How Quacks Become Millionaires: '5G-COVID' Doctor Will Sell Supplements

Several months ago, we ran a story on the best (worst?) conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. Perhaps the most inventive one was the notion that 5G caused COVID. This requires some explaining.

According to an actual, real-life medical doctor named Thomas Samuel Cowan, viruses don't make people sick. (He must have missed that lecture in medical school.) Instead, our bodies produce viruses after they get sick. "Bad DNA" caused by 5G is how the coronavirus was born. See? It all makes sense... in Bizarro World.

As is so often the case, the bullsh** artist finally drowned in his own bullsh**. According to a newsletter from the aptly named Quackwatch, Dr. Cowan is surrendering his medical license. The doctor had previously gotten in trouble for prescribing unapproved drugs to a cancer patient, so this isn't his first foray into the X-Files of medicine.

Apparently, evidence-based medicine just isn't for him. Cal Matters quotes Cowan: "I simply see too much to be willing to function as a physician in the medical system at this time." In other words, he puts faith in conspiracy theories and alternative medicine. All those rules, ethics, and data that modern medicine insist on are simply getting in the way of the really good stuff he wants to do.

So, what's he going to do now? He's going to sell dietary supplements, of course. That's how every quack from Joseph Mercola to Mark Hyman to Dr. Oz can get rich quick. Here's the four-step formula: (1) Tell a gullible, scientifically illiterate public that modern medicine isn't serving them (or worse, it is making them sick); (2) Claim that "the truth" is only being told by the "brave" souls who are willing to go against the medical establishment; (3) Endorse a bunch of snake oil, or even better, open an online supplements store; and (4) Watch the bank account explode. It works every time.

And because there's technically nothing illegal with selling products that don't work -- as long as the package comes with the label that the FDA hasn't evaluated any of the statements made about the product -- there isn't a single thing U.S. regulators can do to stop it.

"Doctor" Cowan isn't surrendering his medical license because he's learned his lesson. Instead, he's watched how other quacks have become millionaires and plans to follow in their footsteps.