when her own staff searched for terms covid-19 and vaccine, the first result that came up was, you guessed it, joseph mercola s book. and it was tagged as a best-seller. warren goes on to point out to amazon that the book perpetuates dangerous conspiracies about covid-19, and false and misleading information about vaccines. i m randi kaye with cnn. can we ask you a couple questions? reporter: dr. mercola refused to talk with us when we found him in florida in august. but unlike amazon, agreed to answer questions about his book over e-mail. mercola told us via e-mail that he encourages everyone to fully educate themselves to make individual decisions about medical risk taking. amazon does have content guidelines for books. but those guidelines do not include anything about medical misinformation. instead, they say in part that they include content that may be objectionable in their books. we also reached out to the publisher, anderson, chelsea
amazon s behavior has caught the attention of senator elizabeth warren who, in this letter to amazon s ceo, wrote she is concerned that amazon is peddling misinformation about covid-19 vaccines and treatments through its search and best-seller algorithms. she accuses the retail giant of being unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods. in her letter, she notes that when her own staff searched for terms covid-19 and vaccine, the first result that came up was, you guessed it, joseph mercola s book. and it was tagged as a best-seller. warren goes on to point out to amazon that the book perpetuates dangerous conspiracies about covid-19, and false and misleading information about vaccines. i m randi kaye with cnn. can we ask you a couple questions? no. reporter: dr. mercola refused to talk with us when we found him in florida in august. but unlike amazon, agreed to answer questions about his book over e-mail.