#2997: Jeff Hays

Antivaxxers struggle to publish in serious research journals – for obvious reasons, insofar as evidence, reality, accountability and facts are all stacked against them. So instead of trying to do research or scientific studies, which – unless care is taken to avoid proper methodology or interpretation of data – would not give them what they want, they tend to make documentaries (at least when they don’t successfully take over and undermine government organizations). Del Bigtree’s Vaxxed may be the most famous, followed, perhaps, by conspiracy flicks like The Greater Good and The Truth About Vaccines, but antivaxxers have been in the game for a while.

 

The 2016 movie Bought: Your Health Now Brought to You by Wall Street, for instance, which was produced by Jeff Hays, directed by Bobby Sheehan, and backed by Age of Autism (and promoted e.g. by Mike Adams at NaturalNews) promised to “uncover the hidden facts about vaccinations” and was, as expected, mostly an exercise in Big Pharma conspiracy theories. And it featured “exclusive interviews” with the same lineup of antivaxx conspiracy theorists exclusively featured in every single one of these movies (here called “the world’s most acclaimed experts in research, medicine, holistic care and natural health”), including Sherri Tenpenny, Andrew Wakefield, Kelly Brogan and Toni Bark, spewing precisely the same misinformation and conspiracy theories they spew in all the other movies. The movie is otherwise crammed with an impressive amount of debunked misinformation, including the claim that vaccines are ineffective but do cause autism – an idea so thoroughly debunked that it categorizes with flat eartherism in terms of connection with evidence and reality – but is especially notable for its persecution fantasies and its attempts to link vaccine denialism with GMO paranoia. There is, of course, no science or evidence involved, which we suppose Hays and his gaggle of loons just take to show how effective Wall Street is at covering things up and as further evidence for a conspiracy.

 

In 2017, Hays followed up his documentary with producing the 10-episode series Vaccines Revealed, another “parade of well-known and thoroughly debunked anti-vaccinationists, in some cases being interviewed by other anti-vaccinationists, produced by someone whose past work has promoted anti-vaccination views” – the first episode lets Andrew Wakefield himself talk for more or less an hour and the third episode features RFK jr. giving “the long version” (over an hour) of his antivaccine conspiracy theories – and which was in heavily promoted (courtesy of chiropractor and insane antivaccine conspiracy theorist Patrick Gentempo) at the International Chiropractors Association (ICA) Council on Chiropractic Pediatrics Annual Conference, a group that has, like chiropractors in general, a long history of promoting antivaccine misinformation (yes, even mainstream media has noticed). Hays has, in fact, had a long and fruitful relationship with chiropractors, having earlier produced Doctored, a conspiracy flick attacking the American Medical Association for being critical of chiropractors (as well as promoting various chiropractic woo and pseudoscience), and Undoctored, which appears to be more of the same.

 

And in 2022, Hays was back, this time with the conspiracy flick The Real Anthony Fauci a full-length feature documentary based on RFK’s book of the same name and hence promoting e.g. RFK’s conspiracy theories about Fauci as a stooge for Big Pharma and RFK’s recommendations of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as potential Covid treatments. Apparently, Robert Malone is a fan.

 

Hays himself has in fact produced cheap and mostly conspiracy-themed documentaries on a number of topics, starting with his breakthrough FahrenHYPE 9/11 in 2004 and including for instance produced a documentary with Ben Greenfield. The aforementioned Vaccines Revealed is, in fact, part of a series of documentaries Hays has done with Gentempo, which include titles like Money Revealed, Crypto Revealed, End Game, GMOs Revealed and Psychedelics Revealed.

 

Diagnosis: A product of the developments in the mid-2000s, when improved technology allowed anyone to quickly and affordably create movies that could pollute and clog up the information stream, it is not always entirely clear whether Hays is a true believer or just producing whatever crap anyone is willing to pay for. Whatever the case may be, he is currently a major producer of conspiracy theory bullshit and a significant malicious tumor on the back of civilization.