The exposure of documents related to the trial of the late American businessman Jeffrey Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell garnered extensive coverage and widespread sharing on social media. However, alongside this attention came a surge of fake news and misleading information.
Given Epstein's association with sexual scandals and exploitation of minors, the names within the newly authorized documents were erroneously perceived to be implicated in the same events Epstein faced charges for. Among the circulated names of those accused, the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who passed away in 2018, was included.
No Revelations on “Strange Tendencies” of Stephen Hawking
Social media users claimed that the court documents related to Epstein contained information about "Stephen Hawking’s sexual tendencies." A text image circulating claimed to validate Hawking’s connections with Epstein, purportedly sourced from the published court documents. However, Misbar’s research into the disclosed 1200-page documents revealed that the circulated picture is fake. The text it displays does not correspond to any content within the officially published documents and files.
The fake text shows a conversation between two individuals. The first one asks about Stephen Hawking’s sexual tendencies and whether he had talked about them to Epstein, while the second person answers: “Yes, he liked watching undressed midgets solve complex equations on a too-high-up chalkboard”.
Answering another question included in the text, about Hawking’s visits to Epstein’s island, the answer was “yes, Jeffrey loved to have intellectuals visit the island so he could reward them for their hard work for humanity and for other darker reasons."
Another claim stating that ABC News published a report saying that “Stephen Hawking was among the leaked names who had sex with minors."
However, Misbar investigated this claim and discovered it to be misleading. Based on Misbar’s research within the network's archives, no report was found to support the claim in question. Instead, the network published another report debunking the initial claim.
Aside from these allegations, Hawking's name was connected to Epstein on two occasions. Initially, it surfaced in a 2015 email sent by Epstein to his partner, Maxwell. The email offered "a reward to friends, family members, or acquaintances of Virginia Giuffre (the plaintiff in the defamation and sexual exploitation case filed against Epstein and his partner), who are able to refute her allegations that the famous physicist had a group sex party with minors on one of Epstein's islands." However, Giuffre's claims remain unproven or refuted. Secondly, Hawking's association with Epstein arose when Epstein requested Giuffre to provide all photos and videos in which she appeared alongside several individuals, including Hawking.
It is worth noting that Hawking was one of a number of scientists who attended a five-day scientific conference in the Caribbean, funded by Epstein, and several photos were taken of him there in 2006, months before accusations of “having sex with a minor” were brought against Epstein.
The Myth of Drinking Children’s Blood and Adrenochrome
A rumor and other misinformation circulated around the time of the disclosure of the documents were also pinned on Hawking and were generally linked to the case of Epstein and various other figures named in the documents, relating to a years-old conspiracy theory about “the world’s corrupt elite” torturing children and drinking their blood to obtain a drug called “adrenochrome," which allegedly preserves youth. Publishers also claimed that this drug was the real reason for Hawking's presence on Epstein's island.
The spread of the claim of “adrenochrome and its preservation of youth” on social media dates back at least six years. Among the information published at the time was the statement that those wishing to obtain this substance torture children to convert the adrenaline in their blood into adrenochrome, and that obtaining a certain amount of it requires sacrificing thirty thousand children.
These details circulated over the years came from a novel called “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by the American writer Hunter S. Thompson, published in 1971. It was turned into a widely popular movie released in 1998. Among the details of the story which is “a brutal journey to the heart of the American dream," and in addition to drug use and dangerous pills in the 1960s, it was mentioned that adrenochrome’s only source was living human glands, and that its excessive use leads a person to madness.
This is a false claim. According to Chemistry Europe, the largest group of institutions specialized in chemistry in Europe, in addition to a number of research papers that discussed the compound, adrenochrome is manufactured by oxidizing adrenaline in laboratories using silver monoxide as an oxidizing agent, without the process being linked to blood or children. Generally, within the human body, adrenochrome results from the biological oxidation of adrenaline.
Misbar’s search for the use of adrenochrome as a substance to preserve youth or as an “elixir of life” did not yield any scientific results, whether on university websites or within the Google Scholar search engine for scientific papers and research.
Nevertheless, research from as far back as 1954, documented in the British Scientific Journal of Psychiatry, concluded a correlation between adrenochrome and schizophrenia. Subsequent scientific hypotheses in 1990 also posited that an increased level of adrenochrome within the body might elevate susceptibility to schizophrenia.
As for its psychological effects, which the Hollywood film adapted from Thompson’s novel exaggerated in its depiction, Laurent Carella, a psychologist and addiction specialist at the French Paul Bruce Hospital, told Agence France-Presse: “Adrenochrome is one of the derivatives of adrenaline and therefore it is possible that it has the effects of adrenaline, such as rapid heart palpitations and sweating, but I have never heard of addiction or adrenochrome poisoning. It is a fairy tale.”
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