Reinventing Medicine Badly but Profitably: the story of Mikhaila Peterson and CBM

Mikhaila Peterson? I must admit, I never heard of her. As it turns out, she is the daughter of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and rose to fame not through peer-reviewed research but by declaring that red meat and salt cured her juvenile arthritis, depression, and other ailments. Her formal qualifications consist of a bachelor’s degree in Biological and Biomedical Sciences, some study in psychology and classics and (because every self-styled medical revolutionary needs a touch of glamour) a diploma in beauty and editorial makeup artistry.

Armed with this impressive background, Peterson has reinvented herself as a podcaster, CEO of multiple ventures (Peterson Academy, Fuller Health, the Lion Diet), and “researcher” of biotoxins. Her outstanding contribution to medicine is the “Lion Diet”, a plant-free, ruminant-meat-only regimen that she claims has put tens of thousands into remission from autoimmune and psychiatric disorders – never mind that it flies in the face of basic nutritional plausibility; and never mind that the actual clinical evidence amounts to close to zero.

When the beef-only version of her innovative diet failed to keep her symptom-free, she deftly pivoted first to lamb and bison, then to mould toxicity, and most recently to mitochondrial dysfunction, each time attaching her brand to a new fringe theory and selling supplements, testing kits, or subscriptions to the gullible public.

Peterson’s expertise in nutrition appears to be inversely proportional to her confidence (or is that chutzpa?). She dismisses evidence-based dietary guidance, promotes IgG-based mould tests are meaningless, and treats correlations between mould and disease as settled causation. Her podcast, which features “opposing views” but mostly amplifies like-minded voices, serves as a platform for monetising anecdote and speculation rather than evidence.

Mikhaila Peterson, it seems to me, is a savvy entrepreneur and influencer with a biology degree and a knack for rebranding pure quackery as medical breakthroughs, reinventing medicine badly and absolving herself of the inconvenient requirement of evidence for health claaims. In a word, she is a high-profile ambassador for CBM – Chutzpa-based Medicine.