Geoff Pain vs. The Wellness Company and RFK Jr.: I do so love a good crank fight!

If there’s one thing that I enjoy immensely in this world, it’s a good crank fight. The surprising thing to most people is how seldom one crank conspiracy theorist will turn on another, given how often the conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, quackery, and misinformation peddled by different cranks is mutually contradictory or even mutually exclusive. These mutual incompatibilities seldom trouble cranks, because, according to the principle of syncretism, cranks like antivaxxers (to pick one example) don’t really have a problem with all the mutually inconsistent “theories” of how vaccines cause autism and all the other health issues for which they blame vaccines. As long as the “truth” that vaccines are bad is at the core of these “theories,” antivaxxers accept them, no matter how mutually contradictory they are. For antivaxxers, the “truth” has already been spelled out. So it is that the various antivax factions with different false ideas of how vaccines harm people exist in relative peace, at least until they do not. One example came across my feed the other day, that of Geoff Pain, who on his Substack proclaims When the Cat’s away, the Mice will play! Children’s Health Defense California Hijacked by Big Pharma.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s antivax organization Children’s Health Defense? In the thrall of big pharma? Tell me more. First, though, who is Geoff Pain, PhD? His Substack tells me very little other than that he peddles a lot of standard antivax tropes about COVID-19 vaccines; so I had to do a little Googling and found his LinkedIn profile:

Inventor and Consultant Scientist with postdocs at Bristol, Cambridge, Adelaide, Monash, UWA in the fields of nanotechnology, synthetic organometallic chemistry, molecular structure and solution dynamics, catalysis, crystal growth for optoelectronic device fabrication by MOCVD, natural product chemistry and markets, biofuels, essential oils, occupational exposure to toxins and carcinogens.

So Pain appears to be a chemist. Goody. I also see that he’s listed in Fluoride-Free NZ, but without much other than a small photo. In other words, his social media and web footprint is relatively small compared to other antivax “scientists.” Let’s see what his complaint about CHD is. First, of course, Pain feels obligated to state just how much he hopes that RFK Jr. wins the 2024 election and becomes President. Good luck with that. There’s no way RFK Jr. can win, although I do fear that he could be a spoiler by siphoning votes from President Biden. (I do note that there is also an argument that he might siphon off more votes from Donald Trump in critical swing states, but who knows?) Be that as it may, here’s his accusation:

CHD is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the stated aim:

Our mission is to end childhood health epidemics by working aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures, hold those responsible accountable and establish safeguards to prevent future harm. We fight corruption, mass surveillance and censorship that put profits before people as well as advocate for worldwide rights to health freedom and bodily autonomy.

I am sad to see Big Pharma Drug Retailers Peter McCullough of The Wellness Company and his close associate John Leake are on the Advisory Board of CHD.

The Wellness Company? “Big Pharma Drug Retailers”? This is delicious as hell. Tell us more Dr. Pain, tell us more:

They work together to market The Wellness Company (TWC) Medical Emergency and Contagion Kits that contain numerous harmful drugs at US$300 per person as previously described.¹²³⁴

I hope Robert F Kennedy Jr. and his campaign team rethink his association with Big Pharma retailers and in particular developers of new supertoxic Bacterial Jabs, Qu Biologics, that could be described as one of the sister companies of TWC.⁵

“Supertoxic Bacterial Jabs”? I couldn’t go on reading this until I took a look at what the heck Pain was talking about here. He links to a January post on his own Substack (of course) entitled Endotoxin Jabbing recommended by The Wellness Company? The tagline made me laugh:

Thanks to Robert Malone for sharing TrialSite News report on ownership of The Wellness Company showing me why Peter McCullough has never responded to my questions about Endotoxin Induced Myocarditis

Oh, goody. I’m really enjoying this crank fight. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall (because of course it is); so I can only read a small part of it:

Hands up who believes repeated subcutaneous self-injection of QBECO “inactivated” Escherichia coli clinical isolate from a patient with Bloody Diarrhea will be a great therapy? 

Wellness Company owners are pushing it to the extent of Clinical Trials.¹

Their published Figure² shows their theory for “Organ Specific” therapy, despite their paper showing the expected Systemic Septic Shock creating the Cytokine Storm.

Nowhere in their paper do they use the word “Endotoxin”.

The “vehicle” used in the Jabs was “physiological saline, with or without 0.45% phenol as a preservative, and were supplied by Qu Biologics”.

I will grant that this sounds a lot like quackery. Because this article was behind a paywall, I couldn’t access the “endnotes” with the references, but I think I found the 2020 scientific article referenced by Pain in the article, Distinct inactivated bacterial-based immune modulators vary in their therapeutic efficacies for treating disease based on the organ site of pathology. Now, read the abstract, and tell me what you think this therapy is:

Recent developments in understanding how the functional phenotype of the innate immune system is programmed has led to paradigm-shifting views on immunomodulation. These advances have overturned two long-held dogmas: (1) only adaptive immunity confers immunological memory; and, (2) innate immunity lacks specificity. This work describes the observation that innate immune effector cells appear to be differentially recruited to specific pathological sites when mobilized by distinct inactivated bacterial-based stimuli administered subcutaneously. The studies presented suggest that the immune system, upon detecting the first signs of a potential infection by a specific pathogen, tends to direct its resources to the compartment from which that pathogen is most likely originating. The findings from this work puts forth the novel hypothesis that the immunotherapeutic efficacy of a microbial-based stimulus for innate immune mobilization depends on the correct selection of the microbial species used as the stimulant and its relationship to the organ in which the pathology is present.

This sure sounds to me as though they’re talking about a vaccine using killed bacteria as the antigen. However, they reference Coley’s toxin very early in the paper, which suggests more of a generally immune stimulus. Coley’s toxins, if you remember, were a mixture containing toxins filtered from killed bacteria of species Streptococcus pyogenes and Serratia marcescens, named after William Coley, a surgical oncologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery who developed the mixture in the late 19th century as a treatment for cancer and claimed to observe major remissions of cancer. Basically, it’s a very early and primitive form of immunotherapy, whose results were very hit-or-miss and whose safety was…questionable, although it was used in some places over many decades until the early 1960s. More recent trials have had mixed results at best. In any event, it is rather ironic that the relentlessly antivax Wellness Company would be embracing Coley’s toxin, basically a vaccine or immunotherapy, if that’s what’s really happening.

On the other hand, I have always marveled at how quacks seem to reinvent conventional therapy, just not in a controlled manner. For example, here they are advocating what is basically immunotherapy, but using a “dirty” mixture of bacterial toxins rather than a pharmaceutical (e.g., pembrolizumab or Keytruda), which targets one key part of the immune system by a known mechanism, to achieve their aim. It reminds me of those claiming that impure herbal medicines, whose active ingredients are often buried in a lot of other ingredients associated with the herbs and whose potency is difficult to standardize lot-to-lot, are superior to purified pharmaceutical products.

Pain also references a Substack post by someone named Kristen Elizabeth entitled The Wellness Company: Altruistic alternative healthcare empire, or intelligence operation? (So Pain isn’t alone in this crank fight. He has allies.) Interesting:

Though TWC’s stated purpose of becoming a fully-fledged parallel healthcare system sounds appealing, a closer look into this company reveals the involvement of some very questionable individuals. This, in turn, leads to explosive revelations regarding close ties to Big Pharma, and deep connections to the intelligence community—including TWC’s former Chief Marketing Officer, who brags about having secured “over 300 million dollars in contracts for Information Operations, PSYOP, and intelligence support.”

That last part is a bit odd. If you look at the actual LinkedIn profile of the individual Christopher Alexander, who bills himself as an “energy, AI, and crypto expert,” you’ll find that, as Director, Research and Innovation Group at Strategic Social, he did this from 2005-2012:

I led insight and influence efforts across multiple countries in support of the Global War on Terrorism. Initially, I headed a team of 5 analysts, and due to my success, I was promoted to oversee two programs totaling over 20 million dollars per year, managing more than 50 employees spread across 3 continents. Additionally, I actively contributed as a junior member to the proposal writing efforts, which successfully secured over 300 million dollars in contracts for Information Operations, PSYOP, and intelligence support.

This is getting more and more hilarious, although one notes that Alexander is a former chief marketing officer. Elizabeth also makes much of links between Tim Ballard, whose highly fictionalized story featured in The Sound of Freedom, a QAnon-linked movie about the Operation Underground Railroad Railroad (OUR), an anti-human trafficking organization in a six-degrees-of-separation link to co-founder of The Wellness Company, Foster Coulson through co-founder David Lopez, who apparently was affiliated with OUR. (OK, one or two degrees of separation, but conspiracies within conspiracies…)

More interesting to me is this part:

In January 2022, Lopez and Coulson jointly founded a company called International Health Brands (IHB). Coulson had previously co-founded an investment firm called Integro Capital in October 2021, with Lopez joining as a co-owner at the same time or shortly thereafter. In June 2022, the two founded The Wellness Company.

International Health Brands is the umbrella for multiple companies which seem to act as sister ventures of The Wellness Company; the most notable among these is Zelenko Labs, which produces and sells the Z-stack line of supplements, co-founded with the late Zev Zelenko. Another IHB vitamin/supplement venture is 3LIT3, borrowing its name from UFC fighter, Vitor Belfort, who co-founded the company with his wife, Joana. 3LIT3 was launched in December 2022, pledging to donate ten percent of proceeds from vitamin sales to their anti-human trafficking non-profit organization called Together 4 Them. T4T is listed on IHB’s website as a charitable partner. There even appears to have been aborted attempts at other ventures, like the now memory-holed Liberty Tree, and less-developed companies like Zinc Research International (ZRI). Finally, IHB owns Rebel Lion, a venture originally conceived as an apparel brand by Plandemic filmmaker Mikki Willis. It now also sells vitamins and supplements. 

Integro Capital’s website lists just three businesses in their portfolio: International Health Brands, Momentix Capital (which lists Coulson as a director in corporate filings) and a biotech company called Qu Biologics. Coulson sits on the board of Qu Biologics, while Lopez’s LinkedIn profile discloses that he is an investor in the company.

I’ve mentioned Qu Biologics before, but what’s the deal this time? Well…:

Qu Biologics is one of many high-powered genetic medicine research companies currently furthering the forward march of the same gene-based medicine technology that underlies the mRNA COVID-19 products rolled out by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and is predictably couched in language around helping sick people and ushering in a better healthcare future for everyone. But its managing team and board are stacked with personnel working in the fields of bio-pharmaceuticals, infectious disease, molecular biotechnology, nanotechnology, and the like.

Interesting… So is this:

The obvious questions here are:

Why would Foster Coulson, who claims to be developing the largest alternative parallel health care system in the United States…


1. promote his empire of goods and services to a market segment which is manifestly averse to gene-based medicine;


2. place himself on the board of a company working to further develop such technology; and 


3. position himself and his companies to financially benefit through investments in their research and products, unbeknownst to his TWC clientele?

And this:

It is certainly important to ask what the crossover is between Qu Biologics and the alternative healthcare messaging coming out of The Wellness Company’s public relations machine, but I predict that generally scrutinizing any links between gene-based research companies and alternative healthcare settings will become even more important moving forward. This prediction stems from an observation of a currently unfolding trend that I think is essential to understand: an attempt to marry the alternative healthcare movement with the same genetic technology that underlies the various COVID-19 injections, through nuanced and attractive invitations that seem safe to the dissident community, yet are delivered via mechanisms of deceit.

If this were true, I’d almost find it to be poetic justice. More likely, though, Coulson doesn’t give a toss about the “alternative health sector.” More likely, he just wants to make money and sees the opportunity to make lots of it in both “alternative health” and companies developing potential pharmaceutical products based on molecular biology and genetics, like Qu Pharmaceuticals, apparently. Likely it’s nothing more than that, with Lopez and Coulson correctly viewing antivaxxers, COVID-19 minimizers, and ivermectin pushers as easy marks to sell product to, as long as the products are “outside the mainstream” and profitable, like nattokinase and bromelain to treat symptoms due to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, conveniently enough, regardless of whether these symptoms come from COVID-19 infection or are symptoms attributed to COVID-19 vaccines.

That’s why I find it quite amusing how Pain goes on to reference other things sold by The Wellness Company. For instance, I didn’t know that The Wellness Company had added Tamiflu to its “Black Box” pandemic kit, but damn if Pain didn’t spot it. TWC’s Contagion Emergency Kit—billed as developed by Dr. Peter McCullough himself!—does indeed contain Tamiflu (oseltamivir), all for the low, low price of $299.95. This amuses me to no end given how much antivaxxers have in the past demonized Tamiflu. Also in the kit, in addition to oseltamivir:

• Ivermectin (of course), even though it doesn’t work to treat or prevent COVID-19.
• Hydroxychloroquine (of course), which also doesn’t treat or prevent COVID-19.
• Azithromycin (an antibiotic that also doesn’t work to treat or prevent COVID-19).
• Budesonide (generic Pulmicort™), an inhaled corticosteroid, often demonized by antivaxxers.

Pain rails against the budesonide and oseltamivir as horrifically toxic products of big pharma, while apparently being just fine with ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin, all of which are also products of evil big pharma but beloved by COVID-19 cranks and antivaxxers as part of the “cure” for COVID-19 and, of course, “vaccine injury” due to the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Also, let’s not forget fluconazole, an antifungal. It’s in TWC’s Medical Emergency Kit, along with antibiotics such as Augmentin and Bactrim, and, of course, COVID-19 fake cures beloved of quacks and antivaxxers, like the aforementioned ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Of course, to me, Pain misses a lot of the point of what’s wrong with TWC. It doesn’t bother me so much that TWC is pushing pharmaceuticals. It bothers me that TWC is pushing pharmaceuticals for conditions for which they are not indicated and for which they are known to be ineffective, like COVID-19 and made-up conditions like “spikopathy” from COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, these are prescription drugs. So how can you buy them? Easy. Peter McCullough and his fellow grifters at TWC have potential marks fill out a “clinical intake form,” after which a quack MD or DO licensed in your state will provide the prescription for you to use to get the pharmaceuticals in the various “emergency” packs sold by TWC.

Also, TWC isn’t the only group of grifting quacks in this game, as shown by a handy-dandy comparison chart on its website to show you why you should buy your pharmaceutical packs from Dr. McCullough, instead of those other quacks:

As you all know, I do so love a good crank fight. However, I love it even more when there’s irony involved, and there’s plenty of irony here. From my perspective, Dr. McCullough, for instance, is as antivaccine as they come these days, as well as a quack, and RFK Jr. has been an icon and hero to the antivax movement since 2005. Since RFK Jr. is the Big Kahuna, of course Pain’s plea is couched as though an unspecified “they” tasked with running CHD while RFK Jr. is away running for President were the ones responsible for CHD putting Leake and McCullough on its Advisory Board.

Except it’s not even on the Advisory Council for the whole org. Rather, it’s just the Advisory Council of the California chapter of CHD. Even funnier, McCullough has been on the Advisory Council of the California CHD chapter for nearly a year and appears to have been added around the same time that RFK Jr. took his leave of absence from CHD to run for President, as the first time I see McCullough and Leake on the California Chapter page at the Archive.org archive of the site is in the April 7, 2023 snapshot of the page, with RFK Jr. having taken his leave on April 2, 2023. Somehow, I doubt that adding these two to the California Chapter Advisory Council was done without RFK Jr.’s permission before he left to run for President. Come to think of it, I doubt that CHD does anything significant without RFK Jr.’s assent, even though RFK Jr. is on a leave of absence.

opWhatever the situation behind this, though, it always amuses me when syncretism breaks down, and the incompatibilities and conflicts between different antivax quacks and their supporters break out into the open. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one, because it is delicious.