Mike Adams launches a sustained campaign of lies against a friend of the blog [Respectful Insolence]

Several of you have noticed that a certain friend of the blog has been under attack from one of the quackiest of Internet quacks out there. Here is his response.

Dear Mr. Adams:

I decided to write this letter because I’ve taken notice of some posts you’ve written about me, mainly because they are riddled with misinformation and lies. Even though at least one of these lies about me made me laugh out loud, your writing about me is downright libelous (and I mean that very word). One lesson I learned from your libel that I had never realized before, is that apparently I have so much power as you seem to think that I have! I mean, seriously. You really do seem to think that I have massive power over what Wikipedia does and does not publish! Indeed, I was half-tempted not to disabuse you of your delusion. After all, if you really think that I have so much influence and power, why would I want to reveal the truth that I do not? Less amusing are your attempts to link me to the criminal Dr. Farid Fata, which is despicable, even by your low standards. What should I expect, though, from someone who’s been running scams since Y2K?

Of course, I am not naive enough to believe that you don’t know damned well that I don’t and are using visions of me manipulating health articles on Wikipedia from behind the scenes as tools to fire up your gullible and stupid followers. Do you even realize how ridiculous your articles come across with their overwrought language? In fact, I laughed out loud when I read, “David Gorski and Arianna Huffington are not directly murdering children, but they are doing everything in their power to kill any truthful discussion about vaccine damage (that might save children)” and then this;

Gorski is one of an ever-shrinking fringe group of Vaccine Holocaust Denialists who show increasing desperation as the truth about vaccines continues to emerge. The VAXXED documentary showcases CDC scientist and whistleblower Dr. William Thompson, who publicly confessed to committing scientific fraud at the CDC to hide links between vaccines and autism. Yet the Wikipedia entry on VAXXED, authored in large part by David Gorski, according to reports, deliberately misrepresents the subject matter and focus of the film, characterizing it as “anti-vaccine propaganda.”

According to what reports? Of course, it’s not a misrepresentation of VAXXED to refer to it as “antivaccine propaganda,” because that’s just what it is. How could it be otherwise, given that its director is Andrew frikkin’ Wakefield, the doyen of doyens of the antivaccine movement, the man that antivaccine activists view as “Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one.” He’s the man who started the MMR fear mongering that led to a massive decline in MMR uptake rates in the UK and whose fraudulent science forms the basis of most MMR fear mongering by antivaccine loons like you to this day.

More amusing to me is thisclaim by you:

As it turns out, the Wikipedia page on the VAXXED documentary is a smear piece authored by none other than Dr. David Gorski, reports Natural News. “Wikipedia’s incredibly biased entry on VAXXED was written by none other than pro-vaccine shill Dr. David Gorski, notorious for his relentless and callous attacks on vaccine skeptics, alternative medicine, and its supporters,” says this article.

The only smear pieces I’m aware of are your recent spittle-flecked trio of articles smearing me. I am not an editor for Wikipedia. I do not go by the ‘nym “Mast Cell” online anywhere—or anywhere else, for that matter. I’ve never written posts about VAXXED anywhere else besides the two blogs that I either run or edit. Indeed, I hadn’t checked out the Wikipedia entry for VAXXED before you wrote these ridiculous articles. Not surprisingly, viewing the edit history of the article (you did check out the edit history, didn’t you?) I saw no one going by the ‘nym “Mast Cell” having contributed to the article. Of course, the truth was never your strong suit. Certainly, evidence or science never was.

As much as your apparent belief that I rule Wikipedia amuses me (look upon my power and despair, you quack!), what amused me even more is that you extended my power to The Huffington Post as well! All because an author who apparently wrote a pro-VAXXED post for HuffPo had trouble doing so, it must be because of me. Why not blame me for every article critical of VAXXED and the antivaccine movement? That would make as much sense as blaming me somehow for “censoring” a post on HuffPo praising VAXXED. After all, it’s not as though I’ve been a fan of HuffPo. I’ve been critical of its antivaccine proclivities since a couple of weeks after Arianna Huffington unleashed it upon the world. I’ve referred to HuffPo’s war on medical science and mocked its announcement of a science section. So the idea that suddenly somehow Arianna Huffington and I are best buddies united in our desire to use jackbooted thugs to suppress the “Truth” that Wakefield, you, and your fellow quacks sell is too ridiculous for words, just like everything else in your ranting screeds. Heck, it’s about as ridiculous as linking me with Bill Maher would be.

If all you had said about me were that control Wikipedia entries on vaccines and am in cahoots with Arianna Huffington to suppress your quackery, I would have had a hearty chuckle and left it at that. However, far less amusing were (1) your regurgitation of six year old lies about me by a misguided youth formerly affiliated with the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism; (2) your utterly despicable attempt at guilt by association in trying to link me with the oncology fraud, Dr. Farid Fata, a man who defrauded Medicare of millions of dollars by administering chemotherapy to people who didn’t have cancer or to people with cancer long past the amount of time they needed it; and now (3) your claim that my patients hate me.

I’ve responded to the first claim in detail in the past. In brief, you regurgitated Jake Crosby’s claims that I have an undisclosed financial conflict of interest with Sanofi-Aventis because my research involves studying a drug made by the company, Rilutek (riluzole) and that this is why I so strongly oppose antivaccine groups. This is a lie originally published in a post on an antivaccine blog (Age of Autism) in 2010 by a college student named Jake Crosby. It was baseless then, and it is baseless now, resting as it does on a “six degrees of separation” sort of stretch. In 2010 apparently Sanofi-Aventis was considering using riluzole to treat autism. There was also apparently a multimillion dollar partnership of some kind between my university and Sanofi-Aventis. I didn’t know about this partnership and was not (and have never been) an investigator involved with it. By Crosby’s logic, however, because my university received grant funds from Sanofi-Aventis and because the drug I have studied to treat breast cancer was made by Sanofi-Aventis and was also being considered as a treatment for autism, I must have been receiving money from Sanofi-Aventis, particularly given that, if vaccines cause autism, there would be lots of money to be made selling a drug to treat autism. (Yes, that is the rationale behind the charge.) There are several errors in fact. First, as I said then I have never received a dime from Sanofi-Aventis to study riluzole or any other drug. Second, Sanofi-Aventis doesn’t even own the US rights to Rilutek any more, having sold them to Covis Pharma Sarl in 2013. Third, my criticism and refutation of antivaccine pseudoscience is something I do because I believe in it, not because any pharmaceutical company pays me. It’s also particularly risible to think that a surgical oncologist would be developing an autism drug for a pharmaceutical company.

Not that you, Mr. Adams, ever concerned yourself with how risible you sound. Indeed, I have to wonder how much contempt you have for your own audience, given how downright idiotic your posts sound.

I’ve saved the worst for last, though, and that is your unforgivable attempt to claim that I worked with or approved of Dr. Farid Fata’s evil. I’ve personally never met Fata, and I have nothing but contempt for the man, as I have related in the past on two different occasions. I am glad he is in prison. If there was anyone who richly deserved going to prison for a long, long time, it’s Dr. Fata. Moreover, he never had privileges at my cancer institute and never practiced in my cancer institute, your lies otherwise not withstanding. I’ve known oncologists at my cancer institute who’ve had to “clean up the mess” (so to speak) when patients treated by Dr. Fata came to them for second opinions. Indeed, Dr. Fata was universally despised by oncologists at my institution, even more so now.

As for your quoting of alleged patient complaints. A particularly obvious phony complaint was this one:

This man is horribly arrogant and was extremely unprofessional. His bedside manner leaves much to be desired, and I got the impression that he’d rather I shoot myself than to interrupt his busy day of blogging.

Of course, I never mention my blogging to patients unless they bring it up first. This claim is also silly on its surface, as a patient who thought I view patient care as an interruption in blogging would not be likely ever to see me in the first place. In any case, I don’t blog at work, although I do sometimes respond to comments if I happen to be in my office working on grants or papers. This, of course, is the problem with online patient ratings. Anyone can comment, whether the patient has ever actually seen a physician or not. Of course, I can counter these anonymous comments with comments I just received from our Press-Ganey reports that were actually quite flattering.

Of course, Adams can’t resist undermining his own attacks with his utterly unhinged rhetoric:

I’ve offered to use my science lab to test [his] urine for heavy metals in order to help him pinpoint possible sources of lead or mercury poisoning — two toxic metals known to contribute to mental illness. Don’t forget that [he] lives near Detroit, Michigan, where the lead poisoning of the water supply was allowed to continue for over a year due to EPA and Michigan government malfeasance. Was he poisoned by lead? Or was his mind already deranged before the lead came along? There’s no way to know the answer without some testing, and it’s unlikely that [he] will volunteer to participate in such tests. People who are infested with intense evil and hatred almost never see it themselves. They are consumed by it but it feels “normal” to them, so they think there’s something wrong with everybody else, never suspecting the severity of their own mental illness.

I mean, seriously. This has devolved into parody.

If you had restricted yourself to your hilariously unhinged and over-the-top conspiracy mongering about how I supposedly rule Wikipedia science articles (or conspire with those who are) and that I’m now tight with Arianna Huffington, who has since become dedicated to stamping out antivaccine misinformation, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with this response. If even you had just regurgitated Jake Crosby’s easily refuted lies about me from six years ago, I might not have bothered. But you couldn’t stop there. You had to defame and libel me with your speculation that I worked with Dr. Fata.

Mr. Adams, if you had even a shred of honor or honesty, you would correct the misinformation you have repeated about me and retract the lies you have told. I don’t expect that you will, because you have neither honor nor honesty. I do, however, take satisfaction in the knowledge that I must have been very, very effective indeed in my critical writing about VAXXED. Were it not so, you wouldn’t have bothered. I’m now in good company, with people I admire, like Paul Offit and Kevin Folta, whom you’ve similarly slimed.

Sincerely
D. H. Gorski