VENICE, Fla. — MAGA and MAHA are happily married in Florida, and nowhere more at home than in Sarasota County, where on a humid October night a crowd of several hundred gathered to honor state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, his wife, and an unlicensed Canadian radiologist who treats cancer with horse paste.
The event, titled “The 3 Big C’s: Courage, Censorship & Cancer,” was sponsored by the We the People Health and Wellness Center, a clinic, funded by a Jan. 6 marcher, where patients can bask in red light, sit in ozone-infused steam baths, or get their children treated for autism with an experimental blood concentrate.
In Venice, in Sarasota County, a “medical freedom” movement forged in opposition to covid lockdowns blends wellness advocates, vaccine-haters, right-wing Republicans, and angry parents in a stew of anti-government absolutism and mystical belief.
Ladapo’s wife, Brianna, a self-proclaimed “spiritual healer” who says she speaks with angels and has prophetic visions, chaired a panel at the event at the Venice Community Center. The keynote speech was by William Makis, a litigious covid conspiracist who, after losing his medical license in 2019, has made a living treating cancer patients with antiparasitic drugs including ivermectin, which was also championed in some circles as a covid treatment during the pandemic.
Clinical trials showed that ivermectin didn’t work, but covid skeptics viewed medicine’s rejection of it as part of a conspiracy by Big Pharma against a cheap, off-patent drug. Some of the patients in his care have what he calls “turbo cancers,” Makis says, blaming alleged impurities in mRNA vaccines that he says have killed millions of people.
For Makis, it’s all one big conspiracy — the virus, the vaccin …