#2607: David Brownstein

Though he’s got genuine credentials, David Brownstein, MD, is a Michigan-based holistic medicine practitioner specializing in thyroid health, arthritis and other chronic conditions, which he falsely believes can be overcome through magic diet. He is also an anti-vaccine activist. Given that he has genuine medical credentials – though no discernible background in relevant research or science  – he is heavily pushed by the anti-vaccine brigade, who will take anyone or anything that looks like it could lend them some credibility (here is a useful list). Brownstein has for instance been featured as a vaccine ‘expert’ in various anti-vaccine documentaries, including conspiracy theorist Ty Bollinger’s The Truth about Vaccines, and is a frequent speaker at antivaccine conferences.

 

A graduate of the University of Michigan and Wayne State University School of Medicine, Brownstein runs a quack website with a prominent store, and has written a number of books (no gooddarn journals and their accountability-based gatekeeping for him) and published numerous videos (like Drugs That Don’t Work and Natural Therapies That Do, The Miracle of Natural Hormones, or The Statin Disaster) and infomercials. In his various publications, which are characterized by incessant sales pitches, he offers numerous ‘controversial’ views on a variety of health topics, falsely claiming among other things that flu vaccines are “worthless”, acetaminophen is “dangerous” and that GMO foods lead to cancer (presumably based on this one).

 

For a fine criticism of Brownstein’s antivaccine rantings, you may look at this (or this one). Brownstein more or less regurgitates all the bullshit he can find in the antivaccine playbook, including appealing to Big Pharma conspiracies, complaining about “neurotoxins like mercury, aluminum and formaldehyde”, promoting common anti-vaccine misinformation about the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and falsely claiming that there has been no safety studies – “[a]s far as I am aware, there are zero – ZERO – safety studies on injecting a neurotoxin into a living being”, says Brownstein, revealing quite a bit about his level of awareness (there are, of course, numerous big studies on the safety of, say, thimerosal). Brownstein also throws in the laughable CDC whistleblower conspiracy, as well as invoking the myth of the autism epidemic, the “epidemic” of chronic illnesses and even vaccine “shedding” nonsense for rhetorical flourish.

 

He has also pushed antivaccine misinformation about the shingles vaccine (possibly the most desperately inane attempt to misuse statistics in the history of statistics misuse), been a keynote speaker at antivaccine conferences around Michigan, and attacked the New York Times for a pro-vaccine editorial by trying to employ the old antivaccine delusional and easily falsified conspiracy claim that “vaccines didn’t save us; better hygiene did” as well as equally easily falsified antivcaccine favorites like the “no true placebo”-used-in-the-clinical-trial of HPV gambit (which at least tellingly shows that Brownstein doesn’t have the faintest clue about how clinical trials work), the Hannah Poling case, calls for a “vaccinated versus unvaccinated” trial – of which, of course, there are already plenty; they just don’t show what antivaxxers like Brownstein want them to show – and the Brady Bunch gambit to try to argue that measles isn’t dangerous. No, really: He did.

 

 

 

In addition to books and DVDs, Brownstein’s website also sells supplements like Celtic Sea Salt (he’s got a book, Salt Your Way To Health, too – apparently his salt will help remedy fatigue, adrenal disorders, immune system function, thyroid disorders, headaches,  cholesterol levels, and blood pressure: it’s some seriously amazing salt) , and Iodoral, an iodine/potassium supplement that can be purchased for a significant sum of money together with his book/DVD entitled Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It. Apparently, Brownstein seems to think – because he’s got supplements to sell – that iodine deficiency is the source of more or less any health issue. “Over 96% of my patients are iodine-deficient and most are severely deficient,” says Brownstein, adding that “conventionally-trained doctors” are unaware of this problem. They certainly are, since there is, firstly, no test to confirm whether you are iodine deficient and iodine deficiency is, if you rely on facts, not really an issue in most parts of the world even if it was an issue in parts of the Midwest up until the 1920s. Brownstein has also pushed CherryJuicePower and homeopathic remedies.

 

Describing his practices as being unaligned with accepted best-practices in medicine would be an understatement, something Brownstein is of course aware of. In 2016, he gnashed his teeth over the difficulties he experienced trying to recertify for his family practice given that none of the board questions concerned woo and quackery: “nutritional therapies”, “natural treatments”, or the various kinds of quackery he promotes: acupuncture, emotional freedom technique, intravenous vitamin and minerals or elimination diets. Why wouldn’t the board just accept his diploma from the Desert Institute School of Classical Homeopathy and the claims about nutrition he pulls directly out of his own ass, and give him a pass?

 

Like so many people in his line of business, Brownstein was relatively quick to seize upon the opportunities offered by COVID-19. His “Brownstein protocol” is an unproven protocol involving vitamins, nebulized hydrogen peroxide and iodine, and intravenous ozone to treat COVID-19. The protocol was promoted by Joseph Mercola (tit-for-tat, one presumes). There is, of course, no evidence or plausibility that the treatment has any beneficial effects, at least not beyond a worthless case series (of judicially selected patients from his own practice – no controls, blinding or randomization, of course) that he managed to publish in a … medical policy and law journal rather than a medical journal, and later in a book endorsed by Robert Kennedy jr., augmented with anecdotes. There is truly no evidence whatsoever. He did get into some trouble with the FTC for his attempts to profit off of COVID-19 with pseudoscience and quackery, though.

 

Diagnosis: Hardcore quack and antivaccine conspiracy theorist who promotes any and all antivaccine nonsense and conspiracy theories he comes across, regardless of how silly they are. And since he is, indeed, an MD, people listen to even his most transparent bullshit. A vile person. Dangerous.

 

Hat-tip: respectful insolence, David Gorski @ sciencebasedmedicine, Peter Lipson @sciencebasedmedicine, wafflesatnoon