When the HPV vaccine was first rolled out, progressives began the conspiracy theory that it was due to the Vioxx settlement by Merck. Vaccines did not have the same "accountability" (read: predatort lawyers being able to sue and win if they just convince a jury a product may have caused problems) so they created products like Gardasil to claw back their revenue.(1)
Ditto with cell phones causing brain cancer(2) and organic food preventing it (and also autism).
Though Republicans now demand equal time when it comes to medical misinformation and conspiracy beliefs, they still have a long way to go before they catch up. All those supplement, wellness, and alternatives-to-medicine grifters in the cancer space still ain't conservatives.
And they still win a lot when it comes to scaremongering, according to recent survey results. In the analysis, 997 patients, 78 percent of them college-educated, said they had read that sugar (ultra-processed food!), deodorant (aluminum! parabens! toxic bioaccumulation!), cell phones (radiation!) and vaccines(mercury!) cause breast cancer while organic food, supplements, and alkaline diets prevented evil science from killing people. That doesn't mean they believed it, but anti-science progressives give up on causes where no one believes them, they chase the money.(3)
It's a new result but not a new problem. Twenty years ago progressives claimed it was aspartame causing cancer. Over thirty years ago, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) insisted coffee caused it.
Fortunately, the women surveyed didn't abandon medical care because they read misinformation about bras and sugar and decided organic food and essential oils would save them.
That does not stop anti-science mullahs. Nor will it stop believers because they will claim "the science" is on their side. Like their belief that vaccines caused autism or right-wing beliefs that horse dewormer cured COVID-19, they had "peer-reviewed" papers on their side. Yet the papers were still only epidemiology, not science. A jury was crazy enough to believe a popular weedkiller causes cancer (but not the most popular one sold by the $140 organic industry) because of epidemiology. There was no science involve, so no plausible biological, toxicological, or chemical hypothesis was introduced in the jury trial.
It's also why on appeal so many goofy jury settlements get thrown out. An appeals court considers science whereas a jury trial doesn't have to do anything of the kind. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) was caught changing its result on the weedkiller, named glyphosate, (commonly called Roundup) at around the same time one of their panel members was caught signing an expert witness contract with a lawyer hopinh to sue over the weedkiller.
Most of the public don't want to read all of that, they will roll their eyes and feel like it must be another conspiracy theory, but the difference between a pharmaceutical company and a supplement grifter is that the people at Big Pharma will go to federal prison if they lie. If a supplement person lies, a law passed by President Clinton, the biggest science denier in the White House perhaps ever, gave them a free pass - all they have to do is put in fine print that FDA has not validated their beliefs that bras cause cancer while turmeric prevents it.
Stay skeptical, even if the person making the claim is in your political tribe.
Citation: Miller DG, Lapen K, Dee EC, et al. Fear and Medical Misinformation Regarding Risk of Progression or Recurrence Among Patients with Breast Cancer. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(12):e2549809. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.49809
NOTES:
(1) Predatorts still find a way. They allege Merck lied in the clinical trials(!) and that FDA was too stupid to catch them. Or in collusion. Activist lawyers, the same people who try to claim weedkillers cause cancer and coffee causes breast cancer, will always find a way to sue in the only country where tort reform is banned.
(2) 2008 was the year that President-elect Obama, who thought maybe vaccines cause autism, floated the idea of having Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in his administration.
Current California Governor Gavin Newsom, derided as San Francisco's Faddish Family-Man-in-Chief because he refused to give his child the MMR vaccine when California progressives had more vaccine exemptions than every other state in the US combined, never failed to embrace a corporate conspiracy. He claimed cell phones cause cancer also.
(3) For decades, the same Environmental Working Group legal outfit that claims deodorant caused your breast cancer have gotten allied journalists to repeat conspiracy theories that strawberries are killing you - unless the toxic pesticide used on them was certified organic by the industry groups that wrote EWG checks. Some gullible corporate media content farmers still write up their claims every week. And then journalists wonder why their trust level among the public is down near near politicians.
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