I put out a call for twitter users to vote for DrRachie, a skeptic physician, in a silly little contest for a twitter award — and I pointed out at the time that the top nominees in the health category were crazy anti-vax fruit loops in altie ‘medicine’. Number one at that time (DrRachie leads now) was a fellow who called himself the Health Ranger AKA Mike Adams, a real crank who runs a ridiculous site called Natural Health News — I link to it to encourage you all to browse it and get a good laugh.

Adams seems to have snapped. Or maybe he was this crazy all along.

He is outraged at being bumped out of the running — not only did he get outvoted, but many of the votes for him were declared invalid, since many people just got a twitter account and posted one item, his nomination. He’s lashing out with accusations of conspiracy and fraud and cheating and is planning to sue the contest. He has totally lost it over this trivial affair.

Look, guy, it’s an internet award. For tweeting. Take the big picture and recognize that as far as significance goes, it’s like finding an especially large and fluffy bit of belly button lint.

Of course, he is a homeopath. Maybe to him, a twitter award is like an infinitely diluted Nobel Prize, and is especially potent.

I do have to point out a wonderful example of irony that is going into my collection. He accuses everyone who voted for DrRachie of fraud, and claims that we’ve been making false accusations of quackery against him.

It wasn’t really surprising to see the vaccine quacks engaging in their false accusations, of course: Lying and cheating is par for the course for the vaccine and pharmaceutical industries. Their supporters apparently reflect that same lack of ethical behavior. They will apparently do anything to win, even if it means engaging in widespread false accusations and trying to get natural health people removed from the contest altogether.

That’s the background. Now brace yourself: he later posted an article describing what skeptics, that is, you and me, actually believe. He did this by ‘researching’ skeptical web sites, none of which he links to, and none of which he actually provides accurate quotes from, but instead, he invents a list of his interpretations of what they say.

• Skeptics believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective (even if they’ve never been tested), that ALL people should be vaccinated, even against their will, and that there is NO LIMIT to the number of vaccines a person can be safely given. So injecting all children with, for example, 900 vaccines all at the same time is believed to be perfectly safe and “good for your health.”

• Skeptics believe that fluoride chemicals derived from the scrubbers of coal-fired power plants are really good for human health. They’re so good, in fact, that they should be dumped into the water supply so that everyone is forced to drink those chemicals, regardless of their current level of exposure to fluoride from other sources.

• Skeptics believe that many six-month-old infants need antidepressant drugs. In fact, they believe that people of all ages can be safely given an unlimited number of drugs all at the same time: Antidepressants, cholesterol drugs, blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping drugs and more — simultaneously!

• Skeptics believe that the human body has no ability to defend itself against invading microorganism and that the only things that can save people from viral infections are vaccines.

• Skeptics believe that pregnancy is a disease and childbirth is a medical crisis. (They are opponents of natural childbirth.)

• Skeptics do not believe in hypnosis. This is especially hilarious since they are all prime examples of people who are easily hypnotized by mainstream influences.

• Skeptics believe that there is no such thing as human consciousness. They do not believe in the mind; only in the physical brain. In fact, skeptics believe that they themselves are mindless automatons who have no free will, no soul and no consciousness whatsoever.

• Skeptics believe that DEAD foods have exactly the same nutritional properties as LIVING foods (hilarious!).

• Skeptics believe that pesticides on the crops are safe, genetically modified foods are safe, and that any chemical food additive approved by the FDA is also safe. There is no advantage to buying organic food, they claim.

• Skeptics believe that water has no role in human health other than basic hydration. Water is inert, they say, and the water your toilet is identical to water from a natural spring (assuming the chemical composition is the same, anyway).

• Skeptics believe that all the phytochemicals and nutrients found in ALL plants are inert, having absolutely no benefit whatsoever for human health. (The ignorance of this intellectual position is breathtaking…)

The only thing breathtaking in that list is the dishonesty. I don’t believe any of that, except that I will admit that I do hold the hilarious position that dead food does have the same nutritional properties of living food — if nothing else, everything I eat is very quickly dead after I’ve ground it to bits between my teeth and dropped it into the acid bath of my stomach. I don’t believe that I extract nutritional value from carrot souls, after all. The rest, though, is looney tunes. Water is inert? A fantastic solvent with complex physicochemical properties is inert? Wow. And at the same time, we think pesticides have no effect on us? I should mention that one of the things I study is teratology and the effect of environmental contaminants on developing embryos…I’m not sure how I rationalized that work if I think common chemicals do nothing.

Mike Adams is certifiably nuts, and worse, he is “lying and cheating,” “engaging in widespread false accusations,” and lacks “ethical behavior.”. At least he doesn’t have to worry that I’ll sue him for being a dingbat.