Talking Points Memo has the goods on disgraced Evangelical preacher Jimmy Baker:
Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker wants you to know that, as long as you’ve got his branded “Silver Solution” on your side, the novel coronavirus epidemic sweeping the globe doesn’t stand a chance. If only those pesky federal regulators hadn’t gotten in the way!
Bakker, a once-mainstream Evangelical disgraced by a sex scandal and a fraud conviction, is now best known for his relentless merchandizing, including with his buckets of freeze-dried food.
And with viewers’ virus concerns peaking last month, he recently took to marketing a miracle cure: “Silver Solution.”
“This influenza that is now circling the globe, you’re saying that Silver Solution would be effective?” Bakker asked the naturopathic doctor Sherrill Sellman on his Feb. 12 show, holding up a bottle of the product.
Silver Solution hadn’t been tested on the current strain of the coronavirus, Sellman responded, but “it has been tested on other strains of the coronavirus, and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours. Totally eliminates it, kills it, deactivates it.” …
The Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission told the Jim Bakker show Friday that that pitch, and several others, had crossed the line.
“You should take immediate action to correct the violations cited in this letter,” officials from the agencies wrote to Bakker’s show in a letter dated March 6.
“The claims cited above are not supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence,” the regulators added later. “You must immediately cease making all such claims.”
If you’re wondering about the word naturopathic, Wikipedia defines it fairly harshly:
Naturopathy or naturopathic medicine is a form of alternative medicine that employs an array of pseudoscientific practices branded as “natural”, “non-invasive”, or promoting “self-healing”. The ideology and methods of naturopathy are based on vitalism and folk medicine, rather than evidence-based medicine (EBM). Naturopathic practitioners generally recommend against following modern medical practices, including but not limited to medical testing, drugs, vaccinations, and surgery. Instead, naturopathic practice relies on unscientific notions, often leading naturopaths to diagnoses and treatments that have no factual merit.
Why this Sellman dude, who supposedly endorses natural therapies, would think a colloidal silver formulation is anything close to natural is rather beyond me. Incidentally, this Skeptical Inquirer magazine cover recently crossed my desk:
Gets right to the point, doesn’t it?
So, it appears this particular Evangelical preacher, even disgraced, can’t stay himself from preying on the credulous. It’s all of a piece, in my mind, since I figure much of his audience will be Evangelicals, because redemption is – quite sensibly – a big part of Christianity. I see them as a beef cow that just keeps on giving, even though the restraints holding it in place are of the flimsiest material – imagination.
