Time To Kill The Steve Kirsch Lies

Some time ago, we said it was time to kill, aka, debunk, all the false claims made by the online presence known as Died Suddenly. In that post (you may recall), Dr Chaim pronounced Died Suddenly officially dead.

Now it’s time to kill something else. It’s time to kill all the lies and disinformation shoveled out by well known far-right extremist’s hero, conspiracy theorist, and outright fraud-pusher, Steve Kirsch.

Who Wants To Be A Fraud

It appears though, that Kirsch didn’t start out all that bad. A graduate of MIT in 1980, he was one of two people who independently invented the first versions of the optical mouse. He continued in the IT field, founding various companies including Infoseek, Frame Technology, Abaca, OneID, and M10.

However, it appears that his former desire for IT fame and fortune (he and his wife fund a charitable foundation which gives billions of dollars to various causes, including many Democratic party related funds), has given way to a new desire: to be an idiotic fraud spinmeister.

The Making of a COVID Misinformation SuperSpreader

In April 2020, Kirsch founded the “COVID 19 Early Treatment Fund” (CETF) to fund research into off-label treatments for COVID19 among drugs already having FDA approval for other diseases. Among the drugs that this fund studied were fluvoxamine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) primarily used for psychiatric disorders including obsessive-compulsive disorder, and hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug which also has some use as an immunosuppressive and antirheumatic drug.

But when the studies funded by CETF failed to find any convincing evidence that either of these two drugs had any real effectiveness against COVID 19, Kirsch reportedly went crazy, post on the Medium platform a piece he titled The Fast, Easy, Safe, Simple, Low-Cost Solution to COVID That Works 100% of the Time That Nobody Wants to Talk About. Medium soon took it down and banned him from the site for false information.

Kirsch then pushed CETF’s attention to ivermectin, and anti-parasitic drug that is FDA approved for use in humans only for certain parasitic infections. He continued to push this drug as a “cure” for COVID19 despite lack of scientific evidence to support his contention.

Not surprisingly, a tug of war between CETF’s advisory board and Kirsch began because of his refusal to believe the results of the studies showing no real effectiveness of the drugs being studied. Kirsch continued to push the insanity until eventually the entire CETF advisory board resigned rather than deal with his idiocy.

Full-Tilt Schizo?

It’s at about this time that we can assume that Kirsch’s brain went full-on schizophrenic.

Kirsch began touting misinformation about COVID19, as well as the vaccines that were, by that time, rolling out en masse. Kirsch, using his Substack account and X (formerly Twitter) presences, he either directly pushed or supported false claims including vaccines containing graphene oxide, luciferase, nanochips, that they were negatively affecting fertility, and a host of other claims, all of which have been proven false.

Kirsch’s penchant for misinterpreting previously published data is well known. On September 17, 2021, he conned his way into a public meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and went on a tirade of misinformation, claiming (among other trash) that COVID19 vaccines “kill twice as many as they save”. He offered inaccurate information to support his claim, appearing to rely heavily on subjective information supplied by the public to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which documents suspected reactions to COVID19 shots to detect possible safety issues.

It is accurately noted that while VAERS is co-managed by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the agencies caution people against using VAERS data to make specific causal links of adverse effects to vaccines without proper research.

But obviously that didn’t stop Kirsch from misinterpreting VAERS data and making a complete ass of himself. His clear M.O. is the old “correlation is causation” fallacy.

Misinterpreting Data

To this day, Kirsch continues to spread COVID19 and vaccine misinformation, recently posting to Facebook:

“COVID-19 vaccines have killed 676,000 Americans.”

Steve Kirsch in an August 6, 2023, blog post

The data Kirsch used to make his was not from VAERS directly, but with an alternative gateway to VAERS run by the anti-vaccine group National Vaccine Information Center, which itself has been infamous for many years in anti-vaccine lies and propaganda.

The CDC cautions that VAERS results, which come from unverified reports that anyone can make, are not enough to determine whether a vaccine actually causes a particular adverse event.

In a communication, the CDC told PolitiFact, a highly-respected fact-checking arm of the Poytner Institute, that “statements that imply that reports of deaths to VAERS following vaccination equate to deaths caused by vaccination are scientifically inaccurate, misleading and irresponsible.”

A Sidenote

Here’s an interesting sidenote about how inaccurate VAERS can be. There is another program run by the FDA, called MedWatch which serves as a reporting tool for consumers and patients to report suspected adverse events from pharmaceuticals, biologics, medical devices, and even cosmetics and food. It is similarly self-reported like VAERS.

I have contended to a number of patients that because of the self-reporting nature of MedWatch, it’s entirely possible for me as a male to make a MedWatch report about a drug, claiming that I suffered ovarian pain from a medication, despite the fact I have no ovaries (in case you weren’t aware, biological males don’t have ovaries). The FDA literally has to consider and accept the report, despite the claim being literally impossible.

Both programs, thankfully, rely on reports to detect patterns of adverse effects or events to help researchers gather data to determine if something requires investigation. So, my one-guy-reporting-ovarian-pain report really wouldn’t go anywhere – even though I actually can submit the report to MedWatch.

From One Set of Lies to Another

Clearly though, COVID19 and its associated vaccines aren’t the only focus of Kirsch’s diseased mind.

With the COVID19 pandemic declared over earlier this year, and the hub-bub over vaccine mandates effectively gone, Kirsch has turned his focus to another huge fallacy: the disproved belief that vaccines cause autism.

Over the last several months, his social media presences, which include Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and his own Substack account, are chock-full of his assertions that vaccines are direct cause of autism in children. Kirsch continues to push these claims, despite the fact that there has not been one single study that has ever been done that has shown even the slightest causal link between any vaccine and the onset of autism in a child.

The Wakefield Fraud

Recall that this fallacy dates back to the 1990s, when Dr Andrew Wakefield, then a physician in the UK, published the results of a study that he had conducted with several co-authors, supposedly showing a direct link between the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine and onset of autism in children.

However, it soon became clear that Wakefield was in serious trouble. Peer reviews that were unable to corroborate his findings, and subsequent investigative reporting that disclosed that he was actually paid to falsify study data by a UK lawyer and had a patent on his own vaccine that he was trying to push as an alternative to the MMR vaccine. Ultimately, his findings were shown for what they were: 100% fraudulent, and the journal that published original work (the Lancet) retracted his entire work several years later. He also subsequently lost his license to practice medicine in the UK, although it does not appear that he was ever charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

Over the last several years, Wakefield’s fraud has found voice in various anti-vaccine organizations and prominent people, most notoriously in Steve Kirsch.

Lying In Pennsylvania

Kirsch has been found to consistently misrepresent data, as well as publicly lying about vaccination rates among special populations.

On June 9 2023, Kirsch was invited to speak at a “Medical Freedom Panel” being hosted by Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, a far-right Republican and promoter of various COVID19 conspiracy theories. Kirsch made a number of false claims regarding vaccines including the false autism link, but also claimed that vaccines caused other disorders and diseases, including homosexuality, gender dysphoria, attention-deficit disorder, and epilepsy, among others. He used the same fallacies by referencing the Amish community (there is a large Amish community in Pennsylvania), by claiming that such disorders and diseases are not found among the Amish because they were “largely unvaccinated.”

Unfortunately for Kirsch, study data prove him wrong. Studies have not only shown that not only have various Amish communities accepted vaccination, there’s also proof that autism actually does occur among the Amish population.

But of course, pesky little things like facts and medical research never stopped Kirsch from lying in front of cameras and microphones.

“Debate me! Why Won’t You Debate Me?!”

Kirsch has been known to go on ad hominem rampages on social media against several prominent medical researchers for daring to dispute his claims, including Jeffrey Morris, director of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Through his well-researched blog Covid-19 Data Science, Dr Morris gives it right back to Kirsch (I’m waiting for Kirsch to post something stupid about me, but I may be too small-time for his ego since I’m in clinical medicine and not in research).

Kirsch seems to be that little kid in the playground, looking up at the big kids and whining “fight me, I can take you down!” while knowing full well that he’ll get pummeled by even the puniest big kid in the playground. Kirsch persists in goading researchers to debate him, frequently offering millions of dollars to anyone who will publicly debate him on vaccine safety.

This type of talk further encourages the anti-vaccine crowd into believing anything Kirsch says without question under the assumption that he would not pay out his own money if he knew he was wrong.

In fact, the exact opposite is clearly true: he doesn’t have to worry about paying out his own money, because of the tactics he uses in discussion and debate which no one will be able to deal with for very long, making it appear that he would have won a debate without him actually saying anything of truth or substance.

Living and Breathing Fallacies

Watch Kirsch. Listen to him speak. Read anything he writes anywhere. Anyone who has spent more than one semester in high school or college debate will instantly recognize that Kirsch literally lives by a number of logical fallacies – these appear to be his life (I think they’re consistent with schizophrenia, too).

Kirsch has a well-documented pattern of rapidly shifting among the fallacies including “correlation is causation”, “appeal to pity”, “appeal to numbers”, Tu quoque (“you too”), non sequitur (“It does not follow”), and massive amounts of Red Herring and Straw Man.

He isn’t an intelligent speaker, he’s a crafty speaker. He often cuts off people and interjects his views in the middle of conversations. When cornered, he rapidly shifts to another fallacy. He does this so often that any sane person attempting to engage in reasonable and honest debate would feel like giving up; much like some parents feel like either giving up or swatting a child who keeps whining and crying about some toy or a piece of candy they can’t have.

The Definition of “An Arrogant Ass”

It’s worth going back to that 2021 article for MIT Technology Review, Doug Richman, a prominent HIV drug researcher at the University of California-San Diego and a former CETF scientific advisory board member, said of Kirsch:

“You see this with people who have a lot of money, who think that reflects their intelligence. He considers himself an expert in something that he doesn’t have training or experience in, and he’s not following scientific methods to assess data.”

Doug Richman, quoted in MIT Technology Review

To me, that’s pretty much the definition of “Steve Kirsch is an arrogant ass” right there. He believes his wealth makes him correct in anything he thinks. Kirsch appears to believe that he is an expert in any subject he discusses, without any actual training or experience in the subjects he discusses. He demands that everyone completely agree with whatever he says, or he attacks them without any logical arguments to validate the attack.

For as smart as he believes he is, his whole schizophrenic devolution into the fake-science underworld of the far-right anti-vaccine conspiracy cult, is clear evidence that he’s not only an arrogant ass, he’s incredibly stupid as well for allowing his intellect to be so easily co-opted by disinformation and his own delusions.

Kirsch is not made one single claim against any vaccine that has been proven to be true by actual scientific evidence. Because of this, only two options appear possible: he is either profoundly deluded, believing that he is right and everyone else is wrong, or he is a maliciously devious liar, deliberately deceiving people when he himself knows everything he says is an absolute lie.

Pronouncement of Death

Based on all the evidence – I, as a medical provider, pronounce all of Steve Kirsch’s claims and lies to be officially dead. As Chaim inferred of Died Suddenly, may G-d NOT have mercy on Kirsch’s soul – because I strongly doubt that he has one.

Note: a variety of sources are cited throughout this piece, as well as others on this page.