Consumer Wellness Center Labs Identity Crisis

When Kevin Jenco Talks About Kevin Jenco on Kevin Jenco's blog, Kevin Jenco usually uses the words I or my.  When Mike Adams Talks about himself on the bowl of pig rectums he calls a web site, he talks about Mike Adams.  I just couldn't help but notice in a recent article Mike wrote titled :CWC Labs announces heavy metals water and soils testing services to the public; 20 toxic metals, minerals and trace elements analyzed via ICP-MS, he refers to himself in the third person.  He writes

"The director of the laboratory, Mike Adams, author of the No. 1 bestselling science book on 

Amazon.com entitled "Food Forensics," directs the scientific analysis of all water and soil samples. 

His recent analysis of hundreds of water samples from across America revealed that 6.7% of 

municipal water systems contain very high levels of lead and other toxic elements in violation of 

EPA limits. "The citizens of America no longer trust cities to provide them with safe, clean water," 

Adams explained. "Our private testing service allows water consumers to get their water tested from 

a trusted, accredited, independent science lab that can't be influenced by local city politics." 

As a writer this just bothers me so fucking much.  Mike essentially pretends to be a third party, hoping the reader won't look at the picture of his sunburnt muffin basket of a head right above the article.  It is an intellectually and morally bankrupt practice that helps give himself legitimacy by pretending he is an expert.

Of course the other option is that someone else wrote the article and is lying about Mike writing it, but I'm no conspiracy theorist, so I wouldn't think that.  

In case you are unfamiliar with CWC labs, you are far from alone. Figuring out exactly what it is is a bit difficult because of the web of businesses Owns and the dozens of different names, web sites etc. that he uses.  But I have been able to track down a few details about the lab.

The adress is not listed on the web site itself, but it is on the Lab Certificate of Accredidation.  The Adress it gives is 704 Highway 71, Bastrop Texas.

From Google Maps

Conveniently it is located next to a portable toilet & septic business.  COINCIDENCE!?!?! I THINK NOT.

Also, on the certificate the name of the lab is 

"Consumer Wellness Center Lab aka Natural News Forensic Food Lab"

CWC Labs also claims it is only open to commercial clients, which raises another question about another conflict of interest.  In another post on this site I wrote called Jerking off In the Mirror: The Mike Adams Story, I discussed how Adams is the sole listed board member of the nonprofit Consumer Wellness center.  The connection between the lab and the charity are hard to discern.  Adams call the lab the "analytical science branch of the consumer wellness center".  The Consumer Wellness Center is located in Cody Wyoming and has no listed upcoming activities.  But it does have a web site OF COURSE.  I don't think Adams can resist the urge of going more than a week without making a new web site.  other than links on their web sites it is unclear how the lab is connected, bringing up the question over conflict of interest if the lab is performing for-profit work like commercial testing.  It seems that perhaps Adams created a charity in order to use the name and establish legitimacy for his lab.

Compounding this question is the recent announcement that CWC labs will be doing water and soil testing for individuals, through a mail in kit available on Adams' Healthrangerstore.com 

FOR $150

All I had to do was one google search to find a number of mail in water testing kits for much less than that price.  For example, a kit from KAR Labs, a much older laboratory with a very good reputation is only $59.99 with prepaid postage both ways.

Mike Adams calls himself the lab director and claims he oversees all scientific analysis, making me further question the credibility of any results that come from what appears to be a scetchy outfit.  The lab is one of the most cited sources in recent years for articles on Adams' many other "news" sites, but as far as I can find Adams has published no true scientific studies and very little of even basic test results.  I encourage my readers to flood the CWC with email queries so that Adams will answer the many questions that surround the CWC lab.

Joseph Mengele, I Mean Mercola DAMN YOU AUTOCORRECT!!

Image Credit asciencenthusiast.com

"Dr" Joseph "don't talk about any of my FDA letters, the FTC settlement, or my Better Business Bureau report" Mercola, is an osteopath who's clinic in Illinois is permanently closed (thankfully).  Unfortunately, however, his web site Mercola.com remains one of the largest quackology outlets on the web.  He peddles all of the usual bullshit, homeopathy, natural remedies, anti-vax rhetoric, but of course as he says on his web site

"Mercola.com is not, in other words, a tool to get me a bigger house and car, or to run for Senate. I 

fund this site, and therefore, am not handcuffed to any advertisers, silent partners, or corporate 

parents."

So it is just coincidence that his site contains a store selling products with his name on them.  The quackwatch article on Mercola reveals that he has an incredibly large home and actually has made a lot of money from his bullshit web site and products.  At the time I  visited the Mercola store section of the site displayed a message saying it was down for maintenance.  I don't know how long it's been like that, but I am curious if it might have something to do with the 5.3 Million dollar settlement Mercola just made with the FTC in April for selling tanning beds that he claimed prevented cancer.

How this man still has a medical license I cannot fathom.  With several letters from the FDA and orders to stop selling fraudulent or dangerous products, the Illinois Medical Board, must have their heads up Bruce Rauner's ass.  You can look up Mercola's medical license and see that they have never even disciplined him since at least before 1990.  However the look up also reveals that in 2014 Mercola settled a malpractice lawsuit for almost $400,000.  The only description of the suit I found was on a law blog, where MERCOLA PRESCRIBED THE WRONG THING TO A PREGNANT WOMAN AND HER CHILD WAS BORN WITH COGNITIVE BIRTH DFECTS!!!

This anti-vax piece of shit caused the very same thing he claims vaccines do, using "medicine" he claims is safe, natural, and harmless.  If you see him in public call him a douche for me please, and if you read this Joseph, Fuck You.

Jerking Off In The Mirror: The Mike Adams Story

I have to imagine that Mike Adams' morning routine starts with him looking at himself fully naked in a mirror doing his very best Buffalo Bill impersonation from the Silence of The Lambs.  That is the only way I can visualize the amount of absolute narcissism displayed through his writing, twitter, you tube videos and every damn thing he does.  The clear efforts at deception he employs at hiding his involvement in so many different thing is disgusting.  I mean I recently read an article on his site, naturalnews.com by S.D. Wells that listed the Top 6 most influential leaders of the clean food movement in 2016 and beyond, or, as S.D. humbly refers to them, heroes.  The list includes the usual suspects, Vani Hari, David Wolfe, Dr. Oz, but I bet none of my readers could possibly guess who #1 is.  Mike Adams The Fucking Health Ranger Himself.  How strange that he would be named the number one health leader by a writer  That Fucking Works For Him.  Of course the article contains no traces of self awareness or recognition of the fact that Adams owns this web site, pays this writer, or is even affiliated in any way.  If this weren't enough for you to picture mike making out with himself, try to also picture the mostly blank mind that is able to come up with such gems as;

The EPA Wants To Kill You With Radiation So Buy This Water Filter I endorse,

  The Bird Flu Is Going To Cause Mass Hysteria And Economic Collapse So Buy My Book "How To Beat The Bird Flu".

or (and I'm not even joking, he wrote this)

Skynet Is Fucking Coming And We Will Be At War With Machines

I have to admit that the Terminator movies is probably one of the most legitimate sources Mike has ever used on his site, but holy shit he actually believes an AI is going to destroy humanity.  

Exactly how narcissistic do you have to be to constantly pay people to praise you on your own web site as the greatest fucking human to ever live?  Maybe the answer is that you have to be the kind of person who starts a 'charity" called the consumer wellness center.  Maybe on that site is a link to the page for the board of directorS (I made that S large for a reason, you'll know in a moment).  Of course when you look at the board of directorS you encounter something that made me laugh for a full minute. 

From Consumerwellness.org

Either the person who wrote the site doesn't understand that an S indicates there are multiple of something, or Mike is just a jackass who relies on people to only read headlines and not dig into anything.  I mean who else but a narcissistic douchebag would have the balls to have multiple websites that post dozens of articles every day making health claims about products he sells and other bullshit, and then at the very bottom in script so tiny and hard to read that they are not responsible for any of the content they publish and that this is not a substitute for real medical advice?  The same asshole that criticizes pharmaceutical companies, food manufacturers, and just about god damn everybody out there for hiding the truth, not putting proper warning on labels or online and and any other crackpot conspiracy that makes it through his tin foil hat is a god damn hypocrite.

So the world would be a better place if Mike just stuck to sitting in a padded room all day telling himself how great he is.  Unfortunately this relic of the 19th century snake oil salesman isn't going anywhere for the time being.

A Broken Clock Twice A Day, Mike Adams And Pizza The Bear

While almost all of my posts so far have been highly critical of Mike Adams, I have to admit that very, very, very, very occasionally he posts something good.  Usually this takes the form of animal pictures he tweets or benign memes riddled with platitudes, but recently he did release a story authored by one of his staff writers Amy Goodrich.  The story is about the polar bear Pizza whose home is a Chinese shopping mall, and to be completely fair the article Mrs. Goodrich wrote is just straightforward reporting of what other groups have said and done regarding the bear.  It is a sad story, and the bear looks very sad, if one wishes to indulge in anthropomorphism.  Having visited China in 2008 for the Olympics i can say that I would not be surprised at all if the bear was not treated well by Western standards.  I saw things on that trip like dozens of live chickens crammed into cages so small they were popping out the sides, people beating dogs in the street, and the many stray dogs roaming Beijing.  I understand that these are cultural differences and it's considered bigoted to apply our values to them, but that does not make it any less sad for an animal lover like myself.  So on this count I agree with Amy Goodrich.  If they could just post these articles quit the conspiracy shit, I would be a fan.





For another source on Pizza try this article from the BBC.

Late To The Party, A brief outline of Miracle Mineral Solution

Mmsforlife.com

I have to admit that up until about three months ago I had never heard of Miracle Mineral Solution.  I have no idea why, but it was simply something that had never crossed my radar.  The first question anyone should ask about a product like this is does it work, the second, is it dangerous.  Well does MMS work? Absolutely not, and is MMS safe?  I'll give you three guesses.  Called many things by many different people, what it really comes down to is Sodium Chlorite, NaClO2.  Sodium Chlorite is industrial bleach used in paper mills.  I'm not using that like Vani Hari or other fearmongers would, making a wild claim about part of a compound or mixture that is similar to an industrial chemical, Sodium Chlorite is literally the exact same chemical used to bleach paper.  Simply checking a Material Safety Data Sheet for Sodium Chlorite shows a myriad of harmful side affects and conditions it can cause.  The MSDS I link to is for a 25% solution admittedly, of course proponents will likely point out that this is far different from the 28% Solution!!! that is MMS.  When used "properly" the solution creates Chlorine Dioxide another hazardous chemical.  This warning letter to consumers from the FDA warns that MMS "poses a significant health risk to consumers".  I'm sure many of the MMS users are either the religious who are fooled by the word miracle in its name, or otherwise probably the usual conspiracy crowd who believe that the government and medical establishment are evil and engaged in a conspiracy to keep us sick, but most of us actually have a functioning brain and should realize that this is a dangerous false panacea, just one more in a long line of them.

I encourage anyone who encounters this product being sold on the net to spend five minutes online and file a complaint with the FDA or FTC.  It is simply one small thing that we can do other than pointing out on our blogs how wrong these people are.

Deconstructing Danger, The Story of Mike Adams, The Health Ranger: Part 1

I thought that for one of these first few blog posts a good idea would be to let my audience know about my little ball of yarn, The Health Ranger.  The man behind the self aggrandizing pseudonym is actually Mike Adams, an ex-software company CEO whose advice should be labeled under the category "the idiots guide to experiencing natural selection first hand"  There are a number of articles out in publications and blogs about Adams that any reader should go to in order to better understand who he is and what he does.  Dr. David Gorski has written a number of good articles about Mike Adams an example of which can be found here.  Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com, a terrific science education site, called Adams' main site, Naturalnews.com, "Without a doubt, the wrongest site on the internet"  But I figured a novel way to go about it is to dissect Adams' own biography on his web site Healthranger.com.  I encourage anyone who wants a good laugh to read it, as it reads like a child describing how great he is to his friends at summer camp.

On the home page of his personal site Healthranger.com, the first thing a person sees is a photo slide show, showing several awards Adams has won for outstanding journalism, followed by (when I visited) a photo of Mike with the caption "Health Ranger calls for improved science education in America".  i can assure you all that the very last thing mike Adams wants is improved science education because it would drastically reduce his own income.  These awards for journalism were given at the Sacred Fire Of Liberty Gala.  A few google searches reveals that the event was sponsored by Emord & Associates, a law firm notorious for defending the fringe supplement and natural products industry.  They are also, according to The HuffingtonPost, attorneys for Mike Adams. 

Adams' biography is incredibly long and self aggrandizing, playing himself as a savior sent to save the world from just about everything.  It seems to have been written around 2012 because of some dates used, but for this article's sake, I'll assume not much has changed.  To start with, Mike calls himself an outspoken health advocate, award winning investigative journalist, and science lab director among other things.  I'll come back to the science lab director part later, but first I want to address the award winning journalist claim.  I am unaware of when and if Mike Adams currently is or ever was a client of Emord & Associates, however if, as the Huffington Post claims, Adam's is a client of Emord, and if he was their client before 2014 when he received his awards, then it certainly takes much of the wind out of those awards he prominently displays on his site.  Most of the other mentions of awards I was able to find were from small radical groups in the same vein as Adams.  Next, a list of several of Adams' websites, Naturalnews.com, CounterThink.com, Foodinvestigations.com, Healingfoodreference.com, and Honestfoodguide.com are listed, leaving out others like Newstarget.com Naturalpedia.com and many others.  All of these web sites are continuously linked, citing each other as primary and secondary sources, to the point where it seems Mike has built the worlds largest ideological echo chamber completely online.

Biographical History

Next comes the biography, giving the usual date of birth and such, but also claiming that he:

 "scored in the 99.9th percentile across all U.S. students. He aced the English, Mathematics and

Science sections of college entrance exams, scoring 100% on 3 out of 4 sections earning numerous

offers of scholarships from various universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(which he chose not to attend)."

Of course, who would ever choose to attend stupid old MIT?  That's where all the idiots go to school. The biography does not say where Adams actually went to college, but only that he has a bachelors in science from "a prominent university in the midwest".  It is somewhat strange that the man who loves to trumpet his achievements and awards does not say where he went to college or display his diplomas. The biography does say that Adams chose not to attend graduate school, begging the question how can he claim a scientific expertise in nutrition and health.  This section also describes Mike's experience as a CEO of what he merely calls a "software company".  For a very good detailed history of this company and what it did, read this excellent article in Health Wyze, part of a whole series on little Mikey.  What Mikes software company was best known for is developing ways to get spam email past spam prevention programs.

Education

The next interesting section is on little Mikey's education.  Claims made here include that he started college before graduating high school, a practice common for many seniors at least in California where I grew up, that he studied many different topics (in other words a general lib arts education), and that he was offered a position as head of sound design for a theater department at a "large university", which of course he turned down.  Then come some of my favorite claims.  The bio says that he

"was found to extraordinarily gifted in music composition. He began studying piano and keyboard at

the age of five. He took on percussion studies at age six. By age twelve, he was creating elaborate

keyboard compositions and publicly performing at music talent competitions."

I have listened to some of Mikes music videos on his sites and I would describe him as anything but "extraordinarily gifted".  My little brother and i recently spent about half an hour on You Tube laughing our asses off at the amazing impression Mike does of a two-bit karaoke star (oh wait, those are his music videos).  I encourage anyone who is a fan of listening to a washed up backstreet boy with a head cold and a recent conversion to the church of what the fuckery to check it out.

Technical Projects

Continuing on are a series of claims that read as though the dorky kid in class is claiming he lost his virginity over the summer to a girl from out of town that you don't know, and he lost her number so don't even try to reach her guys. I'll go through them in order.

1.  Adams was accused by a teacher of practicing witchcraft for writing computer code on paper in 5th grade.

   

•  I'll say this one could be true, I'm not going to do the math and figure out how old Mike was in fifth grade to see what computers were available at the time and make a guess at whether this story is a fabrication or not, but since he made his money in programming, I'll mostly believe this one. 

2.  In seventh grade Adams was able to solve a Rubik's cube in under a minute and had a record time of under 26 seconds. 

  

•   Funny that Adams has never demonstrated this in any of his hundreds of YouTube videos, at least as far as i can find, but I invite him to demonstrate the ability and I will gladly say it is true.

3.  That at 14 Adams was a completely self taught computer programmer doing his own complex algorithms and developed one of the first "cannon wars' games for the Apple IIe.

  

•   Again believable but not provable.

4.  That at 25 he built a program that could beat the stock market averages by 20%, of course he chose to pursue his software company making spam email instead.

    

• This one makes no sense.  Being able to beat market averages by 20% is incredible and would have made him incredibly wealthy.  Either it is not true, Mike has very bad judgement, or he is a crazy super genius that was bored with stocks and wanted to make spam email software instead.  I can guess which one he would choose, but I'll keep my guess to myself.

5.  That at its peak his software was used by 100 fortune 500 companies

•      Fine, I believe it, his terrible software company was successful after all.

6.  Some technical jargon about search engines and Natural News' popularity that the programmer friends and Redditers I asked all said is not that uncommon anyway

7.  Adams' web site Science.naturalnews.com publishes 10 million abstracts from the National Library of Medicine. 

• In other words he thinks it is an amazing achievement to have access to part of what is already freely available through PubMed, located on his site.  Of, course his site doesn't get advertising revenue when people use PubMed, so making himself more money I guess is the accomplishment here.

8.  Adams created Naturalpedia.com, which he calls "a database of hundreds of thousands of quotes from over 1,000 books on health and nutrition."

• Out of context quotes from 1000+ books that likely had to Pass Adams' test before they were included.  As flawed as Google may be, it still provides amazingly better results than anything you will find on Naturalpedia.

9.  My favorite paragraph is the last one of the section, which reads as follows:

"Adams' technical specialty is in the use of computer science algorithms to parse written text. Over

the years, he has developed numerous algorithms for finding hidden signals in large bodies of text.

Adams possess the technology to monitor trends and make predictions about bank runs, epidemic

disease, race wars and other issues reflected in human communications on the 'net. To date, he has

not deployed such a technology and has not announced any plans to do so."

• I swear that the first thing I thought of when I read this was a memory from kindergarten having someone say "well yeah I have superpowers, I just don't want to use them right now, because i'm tired".  But what if Adams really does have such technology? (Which I doubt).  Would it not be absolutely immoral for him to withhold life saving technology that could incredibly benefit the human race?  So either way, whether this is a lie, or a truth, i think all can agree Mike is an asshole because of it.

Patents

If there's anything we have learned about Mikey so far it is that he is a very special boy, that's really smart and had every idea first. 

So it comes to no one's surprise that Mike was the original inventor of a Google Glass-like device.  Unfortunately he just didn't have the money for the patent process in 1995 (after he has already started his software company). Today, the cost of a patent application is a $150 filing fee, attorneys fees, some drawing fees and others that attorney Gene Quinn estimates average to about $14,080.  That's no chump change, but for someone who at that time had their own software company and who claims to have already invented software at that time that could beat market averages by 20%, it probably should have been do-able.

And of course, Mikey is developing the world's greatest battlefield soldier active camouflage ever.  Because I'm sure Mike's superpower as a kid was always invisibility... and every other superpower (we all remember that kid).  Well Mike there's one thing we can agree on here, I also wish you could dissapear.

If you've made it this far CONGRATULATIONS.  I know this was a very long article, but I'm not joking when I say how long, redundant, and unbelievable his own Bio page is on his web site.  Please look for yourself at this link to the the Mike Adams Biography.  Unfortunately I'm not even done writing about this pile of slop, I'm barely even halfway, but for my readers enjoyment and my own sanity, I will stop for the time being until I can muster up the intestinal fortitude to write part two.  As always, thank you for reading, and science is power.

Update 7/29/16:  In this article I referenced an outfit called Healthwyze.  I should have mentioned that Health wyze is an alternative medicine and naturopathy outfit that supports many thing that have no scientific basis, the usual natural cancer cures etc.  However, much of the report they wrote on Adams is quite good journalism if you ignore the wacky health bits they claim.  I reached out to the editor to ask for an interview regarding their reporting on Mike and have not heard back yet, but hope I will get to hear more about why they wrote it and how they feel now, three years later.  Hopefully soon I'll have that story for my readers.

The Value Of Open Discussion and Debate

While on twitter I may seem to be a bit of an asshole, and it does seem very one sided to just write refutations of other people's work, there is incredible value to be found in discussing these issues.  Mainly that value lies in the ability to make people aware of the facts.  As far as I am aware I have only ever convinced one hardcore conspiracy theorist that they were wrong about something, and that was a close friend and it took quite literally hours to convince him.  All I was able to convince him was that Fluoride was not poison.  He still thinks 9/11 was an inside job, that Kennedy wasn't shot by Oswald, and a myriad of other conspiracy theories, but I'm proud of that one little breakthrough.  It took hours of discussion, lots of googling, and a ton of explaining basic science and pointing out the flat out deception of the online conspiracy buffs.  So my policy on this blog will be to not censor any comments at all unless they cross very clear lines of using racist slurs or other solid lines of human decency.  If i do remove a comment I will let you know why and give you a chance to repost.

I want to do the best i can of addressing any evidence anyone thinks they have that for alternative medicine conspiracies etc.  I will either respond in my own comment or write a post if the answer is lengthy.  Please, ask questions, point out my faults and discrepancies, because this is how we reach a conclusion that we can say is true.  I may not change your mind, but I hope I can make you think.