Michael Fumento

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Michael Fumento (1959–) is an American investigative journalist and author. He was embedded in Iraq and Afghanistan, but mostly spreads health and environmental denialism.

Journalism[edit]

Write down any public health or environmental issues you can think of on scraps of paper, pull one out of a hat, and there's a 99.9% chance Fumento lives up to the "fume" part of his last name and has written some hit piece denying it or minimizing while crying "alarmism!" His first book-length excretion was published in the 1980s, called The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS. While Fumento does not deny the existence of AIDS, he merely claims that the AIDS epidemic is minimal and therefore requires no action.[note 1] He has also denied any risk from DDT, global warming, second-hand smoke, SARS, swine flu, and the possibility of an avian flu pandemic. More recently, Fumento has also hopped on the COVID-19 denialism bandwagon, dismissing social distancing and other measures as "mass hysteria" and calling Dr. Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield "Horsemen of the Apocalypse".[1]

Scripps-Howard dropped him from syndication in 2006 after it was discovered that Monsanto had dumped a boatload of cash into the Hudson Institute, where Fumento was employed while he wrote numerous biotech columns and BioEvolution, essentially a book-length advertisement for Monsanto.[2] It was no surprise, either, when it was discovered that he was being bankrolled by Philip Morris as well through The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). He's been around the block in terms of the Beltway conservative and libertarian think tanks — he's been employed by the Hudson Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and Reason.

Also no surprise is that Fumento is BFFs with Steve Milloy. They helped co-found TASSC and often cross-post each others' work or post to their "Trash Talk Bulletin Board."[note 2] They're also both fond of using the doublespeak terms "junk science" and "sound science." It is unknown at this time whether or not Milloy and Fumento were cloned in the same lab.

In May of 2012, Fumento seemingly went through a conversion to the dark side, penning a lengthy piece in AlterNet disclaiming some of his former views and denouncing the right-wing, though he still claims to be an older-styled conservative and claims "I was always way ahead of the curve".[3]

Fumento has a better record on some other parts of science. Fumento has written pieces debunking vaccine hysteria. He also wrote a well-researched article that debunked the low-carb dieting misinformation of Gary Taubes and has written articles critical of the Atkins diet.[4][5] Fumento has written a book The Fat of the Land, which criticizes pseudoscientific claims of fad diets.[6]

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ The title is so absurd today it refutes itself, but here is a FAIR article on his breathtaking dishonesty anyway.
  2. ↑ One such example of their "friendship", where Milloy cites several of Fumento's articles on radon.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ The Two Horsemen Of The Apocalypse: Fauci And Redfield by Michael Fumento (August 04, 2020) fumento.com
  2. ↑ In the Fog of War, A Moral Haze: Monsanto's Man? by Howard Kurtz (Monday, January 16, 2006) Washington Post
  3. ↑ Why I Stopped Being a Right-Winger: Modern Conservatism Has Become a Form of Mass Hysteria by Michael Fumento (May 24, 2012) AlterNet
  4. ↑ Big Fat Fake: The Atkins diet controversy and the sorry state of science journalism. by Michael Fumento (March 2003) Reason
  5. ↑ Low-carb Lunacy by Michael Fumento (February 11, 2004) fumento.com
  6. ↑ The Fat of the Land: The Obesity Epidemic and How Overweight Americans Can Help Themselves. (1997) Viking. ISBN 0-670-87059-5
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