An alternative medicine blogger named Sarah Pope is one of two Florida women suing the Biden Administration for requiring face masks on airlines and other public transportation. In one of her YouTube videos, Pope refers to antibiotics as a “crutch.”
Pope and another woman named Ana Daza signed on as plaintiffs in a suit filed by a Wyoming not-for-profit organization Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF), the Tampa Bay Times reported. Both women are members of the fund.
The lawsuit names Democratic President Joe Biden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as defendants. The lawsuit alleges that Biden, the CDC and HHS overstepped their constitutional legal authority by requiring Americans to wear face masks on all public transportation. The Biden Administration issued those orders in January.
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The lawsuit also states that the face mask requirement has personally affected Pope.
“She had to forego joining her family on a trip to Hawaii because the thought of wearing a mask for such a long flight gave her anxiety, and she is concerned about having panic attacks if she attempts to do so,” the lawsuit states.
HFDF founder and president Leslie Manookian told the Times, “When government gets into the business of mandating what people can and can’t do with their bodies, I think that we have a problem.”
The HFDF opposes all “unethical and unlawful mask, testing, and vaccine mandates,” according to its website. Manookian told the publication that if the government can mandate masks, tests and vaccines, then it could also conceivably force people to get abortions or take antidepressants.
The HFDF website provides printable forms to notify employers, schools and other institutions that any such mandates violate federal law.
Pope publishes a blog and YouTube channel called The Healthy Home Economist. Her articles on COVID-19—most of which are behind a paywall—include ones on how to talk “brainwashed” family members out of getting vaccinated, the “life-altering” side-effects of the Moderna vaccine as well as a recipe for making homemade hydroxychloroquine.
Hydroxychloroquine is a malaria medication that was briefly promoted as a treatment for COVID-19. The Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health have all advised against it.
In her introductory YouTube video, Pope says, “When [my grandparents] got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.”
Antibiotics and antibacterial agents may save over 200,000 American lives annually, according to a 2005 Harvard University analysis of U.S. government data on infectious disease deaths.
Newsweek contacted Pope for comment.
