#588: Gabriel Cousens

Gabriel Cousens is a health writer who describes himself in the following manner:

“Dr. Sir Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Diplomate of American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, Diplomate Ayurveda, a physician of the soul, teaches and lives the sevenfold peace. To the process of awakening and healing, Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), weaves a background as a holistic physician, medical researcher, world-recognized live-food nutritionist, psychiatrist, family therapist, homeopath, Rabbi, acupuncturist, Ayurvedic practitioner, expert on green juice spiritual fasting and detoxification fasting, ecological leader, Reiki master, internationally celebrated spiritual teacher, author, lecturer, culture-bridger, world peaceworker, to give a unique holistic approach to nurturing the hungry soul.”

That ought to tell you quite a bit about what kind of cretin we are dealing with here. Cousens’s work, in all its glory, centers around New Age woo and bullshittery (a mixture, it seems, of sycophancy and criticism of those whose unsupported claims differ from his own – e.g. Johnny Lovewisdom (criticism) and Adi Da (endorsement)). A mainstay of his particular kind of woo is Raw foodism, and he employs a wide arsenal of crackpottery (particularly the Gerson protocol) and New Age religious fluffery to prop up his advice, as well as primitive medieval vitalism: the uncooked baby carrot is “alive”, while the cooked carrot is “dead”; Hence, cooking and pasteurization “kill” food, and raw food is “living”. Why it would be an advantage that the carrot is alive is not entirely obvious, but Cousens does at least have pictures of the auras of energy surrounding the food to prove it. His rainbow diet is aptly featured here.

Apparently Cousens is the founder of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, “the world's leading spiritual, vegan raw and live food retreat center,” and the author of Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days, in which he claims that enzymes are food-qi and that treating diabetes is easy. It is discussed here. He’s got … anecdotes to back it all up, endorsements by one Joel Fuhrman – who appears not to know the first thing about reality – and plenty of thoroughly false and rather random-sounding assertions. In the accompanying video he does tone down the woo a little to make it more mainstream (without making it anywhere near reality-based), but both the video and the “Raw for Life” Encyclopedia on his website feature “expert” commentaries from Morgan Spurlock, Mike Adams and Gary Null, which shouldn’t exactly confer much authority to his claims.

Cousens has been involved in a lot of nasty bullshit over the years, including raising some controversy over his fantastically crankycellular therapy, and he has been responsible for at least one death, though according to Arizona’s board of homeopathic medicine (yes they have one) Cousens wasn’t guilty of malpractice by their standards – “standards of homeopathy” aren’t much to write home about, though.

With one David Wagner Cousens has also written Tachyon Energy: A New Paradigm in Holistic Healing. No, it is not evidence-based; and yes, it is quantum woo taken just a few steps further.

Diagnosis: A staunch enemy of humanity, Cousens is a monstrous supercrank who unabatedly continues his campaign to fool people into ruining their own lines. Repugnant.

#230: Marcus Laux

Not exactly a household name, Marcus Laux is in any case a very typical example of how woo is peddled. He is “a licensed naturopathic physician who earned his doctorate at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon. He has been clinically trained in acupuncture, homeopathy, physical medicine, among other healing modalities.” His biography is here.

It’s all there. He chose the woo route because “[science-based medicine] doctors seemed more interested in money than their patients” and – predictably – because naturopathic medicine “looks beyond the symptoms to the source, treating you as a whole person rather than a bunch of separate, unrelated symptoms”. But of course, Laux initially thought naturopathic medicine was quackery, However, he “knew in [his] heart [i.e. rather than by evidence] that the natural path was the right path” (in short, he found fallacious appeals to nature extremely intuitively compelling). He is also coauthor of “Natural Woman, Natural Menopause” (with Christine Conrad) and “Top Ten Natural Therapies” (with Melissa Block).

His web page is here. Now, Laux is the founder of Qivana, a network marketing company peddling all sorts of wellness products (woo-based, of course – no, you don’t get a link) in what they call the “Qivana Qore” series (it even has “Qi” in the name to give them away).

Diagnosis: This is how great woo is done; while Laux may be a fraud, it's more likely he is completely oblivious to the fishiness of his approach to medicine or business. Not very influential or likely to become very influential, but he is still not unlikely to cause some harm.

#21: Fred Bell

According to his own website, “… at age 14 Bell was not only working at the University of Michigan on nuclear energy projects, but was also inducted into the U.S. government's project called M. K. Ultra. This early mind control research covered such topics as past life regression [check], and the popular remote viewing used today by the CIA and other intelligence gathering factions worldwide [check]. ... Dr. Bell worked on a magnetic disintegration project later known as the Philadelphia Experiment [check], a high temperature fusion experiment, a bubble project later known as Cold Fusion [check] ... . In addition, Dr. Bell worked with the University of Michigan's Cyclotron doing experimentation with the bombardment of nuclear particles and their collisions involving reverse time as observed in a Wilson Cloud Chamber [check]. As a result of this, Dr. Bell built the World's first time machine called the T-1 Time Travel Transposer that allows time travel into the future in increments of microseconds [words fail, but check]. On his 17th birthday, he was transferred into the United States Airforce. There he began working on highly classified projects, several involving early warning radar defense systems and the detection and tracking of extraterrestrial craft [check].

He then left the defense sector and began studying with Himalayan Masters [check]. During this time he became internationally known as a contactee to a Pleiadean group of extraterrestrial humanoids whom were here to help the people on earth save themselves from their own destructive tendencies [check, I guess]. This group comes from a star system 500 light-years from earth.

Today Dr. Bell is a practicing naturopath, scientist and environmentalist, and political activist ...”

So what does he do? Well, dr. Bell is kind enough to want to sell you, for a fairly steep price, various healing devices of his own invention, based on for example Ozonic Electro-Magnetic Technology, quantum receptors, bio-plasmic energy (a.k.a. healing pyramids) to block negative energy, or the Amazing Andromedan Holographic Projector, which "when worn on the head accelerates the brain into quantum entanglement focusing mode”. Who wouldn’t want that?

His website is here.

It is discussed here.

A somewhat more moderate version of his background.
Diagnosis: Words fail. Probably harmless.