A ‘SILVER’ BULLET ATTORNEYS GENERAL STAND FIRM AGAINST SNAKE OIL
Jim Bakker dominated headlines in the late 1980s with his legal troubles, and now the televangelist is facing a new lawsuit in 2020.
The original story of Bakker’s fall begins on a TV set. Bakker and his wife at the time, Tammy Faye Messner, hosted the popular evangelical talk show “The PTL Club” from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. However, their reign came crashing down when Bakker resigned after being accused of offering money to church secretary Jessica Hahn to cover up rape allegations. Bakker was later convicted of scamming thousands of viewers out of millions of dollars, and he spent several years in prison. Today, Bakker hosts “The Jim Bakker Show” and leads Morningside Church in Missouri. While freedom of religion is protected in the U.S., a recent promotion on Bakker’s show caught the attention of attorneys nationwide. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic found its way to the U.S., many people stocked up on emergency medical supplies. For some, this meant purchasing colloidal silver “cures” that were promised to kill the virus. Supplements, pills, and oils with no scientific evidence of their efficacy were sold to consumers until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent cease-and-desist orders to seven manufacturers in March 2020.
appeared on Bakker’s show on Feb. 12, proclaimed Silver Solution is a cure for the coronavirus. Bakker promoted the product and later sold it through his website. The Missouri and NewYork attorneys general caught wind of this scheme and immediately filed cease-and-desist orders, and even a lawsuit, against Bakker. NPR explains that Bakker and his church are in violation of state laws by “falsely promising consumers that Silver Solution can cure, eliminate, kill, or deactivate coronavirus.”
One such product involved was Sherrill Sellman’s Silver Solution. Sellman, a self-described naturopathic doctor and mind-body psychologist who Bakker stopped selling Silver Solution in mid-March 2020. Even as the lawsuit continues to move through the court system, the message is clear: The justice system is cracking down on the sale of snake oil. TIMES THE OLYMPICSWERE CANCELED And the Postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Games
In late March, amid the global spread of COVID-19, the International Olympic Committee announced the postponement of the 2020 Olympic Games. They were slated to take place in Tokyo, Japan, this summer, but they will now happen in the summer of 2021. While this is an unprecedented decision, it’s not the first time that major global events have affected the Olympic Games or which countries participated. Since the inception of the modern Olympic Games in 1896, they have been outright canceled three times — 1916, 1940, and 1944. The first cancellation of the Olympic Games happened duringWorldWar I. The German Empire was supposed to host the games in Berlin, but by the time 1916 rolled around, Europe was deep in the trenches of WWI. Many nations had sent their athletes to fight in the war, so the games were canceled.
WorldWar II caused the next two cancellations. The 1940 Olympics were initially scheduled to be held in Tokyo. It would have been the first time the games were hosted by a non-Western country, but Japan forfeited the right to host when they invaded China in 1937. The games were then rebooked for Helsinki, Finland, but after Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and startedWWII, those games were scrapped as well. Since the fighting hadn’t ceased by the time the games were supposed to happen in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in 1944, the Olympics were canceled again. Though the Olympics have happened on schedule since the end of WWII, the United States has not always participated. In 1980, when the U.S. boycotted the Olympics that were held in Moscow, Russia, in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, 64 other nations followed suit. However, those games still went on as planned and 80 countries participated. The fact that major global conflicts are the only other events that have been catastrophic enough to affect the Olympics might be distressing and elevate anxiety about our current global health crisis. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the Olympics have only been postponed this time, not canceled. We’ll still get to cheer on our favorite Olympians next year.
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