Meet The Internet Entrepreneur Profiting Off The Anti-Vaxxer Movement | ThinkProgress

The single was written, recorded, produced and performed by Mike Adams, AKA The Health Ranger. Adams is a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement, and his website, Natural News, is a collection of eccentric content on the subject. Purported scientific proof of most every misleading and dangerous claim about vaccines can be found in an article bearing his byline. The one about vaccines containing toxic levels of mercury? He covered it. The link between vaccines and autism? Adams asserts not only that it’s proven, but that there has been “systematic suppression” of the evidence. The entire Jenny McCarthy-Jim Carrey affair, wherein two Hollywood celebrities used their platform to champion a rightfully discredited study? Adams printed and promoted their public statements. Via a press handler, Adams refused several requests to speak to ThinkProgress for this article.

Over the years, Adams has expressed a wide range of unpredictable and unorthodox views that span the ideological spectrum. His belief that poisonous vaccines are nothing more than a plot by “Big Pharma” to drum up corporate profits is joined by a conviction that 9/11 was an inside job, a faith that onions, garlic and cauliflower will cure cancer, and a confidence that the James Holmes/Aurora shooting in the summer of 2012 was staged by the FBI in order to justify a United Nations plot to disarm American citizens. Other articles published by Adams and his staff warn, “U.S. School District To Begin Microchipping Students” and “Forced Vaccinations, Quarantine Camps, Health Care Interrogations and Mandatory ‘Decontaminations’” Time and again, Adams has found a way to foster and monetize the most current fear gripping the cultural zeitgeist.


By the measure of scientific experts and historians, Adams’ views are fringe. Dr. David Gorski, Managing Editor of the website Science-Based Medicine, calls Natural News, “a one-stop shop, a repository if you will, of virtually every quackery known to humankind, all slathered with a heaping helping of unrelenting hostility to science-based medicine and science in general.” And yet, Adams is emblematic of a growing cadre of anti-science spokespeople who have cultivated significant influence and followings. How has Adams achieved this? The answer goes back nearly two decades, and highlights many of the means by which digital snake oil salesmen build their brands.


Meet The Internet Entrepreneur Profiting Off The Anti-Vaxxer Movement | ThinkProgress