If you are desperate enough, there is someone out there willing to rewrite all of medicine and relieve you of your savings. A former nurse with multiple sclerosis lost over $10,000 in this way, according to a CBC Marketplace investigation. To whom did she give this money, you may wonder? To Darrell Wolfe, who calls himself Doc of Detox.
I read his 544-page聽Ultimate Healing Guide, available as聽聽on his website or as聽. Even if you鈥檙e neither a doctor nor a scientist, you鈥檒l be able to see that things simply don鈥檛 add up. Scientific theories need to be coherent; his wild ideas, meanwhile, are bursting at the seams with contradictions.
Full of crap
Darrell Wolfe should not be confused with David 鈥淎vocado鈥 Wolfe, although there are plenty of similarities. Both men feed mistrust in science and medicine to their large audiences and sell unproven and disproven 鈥渘atural鈥 remedies. David Wolfe is American, while Darrell Wolfe is Canadian.
In his book聽, the Canadian Wolfe describes his origin story as being tied to his grandmother, who ran a nursing home in North Bay, Ontario. While living with her at the age of 16, he decided that every ailment afflicting her elderly residents was caused by a dysfunction of their bowels. Basically, teenage Wolfe became convinced these people were full of poop and they were rotting from the inside. Not bad for an adolescent with no medical degree! He drew a connection between these older adults and the piles of manure he had witnessed growing up on a farm. His grandma agreed but told him she was not able to use any herbal medicine or perform enemas. Medicine, it seemed to Wolfe, limited itself to the use of chemicals. He would aim to do better.
He fleshed out his worldview over the ensuing decades, and his healing guide reads like a rambling regurgitation of contrarian viewpoints. This is a 500-plus-page Galileo gambit: they laughed at Galileo when he said the Earth revolved around the Sun, goes the flawed argument, and they鈥檙e laughing at聽尘别听now, therefore I too am a genius! You don鈥檛 usher in a scientific revolution simply because you want to, however, and you certainly can鈥檛 pull this off if your ideas are incoherent. The problem with Darrell Wolfe is that he can鈥檛 quite settle on what a disease actually is.
All you need to do is to read through his manual and ask yourself if what is claimed on one page is consistent with what is written on the next. On many pages, Wolfe claims that diseases are caused by negative emotions and traumatic events, like losing your job, which results in blockages. But on page 80, he states that 鈥渄iseases are not errors of Nature, they are specialized programs of nature to support and protect an organism during unexpected trauma.鈥 Diseases, he says, are 鈥渁 natural process of healing鈥 (page 92) but also 鈥渢he root cause of almost all disease, on a physical level, is the root organ: the large intestine,鈥 because it rots, leading to leaky gut (page 54). So which is it?
He writes that 鈥渆xcessive sugar in your system is called Cancer鈥 (page 11) but that 鈥渃ancer is a metaphysical imbalance鈥 (page 75) or that 鈥渃ancer is a meaningful, life saving, biological process鈥 (page 76). Prostate cancer, according to his thinking, happens because the colon is rotting and the prostate sits in front of it, so now it鈥檚 鈥渟wimming in the middle of a cesspool of putrefaction鈥 (page 86). Wolfe seems to have no good understanding of actual sepsis. If what he describes were true, we would all be dead by the end of the day.
Wolfe thinks that dairy is the major cause of multiple sclerosis (page 168) and that COVID-19 is actually graphene poisoning (page 210). He disavows Louis Pasteur and his germ theory of disease (page 78), but later writes that you should buy hemp oil and silver from him because they destroy harmful bacteria and viruses (pages 259 and 281). Healthcare will apparently never change and remain 鈥渢oxic鈥 and 鈥渃ontaminated鈥 (page 27), and the medical system and governments are 鈥渟ystems built to break everything鈥 (page 11), but we should still trust the WHO when they verify that processed meat causes cancer (page 168).
I was reminded of the Nigerian prince scam. An email lands in your inbox stating that a large sum of money will be transferred to you. All you need to do is pay a small fee up front. We may wonder who in this day and age would fall for this, but all the fraudster needs is a few victims to make a lot of money. Doc of Detox does not need to be coherent: enough people will fail to notice his lack of consistency and will give him a lot of money.
Because what he is selling indeed costs a lot of money.
Only I can save you
To get a phone consult with Wolfe, you will have to shell out聽. To get a 鈥渄egree鈥 or certification from his 鈥渦niversity,鈥 you will need to pay聽. Then there鈥檚 the聽, from cleansing teas to Black Diamond crystals, as well as the pieces of equipment he recommends like the 鈥渟tructured鈥 water units for your shower or whole house and his CellSonic gadget, which can allegedly reverse erectile dysfunction. None of this, it bears mentioning, is free. Every product is a cure-all, which makes me wonder why you need to buy them all.
Heavy promotion of expensive products and workshops is something we often see with health-related pseudoscience. There is no clear line that separates real science from fake science, just red flags. Reading through Wolfe鈥檚 manual and website, I saw many of the hallmarks of pseudoscience.
Wolfe wants you to drink聽聽(elsewhere, he prefers 鈥渟tructured鈥 water) and he links to three studies showing its worth. The聽聽has nothing to do with hydrogen but rather with vitamin levels; the聽聽was funded by a company which sells hydrogen water, was done in 26 people, and the error bars for the hydrogen-water group and the placebo group are so large, they almost completely overlap; and the聽, also funded by corporate interest, reported ho-hum results of the sort we come to expect when scientists compare two groups using eight different blood markers and all of the messenger RNA contained in white blood cells. It鈥檚 easy to blind people with science by linking to studies no one will bother reading, much less appraising.
His healing manual is also littered with quotes from dead geniuses, which pseudodoctors love to do as it allows their readers to associate them with these brainy revolutionaries. He quotes Einstein鈥檚 E = mc2聽to claim that 鈥渨here the mind goes the body must follow,鈥 which definitely does not follow from that equation. Hippocrates is quoted as saying, 鈥淚f you are not your own doctor, you are a fool,鈥 but I鈥檓 pretty sure he didn鈥檛 mean you should operate on yourself in the middle of an appendicitis. And of course he cites Tesla鈥檚 disputed quote that 鈥渋f you want to learn the secrets of the universe, look at Energy, Vibration and Frequency,鈥 a staple of influencers who want to convince you that you鈥檙e simply not vibrating at a high enough frequency to be healthy.
All of this shaky pseudoscience needs a foundation of grand conspiracy theories, of course: how else to explain that the medical establishment does not regularly promote the products hawked by Doc of Detox? The opening pages of his healing manual are metaphorically ripped from the canon of Joe Mercola, who has built his own wellness empire south of the Canadian border. Doc of Detox decries the 鈥淪lave Masters鈥 indoctrinating our children in school, and the taxes we have to pay, and the Deep State, and the 鈥渨oke鈥 world in which we live where 鈥測our children don鈥檛 know which bathroom to use anymore.鈥 Once he has properly scared you into thinking that no one can be trusted, he can offer his hand in salvation. But be careful what that hand will do to your body.
Slaps and purges
He calls it 鈥渃lapping鈥 and it鈥檚 one of many dangerous practices Doc of Detox promotes. Clapping means slapping an area of your body for 15 to 60 minutes (鈥渓onger for serious conditions,鈥 he writes on page 314). It is meant to bring existing diseased tissue to the surface, but that is simply not how biology works. If you don鈥檛 want to use your hand or that of one of his trained practitioners, you can buy聽.
He also writes about the power of coffee enemas (which are part of Gerson therapy and are聽) and of something he terms Advanced Therapeutic Vomiting. Calling it 鈥渙ne of the most powerful tools for restoring your health,鈥 he invites you to drink three glasses of warm water in which one of his supplements has been dissolved; to jiggle your stomach up and down; and to make yourself puke by placing your fingers at the back of your throat. Not once. Not twice. But three times. This is utter madness, but it is in keeping with his senseless idea that we need to detox from the modern world. It may just be one of the most powerful tools for developing an eating disorder.
You may be wondering what kind of doctor he is. He is the kind of 鈥渄oc鈥 who is not a doctor. His website鈥檚 About page credits him with two doctorates in natural medicine, one doctorate in Indigenous medicine, one doctorate of humanitarian services, and a certification with the Board of Integrative Medicine.
According to聽, he is indeed not a licensed medical practitioner. His business is registered in British Columbia, yet at the time of the CBC鈥檚 reporting, he was not registered in B.C. as either a physician or a naturopath (not that the latter would give him actual legitimacy). I suspect that his doctorate in Indigenous medicine is along the lines of the doctorate of Indigenous Plant Medicine he promotes on page 110 of his healing manual. To receive the latter, it鈥檚 very simple: first call Darrell Wolfe at the listed phone number, then read the two books he will send you. You then have to answer questions about these two books and write a 2,000-word (or less!) thesis as to how you will incorporate this new knowledge into your practice. This essay is apparently reviewed by a Board of Elders, and once approved, you are adopted into the Taino Sovereign Indigenous Nation and given a doctorate and license to practice. All for the low, low price of $3,500.
Wolfe was exposed by the CBC for promoting a fake AIDS cure in the 1990s which involved pumping ozone up a person鈥檚 rectum. His business shut down, he filed for bankruptcy in 1997, and has simply rebranded himself. He now 鈥渢reats鈥 desperate customers in Mexico, where looser regulations allow him to provide unproven physical interventions that former customers have said were close to 鈥渢orture.鈥
Distress in the face of terminal illness will obscure Wolfe鈥檚 many contradictions. Though he is deeply anti-surgery鈥攃laiming that surgical interventions cause more scar tissue than anything else and thus disease, which is either good or bad depending on the page in his book鈥攖he CBC attended one of his workshops in which Wolfe admitted to raising $20,000 to have one of his clients鈥 orange-sized facial tumour excised鈥 via surgery.
When the CBC talked to him on the record at a later seminar in Ontario, he told them that 鈥渉e never said he could cure cancer.鈥 Brian Clement did the same. When he was聽聽for saying behind closed doors that his Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida saw many customers cured of their multiple sclerosis, he denied having said so when confronted by a reporter and said the CBC had聽.
Among the desperate, these would-be Galileos promise to cure everything if you let go of conventional medicine. In the spotlight, they backtrack and remember that there are laws and regulations in place.
But there鈥檚 just too much money in it for them to stop.
Take-home message:
- Darrell Wolfe, AKA Doc of Detox, is not a licensed medical practitioner
- His inconsistent claims around health and disease are often not supported by evidence or medical consensus
- Many of his interventions are actually harmful, such as slapping yourself for an hour to allegedly bring diseased tissue to the surface and making yourself vomit repeatedly to allegedly restore your health
