Medical Conspiracy Theories - Substack Is Not Helping The Cause.

I love Substack, but the platform is being hijacked by liars & frauds that are killing people.

On December 8, 2020, Dr. Pierre Kory walked into Room 342 of the Hart Senate Office Building to deliver testimony that would fundamentally alter the landscape of American health misinformation. As he faced the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Kory carried with him the conviction of a small network of doctors and entrepreneurs who believed they had discovered suppressed cures for COVID-19.

"There is a drug that is proving to be a miraculous impact," Kory told the senators, his voice rising with conviction. "And when I say miracle, I do not use that term lightly."

The video of Kory's testimony went viral within days, viewed over one million times. But the real impact wouldn't be measured in views—it would be measured in how this moment crystallized a network of health misinformation spreaders who had been building parallel medical institutions on a newsletter platform called Substack.*

The story of how fringe newsletter writers became influential voices in health policy begins with a fi…