By Jonathan Emord, Esq.

I had the great privilege of knowing Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, and of representing them, for the better part of thirty years. They were brilliant, passionate, and principled advocates of individual liberty who did more than voice opposition to government violations of rights, they fought the FDA in court and won in an unprecedented string of victories and against all odds. It was my great honor to be the legal tip of their constitutional spear.

Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw: pioneers and freedom champions

Sandy passed away 3 years ago. Durk died this past Saturday. Each loss was profound for the country and yet escaped much public attention. Like giant timbers falling, their demise means the loss of much reasoned argument in defence of our liberties.

Sandy was a brilliant nutrition scientist, a person with a powerful command of the English language, a great persuasive writer, and a force to be reckoned with in the face of injustice. She and Durk were honest to the core and held the highest standards for their many products, articles, books, and written opinions. The two of them ushered in the nutrition revolution with their blockbuster New York Times best seller Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach. They appeared over 100 times on the Merv Griffin show, many times on the Johnny Carson Show, and repeatedly on other international, national, regional and local television and radio shows. They designed extraordinary nutritional formulas and broke down government barriers to nutrient disease information.

Durk Pearson (1943-2024)

Durk was a renaissance man. He wrote screen plays for Clint Eastwood, including the script for The Dead Pool. He helped create the life support systems on the Gemini spacecraft. He helped come up with the calculus, vector calculus and differential equations used for the guidance systems in cruise missiles. He had dozens of patents. He bred crawfish to be the size of lobsters and sold them in roadside stands labeled “desert lobster.”  He was a rancher. He had a voracious appetite for science and one of the most extensive science libraries in the world. He could build or repair everything from a rocket to a machine to sift gold particles from water exiting a mineral spring. His imagination, creative power and raw genius knew no limits. As an undergrad at MIT, he taught graduate level physics classes. He comprehended the intricacies of Einstein’s theory of relativity and was commissioned by Disney to explain the theory to laymen in a Disney movie. His brain was like an immense global encyclopedia. It was all but impossible to find a single subject on which Durk could not pass as an expert.

“A drug that has aphrodisiac side effects . . . has more trouble getting past the FDA than a carcinogen.” - Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw

May Durk and Sandy rest in peace but may their intellectual legacy continue to make a stir and advance the cause of liberty generation after generation. They will be sorely missed.

Key lawsuits

Pearson v. Shalala (“Pearson I”)

Pearson v. Shalala II (“Pearson II”)

Pearson v. Thompson (“Pearson III”)

Interview with Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw

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