants truth to whatever delusional fantasies his deranged imagination comes up with, regardless of fact, coherence, reason or evidence (such as claiming that de Blasio is German). Apparently, however, his word carries some weight in Rockland County (famous, by the way, for hosting the US’s first case of paralytic polio for more than a decade in 2022 – the patient being, of course, unvaccinated), even though he is obviously delusionally insane. And Handler has said a lot of stupid things, including that parents who “placate the gods of vaccination” are engaging in “child sacrifice”. (“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”, said Rabbi Handler, citing the Gospel of Luke, though we don’t really believe he wants anyone to be forgiven.) Meanwhile, ultraorthodox communities remain a favorite target for anti-vaccine activists.

 

Indeed, not only are vaccines bad, according to Handler, but disease is good: Handler claims that getting measles, mumps and chicken pox reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke by 60%; needless to say, he didn’t even try to back up his assertions, partially, of course, because they are idiotically false. And there is, of course, a conspiracy afoot (one that goes beyond Di Blasio): “This is all being orchestrated by the drug companies, which are very close to the CDC,” says Handler. “The doctors all march in lockstep with the CDC. The doctors don’t think they’re marching in lockstep. They don’t understand that the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, is a totally corrupt swamp. … They are criminals.” And of course, invoking the holocaust is a go-to trick: “Yes, there is a vaccine-triggered holocaust of autism and autoimmune diseases, like asthma, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, and various forms of ADHD and brain damage,” says Handler, and promptly goes on to express outrage that “the Anti-Defamation League and other politically-Liberal Jewish organizations have claimed exclusive ownership of this very powerful English word and blocked its use by Autism activists”; he did of course not go on to try to provide any evidence for his claims, which are demonstrably ridiculous.

 

He wasn’t a fan of covid vaccines and covid measures either. On his YouTube video, which amassed thousands of views, he predictably called his political opponents (including Jewish doctors) “Göring” and “Mengele” and accused them of orchestrating a “soft pogrom”, dismissed standard medical protocols, and provided medical advice based on his own delusional imagination, including vitamin supplements. 

 

Handler was also a signatory to a 2020 letter written by Sharon Kroner and Kevin Barry to President Trump to oppose school vaccine mandates. Having the signature of a raging lunatic like Handler doesn’t exactly lend credibility to the letter, but then it didn’t have any credibility to lose in the first place.

 

Handler is notable for other efforts, too, including fiercely attacking observant Jews for reporting child sex abuse to police; as Handler sees it, such accusations should be handled by rabbinic authorities (“[m]olestation cases must be handled by G’dolim, not by ‘experts’”), and he has been caught defending a rabbi who was convicted of raping his own daughter by saying the girl was lying about the abuse. You are supposed to take the authority conveyed by the title “Rabbi” as evidence enough for anything. Indeed, Handler even served as a spokesperson for the campaign to raise funds to support the convicted rabbi (that effort was led by one Rabbi Moshe Green, a name we record for future reference). He has also opposed efforts to regulate metzizah b’pei, a controversial circumcision rite that can spread deadly herpes to newborn boys, on the grounds that the practice must be “safe” because it is “old”.

 

Diagnosis: Incoherently fuming, insane conspiracy theorist. But although Rabbi Handler is a complete idiot, apparently a number of people thinks his title give him some kind of authority on medical issues. Those people should be avoided.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

#2969: Patrick Hanaway

Over the last decades, quackery has gradually and successfully infiltrated academic medicine, usually under the heading “integrative medicine”. The nominal guiding idea is to integrate alternative treatments with science- andevidence-based medicine, which means integrating worthless garbage with real medicine, which again – needless to say – does not improve actual medicine (“integrative medicine” is the name of a brand, not a specialty) . But there is usually money in it: the motivation for such efforts is usually that patients request such treatments or, more importantly, that there are lucrative grants from woo-friendly people with so much money they don’t know how else to spend it; and for university administrations (who do, as opposed to scientists, decide such issues) that really is what matters. How else would you explain the remarkable double standard employed with regard to demands for evidence of safety and efficacy for science-based medicine vs. woo?

 

Few places have been more thoroughly infected by the integrative medicine scam than the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF), which has – especially under the leadership of cynical quackery-enthusiast Toby Cosgrove – e.g. promoted integrative oncology; been caught recommending reflexology, “energy healing” (like reiki), and acupuncture for children; been sporting a traditional Chinese medicine clinic run by a naturopath (Galina Roofener); teamed up with Goop to promote myths about heavy metals; and – not the least – opened a new Center for Functional Medicine in 2014 to become “the first academic medical center in the United States to embrace functional medicine”. Functional medicine is, of course, a complete and utter scam, despite the Cleveland Clinic trying mightily and dishonestly to convince you otherwise; thet have even referred to the nonsensical marketing myth that the focus of functional medicine “is more on identifying underlying causes of illness and less on symptom management” – and yes, this is lying: not ‘dubious’ or ‘carelessly phrased’ or ‘inaccurate’ or ‘a mistake’, but baldfaced lying. The center was marketed as a “collaboration between the Clinic and The Institute for Functional Medicine”, i.e. Mark Hyman’s infamous institution.

 

The architects behind the collaboration was Hyman and his companion from The Institute for Functional Medicine Patrick Hanaway, who was subsequently Medical Director of, then Research Director of and currently (?) Research Collaborator with the center. Hanaway is is an integrative “holistic” practitioner who claims to have treated his own laryngeal cancer with nutrition, shamanic healing, acupuncture, herbs and prayer (as well as, he has to admit, chemotherapy and radiation therapy). Hanaway, although he is an MD, has previously served on the Executive Committee for the American Board of Integrative Medicine and is Past President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, and he was, for a while, also chief medical officer of Genova Diagnostics, a shady laboratory that offers all sorts of tests of dubious medical value like a saliva adrenal stress profile, comprehensive diagnostic stool analysis, and toxic effects CORE. His own practice, Family to Family: Your Home for Whole Health Care in Asheville, NC, which he runs with his wife Lisa Lichtig – a “family physician, midwife and herbalist” who is “also serving as a traditional healer and ceremonial leader” and an initiated “mara’akame (healer) in the Huichol healing tradition” – is on record offering “holistic newborn and pediatric care” that includes what is ominously characterized as “grounded discussions” on vaccines; and yes, they do promote natural childbirth woo and, yes indeed, homeopathy.

 

In his position at the Cleveland Clinic, Hanaway would write editorials, often mixing word salads with misrepresenting the evidence base in favor of functional medicine – in response to questions by the AAFP, for instance, Hanaway offered a list of studies with no explanation of how they support the practices of functional medicine (and seriously: Does anyone think that this would have been the response if functional medicine had anything?) – and oversee program development and studies designed to make functional medicine come out in a positive light (e.g. pilot, proof of concept studies). Nevertheless, the Center for Functional Medicine was apparently a striking success, leading the Cleveland Clinic itself to commit to serious further investments. There was, after all, what Hanaway described as an “unbelievable pent up demand for this kind of care”, and what other parameter for success could there be in a medical setting?

 

Diagnosis: We’re sure he believes he is helping. He’s also very good at what he’s actually doing. His convictions have, in other words, played a significant role in the shittification of medicine in the US.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

#2968: Douglas Hamp

Douglas Hamp has an MA in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a PhD from Louisiana Baptist University, and he is a frothingly insane fundie conspiracy theorist who attempts to defend a hyper-literalistic interpretation of the Bible (dragons, corners of the Earth, rolling out the firmament, God has hands and feet, and so on). Much of his writings – he has published a number of books – deal with various features of the End Times, in particular his Corrupting the Image series, which currently consists of:

 

-       Angels, Aliens, and the Antichrist Revealed, which concerns a Genesis prophecy that “the serpent will one day mix his seed with humanity as a counterfeit of the Messiah” and argues that this is currently happening. (You can sort of figure out the story – as well as Hamp’s state of mind – from that description and the title of the work.)

-       Hybrids, Hades, and the Mt Hermon Connection, which tells you all you need to know and more about Satanic angel–human hybrids and Satan ensuring “his unending reign upon the earth at the Tower of Babel”.

-       Singularity, Superhumans, and the Second Coming of Jesus, which … ok, here we’ll just quote the blurb: “When two prophets with superhuman powers arrive to warn of God’s coming judgment, the world largely rejects their message and treats them as hostile extra-terrestrials who must be stopped at any cost. Posing as an ancient alien, Satan’s hybrid-avatar, the Beast, kills them and urges humanity to take the mark of the Beast and evolve into gods to fight against the coming alien invasion led by Jesus.” We actually don’t think Hamp intended the book as a work of fiction but rather as a prophecy to be interpreted as literally as possible.

 

So Hamp sees the work at Satan more or less all over the place, including places where you would expect dingbat fundie conspiracy theorists to see it if you frequented conspiracy websites back in 2013, such as the freemasons: in his video The Antichrist, Freemasons and the Third Temple, he lays out the Satanic organization of that group based, in part, on the work of Stanley Monteith.

 

His website, meanwhile, offers a lot of impressively detailed (and utterly ridiculous) prophecies, mostly concerned with the always upcoming End Times. It also invites you to watch e.g. a “prophecy roundtable” (with him, one Scott Harwell, and guests) for “an entertaining chat about the end-times”. He currently also leads his own The Way Congregation in Colorado, which seems to be a cult. The weird praise his work receives e.g. on Amazon doesn’t exactly mitigate that suspicion. 

 

Diagnosis: The sort of colorful, deranged sideshow other incoherent endtimes preachers need in order to make them look borderline sane. Hamp seems to have no such concerns about appearing borderline sane, but has nevertheless managed, it seems, to gather a certain amount of followers.

#2967: Bill Hamon

Another day, another raging fundie. Bill Hamon is a fundie, self-declared prophet and founder of the Christian International Ministry Network. Charisma’s Steve Strang has described him as “one of the fathers of the modern prophetic movement”, and Hamon could, in fact, be described as the founder, with C. Peter Wagner, of the New Apostolic Reformation: the motivation for Hamon being his conviction that Christ can’t return to Earth and bring about its end until Christians form a “militant” army led by modern apostles and prophets that will physically subdue Earth and start establishing God’s kingdom in the Earth’s governments. Hamon is also the founder of Christian International School of Theology, an international network of Bible Colleges that has ostensibly “trained and activated thousands of ministers and saints across the world”, and author of a number of books with titles like God’s Weapons of War and Seventy Reasons for Speaking in Tongues.

 

Hamon is, moreover, a promoter of the weird genre of Trump-finds-God fan fic, the idea that Donald Trump himself is some sort of deeply committed religious figurehead – indeed, Hamon has contributed to the subgenre Melania-finds-God fan fic (an example), the most famous example of which being perhaps Paul Begley’s idea – spun entirely from febrile imagination – that First Lady Melania Trump refused to move into the White House in 2017 until it had been “completely exorcised.”

 

In any case, Hamon is convinced that Trump is doing God’s work and hence is, indeed, a major success story for his movement to put secular governments under the control of militant prophets. And as Hamon sees it, Trump’s primary agenda as president is to combat the forces of darkness commanded by Satan who are trying to take down God’s own cherished and carefully crafted project, the US. Said forces of darkness are of course identical to those who disagree with Hamon on political issues or who vote in ways that are contrary to how he wants them to vote. For if you do, perhaps because you “don’t realize this is a spiritual war”, God is ready to punish you (or other random Americans – God apparently doesn’t care much about precision). Hamon has, as a prophet, a direct line to God that allows him to reveal the workings here. For instance, in 2017, Hamon could reveal that Hurricane Irma was a sign from God that President Trump’s opponents will soon be exposed (just like Q also prophecied). As Hamon sees it, Trump is “God’s man for this time and God’s going to use him to restore America back to its true destiny and purpose”, and like many other fundie Trumpists, he has compared Trump to the biblical Cyrus, an ungodly man raised up to carry out God’s will: “The fact is that God raised him up, and God didn’t ask our permission which man He would bring, but it’s God’s time,” said Hamon (meanwhile, “everyone knows that if Hillary had gotten it, we would be a socialist nation and we’d be so far from our purpose” that we’d have invited the “judgment of God” … which, through hurricane Irma, we received anyways? Who knows.)

 

At least Hamon’s views on Trump reflect his general theological views as laid out e.g. in his book Apostles, Prophets and the Coming Moves of God: God’s end-times army (the one led by Trump and himself) will achieve victory by striking God’s enemies with blindness and natural disasters, which will eventually lead entire nations to convert to Christ. And the apostles and prophets (like himself) will be so powerful that Christians who come into their presence with sin in their lives will be struck dead, and eventually achieve immortality (this is his take on the idea of the Rapture). Now, many of Hamon’s ideas and doctrines can of course not be found in, say, the Bible, but the reason is obvious: As an apostle and prophet, Hamon has, through apostolic intuition, insights into new doctrines that supplement those given by the original apostles and prophets, or, in short: if you make it up as you go, it is really information directly from God.

 

Diagnosis: He’s old, but seems to be as insane and dangerous as ever. To minimally reasonable people, it remains unfathomable that anyone could take this cartoonishly laughable drivel seriously, but they do, and possibly because it is as crazy as it is: the sort of militant Taliban-style fundamentalism, complete with prophets, apostles and superheroes, has gained serious momentum around the world lately.

#2966: Jeremy R. Hammond

Jeremy R. Hammond (not Jeremy Hammond, hacker and anarchist) is a wingnut conspiracy theorist writing for the “alternative” news website Personal Liberty and an antivaxxer. Hammond endorses the thoroughly debunked idea that vaccines cause autism (they don’t) and supports his position by refusing to acknowledge existing science or dismissing it as biased while promoting antivax anecdotes (case studies) and ‘studies’ published in predatory journals. So, can anyone “point to any studies in the medical literature that have shown that the HPV vaccine reduces the risk of developing cervical cancer”, asks Hammond, and yes, sure: we certainly can, but does anyone think Hammond will listen? Then he employs the antivaxx appeal to package inserts, and so on.

 

Diagnosis: No, we can’t be bothered to do much more. Hammond is presumably a relatively minor player, though you never know who might show up at a federal vaccine panel or as an official responsible for public health efforts these days, so best to record the name for future reference.

 

Hat-tip: Skeptical Raptor

#2965: Leon Hammer

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a presientific system of vitalistic myths, and TCM’s ways of diagnosing disease are nonsense based on vagueness, fluff and imagination. Among the diagnostic methods employed by TCM practitioners is pulse diagnosis: using palpation of the pulse at the wrist and inspection of the tongue to try evaluate the patient’s state of health and make diagnoses. The idea is, of course, complete bullshit, and it is based on the notion that the radial artery represents the health of the person and can be used to measure non-existent phenomena like qi – the technique even comes with maps that assigns points on the wrist and tongue to various parts of the body in a seemingly random manner familiar from (other versions of) reflexology.

 

Leon Hammer and John Shen don’t think it is bullshit. According to Hammer, who is the founder of the Shen-Hammer system, aka Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis (CCPD), the pulse can in fact “give us the most precise picture of even the most subtle and complex deviation from this standard of health” because “[t]he pulse record is an instant picture of the current status of a person’s voyage from birth to death”. For a practitioner who approach the issue “with dedication, quiet patience and consistency, becoming attuned to pulse qualities is an ongoing meditation, a training ground for awakening and awareness into total focus and concentration. As such, pulse diagnosis is an opportunity for practitioners to obtain the ultimate satisfaction of being one with their patients, one with themselves, one with the diagnostic process, and perhaps one with the universal forces that are expressed through the pulse.” In other words, it’s utter bullshit, with a sprinkling of helpless deepity. That said, Hammer also appeals to experiments set ut by the Chinese government in the 1950s in which “many well known masters of Chinese pulse diagnosis were asked to examine a patient”. Not surprisingly, “[t[heir findings varied widely”, and pulse diagnosis was accordingly judged to be an unreliable diagnostic tool – Hammer disagrees, however: the variations just shows that “each different pulse system is correct, providing not contradictory information, but different information.” And if your reaction is something in the vicinity of “wait …”, Hammer is ready to admit that it “is difficult to contemplate and absorb”. Indeed. You are just close-minded. Anything goes.

 

Hammer is also the creator of Contemporary Oriental Medicine (COM), which includes “over 100 unique concepts not included in TCM”, including “birth traumas and Heart shock, toxicity, Liver qi and yang deficiency, the separation of yin and yang as precursors to significant and debilitating illnesses, etc.” In other words, Hammer takes TCM and adds whatever woo he fancies to comprise what he views as “the true embodiment of tradition, seamlessly blended with modern insight and wisdom”. None of it has anything to do with reality, of course. Hammer is very clear that he really believes that it works, but doesn’t seem to recognize the need to actually test it.

 

In fact, there is a test of his pulse diagnosis. Sort of. Hammer’s own disciple Karen Bilton submitted “Investigating the reliability of Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis as a diagnostic tool in Oriental medicine” as partial requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Technology in Sydney. In the study, Bilton carefully tested inter-tester reliability among Hammer’s own acolytes and found decent levels of agreement of intra-rater comparisons and (somewhat less) of inter-rater comparisons for certain conditions. Of course, she admits that “reliability … was the exclusive interest of the study, and not validity.” In other words, she found some agreement among students of Hammer’s when it came to setting diagnosis, and carefully avoided judging whether any of those diagnoses had anything whatsoever to do with reality! It is, in other words, an absolutely glorious example of tooth fairy science, and utterly laughable as such. That Bilton was apparently not immediately forcibly removed from the University of Sydney’s premises is a disgrace to that institution.

 

Diagnosis: Batshit stupidity with delusions of grandeur. And this one, too, seems to have achieved some popularity, at least to the extent that the nonsense has drifted into and mixed with the general fog of fads and quackery that is the modern wellness movement.

 

Note: Hammer seems to have passed away, but since we’d already written this entry we decided to publish it anyways. His work presumably lives on.

 

Hat-tip: Sciencebased medicine