The anti-vaxxer behind the Meghan McCain-endorsed Covid shot ‘detox'
Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain and a former co-host of 'The View,' has come under fire for teaming up with the supplements company of a prominent anti-vax doctor that sells a Covid-19 vaccine 'detox.'
In several posts on X, some of which have been deleted, McCain — who previously criticized pop star Nicki Minaj for promoting vaccine hesitancy — announced the partnership, promoted the supplements and took aim at the mRNA jabs, demanding they be pulled off the market.
'If you regret taking the shot, there's hope,' McCain wrote. 'Dr. Peter McCullough's all-natural Ultimate Spike Detox is helping people worldwide. Use code MCCAIN for 10% off + FREE shipping on all orders,' she wrote in a now-deleted post. It's unclear exactly what McCain has to offer to a supplements company beyond her Republican pedigree that has bought her a media presence — but that is probably enough.
The Wellness Company, which has also paid Donald Trump Jr. for promotion of its emergency medical kit, which includes the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, is an anti-vaccine moneymaking venture from Foster Coulson. Its chief scientific officer is former cardiologist Peter McCullough — who is infamous for peddling misinformation and conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccines and for pushing unproven 'early treatments' for the disease like the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. He has become popular with the audiences of 'The Joe Rogan Experience' and other like-minded podcasts, and his supposed expertise has been cited repeatedly in efforts to discredit the Covid vaccines. (MSNBC reached out to McCain and McCullough for comment, but received no response.)
The company's 'Ultimate Spike Detox,' billed as an 'extra-strength formula…the only one designed and used by Dr. Peter McCullough, the world's leading pandemic expert and developer of the McCullough Base Spike Detoxification Protocol,' is available for $89.99.
Like other supplements, of course, the detox is not approved by the FDA for safety and efficacy. There is also evidence that it does not work — unlike the mRNA vaccines, which have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths and offer protection against long Covid.
The Wellness Company is part of a burgeoning wellness industry that has exploded in recent years since the pandemic. The U.S. dietary supplements industry alone, which represents just a fraction of this larger sector, has an estimated value of around $60 billion currently and is projected to grow to nearly $80 billion in the next five years, according to the National Sanitation Foundation, which certifies supplements. Fostering this growth is the fact that it is also largely unregulated.
Perhaps that fact helps explain the growing alignment between wellness influencers and the business-aligned political right, embodied most prominently in the so-called 'Make America Healthy Again' movement launched by anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist turned Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
For McCullough, supplements are the perfect game, allowing him to profit off of the vaccine fear he has encouraged for years now. Before the pandemic, the Texas-based cardiologist held senior positions at Baylor University Medical Center and Texas A&M University.
The Covid pandemic changed the incentives. With widespread confusion and fear, there was a huge market for information — and misinformation. Mainstream doctors were a dime a dozen. Contrarians and fringe voices, however, could readily get attention from media — and alternative media — leveraging their credentials to build their brands and capture sizable audiences. Much of this attention came from the political right as right-wing groups and politicians were working to restore economic normalcy quickly and without burdensome new restrictions on business.
McCullough was already no stranger to controversy, having served as the editor of a cardiac journal that came under fire for publishing articles plagued by conflicts of interest. He latched onto hydroxychloroquine in 2020, which Donald Trump had called a 'miracle cure' in March of that year, encouraging its use outside of clinical trials.
'My own conclusion from a review of the literature is that HCQ has not failed the randomized trials, but researchers have failed HCQ,' he wrote in an August 2020 op-ed for The Hill titled, 'Why doctors and researchers need access to hydroxychloroquine.'
McCullough's name also appears in a 2022 House report detailing a pressure campaign by Trump allies in the summer of 2020 against the Food and Drug Administration over its revocation of the drug's emergency use authorization. The FDA granted the EUA in March 2020 after Donald Trump's public endorsement — an apparent quick fix to the public health crisis hanging over his re-election bid. The FDA's decision to restrict use of the drug, following a large-scale study in June 2020 showing that the drug was ineffective against Covid, rankled the president's allies.
That November, after hydroxychloroquine's efficacy as a Covid treatment had been thoroughly discredited through repeat study, McCullough testified at a Senate hearing organized by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., on Covid 'outpatient treatments' where he promoted the drug. Three months later, in early 2021, Baylor Scott & White Health and McCullough entered into a confidential separation agreement. Several months after that, the Baylor health care system took out a temporary restraining order against the doctor for continuing to claim affiliation with the institution while spreading misinformation about vaccines and the pandemic. At the time, McCullough's attorney said that the affiliations were 'said/printed by a third party with no encouragement from Dr. McCullough,' who 'does not and cannot control third parties.'
Around the time of the Baylor suit, Texas A&M cut ties with him, and another medical school removed him from its faculty page as well. Their reasons were not reported at the time. Earlier this year, it was reported that McCullough's board certifications were finally revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine, which told MedPage Today that it 'doesn't comment on individual physicians.'
But professional disgrace has done little to damage to McCullough, whose enterprises not only include his supplements business, but a nonprofit as well. The McCullough Foundation brought in $660,000 in 2023, according to public records. Although he did not take a salary from the group, it promotes his anti-vax work.
Key to his success has been consistent amplification by right-wing allies. A December 2021 interview with podcast host Joe Rogan blasted McCullough into the MAGA media stratosphere — and he's still a recurring guest on Fox News and a feted speaker at numerous MAGA events. He has also found willing collaborators in various dark money groups like the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and the anti-vaccine Unity Project. Just recently, Johnson brought McCullough back to testify at a Senate hearing about an alleged cover-up of vaccine harms.
Now, even Meghan McCain is hopping on board, lending her ostensibly 'moderate' conservative celebrity to a lucrative business model. It all signals one thing: Anti-vax activism is now the mainstream Republican position.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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