Researchers consider it the biggest spreader of misinformation
An American doctor takes advantage of the “Corona” epidemic for his personal gain
Mercola criticized the vaccination campaign led by US President Joe Biden.
EPA
Mercola is promoting his claims on social media.
From the source
Biden blamed lies online for causing people to refrain from getting the vaccine.
archival
picture
Researchers say that the American orthopedic doctor, Joseph Mercola, is making lies and misleading claims about “Covid-19” vaccines, and is profiting from it.
On February 9, he published a post on the Internet regarding the legal definition of vaccines, starting with an apparently innocent question, but in the next 3,400 words he claimed that coronavirus vaccines were a “medical fraud,” and that injections do not prevent infection, provide immunity, or stop disease transmission. .
Instead, the article claimed, the vaccines “change the genetic coding of the person they are injected with, turning them into a viral protein factory with no key to stopping it.”
Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish, appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, repeating the false allegations online.
The article also reached Facebook, where it was viewed by 400,000 people, according to data from Facebook's CrowdTangle program.
Dr. Mercola, 67, an orthopedic doctor in Cape Coral, Florida, has long been the subject of criticism and government regulation for promoting unproven or unapproved treatments, but he has recently become the leading publisher of coronavirus misinformation online. According to researchers.
clever businessman
Mercola, a brilliant Internet businessman, employs his articles in this regard, publishing more than 600 articles on “Facebook” that have cast doubt on “Covid-19” vaccines since the beginning of the epidemic, and reached a much larger audience than other skeptics of vaccines, according to For an analysis by the New York Times, his claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
The activity earned Dr. Mercola the top spot on the “Biggest Disinformation Spreaders” list, a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65% of all anti-vaccine messages on social media, according to the nonprofit Center for Combating Digital Hate.
Others on this list include well-known American figure Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and founder of Healthnet News, Erin Elizabeth, who is also a friend of Dr. Mercola.
Pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement
"Mercola is a pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement, a character who takes advantage of periods of uncertainty, like what's happening now about the pandemic, to grow his movement," says University of Washington researcher Colina Coltay, who studies online conspiracy theories.
Some prominent media figures have promoted skepticism about vaccines, particularly Fox News' Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, although other figures on the same channel have urged viewers to get the vaccines.
Now Dr. Mercola and others from the list of the "biggest spreaders of misinformation" are in the spotlight, as vaccinations slow in the United States, while the highly contagious "delta" variant has helped a resurgence of coronavirus cases.
More than 97% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 are not immunized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Blame it on lies
US President Joe Biden has blamed online lies for causing people to refrain from getting the vaccine, but even as Biden has urged social media companies to "do something about misinformation", Dr. Mercola stresses the difficulty of the task.
Researchers who have studied his network over the past decade assert that Dr. Mercola has built a vast network to promote natural health remedies, disseminate anti-vaccine content and benefit from it all.
In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth is "in excess of $100 million".
Rather than directly stating online that vaccines don't work, his posts often ask specific questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted.
Facebook and Twitter allowed some of his posts to stay on their pages for some time with cautious ratings, and these two companies found it difficult to set rules for removing his posts from their pages.
“Social media has given him a new life, and he is using it skillfully and ruthlessly to lure people into his allegations,” says Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Combating Digital Hate, which studies disinformation and hate speech.
Congress and the White House in their sessions cited reports from a list of "the largest spreaders of disinformation."
Facebook says it has classified many of Dr. Mercola's posts as false, has banned advertising on its homepage and removed some of its pages after violating the site's policies.
Twitter says it has also removed some of Dr. Mercola's posts and categorized others.
YouTube asserts that Dr. Mercola was not part of a program where he could make money from ads on his videos.
Many of Dr. Mercola's claims have been inflated by other vaccine skeptics, including Ms. Elizabeth, who posted it on her LinkedIn page from 2009 to 2011.
more lenient
But while Elizabeth and others openly oppose vaccines, Dr. Mercola seemed more lenient because he took a less radical stance than his peers, says Kultay, who also said of him: “He dismisses the idea that the anti-vaccination activist is a fringe person.”
In an email, Elizabeth said she was "shocked" to be targeted as one of the "12" list of major disinformation distributors, calling it a "witch hunt".
When the coronavirus broke out last year, Dr. Mercola made the news, with publications questioning the origin of the disease.
In December he authored a study on mask-wearing to argue that masks did not stop the spread of the virus.
He also started promoting vitamin supplements as a way to ward off the coronavirus.
In a warning letter on February 18 of this year, the US Food and Drug Administration said that Dr. Mercola “misleadingly presented” what it sees as “unapproved and misleading products” on the “Mercola.com” website as treatments for the “Covid-19” virus.
In May, Dr. Mercola removed several of his private Facebook posts to evade the social network's crackdown on anti-vaccine content.
And “Facebook” finally removed his article on February 9. But Dr. Mercola continued to ask questions about vaccines. In a post on “Facebook” on Friday, he used another study to examine the usefulness of the Pfizer vaccine against variants of “Covid-19.”
One of the headlines in the publication indicated that the vaccine was only 39% effective, but did not cite another statistic from the study that said the vaccine was 91% effective against serious diseases.
Distinguished scam
Dr. Joseph Mercola, born in Chicago, opened a small, private enterprise in 1985 in Schaumburg, Illinois.
In the nineties, he began converting his activities to natural health medicine, and opened his main website, Mercola.com, to publish his treatments and medical advice.
The site urges its visitors to take control of their health.
In 2003 he published a book called "The No-Grain Diet", which became a New York Times bestseller, and has since been publishing books nearly every year.
In 2015 he moved to Florida.
As his popularity grew, he began making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as “spring pillows increase harmful radiation,” and then began selling products to that effect online — from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt — as alternative treatments.
To support the process, he set up companies such as Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Advisory Services, entities with offices in Florida and the Philippines and teams of employees.
Using this infrastructure, Mercola harnesses the news to quickly publish videos in nearly 12 languages on a network of websites and social media.
His official Facebook page in English has more than 1.7 million followers, while his Spanish page has a million followers.
The New York Times also found 17 other Facebook pages that he appears to be running or closely related to his business.
On Twitter, he has nearly 300,000 followers, in addition to another nearly 400,000 followers on YouTube.
In 2012, Dr. Mercola began writing about the benefits of sunbeds for tanning the skin.
He argued that these beds reduced the chances of developing cancer, and he was also able to sell other beds of the same type under names such as Vitality and Delight for between $1,200 and $4,000 each.
Mercola defends himself
In an e-mail, Dr. Joseph Mercola says it is "very strange to me that The New York Times calls me the biggest publisher of disinformation."
He says that some of his Facebook posts have been liked by hundreds of people, and he wonders: "How can such a relatively small number of likes cause such a disaster for the vaccination campaign that Biden is leading, and is spending on it billions of dollars."
He adds that all the slanders about him are purely political, and accuses the White House of "unlawful censorship in collusion with social media companies."
He did not speak about whether his claims about the Corona virus were realistic, but he says: “I am the lead author of a peer-reviewed publication regarding vitamin D and the risk of contracting Covid-19, and I have every right to inform the public of these facts through Share my medical research.
Mercola is a pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement, a figure who takes advantage of periods of uncertainty, such as what is happening now about the pandemic, to grow his movement.
Mercola, a brilliant Internet businessman, employs his articles in this regard, publishing more than 600 articles on “Facebook” that have cast doubt on “Covid-19” vaccines since the beginning of the epidemic, and reached a much larger audience than other skeptics of vaccines, according to An analysis by the New York Times.
Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news