Money From, I Guess, Big Herpes: What Should I Do With It?

If your only source for news are the idiots at Mother Jones or the even bigger idiots at Sourcewatch, you probably don't know much about the real American Council on Science and Health. Instead, you believe their manufactured claims that we are some kind of sinister organization because we want to give Americans real answers about science and health.

When I bother to read their stuff I am hardly surprised to find that I, along with our other scientists and doctors:

• Help industry pollute our air and water
• Feed harmful chemicals to babies, like pesticides.
• Brainwash otherwise-healthy people into buying and taking poisonous drugs and vaccines.

Most of their claims about us are tired old conspiracy theories (i.e. if you are pro-science, you must be an industry front group) but I am afraid I must admit there is a new funding claim they will be able to make - and it's all my fault.

So I need to get this off my chest.

A while ago, in a comment, a reader notified me he was starting a fundraising campaign for me because of all of the articles I have written about the efforts to discover a vaccine for a real nasty virus (herpes), and that I took the time to speak to hundreds of callers, and answer hundreds more comments online. This was a seriously nice thing to do. I was able to do this because during my first career in drug discovery research, I worked in the antiviral field (hepatitis C and herpes in particular). I know only too well how tough it is to develop antiviral drugs, which is one of the reasons I have written about genital herpes too many times to count. 

Well, it worked. The irony of being pro-science is the money is not great, at least compared to scaremongers who raise a billion dollars a year terrifying people. I was surprised his effort even raised $100 but it did.

Does this $100 mean I am secretly on the take from Big Herpes? To some, it probably does. An environmental lawyer recently got the propaganda outlet for the Kremlin to promote their claim that we are being secretly funded to get all of academia on the side of Monsanto. Others claim they can't figure out how we are an industry front group, they just know we must be because environmental groups say so. We sure seem to attract more than our share of screwballs. 

Now that I have revealed this donation, what to do with this windfall? This will do for now. 

I guess when I get my next bribe, I'll have to figure out something else. 

I imagine Mother Jones is already compiling a team to sniff out any Monsanto molecules that happen to be in the food this buys, SourceWatch will rewrite it, Organic Consumers Association will then send both to Vlad Putin, and pretty soon it will be in New York magazine. 

Then this entire effort will have been for nothing. Perhaps Whole Foods would have been a better choice.