Joseph Michael Mercola (/mərˈkoʊlə/;[1] born July 8, 1954) is an American alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Internet business personality.

[6] In 2005, 2006, 2011, and 2021 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned Mercola and his company that they were making illegal claims for their products' ability to detect, prevent, and treat disease.

[3] His mother, Jeanette Aldridge (née Freeman)[17] was a waitress and his father, Thomas Nicholas Mercola, was an Air Force veteran who worked for Marshall Field's, a department store in Chicago.

[18][3] Mercola attended Lane Tech College Prep High School and studied biology and chemistry at the University of Illinois, graduating in 1976.

In 2019, The Washington Post wrote he had "amassed a fortune selling natural health products, court records show, including vitamin supplements, some of which he claims are alternatives to vaccines....His net worth, derived largely from his network of private companies, has grown to 'in excess of $100 million,' he said in a 2017 affidavit.

The financial institution indicated those accounts were terminated when they became aware of "multiple occasions of regulatory scrutiny, raising concerns about a pattern of deceptive business practices.

[3] Using aggressive direct-marketing tactics,[6] the site and his company, Mercola LLC, brought in roughly $7 million in 2010 through the sale of alternative medicine treatments and dietary supplements.

[30] Rachel E. Moran, a conspiracy theory researcher at the University of Washington said that this announcement was "[Mercola] trying to come up with his own strategies of avoiding his content being taken down, while also playing up this martyrdom of being an influential figure in the movement who keeps being targeted.

[38] In 2020, Mercola was one of the partners in a website called "Stop Covid Cold" offering advice to the public on preventing and treating COVID-19 with alternative remedies.

The website includes links to Mercola's online store and puts a strong emphasis on vitamin D supplements, despite a lack of scientific evidence pointing to the effectiveness of such a treatment.

[44][45] In March, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named Mercola as one of the 12 most prominent sources of COVID misinformation in a report later cited by US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

Mercola argued that Google, who owns YouTube, violated their provision of giving users an opportunity to remove any of their content to comply with a new policy and asked for $75,000 in damages.

[49][50] Mercola co-authored a book with Ronnie Cummins, the founder of the Organic Consumers Association, titled The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal: Why We Must Unite in a Global Movement for Health and Freedom.

[51] Mercola was cited in a February 2022 Stanford University report along with Robert W. Malone and Simone Gold, as prominent pseudomedical influencers (PMIs) who were among the top spreaders of COVID-19 misinformation.

[52]: 80 Mercola participated in an online fundraising event to support the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., along with several other prominent anti-vaccination activists.