#538: Lawrence Broxmeyer

Lawrence Broxmeyer has been called ”today’s single most perceptive and innovative medical investigator” by himself, and is one of the few signatories to the list of ”scientist” who calls for reassessment of the HIV-AIDS link put forth by the denialist group ”Rethinking AIDS” who also has a medical degree. That’s right; Broxmeyer is an HIV denialist. He claims to be CEO of Med-America Research (not to be confused with MedAmerica), the registered address of which is Broxmeyer’s home address.

Broxmeyer has suggested that mycobacteria might be the cause of Parkinson’s Disease. So, apparently, is AIDS, heart disease, Mad Cow, cancer, Alzheimer’s, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, and even the 1918 flu. SARS, on the other hand, is just misdiagnosed tubercolosis. All the claims have been published in the crank journal Medical Hypotheses. The claims are not generally considered plausible, to put it mildly.

What ”Rethinking AIDS” predictably fails to mention is that Broxmeyer lost his medical license and pharmacist’s license in the mid-1990s, being charged with 13 specifications of professional misconduct and with “falsification of applications” by inflating his credentials. His application for restoration of his license was declined: ”[T]he COP finds that Dr. Broxmeyer continues to be self-absorbed … His misconduct was deliberate and planned and demonstrated disrespect for his profession … the COP cannot assess whether he has taken the appropriate rehabilitative steps to insure that the public would not be placed in danger again were his license restored.”

Diagnosis: Self-aggrandizing crackpot who doesn’t seem to think twice about putting people’s life in danger to forward his garbled ideas.