A sinister alliance

As I believe I mentioned on Sunday, my Internet was out, due to a broken cable as it turns out, and so was my TV. Not having TV was a good thing because it meant I did a lot of reading, including "If it Sounds Like a Quack" by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling. It appears they had trouble figuring out how to get "quack" into the title, which doesn't actually make sense because the book is about quacks, not ducks. Be that as it may the book does tell an important story. 

 

The book is largely structured as the interlaced stories of 7 con artists/snake oil salesmen, most of whom probably believed their own bullshit, but that's typical of con artists. (Actually two of them worked as a team so there are really only 6 stories.) That makes it fun to read but the important history and analysis ends up getting buried in the interstices of the anecdotes. Still, it's there.

 

MHH presents the horrifying tale of how we got where we are today, with a lunatic running the Department of Health and Human Services, biomedical research and health insurance being gutted, and the federal government pushing phony miracle cures and pseudo-science. It all developed out of an alliance between libertarians and classical social conservatives, i.e. racists and misogynists and Christian nationalists. 

 

Part One is the so-called Medical Freedom Movement. As the FDA started to crack down on phony miracle cures, the industry rallied under the banner of consumer rights. As MMH tells it, "As sellers of One True Cures were converted into medical freedom advocates, a side effect was the creation of a political space that welcomed the fringe actors remaining in the anti-vaccine movement." They joined up with Ayn Rand-style libertarians. The 2000 platform of the Libertarian Party called for "a complete separation of medicine from the state. We oppose any government restriction or funding of medical or scientific research . . . . We support an end to government-provided health insurance and health care." 

 

Libertarianism, despite some contradictions, found a home in the Republican party. And so did the snake oil industry. Right-wing radio programs and podcasts largely supported themselves with advertising and promoting it (along with phony investments), and the candidates for president, from Mike Huckabee to Rand Paul were into it as well. But the most important candidate is the one who actually won the nomination in 1996, and he was the most enthusiastic. We know what has happened since.