This Fave Mainstream Media Source Is Funded by Anti-Vaxxers – The Daily Beast

Research from the nonprofit U.S. Right to Know has undergirded New York Times reporting on the food system, and outlets ranging from Vanity Fair to the National Review to the Washington Examiner to The Intercept have cited the groups inquiries into the origins of COVID-19.

But the Oakland-based truth and transparency organizations own provenance has gone largely unexamined, even as public interest and political furor over the controversial lab-leak theoryand the even more broadly disputed notion that the novel coronavirus was the result of engineeringhave steadily escalated. However, The Daily Beast found that public documents, including USRTKs own disclosures, show even as the group does not advocate against vaccines, its roots run into a vitriolically anti-vaccine organization that has promoted conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks and The Great Reset.

That theory posits that pandemic-safety protocols are a prelude to a new global regime of government and corporate control.

Filings with the Internal Revenue Service and the state of California show that USRTK launched in 2014 on a $44,500 grant from the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). For the first two years of USRTKs existence, the Minnesota-based OCA was its lone funder, with contributions swelling as years passed, and totaling more than $1 million in 2021, according to USRTKs own reporting.

While the self-described investigative research group has acquired other contributors, the Organic Consumers Association has far and away remained the largest, with its gifts to USRTK amounting to almost double the sum received from the next biggest donor. The Organic Consumers Association has also been the only organization to grant money to USRTK every year since its inception.

Like USRTK, the 23-year-old Organic Consumers Association began as a group preoccupied with pesticides and genetically modified organisms. But as it gained financial backing from ultra-rich backers in the wellness sectormost notably supplement kingpin Joseph Mercolait adopted their conspiratorial anti-vaccine views, as The Daily Beast previously reported.

Earlier this year, OCA founder Ronnie Cummins, who has also advanced 9/11 truther narratives, co-authored a book with Mercola which purported to expose The Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal. The books footnotes included multiple citations of USRTK research on COVID-19s origins and, in promoting the book last month, Cummins referred to USRTK as a longtime ally. (Cummins did not respond to a request for comment.)

In late 2020, a USRTK researcher also participated in a Facebook Live event the Organic Consumers Association hosted. A lot of pieces dont fit the animal-origin story thats prevailing, the USRTK staffer asserted, citing what he described as the viruss unusual qualities.

Meanwhile, most scientistsand a recently declassified U.S. intelligence reporthave concluded that the virus was most likely not the product of deliberate genetic engineering.

USRTK co-founder Gary Ruskin, the only staffer at the organization who responded to The Daily Beasts queries, admitted that he had known Cummins for decades and launched the group with his support. But he insisted his group had nothing to do with his patrons more controversial views.

We wanted to start a new organization to stand up for the idea that people have the right to know what's in their food. Ronnie was supportive of this, Ruskin wrote in an email to The Daily Beast. We dont work on the issue of vaccines.

But Cummins is hardly the only anti-vaxxer operation with which the group has fraternized.

Public records show the organization has also received considerable financial contributions from the Westreich Foundation. That group, in turn, has bankrolled multiple anti-inoculation groups, including the National Vaccine Information Center, which experts have long called the most powerful anti-vaccine organization in America. Until last year, the Westreich Foundation maintained a Vaccine Safety page on its website that included false assertions that immunization is total nonsense and that vaccine safety is the greatest lie ever told.

The only phone number for the Westreich Foundation The Daily Beast could find was disconnected.

Further, though it has not echoed his notorious views on vaccines specifically, USRTK has repeatedly used its platforms to amplify Robert F. Kennedy Jr., perhaps Americas most infamous anti-vaxxer. He has in turn amplified themparticularly on the issue of COVID-19s origins. This Spring, USRTK research director Carey Gillam published excerpts of her recent book on agrochemical giant Monsanto on Kennedy Jr.s website, and in June she appeared on his podcast to discuss the issue.

All this time, Gillam has been a regular contributor to The Guardian, where her work has focused on environmental degradation and the food system. Neither Gillam nor Guardian U.S. editor John Mulholland responded to requests for comment, and Ruskin dodged questions about her decision to collaborate with Kennedy Jr., who the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified as one of the biggest purveyors of COVID-19 falsehoods on the Internet.

Robert Kennedy has lots of views about lots of things, Ruskin wrote. I dont really follow them all especially closely.

Dr. David Gorski of Wayne State University, who first identified USRTK as an arm of the Organic Consumers Association on the blog Science-Based Medicine in 2016, argued that the two nonprofits share a similar set of obsessions: namely, perceived tampering with nature. He argued USRTK took reasonable distrust of corporations and righteous calls for accountability to an extreme, tipping into pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

"They started primarily as anti-GMO and anti-pesticide of any kind, and definitely into various conspiracy theories about Monsanto, [herbicide] glyphosate, etcetera. And that was primarily how I knew them, Gorski said. "Whats fascinating is how fast theyve pivoted to COVID nonsense.

But Gorski also posited the groups intensifying interest in the widely dismissed notion that COVID-19 sprang from so-called gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a natural evolution from USRTKs original mission.

"Think of it this way: if you come from a belief system where genetically manipulating organisms is dangerous, and its the goal of the corporations to exploit and harm and exploit us, he said, a group like that would be very much attracted to the idea that this horrible, deadly disease came from humans manipulating coronaviruses.

Dr. Kathleen Jamieson, professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a recent article on conspiracists exploitation of uncertainty in COVID-19 science, noted USRTKs work flattens out crucial differences between the lab-leak theory with the notion that the virus was artificially modified. She pointed to a USRTK report that contrasted a scientific articles claimThere is currently no credible evidence to support the claim that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a laboratory-engineered CoVwith a private email the group obtained in which one of the same articles authors wrote, We cannot rule out the possibility that it comes from a bat virus leaked out of a lab.

The role of some of the players in that ecosystem is trying to maintain a more professional and trustworthy looking exterior.

Callum Hood

In fact, Jamieson noted, these claims do not contradict each other at all. Some versions of the lab-leak hypothesis have suggested that scientists at the Wuhan lab were studying a naturally occurring coronavirus in bats there, and failed to observe proper safety precautionsnot that they created the pathogen in a petri dish.

The difference between there being lab origin and the virus being genetically engineered in the lab is really important, she asserted. Theres some slippage across the materials you sent me between lab origin and the claim of it being genetically engineered.

Jamieson argued USRTKs work deserved scrutiny because of its funding and affiliations. But she also noted that the organizations published research stopped short of open conspiracy theorizing on the virus origins.

"Their language is not the traditional language of conspiracy theorists, Jamieson told The Daily Beast. My definition of a conspiracy theory is that there are powerful individuals of malign intent who are covering up.

But this may have to do with USRTKs role in what Callum Hood, research director at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, suggests amounts to a larger anti-science/anti-vaccine ecosystem. While Mercola and Cummins group may indulge in wild speculation about nefarious international plots, other organizations like Kennedys Childrens Health Defense and USRTK strive to maintain a respectable sheen.

The role of some of the players in that ecosystem is trying to maintain a more professional and trustworthy looking exterior, Hood said. "Childrens Health Defense is one of those which sort of goes to great lengths to look trustworthy, and U.S. Right to Know also appears to be trying to present itself as a trustworthy investigative organization.

The real target of proponents of the gain-of-function theory, Hood asserted, is Dr. Anthony Fauci. And, going by repeated explosive exchanges between Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Fauci over government funding of groups engaged in gain-of-function research, they are hitting their target.

Some of Rands most recent verbal fusillades came after The Intercept published documents detailing U.S. grants to an organization that collaborated with the Wuhan lab. Although in this case USRTK did not provide the documents, as it had for past Intercept pieces, Ruskin himself donated a quote.

This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic, he told the left-leaning outlet.

The Intercepts reporters did not respond to requests for comment. Likewise most of the journalists or news organizations The Daily Beast contacted for this piece did not respond or declined to comment. Those who did requested anonymity in order to speak freely, and attested that they did not know about the depth USRTKs relationship with fringe groups when they accepted its assistance, and maintained they independently verified the authenticity of materials the group sent them.

Ruskin, for his part, denied promoting pseudoscience and conspiracies, and insisted his group had not conflated the lab-leak hypothesis with the bioengineering theory.

We stand by our work, he said, noting the group has published material in peer-reviewed journals. We talk with lots of people about our work, but we dont work on vaccines.

Meanwhile Jamieson, the communications professor and conspiracy theory expert, argued that uncertainty about COVID-19s originsand conspiracy theorieswill fester so long as Chinese authorities continue to resist an open investigation. What is necessary, she argued, is transparency from government actors and investigations that do not begin with presuppositions about how the virus emerged.

There are legitimate, important questions here that need to be answered, she said. "In the absence of certainty of the origins, not finding the host animal for example, or host entity, through which the virus jumped to the human population, you're going to have alternative causes posited, and those alternative causes are going to include some that will suggest malign intent by powerful actors who are covering up what they actually did."

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This Fave Mainstream Media Source Is Funded by Anti-Vaxxers - The Daily Beast