#2770: Josh Disbrow et al.

It is hardly a surprise that something like Covid would bring an army of quacks, grifters and pseudoscientists out of the woodworks to try to sell you silly, costly and ineffective treatments for the virus. Some of them even got a boost (deliberately or inadvertently) by confused and bullshit-prone public authorities, like when then-president Trump suggested using internal light to treat COVID-19. Whether Trump knew it or not (he certainly didn’t care), that idea was already being pushed by a company called Aytu Bioscience, which had developed a device called Healight, a catheter with an LED emitting UV-A light. According to Aytu’s CEO Josh Disbrow (who owns the company with his brother Jarrett) and the company’s scientists Mark Pimentel, Ruchi Mathur, Gil Melmed, and Ali Rezaie, working with Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Healight “has the potential to significantly impact the high morbidity and mortality of coronavirus-infected patients and patients infected with other respiratory pathogens.” It doesn’t, a conclusion not affected by the fact that Aytu did have a glitzy promotional video advertising the product, Tweets of which were promptly but temporarily deleted by Twitter along with the company’s Twitter account, after they started getting pushed by a horde of Trump fans and bots eager and/or desperate to edit reality to make it look as if there were (laughable) support for the president’s (dumb) claim. Wingnuts like Breitbart promptly yelled “censorship”. So it goes.

 

Healight’s claims and the evidence for them are comprehensively assessed here. Now, the developers had, in fact, been working on the Healight device even before Covid, and in an abstract published in the United European Gastroenterology Journal in 2019, they claimed to have evidence that intracolonic UVA light exhibits significant in vitro bactericidal effects in an array of bacteria. Of course, that bactericidal effects doesn’t translate into antiviral effects was a detail quickly brushed over when Covid arrived to present its marketing opportunities, but an even more obvious obstacle elegantly brushed over is the rather important in vitro qualifier: Even if the device actually had impressive in vitro antiviral effects, how would that apply to, say, the type 1 and 2 pneumocytes in the alveoli of the lungs typically affected by Covid and which no device (regardless of whether it was developed for intracolonic application, like Healight, or not) could conceivably reach? Then again, it’s probably a good thing that the device couldn’t actually do what the developers suggested (but were careful not to outright assert) that it could: even if the treatment could actually be delivered, which it can’t, and were able to selectively target virally infected cells and not other cells, which it isn’t (so it would probably kill you if it worked as claimed), it would, if it could kill virally infected cells (which no evidence suggests it can), cause a wave of cell death – rather than killing infected cells over time, as your immune system does – that would severely increase the inflammatory response, something patients already severely affected by Covid might … want to avoid, for obvious reasons.

 

No, from the point of view of basic anatomy and medicine, the device makes no sense. But then, neither did hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, and lack of sense didn’t halt those products from gaining widespread popularity among those whose epitsemic processes are governed by treating Trump is right as axiomatic. Ivermectin, at least, has genuine uses for other kinds of livestock.

 

Now, Aytu did in fact ultimately conduct a small clinical study. The study did suggest that Healight, fortunately (and contrary to how Aytu tried to spin the study), didn’t do shit and was accordingly probably safe.

 

Diagnosis: Yeah, they did conduct a study they shouldn’t have bothered to conduct, and the product seems to have faded from view afterwards as a crank treatment for Covid. Disbrow et al.’s hyping, for commercial purposes, something that couldn’t work still qualifies them all for an entry here and may hopefully help you make safe decisions if you ever encounter their names in the future.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence; For Better Science

#2769: Tania Dilmani

Tania Dilmani is a California-based grifter and quack. Her website (“mommyhomeopathy”) promotes an impressive array of quackery, but the central component of it all is, of course, the quackiest one of them all: homeopathy. And since her medical advice is already completely and utterly untethered to anything resembling reality anyways, Dilmani is, of course, an anti-vaccine activist as well: Indeed, according to Dilmani, the fact that vaccines are safe, effective and necessary is a myth (so there), and instead of anything reality-based, she recommends “homeoprophylaxis for immune boosting” as a viable alternative to vaccines. Needless to say, her recommendation is bonkers and Tania Dilmani is lunatic to the extent that her nonsense becomes hard to distinguish from malice.

Dilmani isn’t quite as obscure as she ought to be, however, insofar as she received a boost from other anti-vaccine activists during the (fortunately successful) California fight to eliminate non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates around 2015. Dilmani even appeared at seminars with people like anti-vaccine MD Bob Sears, which should really serve to emphasize how little concern Sears has for facts, evidence and accountability, but which was, we suspect, also entirely audience appropriate.

 

Diagnosis: At this level of crazy nonsense, it’s malice. Tania Dilmani is evil.

#2768: Brenden Dilley

Brenden Dilley is a MAGA “life coach”, professional asshole (“I really have a deep appreciation for pettiness”) and rightwing broadcaster on YourVoice America (a popular stop for media personalities on the MAGA clown circuit, such as Roseanne Barr), Periscope, (occasionally) YouTube and Twitter (“a shitty, disgusting, pedo-filled fucking communist organization”, according to Dilley after having been repeatedly and persistently banned), whose fame rests primarily on his promotion of QAnon conspiracy theories. According to himself, he did initially doubt the authenticity of QAnon posts until an unspecified member of the Trump family at one point confirmed to Dilley that the QAnon conspiracy theory was legit. (Dilley subsequently went on to apologize to the Trump family.)

 

Dilley, however, has managed to become a rather seriously influential figure in American political life. He is the unofficial leader of a “troll army” that is currently attacking Trump’s enemies on social media, and he has gained direct access to the Trump campaign and even Trump himself. Dilley and his Dilley Meme Team were also behind the video So God Made Trump, with AI-genereated narration in the voice of the long-dead Paul Harvey, which Trump himself posted to his social media accounts.

 

Trump

Most of all, Dilley is an unconditional sycophant of Trump and all things Trump; according to Dilley: “Part of what makes President Trump special is that we finally have somebody we can build legend around and you need that in culture”. You see, Trump is “a legitimate, high IQ genius” and his performance as president is without historical peer: “This is prime Michael Jordan, this is prime Tom Brady, this is prime Joe Montana, this is prime [Wayne] Gretzky.” He has accordingly mocked the left for not grasping the “simple science” that Trump, ”the golden-haired Adonis that he is”, has “God-tier genetics”. Indeed, the only apparent flaw of Trump’s presidency, as Dilley sees it, is that Trump was not “nearly as authoritarian as we hoped he would be” while in office: Dilley explicitly wanted Trump to be a dictator and “wanted him to rule with an iron fist”, and is accordingly sad that Trump ostensibly “would not abuse his powers” but would remain “respectful of the rule of law”. So, as a lead-up to the 2020 election, Dilley demanded that as soon as Trump won, he should immediately invoke the Insurrection Act and round up members of the press and his political enemies for prosecution and execution: Trump supporters had better “start developing a stomach for death” (or, as Dilley put it, “testicular fortitude”) when Trump and his team finally manages get in position to be “firmly imposing the law of the land”, for death is “what it’s going to take”.

 

When Trump in fact lost the election, Dilley was of course quick to call “fraud”, e.g. by challenging anyone to disprove his easily disproven claim that 130,000 fraudulent ballots were brought in for Biden in the middle of the election night in Wisconsin, or flatly asserting, without anything remotely resembling sources to back it up, that “Joe Biden probably got 10 to 15 million fraudulent votes.” He also quickly declared that Trump “is not going anywhere” because his supporters “are more than prepared to do everything – and I mean fucking everything – to preserve our constitutional republic and to protect our president.” Indeed, Dilley remained confident for a long time afterwards that “Trump is going to win”, however: “You can scream ‘illegitimate’ all the way up until 2025, when Trump will probably get reelected again because he’s going to petition for a third term because you motherfuckers kept trying to rig the first two terms.” He would just wait for the hand of God to prove that heroes and legends still exist in America. Just in case, however, Dilley had even prior to the 2020 election been lifting weights and taking testosterone to prepare himself for having to fight off “Chinese super soldiers” if Joe Biden became president. We admit that Dilley’s response to his own prediction makes one somewhat curious about what Dilley imagined such encounters were going to look like.

 

The reason Trump lost – or come across as having lost – is, of course, that Trump, despite his qualities, has powerful enemies; the reason the “most of the powerful leaders in America and around the world” wanted and want to stop Trump from assuming the presidency again is “because he cracked down on their ability to fuck and traffick children from 2016-2020.” Others were too cowardly or treasonous to step forth: In 2020, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, for instance, became “officially a traitor to the United States of America” for certifying the state’s election with Biden as the winner.

 

Weighing in on the big discussion of potential Taylor Swift endorsements in 2024, Dilley warned Swift not to endorse Biden or else it will be necessary for MAGA to “punish that bitch”: “Right now, there’s been no commitment, so for now, we are essentially courting [Swift]. There are people that you are courting; once they make the wrong choice, you punish.”

 

Biden

As for Biden himself, well: who he? During Covid times, Dilley wondered whether Biden continued to wear a mask not to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but to make it easier to hide the fact that “it’s different people playing Joe Biden” (Dilley himself refrained from wearing a mask during Covid because he was actually hoping to give the virus to “your fat, disgusting, fucking gross liberal mother”; he also claimed that his refusal to wear a mask was a hill he would “die on”, which, had it happened, would probably not have had the rhetorical effect he was aiming for). In any case, the person playing Biden is being instructed, through a covert earpiece, on what to say and how to act by “that gay, lispy fuck” former Rep. Barney Frank. In 2020, Dilley vowed not to pay taxes or obey laws if Biden became president – “I’m not fucking living under an illegitimate presidency” – but it’s unclear to what extent he’s followed up on that.

 

Post-truth

As one of the most explicit champions of a post-truth political discourse, Dilley is at least explicit about spreading fake news, however: “I don’t give a fuck about being factual,” says Dilley but rather “make shit up all the time.” He can do so because his “objective is to destroy Democrats, OK? To destroy liberals, liberalism as an idea, Democrats, and anything that opposes President Trump. That’s my goal.” Brenden made that particular comment in connection with his unconditional praise for Trump’s baseless accusation that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough had something to do with the 2001 death of a woman who worked in Scarborough’s congressional office; Dilley rather urged his listeners to start “investigating” whether Scarborough may have also been involved in the 1996 death of JonBenét Ramsey because why not? Given his audience’s cognitive situations, they’d certainly be able to come up with something to convince themselves. And then again, Dilley has anyways urged his listeners to harass reporters and politicians “all the time” anyways. It’s little wonder that the Trump campaign has warmed to this fellow.

 

Fans

In 2020, Donald Trump Jr. sent Dilley an autographed copy of his book along with a personal note thanking him for his “support to #MAGA.” Donald Trump Jr. isn’t Dilley’s only significant fan, however; after Dilley declared, in 2020, that he was just waiting for the “green light” from Trump to start gunning down protesters over the murder of George Floyd (or, really, anyone he disagrees with), Republican then-congressional candidate Buzz Patterson appeared on his livestream program to tell Dilley that he loved him like a brother. As for the protestors assertion, Dilley’s position was presumably also influenced by his assumption that the killing of Floyd and the resulting protests were deep state, false flag psy-op aimed at preventing Trump’s reelection. Other fans of Dilley include the aforementioned Roseanne Barr and Aubrey Huff.

 

There’s a decent Brenden Dilley resource here.

 

Diagnosis: It’s easy to believe that you can write him off as merely a laughable clown, but although Dilley is a laughable clown, he is, like many clowns, pretty scary: Dilley’s style and content is Trump’s, just with added anger, coherence and cursing, and his brand of post-truth rhetoric – silly as it may seem to anyone minimally reasonable – has established itself as the cultural identity of a rather larger amount of people than most civilized people would like to think. Dilley’s popularity  and influence is not at all surprising, and that’s the scary part.

#2767: Adrienna DiCioccio

Adrienna DiCioccio is a conspiracy theorist and repeat InfoWars guest with ties to the Proud Boys and Roger Stone, and is perhaps most famous for organizing – or attempting to organize – a 2019 symbolic one-day boycott of social media sites to protest these sites’ alleged censorship of conservatives; together with Laura Loomer, she has also organized protests at Twitter’s headquarters in its pre-Elon-Musk days, and she has organized wingnut “free speech” rallies in DC. The campaigns gained a modicum of traction in wingnut circles who may or may not have been aware (they probably were) of the kind of views DiCioccio had in mind as being censored conservative viewpoints.

 

Notably, DiCioccio is a prominent promoter of QAnon conspiracy theories, claiming that what she perceives as US ruling elites are really covert Satan-worshipping child traffickers and cannibals, as well as a Sandy Hook truther, claiming that Sandy Hook was a false flag and that the government staged the 2012 elementary school shooting as a means for pushing gun control. DiCioccio was among the sources Alex Jones infamously promoted in his push for Sandy Hook trutherism. DiCioccio is also responsible for promoting weird QAnon-backed fake news hoaxes (subsequently a Snopes mainstay) about Oprah having been arrested for supposedly being part of a child sex-trafficking ring.

 

As you’d have expected, DiCioccio was also present in DC in connection with the January 6, 2021 insurrection, but seems not to have faced any charges.

 

Diagnosis: An angry, paranoid, minor but well-connected cogwheel in the garbled nonsense chaos machinery of contemporary wingnuttery, DiCioccio is yet another victim of the redpill epidemic. And she has, like redpill victims do, utterly forsaken the cognitive standards of accuracy, evidence and facts in favor of the familiar, paranoid conspiracies all the way down scheme of reasoning.

#2766: Tracy Diaz

Some dingbat conspiracy theorist
interviewing Beanz at CPAC 2020

A.k.a. Tracy Beanz 

 

Tracy Diaz is a youtuber and conspiracy theorist who was, at least in part, responsible for helping the QAnon conspiracy gain a broader audience back in 2017: prior to the efforts of Diaz and 4chan moderators Pamphlet Anon (Coleman Rogers) and BaruchtheScribe (South African conspiracy theorist Paul Furber), 4chan was riddled with various anonymous “anon” posters claiming to be high-level political operatives, and QAnon seems to have been rather randomly selected among these for wider dissemination; Diaz, at the time a small-time YouTuber with a background as a wingnut talkshow hosts for Liberty Movement Radio and a former Ron Paul staffer, had already achieved moderate popularity (a few thousand views) for YouTube videos with conspiracy-theory-based analyses of WikiLeaks releases and Pizzagate nonsense, apparently realized that promoting QAnon could boost her popularity, and she launched her career with the video “/POL/- Q Clearance Anon - Is it #happening???”. That one was followed by multiple sequels in which Diaz, using the familiar technique of free association, would attempt to “decipher” Q’s “cryptic” messages. Together with Rogers and Furber, Diaz also established the Reddit community CBTS_Stream (“Calm Before The Storm”), where they reached a larger audience of conspiracy theorists, and from which their nonsense would begin – with substantial help from Russian accounts – to infect various other social media channels. Diaz was herself banned from various mainstream platforms like Patreon, Facebook and Twitter (later reinstated), but she continued to earn thousands of dollars from outlets like SubscribeStar.

 

Diaz’s work was apparently sufficiently well received by wingnut leaders for her to be invited as a speaker to the 2020 American Priority Conference, or “AMPFest”, at then-president Trump’s Trump National Doral Miami, together with similarly conspiracy-minded loons like leading anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, jr., leading wingnut conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, US Representative Matt Gaetz, Simone Gold, Corey Lewandowski and Roger Stone. 

 

In addition to the standard QAnon ideas – centrally, that the world is really run by a cabal of pedophiles – Diaz has also promoted conspiracy theories about Covid-19, claiming that news media exaggerated the pandemic as part of a broader conspiracy to gain “power”: apparently mainstream media deliberately “stopped the economy” in order “to damage the president [Donald Trump] in his re-election. They want people scared.” That Covid also existed outside the US is irrelevant since it doesn’t support Diaz’s narrative. Much of her nonsense, including election fraud conspiracies, is pushed by the website UncoverDC, for which Diaz is editor-in-chief. Diaz is also on the board of directors for Michael Flynn’s organization America’s Future, one of the groups that paid for the Arizona Senate’s self-styled election audit in 2021, and she recently appeared as a talking head in Flynn’s autohagiographic conspiracy flick Flynn.

 

In fact, Diaz has denied that she has promoted QAnon conspiracies at all but instead has approached the topic as “an online journalist”, and she has threatened those who accurately describe her activities otherwise with legal action.

 

In April 2021, Diaz was elected as a Republican committeewoman in South Carolina, as part of a general push from QAnon proponents to seek public office. In 2022, her Twitter account was also reinstated, something she celebrated with a barrage of misinformation about the COVID vaccine and unsupported accusations of voter fraud, mostly stuff that had already been thoroughly debunked.

 

Diagnosis: All nonsense and misinformation, of course, but Diaz doesn’t care; that is, she generally doesn’t seem to consider truth, evidence or accuracy to be relevant for whether she should promote – or even believe ­– something. And given her audience, and that what she does care about is attention and recognition, she’s presumably right about that, unfortunately.

#2765: Philippe Diaz

Philippe Diaz is the deranged CEO of Cinema Libre Studios, an LA-based movie production and distribution company, nominally “of independent narratives and social issue, documentary films” (and though Diaz is French, he lives in the US and qualifies for an entry here). In particular, Cinema Libre produced Andrew Wakefield’s “documentary” Vaxxed, which according to Diaz took up an issue that “has been suppressed for far too long”. And when the conspiracy nonsense and misinformation in Wakefield’s film started to receive the criticism it amply deserved, Diaz predictably threatened critics with legal action – indeed, Diaz wanted critics “prosecuted”, apparently under the delusion that criticizing the movie and petitioning venues not to show the film is a crime. The threats were of course intented to intimidate critics into silence so that they wouldn’t get his film canceled because the film’s critics ostensibly doesn’t value free speech like he does. So it goes. Also, “the movie [Vaxxed] is not anti-vaccine and neither is Dr. Wakefield. Rather, it promotes safe vaccine protocols,” said Philippe Diaz.

Diagnosis: Though we may not have any insight into Diaz’s personal views on vaccination, it is clear that he has established himself as one of today’s central promoter of anti-vaccine misinformation, and his legal thuggery more than indicates that he’s a piece of garbage through and through.

#2764: Heather Dexter

Heather Dexter is an anti-vaccine activist, naturopath, general quack, sometimes mommy-blogger and a general threat to the health and welfare of her surroundings, including her own children: As she proudly relates in a post for the hardcore conspiracy theory- and pseudoscience-promoting and New Age-religious extremist blog and facebook group Like-Minded Mamas, she forewent vaccines for her three children, instead letting them get deathly ill with whooping cough so that they would achieve “natural immunity”. In Dexter’s deranged excuse for a mind, immunity to whooping cough – the point of which one would think is to not get whooping cough – is better if it is natural (it isn’t). She also avoided taking her children to a real doctor or use real medicine to alleviate their suffering, which they could easily have done, because alleviating suffering is “unnatural”.

 

Illuminatingly, when she discovered that people near to her (and with more knowledge than her) didn’t immediately agree with her decision, she “felt blind-sided and hurt, unsupported and ready to blow” but came to terms with it in the manner of a true F student in a high-school philosophy course: “I have learned that my truth does not belong to all of humanity. Each person is entitled to their beliefs and logic or training”. She emphasized however, how much she had suffered through the whole ordeal: “It was a living HELL. Every day. It had an intense effect on my marriage and relationship with my husband. It caused me to question everything I knew about Natural Health.” Because the whole incident was, of course, about her and about her beliefs and her, Heather Dexter’s, self-esteem as a mother. Fuck the children. The more they suffer, the more she can show that she’s a good mother. And fortunately she made it through (the test subjects for her motherhood identity, the children, recovered): “It has been my biggest challenge to date as a mother. This mother conquered.” Children are, like purses, the accessories to motherhood against which your mettle as a mother is evaluated by your peer group.

 

Besides, she did get the support she needed when she “called my mentor and the founder of my Naturopathy school to gain yet another naturopathic perspective. She had nothing but good things to say. She once again boosted my morale.” Remember that naturopaths like these think of themselves as being capable of helping other people with health issues. If that doesn’t frighten you, you are either stupid or deeply cynical – Dexter herself is apparently “a Board Certified Naturopathic Doctor, Certified Affiliated Bradley Method Instructor, Certified Holistic Doula, Certified Usui Reiki Master Practitioner” (though it is unclear who “certified” her – presumably those who took her money in exchange of a diploma). And her naturopathic peer group (including one Sarah Mokma of Rooted Well – a deranged quack whose name is duly noted for future reference) had advice: “Turns out the best way to clear out the lungs is through the rectum … enemas.” This is, of course, utter nonsense, but it will exacerbate the suffering of the children and thus provide Heather Dexter with another notch in her motherhood belt. She also used homeopathy, “chiropractic care, probiotics, and optimum nutrition” and later “Olive Leaf Extract, Elderberry Syrup, Pau D’arco Extract, Light Therapy and Reflexology” and a whole slew of supplements – in short, she made it amply clear that neither she nor her naturopathic colleagues had the faintest clue what they were doing.

 

And just in case you didn’t yet draw the obvious conclusion that Heather Dexter is a dangerous moron for foregoing vaccines and medicine: “I just want you to ask yourself … How did people make it through for thousands of years? How did they get through the Spanish Influenza, the Black Plague, fevers and other ailments?” They didn’t, Heather. That’s the whole fucking point. Children died. The fact that some “school” (presumably a diploma mill) charged you money for what they called an “education” might actually be a crime.

 

Now, Dexter did receive some criticism for her actions, so she and her colleagues promptly shut the facebook group. As they explained it, the group and Dexter’s story were about “honoring a mother’s intuition”; but unfortunately “the story found itself in the hands of those who are out to destruct”. But don’t for a moment think that Dexter learned anything from criticism; quite the contrary: “this experience has shown us that we need to be even louder”.

 

Diagnosis: Completely delusional, and as a result of her delusions combined with her ego and self-centeredness, an immediate threat to her surroundings. Heather Dexter is, in short, a terrible person – religious conviction is no excuse – and, as she more or less explicitly admits herself, a horrible parent who won’t hesitate to torture her own children if it strokes her own ego.

 

Hat-tip: The skeptical OB