INVENTOR: It's got a one-year warranty,
but it lasts 10 to 20 years.
[subdued music]
♪ ♪
It increases body temperature...
KEY: Your body's electric.
They don't want you to know that.
They want you to think that your body needs petroleum.
[machine beeping]
PERSON: Right now, I think people are starting to realize
that this isn't hokey-pokey talk no more.
PERSON: What we're doing is just doing our little part
to fight back the massive injustices
that are going on masquerading as something called healthcare.
♪ ♪
PETER: I think everybody's here
because they know something is wrong.
JAN: At a time when we are
at an extraordinary apex
of medical and scientific discovery...
PETER: There's no patient group that we can find
where it's an advantage to take one of the vaccines.
- We are in some ways, in an information vacuum.
PETER: This is not disinformation.
It is published scientific data.
JAN: So many messages. You have so much noise.
You have so much mistrust.
[cheers and applause]
SPEAKER: Now, we've officially
got to defeat all of the mandates.
JAN: So many people are just trying
to get good information.
- Not just Covid, not just Hepatitis B--
every single stupid vaccine...
JAN: But if they can't get it from their doctor...
♪ ♪
Where else are they gonna get it?
SPEAKER: Are you ready to win this war?
PROTESTER: Healthy is not the new sick.
No vaccine passports! [cheers and applause]
CLYBURN: Americans across the country
have been targeted by an unprecedented level
of misinformation about the coronavirus.
- The Covid vaccine doesn't work!
PROTESTER: Freedom over fear!
NEWSCASTER: From epidemic to infodemic...
NEWSCASTER: Wrong information is spreading quickly
on social media.
- I'm sure you've seen the pictures
all over the Internet
of people who've had these shots
and now they're magnetized.
JAY: Fraudsters began to push coronavirus cure-alls
and preventative treatments.
COOPER: More than half of unvaccinated Americans
think the vaccine is more dangerous than Covid.
One Florida doctor has seemingly gone
to great lengths to perpetuate it.
- We are told that the Covid injections
are "safe" and effective.
- The most influential super-spreader
of misinformation...
MERCOLA: These drug companies are criminal entities.
Like, you've got Fauci who's a sociopathic criminal.
KAYE: His name is Dr. Joseph Mercola.
NEWSCASTER 1: Dr. Mercola. NEWSCASTER 2: Joseph Mercola.
NEWSCASTER 3: Dr. Mercola.
PERSON: Joseph Mercola.
MERCOLA: Those who are vaccinated
might be dropping like flies.
This is the most effective brainwashing
propaganda campaign in the history of mankind.
♪ ♪
- Dr. Mercola, to me, has his cake and eats it too.
MERCOLA: I've been studying
food's impact on health for decades.
JAN: He has the white coat, which is a signifier
of mainstream establishment medicine,
seems assuring and yet informed and authoritative.
KAYE: Who knows how many of his followers chose
to skip the vaccine.
NEWSCASTER: His audience is substantial.
PERSON: 15 million visitors on your website every month.
- Probably closer to 30 million now.
- When you're looking for authority
and trust and concern, particularly in these times...
- This has, like, been one
of the best years of my life since COVID-19.
JAN: He seems as safe a landing spot as any.
[unsettling music]
♪ ♪
PERSON 1: Rampant disinformation.
PERSON 2: The results of it are deadly.
♪ ♪
SARAH: I have to tell you that things that I found
on Mercola's website potentially saved my life.
Dr. Mercola gives answers for everything.
He steps up and says, "I have answers,"
where others don't.
♪ ♪
I, very, very early on,
had issues with my weight,
and I had no idea what to do.
The other thing that was going on
was that I was hyper, hyper-sensitive
to everything.
I would get regular, very serious lung infections.
I had passed out at school.
Food and pretty much anything that I ate
would make me feel sick.
And at the same time, I'm overweight.
I'm--I'm still struggling with these issues,
but in my 20s and 30s,
I started to have really,
very rapidly escalating
food reactions.
And I was starting to have trouble breathing.
And I was scared to death.
I was a single mother and I was terrified
that I was going to die.
♪ ♪
And I was seeking doctors that could help me with this.
And I had talked to one who told me,
"There's no way that
"someone who is eating the way you say you're eating
"could be obese like you are.
"So clearly, you have other issues going on,
and I think you should seek psychiatric help."
I--I was just stunned and dumbfounded by that--
to be so dismissed.
I feared for my life.
And I felt like I had nowhere else to turn.
♪ ♪
It was around that time that my mother told me
about Dr. Mercola.
[cheerful music]
♪ ♪
MERCOLA: This is Dr. Mercola,
and I've been a family physician
for over three decades.
And 20 years ago, I established Mercola.com,
which is the most visited health site in the world.
I'm a Chicago native.
I was born and raised
within the city limits of Chicago.
I started in regular conventional medicine,
then went to an osteopathic school.
The reason I chose to go to osteopathic school
as opposed to medical school is that,
philosophically, they were more inclined
towards my interest in medicine,
which is more looking
at the foundational causes of disease.
Now, practically, when I went...
- He was a classmate of mine at medical school.
♪ ♪
He was very much into research...
MERCOLA: In fact, when I was in medical school
in the late '70s,
I was on the front cover
for the national medical student handbook.
JAY: And analyzing exactly what was being taught
as the way things should be done.
I know that he started to practice in Illinois.
NEWSCASTER: And his doctor thinks
bad air at his school may be what's making him ill.
MERCOLA: The range of symptoms stretches
from respiratory complaints
such as runny nose, itchy eyes, hay fever type of symptoms.
For the first five years,
I was basically a drug-prescribing doctor.
I kind of bought the model hook, line, and sinker,
and wound up prescribing a lot of medications in the late...
ANTHONY: I--I remember Joe.
We worked together at the Chicago Osteopathic
and Olympia Fields osteopathic programs.
I mean, there's a big difference
between allopathic and osteopathic medicine.
Osteopathic medicine is a philosophy
to improve function.
And not just the physical side--
the spiritual and emotional.
He did not hesitate to advocate
that we are osteopaths.
There was a real sense of pride.
At that time, pharma was spending
immense amounts of money
to "educate" doctors.
Joe was one who actually would say things
in argument.
"We want you to know
"that this is a drug-sponsored presentation,
"and that these presentations are paid for
by a drug company that makes this product."
He was the kind of person back then
that would not take it sitting down.
Sometimes I would be lecturing,
and then I would-- I'd stick around
to see what he was gonna say.
- Uh, because there was not many people like him,
at that time, who really pushed
the osteopathic side.
- In the '90s, I wound up taking care
of some--a patient with yeast syndrome
and studied Dr. William Crook's material.
When I applied his program, it worked.
Started using my practice as a test bit
for these interventions and seeing the results.
This inspired me to do more.
- He has described this as really being, uh,
a moment that helped to enlighten him about
the nexus between diet and health problems.
MERCOLA: So I wrote a letter to all my patients.
I said, "Listen, if you aren't interested
"in getting off your medications,
you're gonna need to find a new doctor."
I lost 75% of my patients.
It was the best thing that ever happened to me
because I only had people who were willing to work.
Started seeing patients from all the Chicago-area,
then all over the state.
And then people were flying in from all over the world
to see me.
And--and at that point, I started my website.
♪ ♪
Today, I'm going to review seven ways
in which you can be healthier.
You're gonna find information on this site
that's just not typically available
under traditional medical journals.
- He created a system of speaking
directly to people.
- We had well over 100,000 people.
So many people looked in,
it actually crashed our server.
RACHEL: And that engendered trust.
It also helped to build his brand
as a person who would tell them things
that other doctors and traditional medicine
would not tell them.
MERCOLA: Then I realized that doesn't scale very well.
It was really a prescription for financial catastrophe.
Ultimately, you have to have a form of revenue
to keep the doors open.
RACHEL: One of the things that he started doing
within a few years was he started to sell products.
- If you've got Teflon cookware in your home,
get rid of it.
One of the safest choices you could make
would be enamel-coated cast iron cookware.
And our offering at Mercola. com/pan...
RACHEL: And within just a few years,
this was a multimillion-dollar business.
- I was really surprised to find out
that it actually sold out in four days.
RACHEL: Selling products online
and fueling content for his website
began to overtake his business of actually seeing patients.
And after some time, this became his full-time job.
He stopped seeing patients in 2009.
- Optimizing your gut micro-biome may be
one of the most important things
you can do for your health.
And we have one of the best high-potency,
multi-strain products on the market bar none.
♪ ♪
RACHEL: There aren't a lot of doctors
who have a multimillion-dollar supplement business.
- Let me tell you how I designed this supplement...
- With millions of followers...
- And if you want more information
about artificial sweeteners,
please, please, please read my book Sweet Deception.
- Most of what he says or does is not crazy.
But he started pushing some ideas
that many people, including experts,
felt were quite dangerous.
MERCOLA: Why are we immunizing
four million helpless infants a year?
It just doesn't make sense.
MERCOLA: Hi, this is Dr. Mercola.
And I am excited to share some information with you.
[indistinct chatter]
What I want to do is take the wisdom
I've compiled in the last 30 years or so,
and focusing on these natural strategies,
is share the best of the best with you,
and specifically fine-tune it
for what you need to do to prepare yourself
in light of what's happened the last two years.
[unsettling music]
KEY: We have medical doctors around the world now
that are saying they have cured Covid
utilizing this simple solution.
- I went through med school.
They don't teach us nutrition.
- I have a dim memory
that the Kellogg's company--
like, the people who bring you Corn Flakes--
that they are affiliated with the original wellne--
one of the wellness movements.
I mean, that's how far back it goes.
[cheerful music]
♪ ♪
By the mid to late '60s,
you had the rise of all kinds of movements.
[overlapping shouting]
A new way of thinking.
A new way of looking at your body.
PERSON: And as you can see,
it's unlike any other group therapy known
in the history of psychology.
JAN: A new way to look at your life.
One branch of that thinking
was to be suspicious about anything
that you're putting into your body
that was not "natural."
It was thought to be aspirational.
That was the climate of the times
in which Mercola came of age.
At the same time,
many people rightfully began to mistrust
what modern medicine represented.
There were clinical trials without consent.
And, of course, the terrible mistakes
at the behest of big pharma--
Thalidomide, the DES babies.
There's lots going on that lead people to question
what used to be accepted
as the absolute truths of modern medicine.
- Hello, this is Dr. Mercola,
and if you've been a subscriber
to my award-winning newsletter,
you'll know my mission has been
to investigate and report
on deceptive and fraudulent practices
that can impact your health.
Now, in the past, that focus has been...
- You watch his videos and he seems very earnest
and very much like he cares.
- And I would like to take time out now
and thank you, my loyal readers.
- And it felt genuine.
MERCOLA: For some time now,
we've offered a vitamin B12 supplement.
SARAH: Nobody said to me,
"You know, a B12 deficiency is actually really serious."
Mercola was offering me some information
that regular doctors were not addressing.
- First of all, it's important to understand
that vitamin B12 is the largest vitamin
that we know of.
SARAH: It was very pricy.
But, you know, it was my health.
I was willing to pay it.
♪ ♪
I literally felt better,
so I knew that it actually was working.
I didn't get all better,
but it was a jumping-off point for me to try
to track down what was going on.
And I'm grateful to that website
for giving me that.
STEVEN: My first day at Mercola.com,
I really didn't know what to expect going in there.
I'd never heard of the guy.
I was in the content strategy department.
We were helping find the content
that would go into the newsletter,
and we were also running
his various social media pages.
Well, one of my responsibilities
was to actually comb through
trending content on the Internet,
try to see what's working well,
copy what's working, avoid what's not.
And then I would send it on to my boss.
I think Dr. Mercola might have even weighed in
on some of that.
Then they selected the content,
and then basically sent to writers
who then wrote the content in Dr. Mercola's voice.
And then it would get published.
You know, a lot of the content that did the best was, um,
borderline clickbait-ish, where it was, you know,
try to create an image with a tagline on it
that would-- captures people's attention.
[cheerful music]
♪ ♪
[unsettling music]
♪ ♪
We went through a number of phases.
Our page really evolved.
You know, it took a long time for him to get
his one millionth Facebook fan,
and then he hit two million, you know,
not that much longer after.
It was growing fast.
When I was there, I believe we grew about--
I have the numbers actually on my resume.
Give me a second.
When I was running Dr. Mercola's social media,
I believe his Facebook page was growing
by about 1/4 million fans a year.
It was big.
Bryan: I was the senior writer for Chicago Magazine.
And my editor came across a guy named Joseph Mercola
who was in the Chicago suburbs.
And his website was getting so many hits
for seemingly super outrageous claims.
DR. OZ: Please welcome Dr. Joe Mercola.
BRYAN: He had appeared on
The Dr. Oz Show a couple of times.
- You're arguing that cancer can be cured
by eggplants.
- Coconut oil is interesting because it may be useful
in the treatment of Alzheimer's.
- And I went out to his offices.
[curious music]
I thought there would be
more treatment rooms or something.
And I asked the receptionist about it and she said,
"No, this is really kind of sales and marketing,
you know, is what we do here."
So she led me back...
♪ ♪
And there he was.
♪ ♪
He was very polite.
There was just this sort of prickliness and a--
a deep sense of suspicion toward me.
He was willing to answer just about anything.
But there were certain topics he was evasive about--
certainly his wealth.
I asked about the home in Barrington,
vacation in Mexico and South Beach.
He got a little defensive.
One thing that really struck me was
how willing he was to talk about his marketing prowess.
He is keenly aware of the power
of being provocative and shocking.
STEVEN: They would do a lot of headline testing.
A select group of customers would get
one of the articles for the next day,
and they would have one of four various headlines
so they could test which headline did the best,
you know, which one got the most clicks.
And then that would be the subject
of the next day's newsletter.
- Learn How Homeopathy Cured a Boy of Autism.
Your Flu Shot Contains a Dangerous Neurotoxin.
Vitamin D, The Silver Bullet for Cancer.
I just wondered what...
goes through the mind of, uh, Dr. Mercola
or the people who write these headlines.
Like, do they believe that?
And if so, how can they believe it?
And how can they promote it
when really it could harm people?
MERCOLA: Hello, this is Dr. Mercola.
And if you've been on this site
for any length of time, you'll know that vitamin D has
a profound and dramatic influence on your health.
- He promoted vitamin D being good for your immune system.
But then he would also take it a step further sometimes--
how vitamin D can help prevent cancer.
If you have cancer, it might help you fight it.
- If you're going to use a tanning bed,
as I've said time and time again,
you want to make sure it's a safe tanning bed,
a tanning bed that uses electronic balance.
- Corresponding with that,
he, uh, offered his own tanning bed...
MERCOLA: We have some of the--
actually, some of the best and safest tanning beds
in the world.
BRYAN: For $3,000 on his website.
- And, really, the only tanning beds
that have been approved by the Vitamin D Council.
NEWSCASTER: The American Association
for Cancer Research has found
people who use indoor tanning beds
have a two to four time greater risk
of developing melanoma.
HARRY: Is there such a thing as a safe tan?
- If you ask the dermatologists, Harry,
the answer is an unequivocal no.
BRYAN: From my research that I found in my reporting,
90% of his claims...
you know, were just flat out contradicted by facts,
by studies.
He's just marketer supreme.
He's selling mistrust and skepticism.
And he's recognized
there's a great demand and a great market
for what he's selling.
- Our new Pro-Puffs line of snack foods.
- Uh, it was an opportunity, it appears, uh, to Joe.
- For a long time, right.
It's--it's a business. Yeah.
And these are business decisions.
MERCOLA: Order a ClearAir personal air purifier.
ANTHONY: The very thing that we believed
was so wrong with the pharmaceuticals,
that they were trying to indoctrinate doctors
that their product was necessary
for certain diagnoses,
has somehow become adopted.
♪ ♪
I--I don't know what happened to Joe Mercola.
Power corrupts.
Absolute power absolutely corrupts.
MERCOLA: You know if you've been
in the COVID-19 pandemic that anything
the mainstream media tells you is wrong.
That was the big lesson.
They were telling you misinformation
in spades on steroids.
SPEAKER: They are murdering people every single day
in these hospitals in the United States of America.
KEY: They want every single one of you guys
to take this bio-weapon and put your freakin' mask on
and deprive your body of oxygen
because they say it helps you.
- They're talking about literally
programming our minds.
You speak out against the government,
guess what's gonna happen? They're gonna cut you off.
MERCOLA: They can shut down your bank accounts.
They can make it almost impossible
to survive 'cause you have nothing
to buy food or pay for shelter for.
SPEAKER: I am going to talk about this with everybody.
BRYAN: At the time I spoke to him,
Joseph Mercola was very passionate
about the evils of the government
and the evils of big pharma.
♪ ♪
This is from Mercola's website.
"Fraud, kickbacks, price-setting, bribery,
"and illegal sales activities.
"You'd think it was the script
"for a thriller, global action movie.
But no, it's just big pharma at its deceitful best."
- The corruption between the pharmaceutical companies,
agricultural industry, the FDA,
and these regulatory governmental agencies
will continue to destroy the American health
and the health of the world.
- He also drew attention from the FDA.
He was cited for unfounded claims repeatedly.
He would comply grudgingly,
while complaining all the way,
and use them as evidence, uh,
that he was being persecuted for his views
by the government.
- This is a pay-to-play system,
and if you challenge the system,
you will be punished.
- The rates of vaccine injury are off the charts--
ten times anything anyone is telling you.
And we are here alerting you to this fact.
- There is not one single childhood vaccine
in the U. S. or-- or in the Western world
that has ever been tested against a placebo.
- I did the research.
I didn't believe the tell-a-lie-vision.
MERCOLA: You have to identify good sources,
so I believe our site is one of them.
BRYAN: Mercola is and always has been anti-vax,
long before Covid.
- He always promoted himself as being
very pro vaccine information.
You know, he just says
that you should really look at what's out there.
But then if you look at what he puts out there...
♪ ♪
Everything says that vaccines are
very bad and dangerous.
- You will be deluged
with promotions to get the flu vaccines.
But there are far more effective,
less expensive, and less risky alternatives.
- Vaccine resistance has been around
as long as there have been vaccines.
And this belief would ebb and flow
through the centuries.
In the late '90s, Andrew Wakefield writes
a destructive article
associating the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella
with what seems to be an uptick in autism.
- There were medical events associated with the exposure
that then subsequently led to the child's decline.
- It's been discredited so many different ways.
NEWSCASTER: The very journal which published it said
it was fundamentally flawed.
- But fearful parents took note,
challenging the childhood schedule of vaccines.
- Let's start a revolution, folks.
You don't have to--to give in to these anymore.
We--we are conscious, educated adults
that have a decision as to what we input into our kids.
STEVEN: As I was doing the training with more people,
I was actually getting challenged
by some of the new hires
about the information that was being put out there.
It just, you know, planted seeds of doubt in my mind.
There were specific posts and articles
that would come up that raised
a lot of potential concerns about vaccines.
We were giving them a lot of medical advice.
Even though we always said
we weren't giving medical advice,
people would stop after--
like, they wouldn't get a second opinion.
They would just come and get what Dr. Mercola says
and then that's that.
[birds chirping]
SARAH: I would ignore the stuff
that I thought was...
Bordering on ridiculous.
But at a certain point, it shifted.
- You never really want to put your phone
in--on your body, unless it's in airplane mode.
SARAH: He said that your cellphone would cause cancer.
MERCOLA: So you probably want to know
how cell phones cause cancer.
And so he came out with his Blue Tube headphones.
MERCOLA: Every member of your household
who uses a cell phone on a regular basis, uh,
needs to own their own Blue Tube headset.
SARAH: This is either an opportunity
to make a bunch of money
or he believes this thing
that doesn't make any sense.
Neither one of those is appealing.
♪ ♪
SARAH: As time went on, I felt like he went
more and more off into the weeds.
- I stop eating after 3:00 or 4:00.
Most of us kill our pets, not intentionally.
I'll tell you how.
Just like you, your pets need to fast.
The safest light to use in your home at night
would be a candle.
Fluoride is a poison.
Now I sit down less than 30 minutes a day.
Chicken's not a good food.
Oh, I sleep in a Faraday cage at night.
SARAH: He seemed to have over time
kind of a growing almost paranoia
about, uh, the government.
- There's a cultural war going on.
There's a collusion that results
in a suppression about the truth.
- It became like a conspiracy theory.
- And it's this suppression
will gradually, progressively erode
our private individual rights, our freedom.
- You know, them.
The other-- the, um, nefarious entity
that was trying to shut him down.
- That our ancestors fought so hard to achieve.
And it's eroding at a regular, persistent basis.
- I didn't have any interest in buying into that.
♪ ♪
Mercola kind of shifted
into kind of a cult of personality,
and that was when I was like,
"Okay, I can't do this anymore."
[waves lapping]
STEVEN: The company relocated to Florida.
It didn't really appeal to me.
You know, I felt like I was just putting
a lot of bad information out there.
I wanted to move on and I wanted to put
good in the world instead of--
I felt like I was not putting good into the world.
I felt the opposite.
♪ ♪
I left the company in December of 2018.
♪ ♪
MERCOLA: Okay, here I am at the beach.
Clearly, the ideal way to get your vitamin D
is to be in the sun.
You can see I always wear a hat when I'm in the sun
because there's no reason to get
sun exposure on your face.
Glad you're staying healthy.
We need to keep you healthy for a while, man.
We got work to do. PERSON: I know.
Lots of it, so yeah, that--
I haven't--I haven't hit act two yet,
so I'm getting ready for act two.
[mellow music]
[seagull calls]
♪ ♪
DIANE: Dr. Mercola is 1/3 of my healthcare team.
I've never met him. He's never treated me.
But I'm here today because of him.
♪ ♪
- But I believe that if you catch them early enough,
almost all these cancers are curable.
You've gotta know what you're doing,
and you gotta stay away from strategies
that are gonna take you backwards...
- I was diagnosed with very, very advanced
stage four ovarian cancer four years ago.
And I underwent two major surgeries,
18 rounds of chemotherapy.
And I mean, I felt like I had been poisoned.
So I was taking all kinds of things
to counteract that.
I really, uh, credit Dr. Mercola
with saving my life.
I mean, yes, a doctor that did surgery on me,
an oncologist, also, yes, helped save my life,
but he's where I started.
And he was the primary source.
And he's kind of, at first, alls I had to go on.
- Every day, 1,600 people die from cancer
in the United States alone.
And how do we beat this disease with lifestyle?
By paying attention
to the types of foods that you're eating
and when you're eating them.
- When you feel that your life has been saved
by somebody, you are gonna be so grateful to that person
and trust that person,
so that the next thing that they say to you,
you're gonna maybe be even more inclined to believe,
or at least loyal enough to listen.
And that's what makes it insidious
when some really dangerous idea appears
in the middle of a bunch of other stuff
that seems reasonable.
That's how you get misinformation into people.
NEWSCASTER: Over a million have now been infected
by coronavirus worldwide
since the start of this outbreak.
FAUCI: But we're having a lot of suffering,
a lot of death...
NEWSCASTER: A situation that unfortunately
has grown more dire by the day.
Across social media, Covid misinformation--
it's running rampant.
- When that Covid stuff first started,
I kind of was like, eh, I wasn't paying attention
to it too much, and, you know,
it became more and more prevalent,
so I started listening in.
And so I actually started getting fearful.
And then I started learning about some protocols
with some natural supplementation
that would counteract that.
It would be less severe.
MERCOLA: We're gonna discuss
the specific interventions you can do
to stay safe and stay healthy.
One is time-restricted eating.
Then, of course, you're gonna want
to optimize your vitamin D.
Zinc--you need to make sure you have
enough zinc onboard.
My favorite supplement is molecular hydrogen,
which causes your body to make its own antioxidants.
- This era is just right in his wheelhouse,
you know, to--to, uh-- to exploit.
He's positioned himself as the leader.
And surely that attracts a lot of people to him.
He says exactly what--
he plays on all of the fears.
♪ ♪
- Mm-hmm.
For me, it wasn't that bad,
but, you know, I exercise every day.
I take--I've been taking large quantities
of vitamin D3.
MERCOLA: My favorite is, uh--
I simply use very low concentrations
of hydrogen peroxide,
about 30-fold decrease from the typical concentration
you buy at the grocery store or the pharmacy.
And just breathe it in.
DIANE: He said if there was, you know,
like, breathing difficulties,
and you were nebulizing with hydrogen peroxide,
that you would have, like, a lot of results
just, like, by the end of the day.
I did go ahead and buy all those products.
- My wife, when she had Covid,
she was having respiratory problems.
And we got the food-grade hydrogen peroxide
and we got a nebulizer, which we never had at home.
- And all you do is put it over...
And simply breathe in and out.
JAY: It did help her quite a bit.
Actually, right away.
- Do not put hydrogen peroxide into your nebulizer.
NEWSCASTER: Health experts say it's dangerous for your lungs
and can be fatal.
DIANE: You know, I told people that I knew about it.
And it's, like, nobody wants to listen.
I just said, "Well, I'll just keep it for myself,
and I have it here if I need it."
JAY: I think that he is a man of great integrity
to examine things scientifically
to let people know what's the healthiest lifestyle.
- You know, I haven't read that much.
I haven't read anything, really, by him,
that I can remember concerning vaccination status.
NEWSCASTER: In every corner of the country,
Americans have been rolling up their sleeves today,
hope that this is a game-changer.
- I feel extreme confidence
in the safety and the efficacy of this vaccine.
- It's vitally important to understand reality
when it comes to these Covid injections and jabs,
how that can contribute
to an enormous pathology that will radically increase
your risk of dying prematurely.
Many people believe this depopulation strategy
is the--one of the ultimate, uh, motivations
behind this, uh, Covid injection strategy.
- There's a lot of risks involved
that are, you know, being underreported.
- The vast majority of injuries and deaths
are simply unreported.
We are at a--a-- an absolute conservative base
of 12,000 deaths.
Now, probably over 50,000 in reality.
- I did come across some information.
And there was some connection to the vaccine.
I don't know if it was existing cancer
or could create cancer.
And as soon as I got one whiff
of "cancer" in that vaccine, instant no-go.
Dr. Mercola, I felt that he was just trying
to present another side.
He wanted people to know the truth.
- 65% of the disinformation
that we see online is coming from 12 people.
- The Disinformation Dozen are the folks
that we identified as being
the super-spreaders on social media.
Can I lay out to you, perhaps the macro issues
that we've been looking at?
My name's Imran Ahmed, I'm chief executive
of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
CCDH kind of looks at online harms
and the way in which bad actors,
from a range of sectors,
use bad platforms to create harm.
- Coronavirus, you're probably concerned about it
for yourself and your family.
You might be curious.
How did this virus start?
IMRAN: Our most prominent report
was a snapshot taken in March 2021
of who were the 12 most influential
digital anti-vaxxers, the Disinformation Dozen.
They included people like Joe Mercola,
who was number one.
They all target a different bit.
Right, so you've got RFK Jr.
who targets African American communities.
You've got the Bollingers,
who target Trump and QAnon communities.
You've got all these different figures
targeting markets because they're marketers.
And Mercola is the wellness market.
It works really effectively.
[tense music]
NEWSCASTER: The wrong information
is spreading quickly on social media.
- Almost 100% of our deaths have been
in unvaccinated individuals.
- In parts of the country
with very low vaccination rates,
things are approaching as bad as they have ever been.
- The vaccine disinformation has three fundamental themes.
One is that vaccines are dangerous.
MERCOLA: This is an experimental gene treatment.
IMRAN: Two is that Covid isn't that dangerous.
- It really, uh, aligned
with the, uh, normal epidemics of flu
that we have every year.
- Three is that you can't trust doctors.
MERCOLA: We have a Facebook group page now,
spreading this message far and wide.
♪ ♪
JAN: One of the worst things that you can say
to someone who is vaccine-hesitant
is to accuse them of being ignorant
because their questions come from a good place.
They're just trying to get good information.
I think a lot of people feel confused.
It's not been sufficiently explained
that all the pharmaceutical companies
were told they would be paid regardless
of whether their vaccine was successful or not.
And so the financial incentive to cut corners was eradicated.
But most people don't understand that.
- There's a lot of ironies with Mercola's career.
♪ ♪
Chief among them is this notion
that he's anti big money when it comes to medicine
and pharmaceuticals.
He's a rogue, you know, a rebel,
battling against these huge forces
and wealth and riches,
when his very business is predicated
on textbook corporate marketing to make money.
- You know, with big pharma,
yeah, they're making money off of you,
but they have a vested interest in you being sick.
You know, if people are saying that about Dr. Mercola,
he has a vested interest in you being healthy
and staying healthy.
I'd have never thought about him
as regards to "Oh, he's profited--
profiting me off of vitamin D3."
I'm going, "Thank God he's selling the D3 with K2.
Send me another bottle because it's working."
NEWSCASTER: According to a affidavit filed
back in 2017, his net worth right now
is around $100 million.
RACHEL: Look, if, like, P. T. Barnum
wants to go out and say, like,
"Look at my, like, giant two-headed goat,"
and people want to buy that, then, like, that's--
he's a business man,
and we live in a capitalist society.
But when somebody who is in the truth-telling business
and accuracy business and science business
and you-have-to-trust-me business,
you can't have that person giving you misinformation
or telling you lies
if he knows that they're not true.
IMRAN: Here we're seeing Joe Mercola, on Amazon,
his--his sort of book, The Truth About COVID-19.
His book was an attempt to sort of create
a political ideology around vaccine disinformation.
- Have you found yourself wondering
if you're in a dream
or some type of dystopian nightmare?
♪ ♪
IMRAN: He's really pushed this idea
that there is a dangerous group
of powerful people who are pushing
this agenda of vaccines to enslave humanity.
MERCOLA: The effort appears to be
the great transfer of wealth and power
from the masses to a few of the global elite.
Overwhelming evidence shows
that the United States Federal Government
was directly funding the dangerous,
gain-of-function virus research that led--
actually led to this global pandemic.
And the media helped to bury
any evidence of the lab leak by calling it
"a conspiracy theory."
- In September of 2021,
YouTube removes his channel
because he's promoting misinformation.
- Isn't it interesting that anyone--
anyone who asks questions
or challenges the mainstream narrative
is immediately censored on social media?
IMRAN: Mercola's been banned from YouTube,
and yet here he is all over it.
- I've got to tell you, it's a different experience
being here in person.
- You can see that the first recommendation that comes up
on a Mercola video is for more Mercola videos.
RACHEL: Every time Joseph Mercola
gets slapped on the wrist,
it is a marketing opportunity.
It's way for him to say,
"I am an anti-establishment person
"that is willing and brave enough
"to tell you the truth.
They don't want you to hear what I have to say."
- Rise up against tyrannical governments
and the pharmaceutical industry
that are coordinating the assault
on our personal freedoms and civil liberties.
JAN: When you are being criticized,
or constrained by prudent good-faith norms,
in the current climate,
you can turn that upside down
and present yourself as a martyr
and a victim to truth.
MERCOLA: In August, I was forced to delete
15,000 articles from my site.
DIANE: I'm like, really?
He's just trying to make people aware,
and he was being silenced.
MERCOLA: We're gradually restoring many of them
to Substack.
- He's got thick skin, and I thank God
he continues to do what he does.
CALLUM: Mercola's managed to maintain his presence
on Facebook.
He's still on Twitter, uh, on Instagram--
Substack, where he's actually making
a substantial amount of money.
And he's got a whole sort of storefront page on Amazon
and as well as his own website,
which is incredibly popular.
As long as mainstream platforms
are allowing him to operate,
he is seeing slow but steady growth.
And that means that his disinformation
is reaching an ever-growing audience.
ALL: [chanting] No more tyranny!
JAN: So many people feel oppressed by this pandemic
in so many ways.
PROTESTER: Who's body? ALL: My body!
PROTESTER: Who's body? JAN: Their children
are being taught things
that the parents don't believe in.
- Save our children!
- They're being told by the government
to take medicines they don't believe in.
PROTESTER: Do you want vaccine passports to exist
as a human being? ALL: No!
- And Mercola gets that.
SPEAKER: We'll win our rights.
JASON: Joseph Mercola is dangerous.
I think this is a way to see-- to gain power and influence
and ultimately money.
Unfortunately, the currency of that fortune
is lost lives, hospitalizations,
and unnecessary deaths-- preventable deaths.
People's consumption of misinformation
will continue,
and that will be to the detriment
of the institutions which have been there all along
to keep us safe and healthy and well.
That is ultimately the downstream impact
that we have to take care of.
It's a kind of evil in my opinion.
- Welcome, everyone, this is Dr. Mercola
helping you take control of your health and we're...
JAN: If someone says to you, "Take control of your health,"
it implies that you don't have control over your health
and it's something you need to regain.
It implies you've lost autonomy.
It implies you've lost choice.
- We gotta become our own doctors.
SPEAKER: If the propagandists at our media station
ever air this stuff, this is over.
- I think people need to pay attention
to what's really going on with this so-called Great Reset.
Talking about being in perpetual,
ongoing enslavement for every man, woman, or child.
PERSON: He tells the truth.
And he's been persecuted and de-platformed
and he did not change his tune.
So I respect that.
ANTHONY: I can't explain it.
I don't understand it.
One of the things that's part of the osteopathic oath is,
"I will not besmirch or critique
another physician's rightful practice."
The term "rightful" is very important to me.
If you are against science,
and you are profiting from that,
I think you've left the boundaries of rightful.
And that's one of the reasons why I'm talking.
- The perfect conditions for a--a snake oil salesman
to step up is when there is an unanswerable question.
And Dr. Mercola can tackle any issue--
any issue, and offer you a solution.
And it only costs you this much.
- It just seemed easy to put it in this thing.
This is most of it.
Some of the new stuff that I'm mixing in
is kind of up here. [pills rattling]
In December, I was doing my three-month checkup,
and now I've had a cancer reoccurrence.
I knew all my options right away.
There's hardcore chemotherapy that may kill me,
that may damage my organs, destroy my immune system,
make my bladder bleed.
I might develop new cancers in other areas.
And then there's options
that involve other supportive therapies.
- No, I haven't talked to them about it at all
because of fear of being ridiculed.
It's almost, like, you know,
we don't know about it, we're gonna criticize it.
There's only one way to do it-- cut, poison, burn.
Surgery, chemo, radiation.
There's no other way to treat cancer.
Well, I got news for you. There's lots of ways.
It's my body and my decision.
[voice breaking] And, uh--
and I know I'm doing the best option for me
for long-term success and to remain healthy.
I think Dr. Mercola--
honestly, I think that he would say
I was doing the right thing.
- The U. S. healthcare system by so many different measures
is broken for so many people.
♪ ♪
And in that sense, is he exploiting
the holes in the healthcare system?
He's certainly benefiting from them.
- Is he a true believer or is he just a marketer
taking advantage of a market?
I think it could be both, and is.
JAN: I think the guy really knows
how to take a good temperature.
He rode the wellness wave.
He correctly assessed when the--the winds were shifting
around belief in conventional medicine
and science.
Man, the guy just pulled out that thermometer
and went, "Hmm. Okay." [chuckles]
"I know the right medicine for that fever."
♪ ♪
In that way, he's a good doctor.
♪ ♪
[tape player clicks, winds down]