Quack of the Day: "Dr" Andrew Moulden

Andrew Moulden is a pretty common name tossed around within vaccine conspiracy circles, and Mr. Hubbs is no exception. Again and again, Mr. Hubbs cites the work (I dare not use the term research to describe it) of Mr. Moulden and even though Moulden has yet to actually prove any of his claims, that really doesn't matter in the mind of a medical conspiracy theorist.

So who is this Moulden guy and why is he so important? Why is he so frequently cited by Mr. Hubbs and other vaccine conspiracy theorists alongside Sherri Tenpenny, Andrew Wakefield, Russell Blaylock, or the ever-present references to the infamous whale.to website?

Well the short version is that Moulden claims he knows the root cause of autism, which as a coincidence just so happens to be related to vaccines. He also used his websites (the now defunct www.brainguardmd.com, www.AMassNetwork.com, www.JustGetUsIn.com, and www.brain-guard.com among numerous others) to sell nutritional supplements, pamplets, DVDs, and tickets to his various seminars.

Where have we heard this story before?

Of course reality soon caught up with Moulden and people started looking beyond the clever marketing, the scare tactics, and the silly YouTube videos. This resulted in Moulden pulling his website which was likely a result of investigations into his claims which found them totally without merit, and due in part because he was using his website to sell diagnoses of brain disorders remotely. The basic premise was Moulden would ask people to send in videos (or sometimes just photographs) of their children looking at the camera, and based upon eye movements he would diagnose what is wrong with them... for a hefty fee of course. He called this idiocy his "BrainGuard" process, and in order to even submit a video or photographs he required people to hold a "AMassNetwork IMAN-12" membership - which required a paid fee as well.

Not only did Moulden profess he could diagnose autism or brain disorders via photographs, he even went so far as to claim he could diagnose "some learning and language disabilities" from seeing photographs alone! Even to a layperson this is simply unbelievable as a photograph doesn't tell you anything about the cognitive abilities of a person, but of course to a vaccine conspiracy theorist such as Mr. Hubbs it all makes perfect sense.

Granted anyone who has ever had a photograph taken where they were purposefully crossing their eyes or making a funny face I guess this would be enough to convince Moulden that they have a brain disorder - but back here on the real world where actual diagnoses takes more than a photograph this type of snakeoil simply will not do. Now I fully realize it is hard to believe that anyone (even a self-proclaimed expert such as Moulden) would actually make such wild claims, but thankfully we have his own words to quote to remove any doubt:

"...we are able to diagnose vaccine injury (including autism and aspergers and Gulf War Syndrome and Gardasil adversity and some learning and language disabilities..from photos alone - conformed by video.. and we are right, on the photos alone, 80% of teh [sic] time..add the video - we hit >95% to 100% accuracy)." ~Andrew Moulden

And taken directly from his website (before it was removed) is the entire sales pitch:

"BrainGuard provides digital video and photograph based "video microscopy" to monitor and assess for clinically silent brain damage that causes, or has caused, neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders including autism, autism-spectrum, pervasive developmental disorders, Asperger's syndrome, sudden infant death, infantile paralysis, Post vaccine syndromes (Gulf War syndrome, Guillain Barre syndrome, cognitive impairment...), seizure disorders, ischemic strokes, specific learning disabilities, and attention deficit disorders.

AMassNetwork IMAN-12 Membership available at (www.AMassNetwork.com). You must have an AMassNetwork membership subscription in order Access/receive BrainGuard services and solutions.

Brain damage, especially vaccine and infectious disease induced brain damage, is clinically silent. Our proprietary techniques and technologies provide the means and methods to assess and monitor the integrity of the central nervous system from birth to adulthood with a non-invasive, cost-efficient, home based, video/photo solution for monitoring the integrity of the human brain across neurodevelopment.

There are three steps:

Capture a 30 second video clip of the BrainGuard client - full face in view, eyes open, awake, alert, and responding/attending to the videographer.

Login or Register with BrainGuardMD.com

Follow instructions on how to upload your video/pictures to our secure servers.

What Comes Next:

We will process your submissions and inform, via email to your "IMAM-12" account the results of your BrainGuard scan(s). If we detect the MASS response (a medical emergency) one of our staff will contact you directly with what to do next.

If you are looking for proof causation of vaccine induced brain damage (including autism, Gulf War syndrome, Wrongful death, brain impairment...) - BrainGuard can provide these services and all inquiries."

Now obviously you couldn't make this up even if you were skilled at sarcasm, but this is word for word what Moulden had on his website. So basically Moulden claims he can diagnose a veritable plethora of brain disorders via photographs and/or video without so much as a basic collection of vitals, any medical history whatsoever, or even the most basic of basic interviews or clinical exams... and this is the type of guy the anti-vaccine crowd wants to use as a trusted expert?

Of course charging hundreds or even thousands of dollars to diagnose a medical condition via the Internet is only one part of the scam. Once the "patient" was diagnosed by Moulden as suffering from Moulden Anoxia Spectrum Syndromes or "M.A.S.S" (obviously a term invented by Moulden to serve as a catch-all for anything and everything that he found suspect), he would then sell them his miracle "Brainguard" formula for the low-low price of $47.00 for a one month supply - plus shipping and handling of course.

There is only one major problem here. Not a single one of Moulden's theories or techniques was ever proven. Not only that, but his miracle "Brainguard" supplements were just that... nutritional supplements. They were not pharmeceuticals or legitimate medicine and they even had to carry a disclaimer on them that they weren't intended to treat or cure or prevent any disease etc, thus Moulden himself even understood they were nothing but snakeoil because he never bothered to even attempt to publish a single peer-reviewed paper nor did he ever perform a single clinical trial in any attempt to back up his claims or provide support to this theories.

Now obviously if you are a fellow vaccine conspiracy theorist like Mr. Hubbs you will continue to defend Moulden's work and claim that the FDA or CDC or AMA or whatever other three lettered medical body is corrupt and has done what it can to silence Moulden. The only problem with that is that Moulden himself is Canadian, and as such the US government and American medical governing bodies don't have any control over Moulden's claims unless he tries to practice medicine in the US.

This just goes to show that a quack in America is a quack in any other part of the world as well, even when they are far outside the jurisdiction of the American government.  However even with all of this said, even with the above mentioned facts that cannot be disputed, the biggest problem with Andrew Moulden is probably the fact that the man doesn't hold a license to practice medicine, and thus any attempt by him to diagnose patients (either in person or via the Internet) would be illegal.

I know it can be confusing as Mr. Hubbs and other vaccination conspiracy theorists continually refer to Moulden as "Dr. Moulden", but the truth is Moulden doesn't hold an actual license to practice medicine in either Canada or the US (or anywhere else for that matter).  Moulden does hold a doctorate that much is true, but his PhD is actually in psychology.  He earned that degree in 1999 and then claims to have earned his "doctor of medicine" degree a year later from an entirely different school atlhough that seems highly suspect and is unverified.

The fact is, Moulden never finished his residency program (which was in psychiatry not any field related to vaccines by the way), and he has NEVER been licensed to practice medicine - anywhere.  Don't take my word for it though, just read it directly from The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (the one and only official medical licensing body of Ontario) which clearly shows he attempted to get through a residency program, but after eight years of trying he was only able to reach the third year (the residency requires five years to complete), so he must have finally given up and decided there was more money to be made by selling DVDs and speaking at seminars than there was by actually practicing legitimate medicine.

So having a medical degree or being able to call yourself a doctor just isn't enough.  Earning a PhD does grant you the right to call yourself a doctor, but someone who fails to complete an actual medical residency program is no more able to treat patients or prescribe treatments as someone who earned their PhD in Economics or History.  Although in reality you might have better luck getting medical advice from a doctor of history rather than someone like Moulden who pretends to be a legitimate doctor.

When you boil it all down and examine the facts, Moulden is just like all of the other "experts" that are all too often cited by antivaxxers like Mr. Hubbs.  He is a great pitchman and tells a good story, and he does have a certain way of convincing people to buy his products (the Billy Mays of the vaccine world if you will) but at the end of the day when you peel back the curtain there not only is no science to support it, but you find the velvet curtain is actually just cheap polyester... an imitation meant to look like the real thing from afar.

Will any of this stop ignorant vaccine conspiracy theorists like Mr. Hubbs from continuing to cite "Dr. Moulden" on their blogs and websites?  Probably not, because if I have learned anything about these types of people it is that even when they are proven wrong and even after you have discredited every single one of their claims or experts, they still refuse to acknowledge the world around them.  We have seen it with "Dr" Tenpenny, we have seen it with "Dr" Wakefield, we have seen it with "Dr" Moulden, and I'm sure we will see it many times in the future as well.

Say what you will about people like Mr. Hubbs, but it is more than obvious that he is a very slow learner.