Medical conspiracy theories are so common that nearly half of Americans believe in at least one, according to a study. These include ideas that the CIA infected African-Americans with HIV, and that toxic chemicals are pumped into water supplies in the name of fluoridation.
University of Chicago researchers conducted the study, which covered a wide range of popular theories that do not agree with findings by most scientists. An online survey was conducted of 1,351 adults, and those results were weighted to reflect the American population as a whole.
Respondents were asked to read brief descriptions of six medical conspiracies, including the idea that vaccines cause autism and cell phones cause cancer. Other idea presented to subjects were the ideas that genetically-modified foods are produced to reduce the global population, and that patients are forbidden from seeking alternative treatments. Volunteers in the poll were asked whether or not they had heard of each theory, and whether or not they believed the ideas to be true or not. A total of 49 percent of respondents believed in at least one of the theories, a number that could be explained by the complexity of medicine, sponsors suggested.
"Science in general - medicine in particular - is complicated and cognitively challenging because you have to carry around a lot of uncertainty. To talk about epidemiology and probability theories is difficult to understand as opposed to 'if you put this substance in your body, it's going to be bad,'" J. Eric Oliver, lead author of an article announcing the results of the study, said.
While fewer than one-third of respondents said federal regulators do not suppress natural cures for diseases, 37 percent of Americans agreed that such natural medicines are prohibited by the government.
The theory that vaccines cause autism was known to 69 percent of the people who responded to the survey, while 20 percent agreed with the idea. A total off 44 percent of Americans reported they did not believe in a link between autism and childhood vaccines.
Rush Limbaugh opined on his show that the Obama Administration is purposely allowing Americans to become infected with Ebola as payback for slavery.
"And if it hadn't been for [Liberia being founded by freed slaves] they probably wouldn't have [Ebola]. So there are some people who think we kind of deserve a little bit of this," Limbaugh stated on his show.
The medical conspiracy theory least popular among Americans is the idea that federal agencies purposely infected African-Americans with HIV.
Study of the acceptance of medical conspiracy theories by the American public was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
