"Dr." Edward Group

Dr. Edward Group is not a real doctor, except in the field of chiropractics. He is, however, responsible for creating a large number of the supplements that Alex Jones sells on the InfoWars store.

Dr. Group runs the Houston-based Global Healing Center.

Group Acts Like He Is A General Practice Doctor, But He Is Not

Dr. Group's bio on his website is full of acronyms that would suggest that he has a plethora of advanced degrees. This suggestion is intentional, seeking to create the impression that he has a broad range of medical training, but that is dishonest and misleading.

Group goes a long way to cover up how unqualified he is, so it may be wise at this point to take his supposed degrees one by one and see why they mean nothing.

• Doctor of Chiropractic Degree (DC) from Texas Chiropractic College

Having a degree to perform chiropractics is nothing to be ashamed of. Granted, there are some indications that chiropractic medicine does more harm than good for a large number of patients, and there have been some chiropractors who have come out and warned that their profession contains a lot of scam artists who are counting on people believing that their DC degree is the same thing as an MD. Dr. Group is precisely the type of chiropractor that this guy was warning the world about.

Also, Texas Chiropractic College does not have very stringent admissions requirements. According to their online application portal, to be considered, you just have to send in a 2-3 page personal essay about why you want to be a chiropractor, one letter of recommendation, your college transcript (though no specifics are mentioned about what they require on that front, or if they even require prospective students to have completed an undergraduate degree), and proof that you either got the meningitis vaccine, or proof that you don't believe in vaccines.  This is a very low bar for entry into a doctoral program.

• Diplomate of American Clinical Board of Nutrition (DACBN) from the American Clinical Board of Nutrition

This is a degree that is attainable by taking a multiple choice test. According to the Chicago Tribune, recipients of this degree are generally chiropractors, which allows them to expand what they're legally allowed to do, without requiring actual degrees in nutrition or dietetics.

• Group has 4 degrees from the Natural Healing Institute of Naturopathy

Based on many of the reviews of past students, the Natural Healing Institute of Naturopathy appears to mostly be a disorganized mess of a "school" where people can basically just pay to be given degrees that allow them to practice things like aromatherapy. Students have left reviews like "this program is almost over and I am no where near feeling ready to put my information to use," "this is not a college credit course for which you would at least get a legitimate credit for your self study. THIS IS A SCAM!!," and "some of the other students I spoke with at break felt the same way and were considering asking for a refund - but there is a cancellation fee of $200."

The only requirements to get into the NHI are that an applicant be over 18, have a high school diploma/GED, and can pay up. Also, conveniently, the NHI offers most of their degrees as "distance learning" classes, which suspiciously are often offered at steep discounts. For instance, right now, if you get it through distance learning, the Certified Naturopath Degree that Dr. Group has, which normally costs $29,900, can by yours for the low, low price of just $9,990.

It is probably unrelated, but the Federal Trade Commission's consumer protection website lists "Offering Degrees at a Flat Fee" as being one of the main signs that an online school is a diploma mill.

Beyond the possibility that this school is a pay-for-degrees operation, it is a large concern that Dr. Group claims to have a Certified Clinical Herbalist degree (CCH) and a Certified Clinical Nutritionist (CCN) degree from NHI, but those are not degrees that NHI offers. However, NHI does offer a couple of very similar sounding degrees.

While they don't offer a Certified Clinical Herbalist degree, they do offer a Certified Clinical Master Herbalist degree (CCMH)™. The reason there is a trademark on there is because this is a degree that NHI has created, and that is something they can do because the field of accreditation of herbology is completely unregulated. The CCMH degree basically amounts to a glorified aromatherapy degree.

Also, while the school does not offer a Certified Clinical Nutritionist degree (CCN), they do offer a Certified Nutritionist Consultant degree (CNC). The reason for Dr. Group switching up a few letters here is very clear. A CCN degree is a pretty legitimate degree that requires extensive internships and post-graduate education, while the CNC is definitely not. Also, according to QuackWatch, people with CNC degrees or offering CNC degrees "should be regarded as bogus."

In yet another weird coincidence, those two degrees, the Certified Nutritionist Consultant and the Certified Clinical Master Herbalist degrees, are two of the four degrees that NHI offers as "distance learning classes," along with the Certified Naturopath and Holistic Health Practitioner degrees Group also received. Either Dr. Group received two degrees from this school which they do not offer, or he just paid for all the degrees he could get from them online and bluffed about a couple of them to exaggerate the degrees he just paid to be awarded.

• Diplomate of the American Board of Functional Medicine (DABFM) from the American Board of Functional Medicine

All it takes to get this degree is to have a doctorate level degree (for Group, it's his chiropractic degree), take 300 hours of course work about Functional Medicine (which, again, can be done in correspondence courses, which often means just pay for the credit hours), then pass an exam. Dr. Group very well may have done all this.

The bigger issue is that Functional Medicine is, in itself, a scam, and little more than an attempt to rebrand the term "alternative medicine" and make it seem more similar to "medicine medicine." At its core, Functional Medicine is a school of medical thought that believes that doctors need to focus more on the entirety of a patient, their physical, mental, and spiritual parts, to treat them. Naturally, since our methods of quantifying and studying a person's spiritual health are very limited at this point, the arguments put forth by Functional Medicine proponents by definition cannot be studied. Functional Medicine represents a very dangerous trend that can be best summed up as expressing, "who cares about concrete facts and observable correlations in science that say we're wrong when we have one anecdote that says we're right?"

Naturally, the larger medical community warns the public to be wary of people practicing "integrative or functional medicine," and that Functional Medicine is "merely a marketing tool that is as imprecise as those who claim to practice it."

• Executive Education, Owner/President Management (OPM 52) from Harvard Business School

This inclusion on his educational resume would lead the casual observer to assume that Dr. Group was accepted to Harvard Business School, which in and of itself would be a pretty impressive credential.

However, this Owner/President Management program isn't really a part of the Harvard Business School, by which I mean that it is not a program that is specific to students at Harvard, nor is it a program that culminates with the rewarding of any kind of degree or certification. There are no educational requirements to get in, and Harvard Business School is careful to call enrollees "clients" and not "students."

Based on current prices, completing the program would cost a person about $127,500, and because it is not a degree-granting program, everyone who pays for the classes gets a little misleading connection to Harvard on their resume.

People on the internet often make fun of Tyra Banks' habit of claiming to have graduated from Harvard Business School, when in reality, she just attended this same OPM program that Dr. Group did.

• Executive Education, Member of the MIT Sloan Alumni Community and MIT Sloan Alumni Database from MIT Sloan School of Management

Much like was the case with his "credentials" from Harvard, this is another entry on the resume that implies that Dr. Group has some kind of degree or credential, or is even associated with MIT, when in reality, he just paid to attend some open-enrollment business seminars.

Interestingly, MIT does have a page for Dr. Group up on their website, where you can see all of the courses he's taken through the Sloan School. Based on current estimated prices, Group paid at least $40,000 to take 25 days worth of seminars about business, with names like "Essential IT for Non-IT Executives" and "Strategic Cost Analysis for Managers." It all sounds like pretty standard middle-management stuff.

Perhaps the best gem to be found here is that in March 2017, Dr. Group attended a seminar called "Applied Neuroscience: Unleashing Brain Power for You and Your People." Dr. Group was so displeased to have spent $3,500 on this seminar that he left a negative review that is pretty funny:

“The course did not provide useful takeaway info. Did not cover the affects and variables that sugar, msg, metals, aspartame, environmental excitotoxins, emf, lighting, have on the brain. Also the exercises were not beneficial. Info was outdated. I would not recommend this course.”

It's hilarious to imagine Dr. Group in this business school lecture where the instructor is going over Neural Tethering and Cultural Inclusivity and how the concepts can boost productivity, and Group is just sitting there thinking, "when are we going to discuss my fears about the Electromagnetic Fields? This class is bogus."

In fairness to MIT, the course description does literally say "Note: This is not a science course; it is a leadership course based on scientific research," so Dr. Group probably shouldn't have expected talk of "excitotoxins." That's kind of on him.

Also, anyone who actually went to Harvard would know that the correct word is "effects," and there is no need for that comma after "lighting," though there probably should be an "and" or an "or" before it.

Although he does not specifically say so on his educational resume, it appears that Group received his undergraduate degree from Southeastern Louisiana University, based on his inclusion that he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity at said school. Perhaps one of the reasons that he may not want to brag about having gone to SLU is that the school does not really even offer a pre-med track for undergraduate students. If he graduated with any degree from here, he would have a very difficult time getting accepted into any medical school with graduate level admissions requirements. Luckily, Texas Chiropractic College is pretty loose on admissions.

Membership In Shady Organizations

In addition to boasting an incredibly dubious educational resume, Dr. Group also brags of membership in a number of organizations that aren't the sort of groups a serious doctor would be a member of. Weirdly, they are the kind of groups a money-obsessed, pseudo-science peddling con man would be a part of.

• Oxford Club Member

Dr. Group describes this as "an international group of people who analyze world affairs and business trends," which coincidentally sounds a lot like how Alex describes the "Globalists."

This is not what the Oxford Club is. The Oxford Club is a business that sends out periodical newsletters advising their subscribers things in which they should invest, and specifically exists only to help subscribers "get rich." Some have accused it of being a bit of a scam (upselling people on more expensive memberships, advertising that their advice is better than it actually is, etc.), but it really just looks like an investment newsletter.

Sure, The Oxford Club has a wing called the Oxford Voyager Club that puts on the occasional seminar, but Dr. Group is not one of the people who puts on these seminars. At best, he paid $1,000 to attend one.

The Oxford Club offers memberships on three levels. Premier Membership just means you subscribe to the Club's publications. Being part of the "Director's Circle" really just means that you've decided to pay for a lifetime membership up front, and you can give your membership to a family member. The highest level, the "Chairman's Circle" apparently is the same as the Director's, but you get access to a special part of their website.

It appears that a top-level membership is priced at about $5,900, which definitely seems within the range of what Dr. Group is willing to pay for a credit. The problem is that, even at this level of membership, it's absurd to call himself a part of "an international group of people who analyze world affairs and business trends." He would be a "top-level mark/subscriber of a publication that offers investment advice," at best.

Also, if you didn't already think the Oxford Club were a bunch of assholes, their Chairman's Circle gets together once a year, and in 2018, their gathering was literally called "The Wealth Cruise." It's truly a dream come true, getting to pay between $5,000-$22,000 to hang out on a boat with stuffy white men who really love money.

• Occidental Institute of Research Foundation

The OIRF is listed by QuackWatch as a "Questionable 'Research' Entity."

In 2004, a naturopath in Australia was convicted of killing an 18 day-old baby by convincing the parents they did not need to follow through with life-saving surgery. The naturopath, Reginald Harold Fenn, told the parents that he had used a machine called a MORA machine which indicated that the baby did not need surgery.

The MORA machine is part of "an all-encompassing assessment and treatment modality utilizing a patient’s own “ultra-fine electromagnetic oscillation." This electromagnetic oscillation is supposedly read by the MORA machine. The use of this machine directly led to the death of this baby.

They have since removed it from their website, but at the time, the OIRF was heavily promoting the use of MORA machines, saying "its application is trouble-free and for that reason is especially suitable for use with sick children...practically every illness or disturbance, be it organic or functional, acute or chronic, already in progress or only beginning, may be treated with MORA-Therapy."

• Society of Scientific Exploration

The name of this organization lends it the appearance of bland credibility, but the reality of what they consider "scientific exploration" is anything but.

The SSE's primary function is that it puts out a quarterly journal that they claim is peer-reviewed and scholarly. A quick scan of the journal's editors introduces immediate concerns, namely that one of the Associate Editors is Courtney Brown, the man who runs a "remote viewing institute" (which is conveniently both a non-profit and for-profit business simultaneously) and who famously was a guest on Coast To Coast AM and claimed that his associates had "remote viewed" a giant spaceship following the Halle-Bopp comet, which is likely where Marshall Applewhite got the idea, which led to the Heaven's Gate suicides, two months after Brown was on Coast To Coast.

Courtney Brown's involvement in the editorial process of this journal makes it's scientific credentials incredibly suspect, but not nearly as much as the actual content of the journal does. Instead of covering topics that might well be said to be on the fringes of science, the journal covers topics like (not surprisingly) remote viewing the future (which would also count as precognition), UFOs, cryptozoology, and in their Dec. 2017 issue, how to use runes and the work of five different poets to discern William Shakespeare's true identity. Honestly, the journal is a whole lot of fun, but the leaps in logic and assumption that are made are disqualifying to be considered scientific.

The Society of Scientific Exploration is a den of pseudo-science masquerading as scholarship, so it is no surprise to see Dr. Group is involved, but what is most confusing is that it seems unclear how he's involved at all. His name isn't listed as an editor or a member of the staff, and all their journal issues are available online, and none feature articles submitted by him.

Global Healing Center

Most of the Global Healing Center is about selling Dr. Group's supplements. Pretty much everything he sells is the same stuff Alex sells, just with different names. Alex sells Liver Shield, Group sells Livatrex. Alex has Survival Shield Nascent Iodine, Group has Detoxadine Nascent Iodine. Each product speaks volumes about what each man needs in order to sell his wares: Alex needs war/battle imagery to evoke fear and masculinity, Group needs a made up word that he hopes people will think is a real medicine.

On the Global Healing Center website, they spend a whole lot of time bragging about awards they've won from the Better Business Bureau. This is pretty unimpressive, given that the Better Business Bureau has been consistently shown to be a corrupt organization where you can just pay for ratings and accolades, to the extent that because the supposed owner of it paid for it, a fake business named after Hamas was given an A- grade from the BBB. They also "accidentally" gave the Nazi message board Stormfront an A+ rating. This is all to say that the BBB is not a credible organization, and awards from such an organization are perhaps not as impressive as they seem.

Global Healing Center has shown an interesting path of growth over the years. Before 2015 (reflecting fiscal year 2014), the company did not even rank on Inc.'s list of the 5000 fastest growing businesses in America. In 2015, they made the list, coming in at #1902, which most likely reflects the increased sales the business experienced from their association with InfoWars:

In the first full year that they worked with InfoWars, they brought in revenues of $14.6 million. While it is difficult to assess how much of this revenue was due to their association with Alex Jones, but it would be safe to assume it represented a sizable chunk of this total, given that it launched them onto this list. 

In 2016 (reflecting fiscal year 2015), they saw the business grow slightly:

In their second year working with InfoWars, Global Healing Center raised their revenue by $1.4 million, which is about a 10% increase from the prior year. That is not bad, generally speaking, but is nothing compared to what they experienced the next year:

In their 2017 list, reflecting fiscal year 2016, Global Healing Center increased their revenue by over $10 million, which is an insane aberration. That is an almost 60% increase in revenues, without anything substantive about the company changing.

This could be seen as a story of a business hitting their stride, but because of the players involved, this kind of jump seems very suspicious, especially considering that at the end of 2015, beginning of fiscal year 2016, Ted Anderson lost his license to sell gold and other precious metals. Whether or not that is a huge coincidence or an indication of financial misdeeds remains to be seen, but seems possible that illicit payments that were being laundered through Ted's untraceable gold business were re-routed to Dr. Group's unregulated supplement business when Ted's license was revoked.

Involvement With InfoWars

Dr. Group did not exist on the InfoWars radar before late 2013. Before that point, Alex Jones made all his money off of sponsors, selling books/DVDs, and probably some dark money under the table.

While Alex had previously sold some products created by veterinarian Dr. Wallach, when Dr. Group entered the scene and Alex launched InfoWars Life, things changed quickly. Alex's business model became one based around selling supplements, and it appeared to be a lucrative model.

Dr. Group has made frequent appearances to the InfoWars studios over the years, and every time he shows up, the show turns into an at least hour long infomercial about their supplements, with a little bit of "Dr. Group dispensing advice to callers he is not qualified to give."

Primary Motivation In Life

Dr. Group has alleged on Alex Jones' show that his reason for studying health is to undo the damage that was done by his father, who allegedly invented Saran Wrap. This is almost certainly impossible, considering Saran Wrap was invented in 1933, it was invented by a guy named Ralph Wiley, and a Google search of "Edward Group Jr" and "saran" turns up zero results.

Without providing any explanation or proof, Group has also asserted that his extended family is "probably" in the Illuminati.

Extra-Curriculars

Dr. Group directed a documentary about his heath beliefs called The Secret To Health which you can rent on Amazon Prime. It is very, very clearly an extended infomercial for The Global Healing Center masquerading as a documentary. Strangely, it came out in 2014 and still does not have the five ratings required for IMDB to display an audience rating for the film.