#2902: Eric Gladen

Eric Gladen is the founder of the organization the Children’s Health Defense; yes, that would be RFK jr.’s organization, which is one of the most influential disseminators of anti-vaccine misinformation in North America. The group was founded as the World Mercury Project in 2007, with RFK assuming the chair in 2015, primarily to promote the utterly debunked myth that thimerosal in vaccines cause autism, but the group has later branched out into other conspiracy theory mongering, such as campaigns against water fluoridation, pesticides, paracetamol, aluminum, and wireless communications.

 

And though his organization has gradually downplayed the mercury scare bit of their anti-vaccine nonsense (since thimerosal has been absent from childhoold vaccines for some 25 years now), conspiracy mongering about mercury was always Gladen’s thing; his personal history as an antivaccine activist is detailed in Trace Amounts (2014), one of a significant number of anti-vaccine propaganda screeds that were originally marketed as ‘documentaries’ (of sorts), for which Gladen himself was one of its directors (the other was one Shiloh Levine). According to the movie (brief review here), Gladen at one point suffered from sudden and unexplained health issues, used the Internet to do his own research, and concluded that he suffered from mercury poisoning. Then he created a timeline according to which – ‘surprisingly’ – his symptoms started immediately after a tetanus shot that contained thimerosal. So Gladen did more Internet searching and convinced himself that thimerosal could cause his symptoms, chose a specific chelation protocol and found a doctor willing to administer it, against all scientifically grounded advice, whereupon his symptoms temporarily (but only temporarily) improved. He also concluded that his symptoms resemble autism (in reality, of course, mercury poisoning symptoms do not resemble autism), and off we go. At no point did he or his doctor actually verify that the mercury poisoning diagnosis was correct, of course. But based on his own internet searching, Gladen anyways arrived at what he took to be confirmation that vaccines are the cause of a largely mythical autism epidemic and decided to make a movie. Along the way, the movie weaves in a large number of anti-vaccine talking points (and carefully circumvents the massive amount of evidence against his hypothesis) – many of them discussed here  – and conspiracy theories (in particular the CDC whistleblower conspiracy) ,and we are subjected to the appearance of a number of familiar quacks, grifters and antivaccine conspiracy theorists, such as the Geiers and Boyd Haley.

 

The movie nevertheless gained a bit of traction after having been aggressively marketed – through what the movie’s publicist, Jenni Weinman Voake, describes as a “handful” of influencer-oriented, salon-style screenings held at private homes – and was subsequently heavily promoted by deranged conspiracy theorists like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (of course), Jim Carrey, Ed Begley, Jr., Danny Masterson, Cindy Crawford, and Bob Sears – the CHD has a substantial budget for these kinds of things. It was, for instance, heavily used by RFK in his lobbying efforts targeting Oregon lawmakers who could influence Oregon Senate Bill 442, which sought to remove personal belief exemptions from vaccination requirements. Gladen himself is a recurring feature at various antivaccine misinformation and lobbying events, though doesn’t seem to be among the most flamboyant ones.

 

Diagnosis: Though perhaps not among the most familiar names in the antivaccine horror clown circus, Gladen is a loon’s loon and has been instrumental in constructing and developing one of the most immediate and serious threats to civilization. A hideous piece of rot.