DREW PINSKY IS AMERICA'S DOCTOR - WHATEVER THAT MEANS NOW.

From Loveline to Celebrity Rehab, DR. DREW has shaped how we think about sex, addiction, and public health. His recent evolution to free-speech warrior says a lot about physicians, the media, and “truth” in the MAHA era.

- RACHEL MONROE

AT FIRST, the interview looks like any you'd find on network TV: two men, both in sport coats, set off in boxes beside each other, speaking directly to the camera. The chyron beneath them has “Ask Dr. Drew” on the left and the name of his guest on the right: Warner Mendenhall. Mendenhall comes into the interview hot, talking about how the COVID vaccine was “completely ineffective” and that it’s caused “tremendous damage.” Then he says, “I believe about half a million people have died from taking the shot.”

If you’re not familiar, Mendenhall is a lawyer who claims that some of his clients have become ill and suffered injuries due to the vaccine.

You're probably already familiar with Dr. Drew. Drew Pinsky, MD, is 66 now, and he’s been a physician and media presence for more than 40 years. He’s board-certified and practices as an internist and addictive medicine specialist. And he looks remarkably unchanged since he was doling out sex and relationship advice on MTV’s Loveline in the ’90s and counseling addicts with star power on VH1's Celebrity Rehab a decade later. Toned, bespectacled, and brainily telegenic, Dr. Pinsky could pass for at least a decade younger.

During the January 2025 interview, as Mendenhall lists the supposed harms caused by the COVID vaccine, Dr. Pinsky nods. He stares ahead with patient concern, his lips closed above his microphone.

But this interview didn’t go out over any of the cable channels where Dr. Pinsky used to appear all the time. Instead it aired on YouTube, which later flagged it for being in violation of the platform’s policies around medical information. (It’s been estimated that COVID vaccines prevented more than 18.5 million hospitalizations, 3.2 million deaths, and nearly 120 million infections in a two-year period, according to a 2022 study by the Commonwealth Fund, an independent health research entity. There is zero evidence to support any part of Mendenhall’s claims.)