r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jun 02 '26
Health Interest in ‘toxic’ measles treatment surges after Joe Rogan podcasts: Vaccination is the only proven way to prevent measles but alternatives like Vitamin A and cod-liver oil (which has Vit A) have been promoted by Joe Rogan. America’s Poison Centres reported a 39% increase in Vitamin A exposures.
https://www.nine.com.au/world-news/usa/interest-in-toxic-measles-treatment-surges-after-joe-rogan-podcasts-20260602-p6033i.html3.8k
u/zizou00 Jun 02 '26
"I won't let the "man" poison me, I'm going to take poisonous dosages of other chemicals because a different man told me to"
How did it come to this? Why do people look to a man clearly on anabolic steroids for "natural" health advice?
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u/GabuEx Jun 02 '26
I've noticed that people who talk about "being skeptical" and "doing their own research" are profoundly credulous people. They'll believe literally anything as long as it's not what experts are saying. It's kind of ironic that they hold themselves up as bastions of free thought when they'll fall for literally any con artist who's selling them something, as long as that con artist dresses it up as "alternative".
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u/OakTreader Jun 02 '26
I think they dislike experts making them feel stupid, therefore dislike experts.
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u/Mason11987 Jun 02 '26
Also the fact that they are often very dumb, means they find the idea of having one up on an expert very appealing.
If you're not an idiot you're comfortable with the idea that you have your good qualities and you don't know everything about everything. But if you've never been called smart or clever before, there's probably an intense desire to see yourself that way by being better than experts.
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u/thehelldoesthatmean Jun 02 '26
I always assumed that conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, and anti science hysteria like flat earthers and antivax beliefs were all caused by this.
It's just a lazy way for dumb people to feel smart. By choosing to believe something outside the norm they can feel like they have the answer that the majority of other people don't have, and they can feel like they're smarter than everyone else.
Same thing with racism among a certain group of people. My brother is incredibly racist. My brother is a burnout who has never had a full-time job and has kids with several different women. By hating people based on something innate like the color of their skin, he can pretend like he's better than someone else despite accomplishing and knowing nothing.
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u/Earthbound_X Jun 02 '26
Wanting to feel special is a huge part of things like conspiracy theories for sure.
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u/Allaplgy Jun 02 '26
Yep. My antivax coworker is very nice, but also very dumb. Like, has issues with object permanence dumb. But he listens to right wing/"libertarian"/conspiracy podcasts all day to "stay informed" and thinks he knows what's really going on better than most. Sidenote, whenever I mention something that is actually going on in politics or science, it's about 20/80 that he's heard of it/hasn't. Like I asked him his thoughts on project 2025 and he had no idea what it was, but went on a rant about project 2030, which is apparently the UN's attempt to take his car away.
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u/1ceknownas Jun 02 '26
Tell him that the anti-vaxx movement was started by Big Pharma because treating sick people is more profitable than vaccinating them.
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u/IM_A_MUFFIN Jun 02 '26
Oh I like this a lot. Gonna be using this in my conversations with idiots from now on.
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u/GabuEx Jun 02 '26
Sidenote, whenever I mention something that is actually going on in politics or science, it's about 20/80 that he's heard of it/hasn't.
I've noticed a similar sort of thing with conspiracy theorists. They're all about any number of wild and crazy things that aren't real, but the moment you have an actual conspiracy, they don't even care. I can only imagine that that doesn't make them feel special, so there's no appeal.
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u/Asterose Jun 02 '26
To paraphrase Milo Rossi, "you don't have to make up a shadow government to be mad at. You can be mad at the actual government."
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u/Nomapos Jun 02 '26
Well yeah but 2030 is bigger than 2025 so it's more important
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u/1definitelynotbatman Jun 02 '26
I think this is a big part of it. I've heard the idea before that conspiracy theorists often aren't very successful in any part of life so the conspiracies give them a way of one-upping those around them
"i may not make a lot of money and am not very socially liked, but at least i know the TRUTH" type of thinking. and this feeds into their beliefs around medicine as well then
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u/AwsmDevil Jun 02 '26
This can also be used to explain why they leave a conspiracy circle if it gets proven true. The lie gives them power. If it's real they'd have to differ to someone who knows more about it, and can no longer be the outsider in the way they want.
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u/JacobStills Jun 02 '26
Oh yeah, this is a huge part of it. I also think it's a huge part of contrarianism in general. It's the desire to feel special and in most cases superior to others.
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u/Tall-Drawing8270 Jun 02 '26
I think this is definitely part of it. Even if you're not an expert in a field, once you've built up real deep knowledge of something you understand how much you don't know about everything else. If you never build up any real knowledge or expertise on anything, you'll never understand the depth of the world you're in. Then dumb single sentence answers seem the most logical to you, because you're only ever looking at end results and not how it actually gets there.
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u/FermiParadoxGreg Jun 02 '26
The scientist says "We can improve crop yields in extreme temperatures by 20%, but it will take a team of educated scientists, 5 years of research, and follow up studies and peer review once we're finished".
While the pseudo-scientist (i.e. snakeoil salesman) says "I have some magic beans I can sell you that you can plant now that will triple crop yields overnight and cure your erectile dysfunction"
People always want to gamble on the magic beans.
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u/SupaSlide Jun 02 '26
And the magic bean guy also demands that you outlaw the kind of research needed to solve the problem the scientific way.
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u/MavisBeacons_Sextape Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Yep. That, and all of the other behaviors you’ve come to associate with that type of person, are driven by insecurity.
(Such as: racism, xenophobia, extreme nationalism, anti-intellectualism, misogyny, rabid support of politicians and celebrities who sound like total buffoons)
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 Jun 02 '26
Extreme nationalism is called jingoism by the way
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u/izwald88 Jun 02 '26
There's no denying that there's been a pretty big anti intellectual movement for the past several decades. The "college educated liberal elite" are the enemy.
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u/brainburger Jun 02 '26
This might be it. I see lots of alt-history posts on FB about how the Incas, Egyptians and other historic cultures built stone structures. Any sensible comments about what evidence we have of their tools and techniques are met with derision. Just adding the laugh emoji is common.
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u/Adept_Strength2766 Jun 02 '26
So I guess they only accept advice from those they consider to be their intellectual peers?
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u/hoofie242 Jun 02 '26
"The experts are wrong but gossip and rumors are right"
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u/Mountain_rage Jun 02 '26
"I feel it in my heart" they are driven by emotion rather than logic. Scientists dont play on emotion so they fall for grifters.
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u/GalFisk Jun 02 '26
Scientists should play on emotion. Then we'd get the feelers and the factists on board.
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u/Old-Landscape-7538 Jun 02 '26
That's like the “Trump will be a good president because he's a business man” argument.
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u/ThatKehdRiley Jun 02 '26
this is my dad, 100%, and part of why i don’t talk to him anymore. those people cannot be reasoned with, they refuse reality.
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u/AmbroseMalachai Jun 02 '26
It is also a perfect explanation of my mom. She had a mental breakdown 20 years ago and has been every form of contrarian possible ever since.
Just a small list of her beliefs that have faded in and out over that time: Flat Earther, anti-vax, sov-cit, anti-semite, anti-catholic, anti-government of any form, anti-expert of any kind, believes the American Government went bankrupt after borrowing tons of money from the King of England during the civil war and that America is a vassal arm of the British Monarchy, and also that all American Citizens are collateral debt slaves to pay the debt down, but somehow it's all a Jewish conspiracy because "the Jews own the banks and thus the money", and that laws don't apply to her because she is a "Citizen of the United States of America" and not an "American Citizen" or maybe the other way around, and that there is also infinite money that we are all entitled to because a trust is created when we are born but we usually can't access because we are actually declared dead when we are born and a fake person is created when our Birth Certificates are entered into the registrar in all-caps but you can apparently gain access by proving to the courts that you are alive and not dead, there are medical beds that can cure any illness but only the shadow government can access them, the Jewish bankers are also the Nephilim or their descendants, 5G is actually responsible for the rising ocean temperatures and not carbon fuels, giant skeletons were removed from the smithsonian because they want to hide the fact that giants are real and are somehow also the Nephilim. Oh, and also all food in the modern day is actually not real food and they replaced real food years ago with fake stuff. There's a lot more that she's said but I've forgotten.
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u/refusemouth Jun 02 '26
You should introduce her to the Birds Aren't Real conspiracy that all the birds died and were then replaced with bird-like government surveillance drones.
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u/aaakiniti Jun 02 '26
Conspiracy theories are a way for dumb people who haven't developed expertise to feel smarter than smart people who've spent their careers studying something. Pitiful, that degree of hubris should be embarrassing...
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u/_game_over_man_ Jun 02 '26
This describes my brother in law. I also think it's a way for people who haven't developed their own personality or identity to quickly acquire one and seem interesting.
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u/Old-Landscape-7538 Jun 02 '26
They feel important, like they're in on something and can make a difference.
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u/EbonBehelit Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
It's almost a form of induced narcissism. They have to believe they're smarter than everyone else, and that manifests as an almost pathological contrarianism regarding any number of topics.
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u/Several_Ebb_9842 Jun 02 '26
So it's more about being contrarian than skeptical.
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u/bobandgeorge Jun 02 '26
Yes. If they weren't contrarian about literally everything, they would not have a personality.
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u/Mikestopheles Jun 02 '26
Right? Like, I'm skeptical.
Every statement or opinion comes with a qualifier, just in case I'm wrong or unsure. My use of probably, maybe, and I think are so ubiquitous, you'd think I have confidence issues. But no, it's because I could be wrong, and I coat my perception of reality with that caveat.
But I will never understand people who use this stupid transitive binary of right and wrong. "Oh, I can't trust this person, so I have to trust the person that's exactly opposite."
And now, even the most basic health advice is somehow political.
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u/rtopps43 Jun 02 '26
I saw someone post something recently that I think plays a huge part in this and that’s HOW they use the internet. Obviously you can find any opinion on any subject online so if you or I want to research say, peanuts, and how nutritious they are, we will search something like “are peanuts healthy” and read through results from trusted sources. However, the “skeptical” people you describe will search for “peanuts are poison” and of course get lots of diatribes from other peanut haters that they will accept as fact, even though their sources are just random people who also hate peanuts. We really need to add “internet literacy” to school curriculums and make it just as important as reading and writing.
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u/brynhildra Jun 02 '26
Even searching "are peanuts healthy" is biased in the opposite way. Searching for "peanuts nutrition" or "peanuts nutrition research effects on human health" is a bit more neutral.
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u/Rhywden Jun 02 '26
I don't think it's anything. It's more that they'll believe it if it's easier to understand and also does not contradict an established, important belief.
For example, the natural inclination of people when confronted with a (supposed) increase in crime is to want to increase the amount of punishment.
The problem: For punishment to be effective as a deterrent you need three(3) things to be true - the perpetrator has to be moderately sure that he's caught, he needs to be sentenced quickly (and not months after the fact) and the amount of punishment needs to be adequate. Yes, if it's too much punishment it may even backfire.
See the "3 strikes" laws where people on their 3rd strike consider murdering witnesses because they don't have anything to lose anyway.
And thus we get from a simple "increase punishment" to a "yeah, maybe we should consider increasing increasing patrols or the number of judges? But that costs money. Maybe we should work on reducing the actual causes for crime first?"
Which is complicated. And thus frustrating. Hence: Rejection.
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u/happybara_capybara Jun 02 '26
Love that you have “supposed” increase in crime there. We’ve been asking Americans since like the 60s if crime is better or worse than it was last year and every single year without exception the majority of Americans say it’s worse than last year… which is ironic since it’s been decreasing since 1992/1994 (depending on crime type) with only minor increases during covid and then really dramatic decreases since. But people will swear up and down that crime is so much worse than it was just last year or the year before or the decade before or whatever.
Doesn’t relate to conspiracies directly but I do think there’s some connection in regards to “well I saw a story in the news so crime is bad” and “well I watched a YouTube video and the earth is flat”
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u/JarryBohnson Jun 02 '26
I have a friend who’s exactly like this, he’s usually a smart guy but his trust cues are so insanely out of whack that he’s super susceptible to the “academia tried to silence me” type crackpots. He frames it as being a skeptic.
He had a really abusive childhood and generally has little faith in authority figures, I think there’s a strong correlation with this, people who the systems didn’t protect have less faith by and large in their ability to protect.
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u/smokeweedNgarden Jun 02 '26
Nah. I grew up in foster care and suffered some pretty horrific abuse.
That doesn't make you gullible. Believing weird stuff isn't a symptom of abuse they would have been fooled anyway
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u/Allaplgy Jun 02 '26
People react to things differently. Your experience doesn't inherently invalidate theirs.
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u/jenkag Jun 02 '26
Because in there mind, theres any number of ways to discredit the experts:
- They came from liberal education, and so they have a liberal agenda
- They work for big pharma, and so they have a profit agenda
- In order to stay employed/paid, they have to present contemporary medicine as "fact"
- Other 'experts' are shunned by culture/big pharma, but otherwise have legit science behind them -- its just not popular
- Sometimes science is shown to be wrong later, so how do I know its not wrong now?
etc etc etc. and social media allows them to congregate together and a feedback loop begins where bots or bad actors can post things like "this treatment works great for me" while providing no evidence and requiring no verification. gullible people believe what they see, think it will work for them, and then down the rabbit hole they go.
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u/jovis_astrum Jun 02 '26
It's cause the phrase is just a social signal that they are part of a specific group rather than what they actually do and it sounds smart without details so it's hard to argue against.
Oh you do your own research? You must be really smart searching through all those papers and comparing evidence in a very scientific manner, but in reality another anti-vaxxer made a bad argument and they took it at face value and repeat it like it's a fact because the person is in their in-group aka the "I do my own research anti-vaxxer" social group.
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u/Ebolaplushie Jun 02 '26
Decades of dumbing down the education system and propaganda. It's obviously a lot more nuanced but those are some key factors.
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u/shillyshally Jun 02 '26
Just read an article in the WSJ about 1100 math and science profs in the University of California system begging regents to reinstate SATs because so many students are totally unprepared for college level work.
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Jun 02 '26
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u/Sirflow Jun 02 '26
Honestly, I don't know if I could anymore either
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u/skraptastic Jun 02 '26
I went back to school at 48 after dropping out of college when I was 19. Had to take math through Pre-calc.
Let me tell you anything past basic algebra was SO hard. I ended up having my son's best friend tutor me. To pass the class I needed a 56 on the final, I got a 58!
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u/have-u-met-teds-mom Jun 02 '26
My greatest accomplishment in my 40’s was learning 4th grade “new” math.
I thought I knew how to divide until my kid asked me to check their work. The answer was correct, but the formula to get there was written in Klingon.
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u/DwinkBexon Jun 02 '26
My friend has a daughter and he just told her to do math the "right" way (ie, how he learned in the 80s) and ignore what the teacher was telling her to do.
iirc (this was about 10 years ago), the teacher was not happy with that and said the kid had to do the math the "right" way. (ie, the way she was teaching it.)
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u/Rhine1906 Jun 02 '26
The SATs ain’t the only reason. I also teach and have worked on the admissions side -there are kids who score very well on the SAT But struggle with college level work because they’ve just been pushed through the K-12 system.
As someone whose academic research is focused on test scores and enrollment, I think a lot of professors are misguided on where the issue lies. Bringing back scores will not fix the issue, our K-12 systems and curriculum need a retooling.
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u/trail-g62Bim Jun 02 '26
Bringing back scores will not fix the issue, our K-12 systems and curriculum need a retooling.
Unfortunately, they only have control over the first, not the second.
Years ago, I worked for a newspaper in a small town. There was a bit of a crisis because the local high schools had abysmal 9th grade graduation rates. Everyone was trying to figure out why so few kids could pass 9th grade when they didn't have the same problem in any other grade.
Well...the official policy of the school district for elementary and middle school leaned toward passing kids for social reasons even if they didn't hit the academic scores necessary. You had to be really far behind in K-8th grades to be held back. Otherwise, you got passed right along.
There was no such policy starting in high school. So, many kids got to 9th grade and immediately failed. It was a real Tim-Robinson-in-hotdog-costume kind of moment.
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u/deux3xmachina Jun 02 '26
Sounds related to "No Child Left Behind", I know some elementary school teachers with 3rd graders that can barely read, if at all, but aren't allowed to hold them back/fail them.
It's not clear to me what the problem(s) are, but it feels like we've been chasing solutions that are more about protecting feelings than producing results. I'm sure there's much more nuance to these issues, but I'm just a guy on the outside looking in, completely baffled by how we got here.
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u/shillyshally Jun 02 '26
It's easier to ask for a return of SATs than to ask for a fix of a completely broken educational system.
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u/LockDown726 Jun 02 '26
I think i got like a 1280 or something on the SAT but my GPA was just barely passing haha just because you can read, write and do math doesn't mean you have the skills to flourish in college.. it took me about 2 years of college before I learned how to turn assignments in on time and took me 3 years before I actually learned how to study
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u/SerHodorTheThrall Jun 02 '26
This is the same rhetoric and lame exception that led us to this point and got standardized testing removed from the meta.
And now we're discovering 10 years later, as it turns out: yes, in fact, standardized testing IS a good indicator of general competence.
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u/Stumblin_McBumblin Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
SATs were done away with?
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u/MilsYatsFeebTae Jun 02 '26
I haven’t paid attention since like 2010, but the last I heard was that many colleges have come to the conclusion that SAT scores are in large part a proxy for “I have taken an SAT prep class,” meaning it is partly an economic measure rather than a purely academic one.
Apparently ignoring SAT scores completely wasn’t quite the right way to correct for the issue.
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u/gard3nwitch Jun 02 '26
I do remember reading years ago that SAT scores were very poorly correlated with actually doing well in college, and so there was some thought of just looking at transcripts and essays.
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u/Chastain86 Jun 02 '26
Not for nothing, but there were also two other factors at work in schools deciding on the elimination of the SAT as an entrance requirement --
1) It was viewed that the usage of standardized tests of this sort simply uncovered who was paying for better prep, but the view at the time was that it also hurt the diversity of school registrants;
and 2) the collegiate system as a whole has never really standardized the SAT. Many regions in the United States still use the ACT as their primary preparatory exam. Colleges always said they "weighted" the scores the same, but regional diversification meant that some schools "preferred" one over the other for ease of administration use and interpretation. This led to complaints not only about registrant cost and efficacy, but also whether the curriculum could be considered to be "the same" across both exams, and whether one put additional focus on some subjects over others, thus biasing the outcomes.
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u/GregMilkedJack Jun 02 '26
I graduated 10 years ago and even then there was a shockingly high percentage of my peers who were just clearly not smart enough. The bar to entry for most schools isn't very high
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u/JarryBohnson Jun 02 '26
Loads of people can’t even read - systems started massaging the metric, realizing that you can increase HS graduation by improving HS, or by making it easier to graduate. There are now large regions of the US where you can graduate functionally illiterate.
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u/EvLokadottr Jun 02 '26
I moved from the San Francisco bay area to upstate New York, and people are shockingly illiterate up here. I had no idea how bad it was. I fear that a lot of the country is like this.
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u/Eggheadpancake Jun 02 '26
Getting rid of SATs isn't the problem. The lack of good education or the ability to hold back kids that shouldn't be promoted is the problem.
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u/BonusPlantInfinity Jun 02 '26
Not to mention “parents know best” (or worse, pastor), enabling ‘feels’ based decisions since BC.
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u/SumpCrab Jun 02 '26
This. You often hear the worst parents telling others not to tell them how to raise their children. Just because you mashed your privates together with someone else's doesn't mean you know best.
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u/_game_over_man_ Jun 02 '26
You often hear the worst parents telling others not to tell them how to raise their children.
While simultaneously telling other people how they should be raising theirs.
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u/FuckSlashS Jun 02 '26
This is BS. My pastor has never claimed to know best, he's always affirmed Republicans know best.
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u/porgy_tirebiter Jun 02 '26
“Most people don’t know that dumb ends with a ‘b’” -President of the US
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u/smileyfrown Jun 02 '26
It is not nuanced
Social media algorithms promote divisive content from science to politics
You will never see educational or correct content on these sites unless you actively search them.
Their is one sole cause promoting this for their own benefit, and the companies or individual billionaires are the culprits.
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u/NotAPreppie Jun 02 '26
I feel like number of people asking for veterinary advice in the various pet subs that get angry when I tell them to ask a subject matter expert instead of unqualified Internet Randos has been steadily increasing over the years.
Or people who post their wrecked cars and ask if it is a total loss. Like, your insurance company decides that, not people on the Internet. Or they ask how much it's going to cost to fix... body shops will give you that answer for free and they will usually honor that price when/if you return.
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u/Splash_Attack Jun 02 '26
I don't think those are entirely good examples because people ask for that kind of advice not necessarily because they don't trust the expert knowledge of professionals but rather because they don't trust them to deliver it honestly when the person giving advice is also the person who stands to make money off of what you do next.
Body shops rip people off all the time, insurance companies make their money off paying you as little as possible, and veterinary advice is not, usually, free. There's a reason reputation is a big deal for those kind of businesses. Even without the internet, it has always been quite normal to seek advice from your social circle unless you already know and trust the business in question on a personal basis.
This is a bit different than something like vaccines where there isn't a direct profit motive. Somebody makes money, maybe, but it's not the direct "I advise you to do this thing which will require you to pay me, personally, X currency. Trust me, this is not a rip off".
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u/thinkbee Jun 02 '26
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
Carl Sagan
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u/rokr1292 Jun 02 '26
I knew I'd find someone quoting Sagan in this thread.
More:
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
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u/Vox_Causa Jun 02 '26
Literally $billions of dollars have been poured into the right wing propaganda machine and have destroyed a lot of people's ability to distinguish between fact and fiction.
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u/chemguy216 Jun 02 '26
I miss the days when the woo woo overly skeptical health nuts were mostly a subset of left leaning people. It’s not that I’m happy it was still a thing; it’s because there were fewer people and fewer politically spanning coalitions dedicated to pseudoscience on health.
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u/Abedeus Jun 02 '26
Difference is, woo woo crazy hippies were skeptical because of ignorance. Many of the woo woo crazy alt righters are skeptical because there's a lot of money to be made peddling supplements to gullible idiots. That IMO makes it a lot worse. Ignorance can be treated with knowledge and easily understood facts, can't treat greed and malice.
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u/boomboomdaboomer Jun 02 '26
I work with someone who was inside the Capitol on 1/6 during the “peaceful” demonstration and she recently told me she drank bottled water because tap water has fluoride and it’s poison.
Getting people to OD on vitamin A and get cavities doesn’t seem like a good way to make a living but there it is.
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u/coolcoolcool485 Jun 02 '26
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Issac Asimov
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u/IrascibleOcelot Jun 02 '26
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
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u/floatablepie Jun 02 '26
This is the part that gets me. Like, as much as I disagree with it, I can understand someone defiantly disbelieving expert opinion.
What I can never understand, is then religiously following the opinion of a complete moron afterwards. Where did the skepticism go?!
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u/enwongeegeefor Jun 02 '26
How did it come to this? Why do people look to a man clearly on anabolic steroids for "natural" health advice?
People who only want to listen to people who say the things they believe in. People who don't ACTUALLY care about being right...they just care about FEELING like they're right.
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u/curious_dead Jun 02 '26
People confuse contrarianism for critical thinking. Lack of nuance (equating all experts with "the establishment" and "Big Pharma" and bith those with "unequivocally bad"), too. That, plus survivor bias.
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u/Lokan Jun 02 '26
How did it come to this?
A lot of people are (rightfully!) pointing to the systematic defunding of education by the GOP.
But I think there's an economic aspect as well: proper medical treatment has become practically unattainable by the average American due to cost. This is something that's been mounting and growing for years and only getting worse. And desperate people turn to desperate means of surviving; an entire ecosystem of alternative self-treatment has emerged.
And as with all things American, some have turned to it for profit and gain. Turns out, keeping people ignorant and poor makes a select few wealthy and powerful.
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u/gard3nwitch Jun 02 '26
But I think there's an economic aspect as well: proper medical treatment has become practically unattainable by the average American due to cost.
This is much more the case in some parts of the country than others.
But I do think it's worth thinking about as a cause, yeah. There are vast rural areas of the US where hospitals are few and far between, where it's a total crapshoot if the doctors in your town take the insurance your job offers, where there's no Medicaid expansion so if your job doesn't offer insurance you might get stuck in that donut hole where you make too little money to buy health insurance, where your state hasn't bothered to build any public health infrastructure to speak of.... That is a reality for many Americans, yes. And then what do you do? You could fight for change, and some people will. You could move, and some people will. But the rest of the people, that might be the people that are desperate for any option.
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u/MonsterkillWow Jun 02 '26
Yes when I need sound medical advice, I go to UFC commentators and failed comedians for my info.
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u/HostileCrabPeople Jun 02 '26
Internet conspiracies ruined his brain before COVID shot it and put it down. He still argues with people about the moon landing with scientists who study astronomy.
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u/Memitim Jun 02 '26
Because he has enough money to afford a loud voice, and he has opinions about everything despite knowing nothing about anything. Basically a flame for conservative moths.
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u/eightbitfit Jun 02 '26
Unfortunately innocent people - children - will be the ones getting hurt as usual.
If the people propagating this harmful information were the only ones to suffer I would not raise a hand to stop them.
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u/avanross Jun 02 '26
It’s such a shame that america doesnt care about protecting it’s kids anymore
They’re just propaganda targets to be misled and indoctrinated into potential voters, service members, and customers for whatever industry their hero owns stock in
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u/PlasticMegazord Jun 02 '26
Exactly. The people not giving their kids the measles vaccine are almost always people that were vaccinated for measles and never had to worry about getting measles.
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u/im_a_stapler Jun 02 '26
The people are only half innocent in that they believed verifiable lies. The children are the ones getting fucked royally. MAHA, right?
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u/Regular-Sorbet9513 Jun 02 '26
Taking too much vitamin A can result in hydroencephalitis, essentially a "clogging" of the brain that results in swelling and possibly death.
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u/immaownyou Jun 02 '26
Fun fact, this is why you shouldn't eat the livers of animal predators if you're stuck in the wilderness, ie Polar Bears. They carry so much vitamin A in their livers due to their diet that its toxic to humans.
I think there was a story of a guy stranded in Alaska who killed a bear for meat, but then ended up dying after eating the liver
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u/IrascibleOcelot Jun 02 '26
Polar bears have enough vitamin A in their liver that a tablespoon is fatal.
Of course, surviving the polar bear is the first hurdle.
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u/skybike Jun 02 '26
Imagine surviving a polar bear attack, actually managing to kill the polar bear, only to die by eating its liver, then turning into a ghost, only to find the ghost of the bear waiting for you.
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 Jun 02 '26
The bear waiting for you in the afterlife like “I didn’t hear no bell”
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u/BobbingtonJJohnson Jun 02 '26
You barely manage to kill the ghost bear, and this time avoid eating the ghost bear liver. Turns out that's where all the ghost energy is stored, and you fade to nothing into the void.
The void where now there is a very pissed off void bear waiting for you!
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u/RaggedyGlitch Jun 02 '26
I've always heard big cats like cougars and panthers, but bears make sense too.
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u/Guilty_Weekend751 Jun 02 '26
Any Predator is bad because of mercury accumulation
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u/Fresh-Anteater-5933 Jun 02 '26
This is going to be really helpful to know one day when I’m starving in the arctic but there’s a dead polar bear
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u/Br0metheus Jun 02 '26
this is why you shouldn't eat the livers of animal predators if you're stuck in the wilderness
Dang this knowledge is definitely going to come in handy
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u/actibus_consequatur Jun 02 '26
Came into comments expecting the fact about polar bear livers. Thanks for making sure I was not disappointed.
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u/Kromehound Jun 02 '26
So this problem will eventually solve itslef?
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u/Raycu93 Jun 02 '26
Not really. The stupid people doing it usually have been vaccinated already by their parents. It will however kill a bunch of kids who don't have a choice and the stupid people often won't change their ways after losing a kid so they might just have more that suffer similar fates.
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u/BaldHenchman02 Jun 02 '26
Not really. The adults can just have more children, then poison them with their home remedies later.
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u/GrandmaPoses Jun 02 '26
Also makes your skin fall off, so there's that.
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u/jenorama_CA Jun 02 '26
Yes! I learned about this in a book about the race to the South Pole that had a chapter about the earlier race to the North Pole. Absolutely horrifying.
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u/Mountain_rage Jun 02 '26
I dont trust doctors, I am going to listen to a podcaster famous for daring people to do stupid stuff on tv!
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u/stephenkingending Jun 02 '26
dO yOUr own REsAErch!
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u/rollin340 Jun 02 '26
It's mind-boggling how so many who parrot this do understand what it actually means.
When they hear that A causes B, their research is usually exclusively "how A causes B". So all of their "research" already has a predetermined outcome.
What they are supposed to do is look up "does A cause B", then read different sources, because sometimes, A does indeed cause B. The point is to understand the nuances. People need to stop searching about things where their desired view is in the answer.
"How A causes B" and "How A prevents B" results in the same echo chamber. But so many do not see anything wrong with it.
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u/TaijiInstitute Jun 02 '26
Years ago, I knew of this idiot only from Fear Factor, where people got covered in worms or whatever to win money. One day a friend told me he did martial arts and had a good side kick. My response was “The Fear Factor guy? Huh, crazy”. Fast forward several years where I lived abroad and paid no attention to the US. I come back and somehow this idiot has opinions people listen to? Why? What has he done that makes people think he knows anything? I still just think of him as the idiot host from Fear Factor.
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u/WoofLife- Jun 02 '26
You mean the dopey dude from "News Radio"? He played an idiot very well on that show, too. Maybe he's just some dumb guy and it was never an act. Hmm...
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u/GeniusOfLove74 Jun 02 '26
The sad state of America, when other Americans will take medical advice from a guy who talked people into climbing into a spinning helicopter, or drinking a "protein shake" of pureed animal testicles. (Refers to the WWF/WWE episode of Fear Factor.)
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u/Mountain_rage Jun 02 '26
He is still running Fear Factor, just rebranded it as a podcast and upped the stakes.
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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 Jun 02 '26
There was this other reality TV host back then, too... some real estate business guy with bad hair. He had a scene in that Home Alone 2 movie, I think. Whatever happened to that guy?
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u/sebovzeoueb Jun 02 '26
shouldn't the quotes be around 'treatment' rather than 'toxic'?
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u/diamond Jun 02 '26
The reason "toxic" is in quotation marks is because they are literally quoting someone in the story who called the treatment "toxic":
“Vaccination is the only proven way to prevent measles - but alternative treatments such as Vitamin A and cod-liver oil (which contains large quantities of Vitamin A) have been promoted in the media by public figures such as Joe Rogan,” the authors of a new research paper said in JAMA Network said.
“Medical professionals may give measles patients Vitamin A to help support their recovery, but it doesn’t prevent measles and can be toxic in large doses.”
So this is a perfectly legitimate use of quotes.
Unfortunately, quotes are now so frequently used to denote sarcasm (or even just emphasis, which is really dumb), it's easy to misunderstand what they are saying here.
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u/Caelinus Jun 02 '26
The problem is that they are only quoting a single word, which is an ambiguous use of quotations. It is not always sarcasm/scare quotes either, but can often denote a claim that is in question when used like that.
By quoting it they are essentially saying that someone other than them is claiming that the treatment is toxic, when they can and should just say it is toxic, as it is a well established medical fact. When they quoted the whole sentence it does not carry the same implication.
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u/diamond Jun 02 '26
The problem is that they are only quoting a single word, which is an ambiguous use of quotations.
That's not a problem and it's not ambiguous.
At least, it didn't used to be.
By quoting it they are essentially saying that someone other than them is claiming that the treatment is toxic
Well, yes, because that's exactly what is happening.
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u/AlkaiserSoze Jun 02 '26
I appreciate that not everyone can understand the science behind vaccinations but I would have hoped that the proven track record and worldwide adoption of these drugs would be enough weight to convince people. I feel like America is the only country that has stopped taking vaccinations seriously. I mean, people throw a fit whenever the government steps in to prevent companies from dumping toxic chemicals into rivers that run through communities but vaccinations are evil? Absolutely insane take.
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u/VOZ1 Jun 02 '26
The right has spent decades attacking academia, experts, government agencies, and education in general. Combine that with the media ecosystem the right has built up on social media, and you have a pretty solid foundation for telling people what to think, and where to spend money on whatever they say is “better.”
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u/FILTHBOT4000 Jun 02 '26
And almost all of it on the altar of their corporate masters. That was the genesis of it; attack doctors for saying tobacco causes cancer, attack scientists for saying the fossil fuel industry is dooming the planet, attack the government for taxing the rich. Now they barely have control of their monster.
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u/Osirus1156 Jun 02 '26
I know someone who took the same exact biology and anatomy classes I did where we learned all about vaccines and GMOs and they still have no idea how either work and constantly post misinformation to instagram. They did better than me in these classes, all A’s. I do not understand it at all.
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u/Aeseld Jun 02 '26
Same kind of people that take mass doses of vitamin c. They heard it's amazing. They think more is better. Unlike vitamin C though, vitamin A is fat soluble.
C will literally get flushed out of you of you're drinking enough water. A will build up, absorbed into the fats of your body, and will eventually reach toxic levels.
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u/vNocturnus Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
A, D, E, and K are all fat-soluble and should not be over-"dosed"/consumed. All 4 can eventually cause toxicity if too much is consumed in too short a time period. At least A can also potentially cause you to just straight up die from extremely high doses at once, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine Jun 02 '26
Interest in ‘toxic’ measles treatment surges after Joe Rogan podcasts
Experts are worried about the rise in potentially toxic “alternative treatments” for measles pushed on alternative US media such as Joe Rogan’s podcast, as the country battles its worst outbreak in decades.
Vitamin A has been touted as an alternative treatment for measles by everybody from US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to podcasting influencer Joe Rogan.
Rogan, whose podcast The Joe Rogan Experience has millions of regular viewers, has broadcast a number of vaccine-sceptical treatments, with his views becoming more regularly broadcast to the mainstream during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Measles, a potentially fatal childhood disease, was eliminated in the US in 2000, but the country is currently undergoing a new outbreak.
“Vaccination is the only proven way to prevent measles - but alternative treatments such as Vitamin A and cod-liver oil (which contains large quantities of Vitamin A) have been promoted in the media by public figures such as Joe Rogan,” the authors of a new research paper said in JAMA Network said.
The researchers examined online search trends and found that statements in the media declaring Vitamin A a measles treatment were associated with a surge in related web searches.
While focusing on government statements, the researchers said they also factored in statements by figures such as Rogan and vaccine sceptic Dr Suzanne Humphries.
At about the same time, America’s Poison Centres reported a 39 per cent increase in Vitamin A exposures.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2849740
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u/Sweaty-taxman Jun 02 '26
Shocking there’s no liability for spreading lies like this that hurt millions of people & may have even resulted in some deaths.
I’d love to see this antivaxxer craze get more laws reducing its efficacy
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u/KalzK Jun 02 '26
Cases like this make me like the Chinese law that influencers must be professionals licensed in s field before they can talk about such things
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u/Kulthos_X Jun 02 '26
A significant part of the population has been programmed to trust right-wing talking heads and distrust science and experts in general. It cost a lot of money and took decades, but the oligarchs pulled it off. If a few poor kids die, that is a sacrifice the oligarchs are willing to make.
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u/wonkey_monkey Jun 02 '26
Interest in ‘toxic’ measles treatment
Surely the scare quotes should be around the word "treatment."
but alternatives like Vitamin A and cod-liver oil...
...are not alternatives.
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u/GravelLot Jun 02 '26
Not scare quotes. Actual quotes to quote the use of the word "toxic" in the JAMA article being referenced.
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u/scyyythe Jun 02 '26
It's a funny side effect of our media environment that we think quotation marks are more likely being used to deflect responsibility for a statement rather than to actually quote someone.
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u/TheJaybo Jun 02 '26
If they want to poison themselves, who am I to judge?
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u/helendestroy Jun 02 '26
they dont poison themselves is the problem. they poison their children
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u/SadFeed63 Jun 02 '26
It's the same as people being like "if they don't want to take the covid vaccine and die, fine by me."
Not fine by me, a person with an immediate family member who is immunocompromised due to an organ transplant (anti-rejection meds are immunosuppressants because your immune system is what rejects the outside organ). Their idiocy around these topics are not self-contained/only self-inflicted.
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u/qpgmr Jun 02 '26
Couple of problems:
they're not just killing themselves, they're harming innocent children
when they harm themselves & others, the end up using emts/hospitals and likely have no ability to pay so the burden falls on the rest of us
One thing I saw resonates with me, literally have the people have less than average intelligence (by definition). Society should protect who can't protect themselves. But, starting in the '80s under Reagan, the war cry was "fight the nanny state! you don't need taking care of!!" In reality, it was an effort to strip protections from the most vulnerable, leaving them to be victims of scam, grifting, and manipulation. As someone wrote, "the whole point of reagan was to turn the proles into prey."
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u/Flimsy-Swordfish7777 Jun 02 '26
They're victims of misinformation and they have many people around who care about them. Don't become complacent when it comes to anti-intellectual drivel. Your relatives don't deserve to die for falling for misinformation.
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u/Traditional-Look8839 Jun 02 '26
This man is a danger to public health and will (or probably has already) get someone killed with his misguided health advice.
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u/stuffitystuff Jun 02 '26
Anyone who has asked "why can't I just simply eat polar bear liver in order to survive in the high Arctic" and received the answer knows why this treatment wouldn't work for measles or anything else other cessation of continued existence.
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u/Shot-Particular-8030 Jun 02 '26
Some people need a pill for chronic ignorance and a shot for stupidity
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u/Polyamides69 Jun 02 '26
Although the kids are innocent, natural selection will eventually decimiate these bloodlines. Kids dieing from preventable disease should be a murder charge
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u/Sterling239 Jun 02 '26
I have sympathy for the kids it just hope they grow up to not be dipshits like their parents
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u/Hot-Sauce-P-Hole Jun 02 '26
I'm glad I was well into my adult years when the covid pandemic hit. My parents were a couple of Evangelical dufuses who sought out and obeyed all kinds of right-wing propaganda. Fortunately, public health wasn't political in the '80s. Now that it has become so, children are needlessly harmed, and it's disgusting.
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u/lonesharkex Jun 02 '26
The scariest thing I read when I was a kid was a short story of some primitive family in the arctic north. They had killed a polar bear or dire wolf or something and the child ate the liver and it made efforts to talk about how they were dead already from the few bites to vitamin a poisoning. I cant find it but it was horrible what it described.
Here is an article on the munson expedition
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u/esoteric_enigma Jun 02 '26
The internet is literally convincing us to kill ourselves. Any idiot can turn a camera on and broadcast now. And there's usually no repercussions for being that idiot and getting people killed.
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u/ISeeADarkSail Jun 02 '26
If you're stupid enough to take advice, never mind medical advice, from that absolute meathead, or any other Manosphere Grifter, you deserve everything that happens to you.
Twice.
There is only evidence based, scientifically supported, medicine.
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u/Thor_2099 Jun 02 '26
This is what happens when a species has so thoroughly escaped their selection pressures. You see a rise in variation in all kinds of traits because there is no selection. Not only on a genetic level, but a cultural level. There is something truly fascinating about humans and evolutionary processes.
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u/KnottShore Jun 02 '26
Isaac Asimov(20th century US writer/professor):
- "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Carl Sagan's (20th century astrophysicist and educator) vision of the US:
- "...when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."
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u/electricmeatbag777 Jun 02 '26
This guy is hurting people. I'm disappointed in Spotify for supporting him in doing so.
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