#2868: David Friedman

David Friedman is an all-purpose quack and snakeoil salesman who has polluted the internet and various airwaves with scam enterprises, woo and quackery for some time. Friedman calls himself “Dr. David Friedman”, but he has no medical background; rather he has a “a doctorate degree in chiropractic, neurology and naturopathy” (note that even when he admits what his ‘degree’ is actually in, he doesn’t tell us where it’s from) and according to himself he is “post-doctorate certified from Harvard School of Medicine [which is … not a thing] and the Southeastern Back Institute [for which Google yields exactly five hits, all associated with Friedman]”. The ‘neurology’ part of his ‘credentials’, by the way, means chiropractic neurology, which is, of course, hideous quackery.

 

In fact, Friedman presents himself as “a leading Functional Medicine expert” and he is currently practising in Wilmington, NC, where his “dedication to wellness includes providing world-class treatment to patients, wellness coaching, and an emphasis on the importance of exercise, nutrition, meditation, yoga, and acupuncture”. According to his website, “his list of patients have included top celebrities and movie stars” and he is apparently also working as a “health expert for Lifetime Television’s morning show and syndicated radio host”. His dingbat conspiracy book, Food Sanity, how to eat in a world of fads and fiction (largely concerned with “hidden toxins” in your food) has apparently sold well, and Friedman has written numerous rants on nutrition for health and fitness magazines, pseudojournals and infomercial magazines such as The American Naturopathic Journal and Chiropractic Economics.

 

Friedman is probably – or at least should be – most familiar as a medical advisory board member of the infamous quack company Seasilver, which we have encountered before. Their product, Seasilver, is an expensive supplement that will putatively “balance your body chemistry”, “cleanse your vital organs”, “purify your blood and lymphatic system,” “oxygenate your body’s cells”, “protect your tissues and cells against challenges” and “strengthen your immune system”. In other words, the claims are precisely as imprecise, metaphorical and ambiguous as they need to be to ensure untestability and thus protect the company from accountability (apart perhaps from the “oxygenate your body’s cells” claim, which is, fortunately for any users of the product, false). To ‘support’ such claims, Friedman’s got an anecdote: himself. You see, “[d]uring my naturopathic studies, we were taught that a giant handful of vitamin/mineral pills was the answer”, which, since vitamin and supplement pills are superfluous nonsense moneymakers for big and cynical industries, is an inadvertently damning indictment of naturopathic education; Friedman, however, though he agrees (at least for Seasilver marketing purposes) that supplements in general are ineffective, concludes that Seasilver is different: “Unlike minerals from the ground, like those sold in health food stores, nutrients from the sea are recognized by our cell receptors and are allowed access into our cells,” says Friedman, since his target group is precisely those who won’t read that sentence and think ‘wait …’. Friedman even tries to explain (or whatever you call it): “Unlike other nutritional supplements on the market, sea vegetation offers ionic minerals, which experts [who?] consider to be assimilated better than any other form” (if you master basic biochemistry, you are not in his target group), before concluding that “[t]his MEDICAL EVIDENCE proves that for every hundred dollars people are spending on vitamin pills, they are flushing $90 down the toilet. Seasilver offers a 98% absorption rate .... meaning you get what you pay for!”; note the delectable use of capitalization.

 

The FTC and FDA were apparently not impressed with Friedman’s standards of proof, ordering, back in 2004, him and his Seasilver colleagues Jason & Bela Berkes and Brett Rademacher to be prohibited from:

 

-       “Making or helping others to make, false or misleading claims about the health benefits, efficacy, or safety of Seasilver or any covered product.

-       Misrepresenting that Seasilver is effective in the treatment of multiple myeloma; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; lung, breast, and prostate cancer; brain tumors; diabetes; AIDS; typhoid; and anthrax, among other ailments.

-       Representing that Seasilver or any other product causes rapid, substantial, or permanent weight loss without reducing caloric intake.

-       Making any representation about the health benefits, efficacy, or safety of any covered product without reliable scientific evidence to support the representation.”

 

Friedman was also ordered to pay $1 million in restitution to settle charges. Note that their FTC and FDA troubles occurred a while ago, when Seasilver was making more precise and testable health claims (i.e. claims that could be evaluated for truth or falsity); the untestable nonsense and meaningless New Age bullshit Seasilver is currently using in their marketing is precisely tailored to avoid ending up in a similar situation.

 

Like so many other quacks and grifters, Friedman also weighed in on Covid, drawing some attention to himself for his bonkers suggestion that the virus could be destroyed by sunlight – “[i]nstead of staying quarantined inside your house, go outside on your back deck and soak up some virus destroying sunshine!”, said Friedman; at least his previous experiences seem to have made him wary of claiming that his own products would have any beneficial effects. The claim received some attention partially because it was repeated by Congressman Greg Murphy.

 

Diagnosis: Spineless quack, and because he knows how to market his nonsense, he apparently wields a frightening amount of influence.