#793: Tony Isaacs

Tony Isaacs is one of those defenders of complementary and alternative medicine that always likes to take it one step further in his appeals to nature. Isaacs contributes his insights for instance, to websites such as Mike Adams’s NaturalNews, where accountability, reason and critical thinking are not exactly the guiding principles.

To take an example of Isaac’s hysteric misunderstandings of reality, we may mention a NaturalNews article entitled “Patrick Swayze’s Misguided Faith in Mainstream Medicine.” Swayze, as you may recall, got diagnosticize with pancreatic cancer, yet rejected and even criticized woo throughout his battle. Isaacs, of course, was displeased, responding with a depressing array of falsehoods, red herrings (natural medicine has been around for 6000 years), misunderstandings and blatant falsehoods. It’s all the usual tropes: modern medicine doesn’t treat the disease, just the symptoms (as opposed to the herbs and oils you can buy at Naturalnews.com). And it is all about toxins, despite the fact that many of the drugs Isaac’s group sells are themselves highly toxic – the difference, of course, is that whereas ordinary drugs have been thoroughly tested for safety, Isaacs’s toxic plant extracts have not. “But they are natural,” alleges Isaacs, and means by “natural” exactly what he wants it to mean in order to be able to procure a defense his approach.

Diagnosis: Isaacs is so blinded by his own fallacious reasoning that he appears to view his wanton disregard for human health and safety as a virtue. Despite its absolute insanity, NaturalNews has a surprising volume of followers, and Isaacs must be counted highly dangerous.