John Cannell MD

John Jacob Cannell, MD's life-long dedication to public welfare began in 1979 when he founded a family medical clinic in the coal fields of Southern Appalachia. Almost immediately he embarked on a widely publicized anti-smoking campaign among coal miners. Shortly after that he became involved in reforming American public education and in 1987, he discovered that all 50 states were claiming they were above the national average on elementary, so-called "standardized," achievement tests. His "Lake Woebegone" discovery was the subject of a special meeting at the U.S Department of Education, a MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour segment and a 1991 60-minutes segment, dedicated to Cannell's education reform work. The 60-minutes segment is available on U-tube entitled "Teacher is a cheater."

In 1991 he switched from general practice to psychiatry. Almost immediately, he confronted "Recovered Memory Therapy," which was destroying tens of thousand of innocent American families. After spending ten years helping end this damaging psychiatric practice, he turned his attention to public health, where, in 2002, he became convinced vitamin D will change the face of medical care and founded the non-profit Vitamin D Council.

The Vitamin D Council's website (www.vitamindcouncil.org) has more than four million unique users per year. After founding the Council, Cannell began writing academic papers about vitamin D and has published 23 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals. He also started blogging for the Vitamin D Council and has written over 1,000 blogs about vitamin D. He has also written two books: one about vitamin D and athletic performance and one about vitamin D and autism.

Academically, Cannell is now best known for his work on vitamin D and autism. However, in 2006 he coauthored two landmark papers detailing how influenza's multiple mysteries are best explained by vitamin D. In fact, his first influenza and vitamin D paper is the most cited review paper in the history of the journal, Epidemiology and Infection, while his second influenza paper is the most downloaded paper in the history of Virology Journal.

However, Cannell is now firmly dedicated to help ending the autism epidemic, which, as several of his academic papers detail, is triggered by gestational and/or early childhood immune deficiencies caused by vitamin D deficiency.