Report: Texas doctor who went viral with unproven COVID-19 cure believes in ‘demon sperm’

Friends, we all woke up to a new video from “America’s Frontline Doctors.” It makes two significant claims:

Masks are unecessary and a combination of drugs including hydroxychloroquine and Zinc have a 100% success rate.

Both of these claims go against the wide and peer-reviewed opinions of medical and scientific communities around the world.

A few important things to consider:

1. As a group, “America’s frontline doctors” does not include an Epidemiologist, Immunologist, or Infectious Disease expert in their leadership (their website, which was created days ago has since been taken down).
2. This video went viral after being shared by Breitbart (and subsequently retweeted by the Trump). Breitbart is a “news” organization which is extremely unreliable at best and outright dangerous propaganda at worst (see the media bias chart in the sources below). They cause tangible harm to public discourse and our ability to recognize and discern truth.
3. The most popular doctor in this video, Dr. Stella Immanuel (pictured below) has made wildly irresponsible claims in the past. From her own ministry videos she has written,

“that medical issues like endometriosis, cysts, infertility, and impotence are caused by sex with “spirit husbands” and “spirit wives”—a phenomenon Immanuel describes essentially as witches and demons having sex with people in a dreamworld…They are responsible for serious gynecological problems, we call them all kinds of names—endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband…They are responsible for miscarriages, impotence—men that can’t get it up.”

In these claims, she is guilty of both scientific and theological malpractice. We would be wise to be VERY suspicious of anything she says. There are many, many apolitical scientific and medical organizations who are responsible for decades of medical care and who are on the frontline of the fight against covid-19. We have trusted them to keep us safe until now, we would be wise to listen to them regarding our current situation.

Finally, friends, in this digital age it is so very easy to be mislead. I know I find myself duped from time to time, too. We all do. There is no shame in being wrong. The human brain, through millennia of experience has been taught to believe what it sees. In this age of photoshopping and deep fakes, our minds are struggling to keep up. Truly, it’s not our fault…however, knowing this weakness, we must all be extra cautions about what we read.

A few pastoral suggestions:

1. An old proverb still holds true. Does it sound too good to be true? It probably is.
2. Confirmation bias is an EXTREMELY powerful weakness for the brain. We are far more likely to believe false information if it conforms to what we already believe.

Knowing this…

3. When encountering new information or a new claim, before sharing it, google it. Is the article/information in question shared by multiple reputable sources (News, medical journals, peer-reviewed studies)? If not, we would be wise to hold it with extreme suspicion.
4. Finally, when wrong (which we will all be from time to time), publicly acknowledge it. Part of our current crisis is that we share quickly without also acknowledging the fallacy. We need MORE people saying, “Hey, I thought this was true, but after further investigation I see it’s not. I want to make sure you know the correct information, too.” Again, there’s no shame in being wrong but it becomes actively harmful when we refuse to change and acknowlege it.

Friends, lets do better. As Scripture calls us, may we be “wise as serpants and innocent as doves.”

Our reputation as Christ-followers depends on it.

Sources:
https://www.adfontesmedia.com

America’s Frontline Doctors

https://archive.fo/G7wtb

https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/report-texas-doctor-who-went-viral-with-unproven-covid-19-cure-believes-in-demon-sperm