Joseph Michael Mercola (; born July 8, 1954) is an American alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Internet business personality. He markets largely unproven dietary supplements and medical devices. On his website, Mercola and colleagues advocate unproven and pseudoscientific alternative health notions including homeopathy and opposition to vaccination. These positions have received persistent criticism. Mercola is a member of several alternative medicine organizations as well as the political advocacy group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which promotes scientifically discredited views about medicine and disease. He is the author of two books. Mercola's medical claims have been criticized by the medical, scientific, regulatory, and business communities. A 2006 BusinessWeek editorial stated his marketing practices relied on "slick promotion, clever use of information, and scare tactics". In 2005, 2006, 2011, and 2021 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned Mercola and his company that they were making illegal claims for their products' ability to detect, prevent, and treat disease. Quackwatch has criticized Mercola for making "unsubstantiated claims [that] clash with those of leading medical and public health organizations and many unsubstantiated recommendations for dietary supplements". David Gorski of Science-Based Medicine says Mercola "mixes the boring, sensible health advice with pseudoscientific advice in such a way that it's hard for someone without a medical background to figure out which is which". During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mercola spread misinformation about the virus and pseudoscientific anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. Researchers have identified him as the "chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online".
Life and career Mercola was born July 8, 1954, in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Jeanette Aldridge (née Freeman) was a waitress and his father, Thomas Nicholas Mercola, was an Air Force veteran who worked for Marshall Field's, a department store in Chicago. Mercola attended Lane Tech College Prep High School and studied biology and chemistry at the University of Illinois, graduating in 1976. In 1982, he graduated from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine (now Midwestern University). According to Mercola's website, he is a former chairman of family medicine at St. Alexius Medical Center. He stopped treating patients in 2009 to work full-time on his health products and vitamin supplements business. In a 2017 affidavit, Mercola stated that his net worth was "in excess of $100 million." Until 2013, Mercola operated the Dr. Mercola Natural Health Center (formerly the Optimal Wellness Center) in Schaumburg, Illinois. Mercola lives in Cape Coral, Florida. Mercola and his partner Erin Elizabeth, a blogger listed by The New York Times as one of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation, have been called two of the "disinformation dozen" responsible for 65% of COVID-19 anti-vaccine misinformation on the internet and social media, according to a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in 2021. He has written two books which have been listed on the New York Times bestseller list: The No-Grain Diet (May 2003) and The Great Bird Flu Hoax (October 2006). In the bird flu book, Mercola dismisses medical concerns over an avian influenza pandemic, asserting that the government, big business, and the mainstream media have conspired to promote the threat of avian flu to accrue money and power. Mercola has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show and The Doctors. His business is very successful. In 2019, The Washington Post wrote he had "amassed a fortune selling natural health products, court records show, including vitamin supplements, some of which he claims are alternatives to vaccines....His net worth, derived largely from his network of private companies, has grown to 'in excess of $100 million,' he said in a 2017 affidavit." In 2023 however, executives of his company Mercola Market complained that JP Morgan closed their bank accounts. The financial institution indicated those accounts were terminated when they became aware of "multiple occasions of regulatory scrutiny, raising concerns about a pattern of deceptive business practices." It is reported that Mercola consults a psychic medium daily, costing $1.2 million USD annually, for medical and business advice.
Views and controversy
Website and publications Mercola operates Mercola.com, which he has described as the most popular alternative-health website on the internet. Aside from the main site, it also hosts blog subsites, like Healthy Pets and Peak Fitness. Traffic counting from Quantcast shows the site receives about 1.9 million novel visitors per month, each returning almost ten times each month; the number of views is roughly equal to the number received by the National Institutes of Health. Using aggressive direct-marketing tactics, the site and his company, Mercola LLC, brought in roughly $7 million in 2010 through the sale of alternative medicine treatments and dietary supplements. The site promotes disproven health ideas, including the notions that homeopathy can treat autism and that vaccinations have hidden detriments to human health. Phyllis Entis, a microbiologist and food safety expert, highlighted Mercola.com as an example of websites "likely to mislead consumers by offering one-sided, incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading information." Researchers say that Mercola employs teams in Florida and the Philippines who translate his posts into multiple languages and then post them to groups of websites and social media accounts. In August 2021, Mercola announced on his website that he would permanently remove all of his articles, but he would continue to post articles daily, which would be deleted after 48 hours. Rachel E. Moran, a conspiracy theory researcher at the University of Washington said that this announcement was "[Mercola] trying to come up with his own strategies of avoiding his content being taken down, while also playing up this martyrdom of being an influential figure in the movement who keeps being targeted."
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