A promise of health influencers who operate outside mainstream medicine is that they are unsullied by Big Government, Big Pharma and other moneyed special interests and professional groups. The implicit or explicit message sent by these influencers, many of whom have some degree of medical or scientific training, is that they are brave truth tellers, giving you special secrets to a healthy life that some shadowy cabal of elites is hiding.
That promise was never true. Many health influencers have ties to supplement companies, make money from lawsuits against vaccine companies or receive financial backing from politically powerful billionaires and venture capitalists. While these influencers may operate outside the bounds of professional medical societies and academic gatekeepers, many are frequently beholden to a different and sometimes less ethical set of elites.
The story of Peter Attia — a longevity doctor who graduated from medical school but never completed residency — is a good illustration of the flimsiness of what these alternative health influencers are selling. His name appears in more than 1,700 documents in the most recent dump of the Epstein files. My newsroom colleague Maggie Astor summarized one of the more appalling exchanges between Attia and Jeffrey Epstein this way:
In one email on Feb. 19, 2016, titled “confirmed,” Dr. Attia wrote to Mr. Epstein: “Pussy is, indeed, low carb. Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.” A couple of days earlier, he had offered his medical services to Mr. Epstein and asked, “Have you decided if you’re interested in living longer (solely for the ladies, of course)?”
In an exchange from June 24, 2015, Attia wrote to Epstein, “The biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.” All the communication between the two in the latest set of files happened years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from girls in 2008 and had to register as a sex offender.
On Monday, Attia posted a statement on X, apologizing and explaining his relationship to Epstein. Attia stated emphatically that he “was not involved in any criminal activity” and “never visited his island or ranch, and I never flew on any of his planes.” (Though Attia booked a trip to Epstein’s ranch for sometime in August 2015, per the files, the two could not find a date that worked for both of them, so the trip appears to have been canceled.) Attia also said that soon after he met Epstein in 2014, he asked Epstein about the conviction from 2008, and Epstein told him it was just a prostitution charge. Attia, who was in his 40s at the time, chalked up his credulousness to inexperience: “I was incredibly naïve to believe him.”
Attia tried to provide in the apology more context for some of the “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible” emails that he exchanged with Epstein. “At that point in my career, I had little exposure to prominent people, and that level of access was novel to me. Everything about him seemed excessive and exclusive, including the fact that he lived in the largest home in all of Manhattan, owned a Boeing 727, and hosted parties with the most powerful and prominent leaders in business and politics.” Attia claimed that the man he is today would not write the emails that have been made public and “would not associate with Epstein at all.”
Even if we take everything Attia wrote in this statement at face value, it undermines his value proposition as an expert, which is predicated on his unique, outside-the-box discernment.
In October he spoke to Norah O’Donnell of CBS’s “60 Minutes” about his medical practice. It reported that he saw fewer than 75 patients, including celebrities like Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth, who paid Attia hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to give them bespoke medical care.
In that interview he called his popular podcast, book, social media channels and practice “Medicine 3.0,” and O’Donnell described his work as “a radical change in how Americans think about their own health care, driven by the patient, focused on prevention.” As part of this, Attia prescribed and took medications that do not have a solid track record of improving longevity in humans. “The doctor and a handful of his patients have also taken a drug called rapamycin that’s F.D.A.-approved for use by transplant recipients. The drug has extended the life span of mice, but Dr. Attia stopped taking it, for now, because it gave him mouth sores, which can be a side effect,” O’Donnell reported.
It seems that Attia is facing some professional consequences for his association with Epstein. He “stepped down from his role as Chief Science Officer” of David, according to the protein-forward company’s chief executive, and the supplement maker AG1 told NBC News, “As of this week, Dr. Attia is no longer an adviser to the company.” Attia was named as a contributor to CBS News in January, and the organization has yet to publicly comment on whether it will cut ties with him, per The Los Angeles Times’s Stephen Battaglio. As a woman, I cannot imagine taking expert health advice from Attia seriously at this point, given the gross and dehumanizing way he talked about the female anatomy in his emails with Epstein.
The takeaway here is not to blindly believe all experts or any people with M.D.s or Ph.D.s next to their names or think that people with the right professional credentials are above ethical lapses, greed or palling around with sex criminals. After all, other doctors and scientists who are affiliated with universities and major hospitals had relationships with Epstein. This is also not meant to say that every piece of advice that Attia gave was bad or incorrect. For example, his breakdown of the effects of Tylenol on pregnant women was thorough and well researched.
We should be skeptical of any people who sell themselves as singularly capable of giving health advice on the internet and should always follow the money and connections where they lead.
End Notes
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Ballerina Farm, the business built by the farmer and influencer Hannah Neeleman and her husband, Daniel, has paused its sale of raw milk products, after “too-high levels of coliform, the family of bacteria that includes E. coli,” were found in its bottled raw milk, according to Utah’s KPCW. Daniel Neeleman said in a statement to People magazine: “Producing raw milk takes careful planning from a facility and infrastructure standpoint. Unfortunately, we learned this after the fact.” You would think the Neelemans might have studied this before the fact, given the known risks of unpasteurized milk.
Feel free to drop me a line about anything here.
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