KCAL9, the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, invited conspiracy theorist Zen Honeycutt -- an anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, conspiracy-mongering snake oil saleswoman and founder of Moms Across America -- to discuss children's health.
If the media has a question about biomedical science, one would assume that a scientist or doctor would be the go-to source of information. But this is 2020, and we're way beyond that.
KCAL9, the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, ran a segment on the safety of the food supply for children. A pediatrician, a nutritionist, an epidemiologist, or a randomly selected professor from the UCLA Medical Center would have made a perfectly fine choice. Instead, KCAL9 went with Zen Honeycutt, an anti-vaccine, anti-GMO conspiracy theorist who is even less reliable than Karen on Facebook.
Honeycutt has no expertise in science or anything resembling it. In the interview, she says that she founded Moms Across America because her children had illnesses that she didn't have as a child -- life-threatening food allergies, asthma, autism, and autoimmune issues. To be sure, autoimmune diseases have certainly increased in recent decades, but the scientific community doesn't know why.
But Honeycutt does. She concluded that GMOs and glyphosate were to blame. How? Well, she doesn't say, but presumably she "did her research." After all, a person with a bachelor's degree in fashion design probably knows more about public health than scientists, anyway.
As one might expect, she spouts a bunch of incoherent, self-contradictory nonsense. At one point in the interview (1:43), she claims that glyphosate can't be washed off of vegetables. Then, seconds later (2:27), she says that glyphosate can contaminate organic food because it gets washed off by the rain. And if you weren't sufficiently scared of glyphosate, she then accuses it of causing cancer, liver disease, and reproductive problems. Of course, literally everything she has said up to this point is a lie -- including "and" and "the."
Zen Honeycutt Is an Anti-Vaccine, Conspiracy-Mongering Snake Oil Saleswoman
Not only does Honeycutt spread disinformation about the safety of the food supply and children's health, she also lies about vaccines. She makes the bizarre claim that vaccines are contaminated with glyphosate, which is incredibly unlikely, to put it mildly. She also says that the FDA knows about this danger and is hiding it, which makes her a full-blown conspiracy theorist.
Amazingly, Honeycutt once wrote an article blaming GMOs for opioid addiction, divorce, insomnia, and ruining family holidays like Halloween. She wrote another saying that the deployment of 5G wireless technology is the "ultimate violation of human rights," because fancy things like electricity are linked to "heart disease, cancer, diabetes and suicide."
How can you cleanse yourself of these poisons? Well, you're in luck. It just so happens that Honeycutt sells a magical detox potion. For the modest price of $35.99, you can be the proud owner of a two-ounce bottle of elixir whose miraculous medicinal properties have not been evaluated by the FDA. How ironic. Maybe the FDA is hiding something about the detox potion?
So now we know why Honeycutt is doing all this. She is using Moms Across America to make a boat-load of money scaring mothers and peddling snake oil. This is becoming a very common business model: Spread lies on the internet (often about GMOs, vaccines, cancer, Alzheimer's, or some other important public health topic), drive traffic to your website, then sell phony medicine.
And it's all 100% legal.
