Document Type

Essay

Publication Title

Emory Law Journal Online

Abstract

This Article argues that the appointment of prominent wellness and antivaccine figures to senior federal health positions marks the culmination of a long-running evolution in American health fraud—from nineteenth-century traveling medicine shows to the institutional capture of government health agencies. Drawing a direct lineage from patent medicine marketing to contemporary wellness conspiracism, this Article demonstrates how tactics perfected by early medicine show entrepreneurs—emotional manipulation, conspiratorial framing, anti-establishment positioning, and the exploitation of information asymmetries—have persisted across regulatory and technological shifts, ultimately achieving unprecedented political legitimacy.

This Article traces this evolution through the deregulated supplement marketplace created by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, the amplification of health misinformation by social media platforms, and the COVID-19 pandemic’s destabilization of public trust in scientific authority. It then examines how these dynamics enabled the elevation of wellness-aligned figures to leadership roles at the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Food and Drug Administration. The resulting transformation of federal health agencies—from evidence-based institutions into platforms for wellness ideology—has produced immediate public health consequences, including mass resignations of career officials, preventable disease outbreaks, and erosion of America’s scientific credibility.

By situating contemporary wellness governance within a longer history of health fraud and regulatory arbitrage, this Article contends that the phenomenon of “government gone Goop” represents a broader crisis of democratic governance: whether institutions tasked with protecting the public can maintain epistemic integrity in information environments that reward confusion, distrust, and commercially profitable misinformation.

First Page

32

Publication Date

3-26-2026

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