Gary Null

Gary Michael Null is an American talk radio host and author who advocates pseudoscientific alternative medicine and produces a line of questionable dietary supplements.

Null is hostile to evidence-based medicine and has accused the medical community of being in a cabal with the pharmaceutical industry to suppress novel treatments for economic gains. He has promoted a range of pseudo-scientific and ineffective alternative treatments, including ones for cancer. He says he became interested in nutrition shortly after that while he was working as a part-time cook in New York City. Null's doctoral thesis was entitled "A Study of Psychological and Physiological Effects of Caffeine on Human Health"; the degree was conferred in July 1989 when he was 44 years old.

Null's academic credentials were investigated by Stephen Barrett, who expressed sharp skepticism about their quality and the quality of his PhD thesis. At the time of Null's education, Edison State College was a non-traditional institute that had no campus and conferred degrees via an external degree program, and towards which administrators evaluated "college-level learning achieved through work or life experiences, self-study, college courses taken previously, industry-sponsored education programs, military instruction" and other prior learning. In place of standard medical therapy, Null advocated alternative cancer treatments such as Krebiozen, laetrile and Gerson therapy, asserting that "the alternatives have been covered up by those science writers of the national news media who ride shotgun for the medical establishment's solid-gold cancer train". Null has also advocated for the long-debunked Revici's chemotherapy in one of his radio-shows.

Over the years, Null has owned multiple business ventures attempting to sell nutritional supplements for a wide range of diseases and disorders, along with a natural gourmet restaurant, a wellness retreat and an organic farm.

In 1979–80, he co-authored a series of articles on cancer research for Penthouse, entitled "The Politics of Cancer", beginning with "The Great Cancer Fraud", which opened: "America's cancer plague has made the medical establishment and its media collaborators rich-even as they suppress new cancer cures". They provided early coverage of the Burzynski Clinic, a controversial clinic that offered an unproven cancer treatment, helping to bring it to public prominence, alleged that mainstream physicians advocate treatments that killed patients sooner than cancer itself and that conventional therapies amplified the disease. In 1985, Null began writing a lengthy series of reports for Penthouse titled "Medical Genocide" that asserted mainstream medicine was completely ineffective in curing a range of major ailments from cardiac diseases to arthritis.

Null is also an HIV/AIDS denialist and asserts the existence of government conspiracies to suppress effective diet-based treatments for AIDS. As of 1999, his position was reported to be that the role that HIV played in AIDS was not as great as scientists generally believed, a discredited theory. By 2013, however, Null was writing on his blog that "HIV equals AIDS" was a "myth". His book AIDS: A Second Opinion advocated for a range of dietary supplements for HIV-positive individuals instead of antiretroviral medication. the OPV AIDS hypothesis was propounded for the first time over one of his radio-shows, by a fellow foot-soldier. Some of Null's productions portrayed those patients as the real heroes, who rejected anti-retroviral therapy in favor of his nutrition-based regimen. Salon described his work as "massive, irresponsible and nearly unreadable". AIDS advocacy groups have asked for his works to be censured, as detrimental to public health. Nicoli Nattrass described Null as a 'cultopreneur'. The Los Angeles Times wrote that Null's experience "should give pause to anyone lured by the extravagant claims of many supplement makers", and said that it was common for dietary supplements to contain doses "wildly different than those indicated on their label" as a result of weak regulation.

Null had been a keynote speaker at a rally opposing mandatory H1N1 influenza vaccination during the 2009 flu pandemic, leading the New York State Department of Health to hold a simultaneous conference to dismiss Null's claims about the vaccine as "not scientifically credible" by discussing the clinical trials. Null had opposed public vaccination deeming them as unsafe and ineffective treatments; he has also promoted discredited notions of vaccines causing autism and other ailments, including leading to infant death. Discussing Null's anti-vaccination efforts, Harriet Hall deems Null to have a bad track record for scientific credibility.

Jonathan Howard, former director of Neurology department at Bellevue Hospital, stated that Null's book Death by Medicine (wherein he had calculated conventional medicine to be the single-largest cause of death in America), was statistically flawed and ill-intended, with an aim to gain on a potential rift between patients and mainstream physicians.

Null has been also a supporter of touch therapy and magnet therapy, both of which have been long determined to not provide any tangible health benefits. In a product brochure, he falsely claimed of magnets being inserted in space suits to avoid adverse complications in astronauts. He has also promoted homeopathy, vouched for pangamic acid to be Vitamin B15. Null also recommends coffee enemas and advocates for cranial osteopathy, applied kinesiology and pulsed electromagnetic field therapy.

Null has produced many works (incl. television programs and books) about reversing aging; he rejects mainstream scholarship deeming the inevitable progression of senescence as normalcy and instead typifies a popular mis-construal about the aging body being an abnormal deviant.

Science-Based Medicine described Null as a consistent opponent of evidence-based medicine. Butler said Null was the foremost promoter of dangerous health-related misinformation to the public and sarcastically remarked that Null is so often wrong, it may be better for an average audience to believe the precise opposite of what he says.

Media work

Null began broadcasting a syndicated radio talk show, Natural Living with Gary Null, in 1980. His show was broadcast first on WBAI, then on the VoiceAmerica Network and over the Internet. Null's show subsequently returned to WBAI, leading to protests from ACT-UP New York and other AIDS activist groups concerned by Null's promotion of AIDS denialism. He continues to host The Gary Null Show through the Progressive Radio Network, which he established in 2005. His shows attracted about a fifth of the total audience-subscriptions to WBAI circa 1994 Butler has written that Null has provided potentially dangerous and outright dubious medical advice to a variety of patient-callers via these fora. The use of Null's films in PBS pledge drives has raised ethical concerns for those involved with the network, who felt that Null's claims were pseudo-scientific and that PBS should not promote them. While Null's films were highly Some member stations have refused to broadcast his programs.

Film

Null has written, directed and self-produced dozens of documentary-style films. Poverty Inc was released in 2014 to poor reviews from critics. Other films include Autism: Made in the U.S.A. (2009) and Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own (2007).