#2803: David Eisenberg

Truly one of the grand old men in the efforts to mainstream quackery, few individuals have done more than David Eisenberg to undermine public health services’ foundation in evidence and accountability. Eisenberg’s power comes partially from his credentials: He has been the Director of the Osher Institute at Harvard Medical School and the Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies, and Bernard Osher Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, positions that have certainly helped him sustain the illusion of being someone to trust on medical issues: he’s served as medical advisor to (among other things) to the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Public Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Federation of State Medical Boards with regard to complementary and alternative medicine research, education and policy, and been consultant to TV series and participated in a large number of high-profile events (like chairing the Scientific Review Committee for the International Research Congress on Integrative Medicine and Health). In 2003, he was also appointed to the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) committee to identify scientific and policy issues in “complementary and alternative medicine” (“CAM”) research, regulation, training, credentialing and “integration with conventional medicine” – which could, on the face of it, sound like a good thing, were the committee not crammed with quacks and hucksters of various kinds. As a representative for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health at the Mass. Special Commission to Study Complementary and Alternative Health Practitioners, he and Michael Cohen recommended that the Commonwealth license “naturopathic physicians” as health care providers to give them an official stamp of approval and legitimacy through legislative alchemy (Eisenberg conveniently neglected to disclose that he had accepted funds from the group).

 

Eisenberg’s annual CME conference at Harvard was designed to allow quack advocates to promote whatever they do, including spinal manipulation and acupuncture, without facing critics, so that they could bolster their CVs with entries that might, on the face of it, sound impressive and build trust. Indeed, Eisenberg must be credited with being largely responsible for Harvard Medical School’s descent into pseudoscience (here, here, here, here and here) as illustrated e.g. by the Harvard Complementary and Integrative Medicine Course he directed and which according to (more reason-oriented) participants “was more like a political rally or a religious revival than a scientific conference”. Here is Eisenberg waxing lyrical about chiropractic, inadvertently giving almost perfect descriptions and illustrations of how quackery works in the process – such as praising chiropractors for “never failing to find a problem” and thereby validating the concerns of their patients while being eminently billable.

 

Eisenberg has also written a large number of articles on complementary and integrative medical therapies. His 1993 article on “Unconventional Medicine in the United States”, for instance, has for a long time been widely cited since ‘quack treatments are very popular’ is a commonly used defense of the legitimacy of quackery among those who promote ‘alternative’ techniques – and even for that study, Eisenberg’s research design was abhorrently shoddy: for instance, to reach the conclusion that “[o]ne in three respondents (34%) reported using at least one unconventional therapy in the past year”, he and his coauthors defined ‘unconventional therapies’ as “medical intervention not taught widely at U.S. medical schools or generally available at U.S. hospitals”, thus including self-help groups and commercial relaxation and/or weight-loss programs. Later surveys conducted and promoted by Eisenberg similarly inflate (in a manner very popular by alternative medicine proponents) the numbers by rebranding all sorts of standard, medically justified methods as ‘alternative’. And whether the alternative therapies included are effective or even plausible is of less concern to Eisenberg; although he is careful to avoid making significant positive claims, his list of techniques that “warrant further investigation” and funding includes homeopathy (including “homeopathy as distinct from placebo”), distant healing and intercessory prayer. What matters to Eisenberg and requires a response from clinicians, is that “[t]he market for complementary and integrative medicine is vast and shows no sign of diminishing” – yes, the market; not medical needs.

 

Here is a discussion of an article by Eisenberg and Ted Kaptchuk on “Establishing an Integrative Medicine Program Within an Academic Health Center: Essential Considerations”. It is … revealing: there is much about how to develop an optimal product delivery model; the question of whether the product works, however, are at best an afterthought. Here is a discussion of an article by Eisenberg with naturopaths Patricia Herman and Beth L. Poindexter on the alleged “cost-effectiveness” of CAM treatments that completely misses the point by strenuously avoiding the awkward point that the fact that the CAM therapies under discussion are not effective matters to discussions of how ‘cost-effective’ they are.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, Eisenberg is all about how to solve practical obstacles to market and deliver alternative medicine, in an effective manner, to as many people as possible. And he’s admittedly good at it. What he seems clinically unable to recognize, however, is the importance of the rather basic question: does it work? We really don’t think he means harm; he just genuinely doesn’t recognize that there might be a gap between believing that something works and whether it actually works that ought to be bridged by evidence.

#2802: David Eisen

David Eisen is executive director of something called the Quest Center and board-certified in traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Eisen is among a significant number of alternative medicine practitioners who have tried to coopt the opioid crisis to market their services; as Eisen puts it, doctors should stop thinking of opioids as a first-line defense against pain and rather recognize that “there should be an array of things for people to choose from, whether it be chiropractic care, or naturopathic care, or acupuncture, nutrition, massage.” The false dichotomy involved is striking – limiting opioid use is no reason to promote bullshit – but it has a disconcerting tendency to go unnoticed by media outlets.

Indeed, Eisen even served on the Oregon Chronic Pain Task Force, a group tasked with coming up with measures to combat the opioid crisis, which resulted e.g. in a proposal to force people who truly suffer to cut opioids in favor of bullshit that does not help by limiting their health plan coverage so that it didn’t cover stuff that would actually help! And of course: the goal was also to get the health plans to cover the quackery Eisen and his colleagues are offering. In addition to Eisen, the task force included acupuncturists Ben Marx, affiliated with the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, and Laura Ocker, former president of the Oregon Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.

 

Diagnosis: Not a loud and incoherent quack; indeed, we suspect that David Eisen comes across as eminently reasonable if you meet him in person. Which is presumably precisely why he’s managed to get himself into a position to deal some serious harm to people who are really suffering.

#2801: James Edwards

The Political Cesspool is a Tennessee-based wingnut, neo-Confederate, Christian nationalist and white supremacist (“pro-white”) talkshow that has been polluting airwaves since 2004 (or at least used to do so; it’s been a bit on-and-off and we can’t be bothered to try to tune in). Its sponsors include the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens and the Holocaust denialist group the Institute for Historical Review. According to the SPLC, the nexus and founder of the cesspool, James Edwards, has over the years probably done more than anyone else in the US to bring neo-Nazi ideology and Holocaust Denialism to wider audiences.

 

The show describes itself as “pro-White” and “against political centralization”, and promises to give you the “other side of the news” (i.e. the false one). Among its guiding principles, you’ll find commitment e.g. to the following:

 

-       “The United States government should be independent of any international organization of governments”.

-       “America would not be as prosperous, ruggedly individualistic, and a land of opportunity if the founding stock were not Europeans”.

-       “Since family is the foundation of any strong society, we are against feminism, abortion, and primitivism.”

-       “We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.” [According to Edwards, “interracial sex is white genocide”.]

-       “Secession is a right of all people and individuals. It was successful in 1776 and this show honors those who tried to make it successful in 1865.”

-       “We are against homosexuality, vulgarity, loveless sex, and masochism.”

 

The show’s many guests have included more or less a who’s who on the conspiracy theory and white supremacist wingnut circuit, including Jerome Corsi, Minuteman Project leader Jim Gilchrist, Michael Peroutka, Sonny Landham, Jared Taylor (multiple times), British National Party leader Nick Griffin, David Duke, Richard Spencer, Thomas Naylor, Holocaust denier Mark Weber and Pat Buchanan. Edwards has also interviewed Donald Trump jr. for Sam Bushman’s Liberty News Radio (LNR), which syndicates the Political Cesspool.

 

Though Edwards has, at least in recent years, deliberately tried to avoid using racial slurs and inflammatory language – letting his guests do that part – he has asserted that he is “firmly of the belief that race relations were better during Jim Crow, and even better in the antebellum south, than they are now.” Also according to Edwards, white children in the US should seek out those who share “the same values and traditions and heroes”, that “forced integration” is a “march toward totalitarianism” and that “I think Martin Luther King really represents about the lowest common denominator of an American that you could get”; also “crime and violence follow African-Americans wherever they go”. Indeed, the situation is urgent: “whites are in for the fight of their lives. America is becoming balkanized. We are being robbed of having a future in the very nation our ancestors carved from the wilderness.” Part of the problem, as Edwards sees it, is the fact that liberals and liberalism “don’t respect the authority of scripture,” and he has traced liberalism’s ostensible contempt for the Bible back to the “infamous” 1954 desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Part of the problem is also policies such as no-fault divorce, which “is as much of a liberal initiative as the Civil Rights Movement and radical feminism.”

 

Himself a former unsuccessful candidate for the Tennessee House of Representatives and volunteer for Pat Buchanan’s 2000 presidential campaign, Edwards was also involved in the creation of the American Party, which advocates white nationalism, in 2010. More recently, Edwards has, predictably, thrown his support in for Donald Trump, and the Trump campaign has responded by giving him full press credentials at a Tennessee Trump rally and generally helping to mainstream his show. During the 2016 campaign cycle, Edwards denounced Hillary Clinton’s campaign because women can’t even be “the ruler of the house under God’s law” (moreoever Clinton is undoubtedly lesbian); he also criticized policies that allowed women to vote. On the other hand, he credited Trump with empowering the “pro-White” movement and called Trump’s presidency an “awakening happening within the spirit of our people” that was beyond his “wildest dreams” when he started his radio program.

 

But his hatred extends not only to Black people; Edwards is also an ardent promoter of anti-semitism: “A lot of their [Jewish people’s] motivation is that they hate Christianity. They hate what we call the WASP establishment […] and they’re using pornography as a subversive tool against us. Jews are by and large dominant in the porn industry. […] You know, connect the dots and look at the names of people controlling our media, and you find out what the common denominator is. […] These Zionist Jews are more interested in subverting the dominant culture, which would be the European culture here in America”.

 

Edwards is also the author of the 2010 book Racism, Schmacism: How Liberals use the ‘R’ Word to Push the Obama Agenda.

 

In addition to Edwards, the show’s co-hosts have included people like

 

-       Keith Alexander, a 2014 and 2018 candidate for the position of Shelby County Assessor.

-       Winston Smith

-       Eddie “Bombardier” Miller, a former Oath Keepers member currently running Blood River Radio, a white genocide and holocaust denialist radioshow where people like Canadian Holocaust denier Monika Schaefer are co-hosts.

-       Austin Farley, the show’s co-founder

 

Diagnosis: Over the years – at least until 2016 – Edwards has probably done more than anyone else in the US to bring neo-Nazi ideology and Holocaust Denialism to wider audiences. And any diagnosis beyond that should be superfluous.

#2800: Myron Ebell

“Nobody has done more damage to efforts to address the climate crisis before it’s too late than Ebell. He has devoted his career to mortgaging the planet for future generations through his paid promotion of denial, delay and dissembling”

-       Michael Mann

 

If anyone can be called “leader” of the climate change denialist movement in the US today, it might be Myron Ebell. Ebell is former Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and (until 2024) chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group devoted to what they perceive as “dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis”. What Ebell is not, is a scientist, and he has no background in science. And although he of course claims to advocate “for sensible energy policies that benefit everyone. Instead of policies that simply reacts [sic] to alarmism,” Ebell has tirelessly used his positions and organization to promote climate change denialism. In September 2016, Ebell was appointed by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

Ebell rose to prominence as a climate change denialist in the 1990s, after making a name for himself as a staunch critic of what he saw as Newt Gingrich’s radical environmentalism. In 1998, he and a group of PR experts and wingnut think-tank representatives (such as David Rothbard and Steve Milloy)  produced a “Global Climate Science Communications” plan aimed to convince “a majority of the American public” and policymakers that “significant uncertainties exist in climate science” – yes, the plan was explicitly to manufacture uncertainty – and that the science was inaccurate and should be ignored. Though CEI was funded by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Dow Chemical Company and the Murray Energy Corporation coal mining group, Ebell has reassured everyone that “We’re not beholden to our donors”. Ebell was, however, instrumental in getting then-president George W. Bush to drop any pledge to curb emisions, withdraw from the Kyoto protocol, and to push out people at the EPA who were willing to actually use facts as an important element in their decision making (some more details about Ebell and the CEI’s involvement with the Bush administration here).

 

For the last two decades, Ebell has been a favorite go-to person for media outlets seeking to achieve a false balance between scientific consensus and layperson Ebell’s scientific denialism, a position Ebell (and CEI colleagues like Marlo Lewis, Iain Murray or Christopher Horner, author of the wingnut conspiracy theory piece of disinformation The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming) has used e.g. to dismiss UK’s then-Chief Scientist David King (a real scientist) as “an alarmist with ridiculous views who knows nothing about climate change.” Ebell has also criticized climate scientist James Hansen's by claiming that “James Hansen was not trained as a climate scientist. He was trained as an astronomer. He’s a physicist” and climate scientist and Arctic expert Robert Corell as “not a climate scientist” and “not an Arctic expert”. As for his own complete lack of scientific training, Ebell maintins that “people other than scientists [should] be allowed to participate” because “that [is] what a representative democracy is” (we can’t help but wonder why Ebell put ‘representative’ in there, even though that’s hardly the most glaring problem with his reasoning).

 

Ebell and the CEI have affirmed their opinion that global warming is a hoax (so much for “uncertainties”), that the data predicting climate change are false, and that the scientific consensus is “phony”, and they have weighed in on most significant events and findings with predictable denialist talking points and conspiracy theories, such as when a Climatic Research Unit computer server at the University of East Anglia was hacked and thousands of emails leaked in 2009: quick to attempt to muddy the waters, Ebell claimed – without any basis in reality – that the hacked emails “make it clear that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an organized conspiracy dedicated to tricking the world into believing that global warming is a crisis that requires a drastic response.” Ebell also falsely thinks (or at least: claims) that “the rate of warming according to the data is much slower than the models used by the IPCC,” which is not supported by anything, though remember that Ebell’s goal is not to get it right but to convince you that the science is unclear and can be ignored – “if he deserves credit for anything – I would call it a black mark – it would be taking the tobacco playbook and applying it to climate change,” said Jeremy Symons, the assistant vice president for climate political affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, of Myron Ebell. Ebell is at least abundantly clear that science, knowledge, evidence and research should be ignored when coming to conclusions about facts.

 

In 2006, CEI did a TV commercial about carbon dioxide with the slogan “They call it pollution; we call it life.” Ebell, meanwhile wrote a Forbes article called “Love Global Warming”, pointing out that “More people die from blizzards and cold spells than from heat waves.”

 

And of course he is the underdog here: Ebell has compared his efforts to fight science with funding from the oil industry and politicians as a “David versus Goliath struggle” against “corrupt environmentalism and big government”; the “environmental movement is not an objective, well-intentioned movement that cares about saving the planet” but a ploy instigated by Marxist and the radical left to ensure “lower material standards of living, more government control, and more power for the technocratic elite.”

 

In 2024, Ebell retired from CEI, citing (a.o.) alleged side effects from COVID-19 vaccines. Yes, if you’re career has been devoted to science denialism and conspiracy theories in one area, why not go for ideologically motivated denialism and conspiracy theories everywhere? Current CEI president CEI President Kent Lassman at least said he was “tremendously grateful” for Ebell’s work: “As a result, we enjoy an enviable position as a leader on crucial issues to the future of America and the economy.”

 

Ebell was also a signatory to a 2021 letter, authored by Cleta Mitchell, urging Senate Republicans to “protect the republic” by contesting electors from battleground states won by Joe Biden in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

 

There is a decent Myron Ebell portrait here.

 

Diagnosis: According to the Sierra Club, Myron Ebell is “One of the single greatest threats our planet has ever faced”. He is, without doubt, one of the most influential climate change denialists in the US, and one of the least principled ones when it comes to willingness to subvert facts to serve ideology. We have no doubt, however, that one of the first victims of Ebell’s disinformation campaigns was himself – the distinction between spineless fraud and true believer is messy here.

#2799: Richard Eaton (?)

AlphaBioCentrix is a Nevada-based “biotech” company that bills itself as providing “Software for the Human Body” (if you think that sounds interesting, I have a bridge to sell you), and which sells various pseudoscientific nonsense such as “Quantum Energy Bracelets” and “Health Pendants”. They’re also behind the “Body Vibes” stickers sold and promoted by Gwyneth Paltrow’s insane pseudoscience and bullshit company Goop. The stickers were ostensibly supposed to “rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies,” and if you wonder what on Earth that could possibly mean, Goop is there to supply you with a string of nonsense technobabble augmented with pseudo-religious New Age fog: “Human bodies operate at an ideal energetic frequency, but everyday stresses and anxiety can throw off our internal balance, depleting our energy reserves and weakening our immune systems,” said the promotional material, and the stickers “come pre-programmed to an ideal frequency, allowing them to target imbalances”. They also claimed, at some point, that the stickers were made using “NASA space suit material”, but that’s a meaningful and falsifiable claim, so they quickly had to remove it to avoid trouble with consumer protection laws.

 

The stickers featured at $120 for a 24-pack, and were ostensibly worth it given their alleged ability to assuage anxiety and vague and unspecific pains, based on something called “Bio Energy Synthesis Technology.” Apparently AlphaBioCentrix’s founder Richard Eaton developed the technology after getting “engineers” to divulge to him the secrets THEY don’t want you to know about. “Without going into a long explanation about the research and development of this technology,” says Eaton (because, of course, neither the explanation nor the research exists), “it comes down to this; I found a way to tap into the human body’s bio-frequency, which the body is receptive to outside energy signatures.” He did not.

 

As for the aforementioned “health pendants”, they ostensibly contain an “energy chip” that is “programmed with specific subharmonic frequencies that assist in [list of vague terms like “environmental”, “mood swings” and “promotes healing”]. […] Programming the energy chips is a unique process that utilizes our patented Bio Energy Synthesis Technology; an infusion process, which when functional will hold bio frequencies to the substrate material. When the health pendant is worn around the neck, the energy from the energy chip taps into your chakras [oh, yeah]. Balancing between the chakras promotes health and a sense of wellbeing. ─ Long known by the ancient healers, healing is a three-way arrangement between, body, mind and spirit. Today’s science has shown the human body has an ‘electrical frequency’ and that much about a person’s health can be determined by it.” No, today’s science has not shown that. Note too how e.g. the “blue chip” (they’ve got several of them in different colors) is supposed to do “diabetic”. It doesn’t specify what it will do for diabetis. Thus AlphaBioCentrix plans to avoid legal trouble if you ever deluded yourself into thinking it could have any actual health benefit.

 

You can read more about their “Digestive Solution™ Energy Card” that will supposedly “boost your ‘Body’s Energy Signature’” and the “Gravity Balance” chips that will “encourage proper cell reproduction while sleeping” here.

 

Diagnosis: Usually, it seems to us, people who have been pushing what they know is fraudulent pseudoscience will gradually come to believe their own claims. We cannot for the life of us think that Richard Eaton does; surely there’s a limit to how much bullshit even Eaton’s brain is able to process.

 

Hat-tip: Gizmodo, Oracknows

#2798: John Eastman

John Charles Eastman is a lawyer, conspiracy theorist, co-conspirator in the federal indictments brought against Trump over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the certification of the election results, and founding director of the Claremont Institute-affiliated Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence – a corollary of Badger’s law, we suppose. Eastman has himself been criminally indicted and recommended for disbarment over his efforts to keep Trump in office and has, as of April 2024, had his license to practice law in California state courts transferred to “involuntary inactive” status. His role in the efforts to keep Trimp in office includes attempts to pressure Mike Pence to reject the votes of electors from crucial swing states that Trump lost, and Eastman is accordingly believed to be among the alleged co-conspirators listed in the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump.

 

Eastman’s pre-2020 career includes being chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, a position from which he e.g. expressed fervent support for Uganda’s anti-gay laws (life in prison for repeat offenders) and promoted most of the anti-gay rhetoric with which the 2010s made everyone familiar, including denouncing the LGBT equality movement as “fascist” and as promoting pedophilia – Eastman actually managed to gain himself significant prominence in wingnut circles also prior to 2020. He also attacked the 2015 marriage equality ruling as “illegitimate” and argued that a simple majority of states should be allowed to override Supreme Court decisions that Eastman thinks are “egregiously wrong”. There is a decent pre-2020 portrait of his efforts here.

 

The national public attention Eastman gained prior to the 2020 election was perhaps mostly the result of his August 2020 op-ed in which he falsely claimed that Kamala Harris was not a “natural-born citizen” (i.e. white Republican) and therefore ineligible to be vice president. Eastman’s attempted gambit was the irrelevant claim that neither of Harris’s parents was a permanent resident at the time of her birth. (It is notable that Eastman had previously dismissed admittedly silly concerns about 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz – who was born in Canada – as “silly”). The op-ed was instrumental in bringing Eastman to the attention of Jenna Ellis and the Trump camp, however.

 

Efforts to overturn the 2020 election

Eastman was a pivotal figure in the efforts by the Trump administration to overturn the 2020 election, starting with him being named to represent Trump in the December 2020 motion to intervene in Texas v. Pennsylvania, a laughable case filed by Ken Paxton on behalf of the state of Texas to annul the Pennsylvania election results. The case was of course quickly dismissed by the Supreme Court, but Eastman still got the time to write a brief full of bizarre claims, including the assertion that “[i]t is not necessary for [Trump] to prove that fraud occurred” but sufficient to show that elections “materially deviated” from the intent of state lawmakers.

 

Eastman was instrumental in shaping and disseminating the myth about “the vice president’s power to hold up the certification” of the presidential election, and he circulated a number of memos to that effect. On January 5, 2021, he completely falsely told Mike Pence that Pence had the constitutional authority to change the electoral vote to block the certification of the election, and he designed the six-point plan of action for Pence to throw out the electors from swing states Biden won that was sent to Mike Lee. He also, together with e.g. Rudy Giuliani and Trump himself, arranged online meetings with numerous legislators in a concentrated effort to convince them and instruct them on how to decertify their state’s election results. Eastman later tried to backpedal a bit from his memos and claims, but he also asserted that Pence didn’t follow through with blocking the election because Pence was in a conspiracy with the deep state to undermine Trump. Oh, and Eastman was demonstrably aware that his efforts were unlawful.

 

On January 6, 2021, Eastman gave a speech at the “Save America” rally prior to the insurrection, where he asserted, without a shred of evidence (or reason), that balloting machines contained “secret folders” that altered voting results. After the January 6 events, Eastman tried to argue that the Trump rally did not incite the siege of the Capitol, going instead full conspiracy theory with the desperately ridiculous claim that “a paramilitary group as well as antifa groups” planned and organized the event; in support for his delusions, he cited a Washington Post article (this one) that did not at all support his claim or even mention antifa. He also, in direct conflict with his other story, blamed Pence’s “inaction” for the attacks. In his subsequent meetings with the House Select Committee on the attacks, Eastman – somewhat understandably – invoked the Fifth Amendment.

 

But even after the January 6 riots, he continued to implore Vice President Pence and his counsel to violate the Electoral Count Act by delaying certification of the election. Indeed, by late 2021, Eastman was still trying to push state legislatures to “de-certify” their election results.

 

On March 28, 2022, federal judge David O. Carter found that Eastman, along with Trump, was more likely than not to have “dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021”, and the US House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack subsequently charged him with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the US, along with Trump. Eastman is presumably also a co-conspirator in the 2023 indictment of Trump for conspiring to defraud the US, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and he was, in August 2023, among the indictees in the prosecution related to the2020 Georgia election.

 

True to form, Trump and his campaign refused to pay Eastman for his services or reimburse his expenses. Nor did Trump, after Eastman meekly asked, in the aftermath of January 6, to be placed on the list of those to be given a presidential pardon before Trump’s term in office ended, grant him a pardon.

 

Diagnosis: It would be easy to categorize Eastman as merely a fervent fundie trying desperately to reconstruct the the law to serve his ideology and interests, but he does seem genuinely confused about basic questions of how reality hangs together. But despite being a dumb conspiracy theorist, Eastman has also managed to do more than almost anyone else to undermine democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law in the US.

#2797: Sheila Lewis Ealey

Sheila Ealey is – surprise, surprise – an antivaccine activist, speaker, self-declared “educator” and general critical thinking-challenged moron who appears to have absolutely no background in medicine but who has, over the last few years, become something of a de facto ambassador to the African American community on behalf of Andrew Wakefield and other antivaxxers. Ealey figured prominently in the antivaccine propaganda films Vaxxed and The Greater Good, and she is a board director for Robert F. Kennedy, jr.’s organization Children’s Health Defense. She is also a frequent speaker at anti-vaccine rallies, such as the 2017 “Revolution for Truth” march in D.C. and the 2019 Harlem Vaccine Forum (which we’ve written about before).

 

At least Ealey is honest that she is genuinely anti-vaccine and that, as she sees it, there is “no such thing as a save vaccine” – a refreshing departure from the “I’m not antivaccine but pro-safe vaccine” gambit most antivaxxers, including Kennedy, favor. Ealey’s reasoning, however, is arguably crazier than most – in addition to standard antivaccine talking points, Ealey has for instance argued against the need for vaccines by pointing out that in the Bible, before vaccines, “people were living, and they were living up to 200 years of age and beyond.”

 

For the most part, however, Ealey invokes racially charged gambits: She is on record likening the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 to Dredd Scott and claiming that the NCVIA made children “property, not people”, just as the Dredd Scott decision reinforced that slaves were property. She refrained from explaining the details of how that comparison is supposed to work, but at least it allowed her to conclude that antivaxxers are the “new abolitionists”. That strategy has won some popularity in the antivaccine movement, by the way; RFK jr. has himself produced another misinformation and propaganda movie called Medical Racism: The New Apartheid designed to scare people in Black communities with antivaccine misinformation (the movie isn’t about medical racism) – prominently featuring Ealey, of course.

 

Indeed, Ealey isn’t just opposed to vaccines; she also urges her listeners – in particular Black people – to avoid medicine altogether and instead take their children to chiropractors, often by citing historical atrocities like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which, ironically, didn’t concern victims being harmed by medicine but victims being harmed by being prevented from accessing medicine – such details don’t figure in Ealey’s narratives, of course. But since she isn’t too concerned with details or accuracy, she also links these medical atrocities to vaccines, blaming for instance the mythical “autism epidemic” on a vaccine “holocaust”. You should take your kid out of schools, too, by the way, presumably just in case schools risk making your kids more disposed to care about details than Ealey would like them to be.

 

Like so many other antivaxxers, Ealey is the mother of a son with autism, and like so many of them, she has deluded herself into believing that vaccines are responsible, which they demonstrably aren’t. Her story also has some gaps in it, with Ealey citing conspiracies orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies to claim that her son’s medical records were stolen from her evacuated apartment in New Orleans (so she can’t show them to you as part of antivaccine propaganda) and to explain why her lawsuit was thrown out.

 

Diagnosis: Batshit crazy conspiracy theorist who don’t even bother to appear semi-coherent or reasonable; but she has nonetheless managed to find targets for her conspiracy rantings and misinformation in underserved groups that are otherwise particularly likely to suffer devastating consequences if they trust her lies. This is bound to end badly.