If you haven’t heard of Joe Mercola, you have not been surfing the waves of health advice on the web. He is an osteopathic physician whose practice now is limited to offering mostly iffy medical advice on his website and selling a variety of questionable products. He claims his website “is not a tool to get me a bigger house and car, or to run for senate.”. He says he funds his site and therefore, is not handcuffed to any advertisers, silent partners or corporate parents and profit generated from the sale of the products he recommend goes right back into maintaining and building a better site, “ a site that, startling as it may be with all the greed-motivated hype out there in health care land, is truly for you.” Gee, that sounds like motherhood and apple pie. It seems though that not every penny earned goes back into the managing the website. Mercola lives high on the hog in a multi-million dollar estate in Chicago. That wouldn’t be objectionable if the edifice were built on gains from promoting sound science. But that is not the case.
Besides being critical of vaccination, calling microwave ovens dangerous, questioning whether the HIV virus is the cause of AIDS, opposing homogenized milk, claiming that sunscreens increase the risk of skin cancer, Mercola hypes and sells a variety of pseudoscience-laced products. Let’s start with “Dr. Mercola’s Earthing Universal Mat,” which is described thus: “When you walk barefoot on the Earth, there's a transfer of free electrons from the Earth into your body that spread throughout your tissues. The effect is sufficient to maintain your body at the same negatively-charged electrical potential as the Earth. This simple process is called 'grounding.' If you constantly wear materials like rubber or 'plastic' shoes, which are both very effective insulators, you'll be disconnected from the natural energy that flows from the Earth.” Well, in my view, the only thing you will be disconnected from is science. This business of improving health by walking barefoot or by using Mercola’s Earthing Mat is nonsense. But Mercola tells us that his mat “is a great way to complement any outside 'barefooting' you might be able to fit into your busy schedule. It's a quick and easy way for you to get started grounding whether at home, at the office, or almost anywhere you go.” I prefer to get my grounding from science not fairy tales.
Dr. Mercola also sells books such as “Dark Deception” in which he describes how we need sun exposure for health. But he would prefer to expose you to the tanning beds he sells, the same ones health experts agree are dangerous and increase the risk of skin cancer. There is also Dr. Mercola’s “organic deodorant” with “baking soda as the “active ingredient.” Except that it isn’t very active. There are also supplements galore. Like “breast health formula,” “mushroom complex” and “silver solution,” none of is a solution to anything. His bamboo toilet paper I’m sure does as good a job as any other, but the claim that it is better because it is free of toxic BPA can be safely flushed away.
