This is a good summary of how this all got so bad:
The TL;DR is that it happened the way all nonsense health fads happen- there’s a preliminary study published about something that happened in a petri dish, then people with money to make latch on to that and sell it to people. People buy it because they don’t understand the 1000 lightyear gap between something having an effect in a petri dish and something working in complex humans in a clinical application. After a while it becomes popular enough that people assume its true and stop questioning it.
In the case of most health and diet fads, step two is that someone writes a popular book. In this case, it was politicians wanting to manipulate their base.
Substitute “ivermectin” for “low carb” or “paleo” or “daily vitamin supplements in healthy people” or any number of other non-evidence-based health interventions people believe in because everyone has said it’s true for so long. Same story, different players and different goals.
