February 4, 2015

Newsmax is a perfect example of right-wing grifters robbing people blind with their nonsense remedies. They peddle crap advice to gullible viewers who are probably the same folks signing onto their other grifty health "solutions."

But when you put Dr. Russell Blaylock on television to sell viewers a bunch of unproven, unscientific, anti-vax, science denying junk, there should at least be a disclaimer telling viewers that any belief in what this guy is peddling can be quite hazardous to your health.

Neurosurgeon, maybe, but a retired one who has been criticized for his stupid take on the H1N1 vaccine. He brought that bias to his interview on Newsmax TV with Steve Malzberg.

Blaylock showed his anti-government streak right out of the gate, when he declared that government "takes away one of the fundamental rights of people, individuals and families and certainly parents — and that is the protection of their children."

Given the current measles outbreak, it would appear that parents may not be capable of sorting the woo from the facts and so aren't capable of exercising those fundamental rights. As long as we live in a society where other people also happen to exist, it seems to me those same parents have a duty to their neighbors as well as their children.

Blaylock is too lazy to actually peddle junk science, so he just makes things up and pretends they're true. Here are a couple of gems from the interview above:

"There's compelling scientific evidence that vaccines are not as safe as they're being proposed. In fact, there [can be] significant, serious problems, including death, seizures, encephalitis and severe brain damage. This is well documented in medical literature."

Actually no, this isn't well-documented at all. Yes, there is a small possibility of a severe reaction, but the risk is nowhere near as grave as the risk of being unvaccinated.

"[W]hat we're seeing is a dramatic increase in autoimmune diseases since they've added so many vaccines to the vaccine schedule. Those include increases in neurological damage and impairment in learning, memory and speech."

There is no scientific evidence to support this claim at all. He can call himself a neurologist, but he's just really full of woo.

"Well, the results from studies show it's nowhere near that effective and when we look at these so-called outbreaks, in almost every case, most of the children had been vaccinated and, in many cases, fully vaccinated for the measles vaccine,"

Dr. Blaylock, read up on herd immunity, please.

The reason I bring this up at all is because Newsmax and other nutter outlets like them do this all the time. They sell snake oil with no evidence to back up their claims, gullible people get sucked in, waste their money, and fund fools like this. As Newsmax makes their transition from online only over to cable AND online, they do it with an expectation to make millions from peddling crap like this.

The only reason they don't get nailed for false advertising is because they're falsely claiming it's news.

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