CNN, October 2021
She was a frequent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show—an Ivy League-educated OB-GYN who often spoke about women’s health and holistic medicine. She was a media darling, and in 2013 made Reader’s Digest’s annual list of 100 most trusted people in America. If you go to Dr. Christiane Northrup’s Facebook page, her posts dispensing advice on health and aging to her 558,000 followers seem consistent with that persona of several years ago. But Northrup also uses her Facebook page to direct followers to Telegram, where another side of her is apparent. Here, on this platform with lax moderation, lies a miasma of misinformation and conspiracy theories.
“Best Explanation I’ve Seen About Why the Covid Jabs Are Killer Shots,” reads one post that she shared. “Me realising I don’t have to take revenge on my enemies as they’ve all had the jab,” says a meme she posted in late August that shows a sly-faced Morticia from the Addams Family. “Another hero emerges,” Northrup writes of a doctor who refused to see vaccinated patients.
Northrup is among a small group of doctors who have emerged as a huge source of misinformation—whether as social-media influencers or family doctors meeting with patients in person—about Covid-19 vaccines, which have thus far proven the most effective weapon against the deadliest pandemic in 100 years.
