A very telling pair of graphs from Ole Humlum’s Climate4You :
We can debate the reasons for less cloud cover, but generally speaking less cloud/more sunshine leads to higher temperatures. (Certain high level clouds may have the reverse effect, but this is small).
Even the Met Office admitted this a few years ago, in a study they have since buried.
In particular, it is the sun that predominantly heats the oceans. The equilibrium effect on the seas from a slightly warmer atmosphere are so small as to be unmeasurable.
In alarmist world, of course, CO2 is the only driver of global temperatures, so don’t expect them to mention that cloud cover has been a major factor behind global warming in recent decades.
May 13, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular |
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How many other countries are entirely fed up with the World Stealth Organization’s misleading spin about “equity”?
The negotiations have been controlled by globalists, not nations, from day one.
Eleven nations informed the UN General Assembly they were not going along with the UN’s support for the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Agenda last September. In alphabetical order:
- Belarus
- Bolivia
- Cuba
- Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
- Eritrea
- Islamic Republic of Iran
- Nicaragua
- Russian Federation
- Syrian Arab Republic
- Venezuela
- Zimbabwe
The Netherlands’ government has been instructed to delay the WHO votes or vote No by the lower house of Parliament.
Slovakia said it will not sign current drafts of both documents.
Croatia’s new majority party is against the WHO’s pandemic preparedness plan
Italy’s Senator Borghi said Italy will vote No on the treaty and furthermore that there are 10 more months in which to reject the IHR Amendments.
It is very unusual to have this level of disagreement made public even before the start of the World Health Assembly meeting. And with “hybrid negotiations” aka backroom horse-trading, leading right up to the meeting, nobody will have time to consider the treaties before they are due to be voted on. It has been a corrupt process from start to finish. It could only succeed with stealth (no one knowing what is really in the treaties) and bribes.
Now that the US has announced that 100 countries are being paid off to develop their pandemic preparedness agenda, will the bribes be enough to get these treaties across the finish line? Will the unbribed be miffed? How much will it cost the US taxpayer for the world’s nations to agree to dictatorial control of pandemics and health information going forward?
May 12, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, Iran, Russia, United Nations, WHO |
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Can pediatricians afford to run their medical practices without the generous kickbacks they receive for vaccinating every child?
Dr. Paul Thomas, a Dartmouth-trained pediatrician, discussed this dilemma during an April 16 interview with Polly Tommey on Children’s Health Defense’s “Vax-Unvax: The People’s Study” bus tour.
“You cannot stay in business if you’re not giving pretty close to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] [childhood vaccine] schedule,” said Thomas, who ran a general pediatrics practice with 15,000 patients and 33 staff members.
Thomas also addressed the risks and harms of vaccines — including COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — and the importance of boosting our immune systems naturally.
‘We were losing … over a million dollars’
Thomas, author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Year,” gave parents in his practice a choice: vaccinate their children on the CDC schedule, vaccinate more slowly by waiting for the child’s immune system to develop or not vaccinate at all.
As more patients refused vaccines, Thomas began to notice the financial impact on his practice.
He and his staff conducted a thorough analysis of their billing records, examining the income generated from vaccine administration fees, markups and quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates.
The results shocked him. “We were losing … over a million dollars in vaccines that were refused.”
He explained that pediatric practices heavily rely on vaccine income to stay afloat, with overhead costs running as high as 80%.
“It is very expensive to run a pediatric office,” he told Tommey. “You need multiple nurses, multiple receptionists, multiple billing people and medical records — it’s a huge operation.”
Three financial incentives for giving vaccines
Pediatricians receive several types of financial incentives for administering vaccines.
The first is the administration fee, which Thomas described as a “Thank you for giving the shot.” He estimated that pediatricians typically receive about $40 for the first antigen and $20 for each subsequent antigen.
“Let’s just say a two-month well-baby visit, there’s a DPT — that’s three shots, three antigens,” he told Tommey, plus “Hib [Haemophilus influenzae type b], Prevnar [pneumococcal], Hep B [hepatitis B], polio, rota [rotavirus] — [that’s] about $240.”
The second way pediatricians profit from vaccines is through a small markup on the cost of the vaccines themselves, though Thomas noted that this is not a significant source of income.
The third and most substantial financial incentive is quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates. Insurance companies offer pediatricians bonus payments for meeting certain benchmarks, typically around 80% of patients being fully vaccinated by age 2.
“I get dinged maybe 10-15% off of those RVUs — relative value units — that are ascribed,” he said, describing the points system used to calculate physician reimbursements.
With his practice’s vaccination rate a mere 1%, Thomas was at risk of losing up to 15% of his overall revenue.
“Really, it effectively means a pediatric practice cannot survive using insurance without doing most of the vaccines, if not all of them,” he said. “And I think that explains the blinders — [why doctors] just won’t go there and look at the fact that these vaccines are causing a lot of harm.”
Neurodevelopmental issues ‘clearly linked to vaccines’
Tommey asked about sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
“When you hear the word syndrome, it means we don’t know what it is … [or] what causes it,” Thomas said. “But we actually have a pretty good clue.”
Thomas said six studies examined the correlation between SIDS cases and vaccines. “In one data set, 97% were in the first 10 days after the vaccine. Only 3% were in the subsequent 10 days,” he said.
Other studies showed similar patterns, with 75-90% of SIDS deaths occurring within the first week after vaccination, he said.
Thomas also highlighted the increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders, allergies and autoimmune diseases in vaccinated children.
“We know without a doubt that things like neurodevelopmental concerns, learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder], autism [are] clearly linked to vaccines,” he stated. “The more you vaccinate, the more likely you are to have these problems.”
Vaccinated children are more prone to infections and illness compared to their unvaccinated peers, according to Thomas, who published a study comparing the health outcomes of each group.
“It’s the vaccinated who get more ear infections, more sinus infections, more lung infections,” he said. “Any kind of infection you look at, the vaccinated get more.”
‘Healthy adults just “Boom!” — dropping dead’
The risks associated with vaccines extend beyond childhood. Thomas drew attention to the recent phenomenon of “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome” (SADS) following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
“We see it on the news, we see it on the ball fields: healthy adults just ‘Boom!’ — dropping dead,” he said. “And that’s all happened since the COVID jabs.”
Thomas expressed particular concern about the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccine development. He pointed out that despite decades of research, mRNA vaccines have never been proven safe or effective.
He cited previous attempts to develop mRNA vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which consistently failed in animal trials.
“When they got to the animal trials, they would vaccinate the rats,” he said. “When they re-exposed those rats, in one study, 100% of them died.”
The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines’ narrow focus on the spike protein is also problematic because it causes the immune system to become “focused on just one thing,” Thomas said.
“When the [viral] organism mutates, those who are vaccinated can’t recognize this new mutation,” he said, recalling how at a family gathering during the pandemic, it was mostly the vaccinated who contracted COVID-19.
Thomas shared a personal story about his mother’s experience with pulmonary fibrosis after receiving three COVID-19 vaccines.
“After her third COVID shot, she started really running out of energy and then getting short of breath,” he said. “Within a month, her lungs [had a] ground-glass appearance.”
Tommey asked about the risks of vaccine shedding.
“Shedding seems to be happening, and it’s been documented in studies,” he said, explaining that vaccinated individuals can expose others to spike proteins through body fluids and secretions.
‘We can no longer go to our doctors and say, “Fix me”’
Thomas discussed the likelihood of new pandemics being declared in the future, driven by the immense financial gains pharmaceutical companies reaped from the COVID-19 vaccines.
“They made too much money — Pfizer alone made over $100 billion,” he said. “So the power that the public health machinery got to themselves with COVID has to be intoxicating to them.”
In light of this, Thomas stressed the importance of personal health and natural immunity.
“We can no longer go to our doctors and say, ‘Fix me,’ after we’ve trashed our own health,” he said. “So we’ve got to take responsibility for eating right, avoiding stress, getting adequate sleep … [and] boosting our immune system naturally with organic produce.”
Thomas also encouraged people to question public health authorities and make informed decisions about their health.
“I can no longer trust the CDC, the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], the NIH [National Institutes of Health],” he said. “Some good people work in these institutions, but the institutions themselves are captured.”
Thomas said that when it comes to vaccines or a new pandemic illness, “They’re the last people you want to trust.”
‘Vax Facts’ book coming soon
Thomas shared information about his upcoming book, “Vax Facts,” co-authored with his partner DeeDee Hoover. He said the book provides an easy-to-read, comprehensive guide to understanding the vaccine issue, regardless of one’s current stance.
“This is going to … allow you to really understand it in an organized, reasonable way why it makes sense now to pause” taking vaccines, Thomas said.
Tommey reminded viewers of Thomas’ weekly show on CHD.TV, “Pediatric Perspectives,” where he interviews pediatricians and doctors who focus on children’s health.
Thomas encouraged viewers to visit his website, Kids First 4 Ever, to learn more about his work and to access coaching services for childhood vaccines and wellness.
Video link
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
May 10, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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A Canadian university has fired Patrick Provost, Ph.D., a professor and scientist experienced in the field of RNA and lipid nanoparticles, reigniting the debate around academic freedom and the suppression of scientific discourse.
Laval University, a public research university in Quebec City, suspended Provost multiple times for publicly questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and the necessity of vaccinating children.
On March 28, the university fired Provost, who had tenure in the Department of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the university’s Medical School.
The firing, which comes as his previous suspensions are still being arbitrated — and despite a Quebec law protecting academic freedom — first made headlines in Quebec’s Le Devoir on April 26, a day after Libre Média published portions of Provost’s letter to colleagues.
“Are we witnessing the re-engineering of society, where we will no longer be able to freely express or debate … where professors will censor themselves, rather than intervene … in order to preserve their privileges?” Provost wrote.
Laval’s controversial decision follows Harvard University’s example in March, when it fired Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, ostensibly for non-compliance with the university’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
‘I could not remain silent’
Over his 35-year career in academic research, Provost authored nearly 100 papers, was cited in over 16,000 research articles and received three “Discovery of the Year” awards in recognition of his research.
He was a leading expert in the field of RNA for the past 20 years and in the field of lipid nanoparticles for the past 10 years.
His extensive knowledge of these key components of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines compelled him to question the possible dangers associated with the novel treatments when the Canadian government rolled them out in 2021.
“Being aware of the potential risks, known and unknown, associated with these new ‘vaccines,’ I could not remain silent on such important issues, where lives were at stake, particularly those of children,” Provost wrote in his letter.
He said he felt compelled to share his concerns with the public, colleagues and government officials, to promote transparency and informed decision-making.
Despite his attempts to engage in dialogue and debate, Provost received no response other than the disciplinary actions taken by Laval University.
He was suspended without pay on four separate occasions. The first suspension, of eight weeks, was imposed on June 13, 2022, following a complaint from a professor, and the second, of four months, was imposed on Jan. 23, 2023, after a complaint from a citizen.
A sixth complaint was dropped on Feb. 14, 2023, after more than 275 colleagues wrote to the university denouncing its treatment of Provost as “abusive.”
Laval maintains his actions were not related to academic freedom but instead infringed on the university’s policymaking authority, Provost told The Defender.
In his letter, Provost expressed his disappointment in the lack of open discussion on the COVID-19 vaccine issue, asking, “Why have peers disappeared from adversarial public debate?”
Academic freedom ‘the last line of defence’ for democracy
Provost’s dismissal sparked concerns about the enforcement of Quebec’s law — passed in June 2022 — protecting academic freedom, The Epoch Times reported.
“University professors have the right to criticize their own institutions — even the government,” Provost told The Defender, who said his case should never have gone before an arbitrator.
The parliamentary minister declined to intervene, however, and — wanting to avoid the accusation of intervening in the legal process — claimed the arbitration process must proceed, according to Provost.
Critics argue that the law was not effectively enforced, leading to the suppression of dissenting opinions and the punishment of researchers who challenge dominant narratives.
The Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d’université (FQPPU), told The Epoch Times that Provost’s dismissal was an “unacceptable attack against academic freedom.”
FQPPU President Madeleine Pastinelli said, “If the theses defended by a professor are upsetting or erroneous, it’s the duty of other specialists in the field to criticize or contradict them on a scientific level and certainly not for managers to establish the limit between what is valuable or not.”
“It’s not normal for professors to fear retaliation when they speak publicly against government directives,” said Quebec Conservative Party Leader Éric Duhaime. “In democracy, universities must remain independent from political interests.”
In a letter of support for Provost, nine Canadian academics warned, “If we give place to censorship in the university, we give place to censorship virtually everywhere else.” They called academic freedom — and particularly tenure — “the last line of defence” for democracy.
Provost agreed, telling The Defender, “If the freedom of speech of professors disappears, democracy will disappear too, quite soon after.”
Laval got $42 million for pandemic preparedness two weeks after firing
Provost’s dismissal also raised concerns about the influence of financial interests and political pressure on academic institutions.
Douglas Farrow, Ph.D., professor of theology and ethics at McGill University in Montreal and one of the authors of the recent letter in support of Provost, wrote on his Substack that the suppression of academic freedom often aligns with the interests of powerful entities, such as pharmaceutical companies and government agencies that provide significant funding to universities.
Farrow highlighted funding recently received by Laval University: “[$]42 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to set up a centre to help prepare for future ‘pandemics.’”
“That’s a lot of money,” Provost told The Defender. “I’m wondering if my dismissal is linked to this announcement, which came about two weeks after I’d been fired.”
“Those vested interests don’t give a damn about science as such,” Farrow wrote. “It is ‘The Science’ they care about, because that is the kind of science you can be told by narrative-spinners to follow.”
Hopes for a favorable ruling
Provost and the Union of Laval University Professors have filed around 20 formal grievances challenging his suspensions and dismissal.
Provost said he hoped a favorable ruling from the arbitrator on the initial suspension would function “like falling dominoes,” setting a precedent for lifting the subsequent suspensions and ultimately paving the way for his reinstatement.
However, the arbitration process is expected to be lengthy, with a decision on the first suspension not anticipated until January 2025, more than three years after the alleged offenses.
If arbitration fails, Provost said he may pursue other options but lamented that “the legal system is really very corrupted by the government” in Canada.
The long battle has taken a toll on Provost’s energy and finances, which are now exacerbated by the loss of his position entirely. He has four children who are still financially dependent, with two still at home.
His two college-aged children have to “work more and borrow money from the bank,” he said, but noted that his family has been “very, very supportive.”
“Father, don’t worry about us,” his children told him. “You have to win this fight and we stand behind you.”
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
May 10, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine |
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An Australian Hero
Paul Collits is a hero to me.
Of all the interviews I have done so far, with so many amazing people, this is the most personal and significant.
In the darkest of the dark days, the people that I relied on the most to triangulate my sanity were Paul Collits, Michael Yeadon, Malcolm Kendrick, and Jeffrey Tucker.
Paul was different in two ways.
Firstly, he is Australian; there were very few sane people writing anything useful left in this country, and secondly, because of the sheer breadth and depth of his knowledge and insight, as you will soon see.
He helped me with far more than just navigating Covid insanity.
Having the opportunity to do this interview is an absolute honour, and truth be told, I was quite emotional when I first read it.
With thanks and gratitude to Paul Collits, for everything.
1. Paul, could you please start by giving readers a brief overview of your background and journey up to this point
First, many thanks to you for arranging the interview. I am very happy to be involved. I am in my late sixties, now well and truly retired. I live in northern New South Wales, close to the Queensland border. Brisbane is the closest large city. We live in a large rural town of about 30,000 people. I have had a pretty varied career, but mainly I have worked as a civil servant (policy professional) and an academic. In the former role, I have worked for a State Government and for the Feds. In the latter role, I have been both a researcher and a teacher. I have also done a short stint working for a Senator (when I was much younger) and briefly as a local economic development practitioner, in both Australian and New Zealand. So I have had had pretty good exposure to all levels of government. Much of my career was spent in regional economic development, and much of my academic writing was in this area. My initial training was in political science (International relations, political theory, public policy, Australian politics) and my PhD was in urban planning. In “retirement”, I have written on a range of topics related to politics, philosophy, economics, policy, education, religion and public health. I have published in The Spectator Australia, Politicom, Quadrant, The Conservative Woman (UK), The Daily Sceptic, News Weekly and A Sense of Place Magazine. I am the Senior Political Commentator at Politicom. And I have a substack. Briefly, I wrote for The Freedoms Project, a pro-life, Christian-inclined blog.
I think this phrase came from the British Covid hero and former Big Pharma executive, Mike Yeadon. I love Mike’s writing, sincerity, compassion, fierce independence and clear thinking. I think he landed on “convergent opportunism’ as his preferred explanation for the policy debacle over Covid. It is a middle position between the Hanlon’s Razor view – the decision makers were stupid – and the conspiracy theorists who think, probably correctly, that the Covid policy response was born of malfeasance and tyranny. For a political scientist like me, the convergent opportunism thesis had some appeal. It goes to the old Rahm Emmanuel dictum, don’t ever let a crisis go to waste. And to the public choice theory that public officials get captured by powerful interests and have their own private interests separate from the “public good”. Many actors had an interest in erecting the Covid State. And they did. There were the public health officials who discovered their fifteen minutes of glory and power. There were the pharmaceutical companies who spied profits. There were the globalists who saw opportunities for control. There were the petit fascists who luxuriated in the opportunity for social control and virtue signalling. There were the captured legacy media. There were the academics who got their grants from the Bill Gates class. There were many opportunists who saw Covid as chance to advance various agendas, all at the expense of the people. And subsequent events lend credence to the theory. Like the pandemic preparedness industry that has emerged. Interests converged. And they cashed in. Mind you, Mike Yeadon came to reject his earlier theory, and who now believes it was all planned, known and executed. Not merely convergent opportunism. There is much evidence to support his new position. Pretty much everything that the conspiracy theorists said of Covid has been proven to be correct. None of this, of course, has been admitted by the guilty parties. The powers that be cling, at best, to the position that “mistakes were made”. We still await Nuremberg Two.
Everyone knows (now) about Big Pharma. Less well known are the global public health tsars, housed in national bureaucracies, international governance institutions, research centres, universities, NGOs, corporates, the media, thinktanks, Big Philanthropy, and governments themselves. Klaus Schwab famously said that the World Economic Forum had “penetrated ze cabinets”. It certainly has. Just as Big Pharma has an interest in creating pandemics in order to find uses for their dangerous and ineffective drugs, governments and their puppet masters have an interest in control, in depopulation and in power. Back in the day, the Rockefellers determined that global control can be gained through crises, preferably crises at global scale that are said to “demand” global action in response. In the 1950s, the Rockefellers came up with financial crisis, climate crises and pandemics the perfect means of gaining global control of populations and pesky governments. One of the core means of assuring that governments played ball was to create globalist institutions, like the World Health Organisation, that could take over the functions of national governments. Another is to shape popular responses to global crises through fear-based propaganda. Create an expectation of crisis, create fear of the coming plagues, recruit hyper-connected actors to the cause, and use “science” or its illusion to suggest that “experts” and not elected governments should run things, and centrally plan responses. Vaccine nutters and global controllers like Gates provided big money to a global network of closely connected players, in the academy, in research institutes, in global institutions, and bought off the media, created narratives, and set up “events” to “plan” for the “inevitable” crises. He did this before Covid, in late 2019, and it worked. (See below). Since Covid, and despite all of the manifest failures and catastrophes of government public health policy, they are still at it, even more so, in planning future pandemic policy. From WHO to Davos and the WEF to the United Nations…
It turned out that the States still retain a lot of power, after all, despite the centralisation of much power in Canberra over the past century. The States still run the hospitals, the schools, the police, and their own borders. The Government of Scott Morrison surrendered authority to the States during Covid. This was spineless and based on fear of the already scared voters. He abandoned statesmanship and left the rule to thugs in State Government. He opted for a model of shared responsibility so as to avoid electoral pain. He created a National Cabinet to achieve this consensus model. This was a cop out and a disaster. The states pushed the boundaries of what they could do, and found compliant populations willing to give up their freedom for the “goodies”, like JobKeeper and JobSeeker, and the assurance of salvation from the coming vaccines. Australians, like other nationalities, bought the Covid lies and obeyed out of fear. They signed up for the track-and-trace technology, they suspected not the signs of coming tyranny, being large of supine disposition and clustered most in the most compliant quadrant of conformism. They became militant in their denunciation of covid dissidents, abusing vaccine doubters and lockdown laughers. They were cultural maskists, too. And dobbers. So, it was a lack of national leadership, cowed politicians fearful of backlash if they went “soft” on the virus – despite all of the science against lockdowns and in support of letting the virus run itself out, while protecting the vulnerable – a compliant population that simply didn’t question the elites’ lies, and State politician-tyrants who enjoyed the daily press conferences and the appearance of power, and who discovered, perhaps to their surprise, that the States can still be very powerful.
The Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard (1996-2007) was in Washington DC on the day of 9/11, due to address Congress. He was, not unexpectedly for a staunch American ally who happened to be almost on site for the attack, deeply shocked by the events. He stated that this was not the time for Australia to be an “eighty per cent ally” of the USA. And so, Australia went to war in the Middle East in what as to turn out a costly disaster for all concerned, with Iraq an unholy mess and Afghanistan returned to the Taliban twenty years on. Howard was criticized at the time by the left, and subsequently by some on the right who may have been queasy about the Iraq War (in particular), but went along with Bush 43 because we are a one hundred per cent ally. Howard was derided as Bush’s “deputy sheriff”. Now, while Howard’s Liberal Party remains a firm US ally, others on the right in Australia are not quite so friendly these days. And with reason. They see America as a political and judicial basket case, Washington DC as a swamp that is perhaps undrainable, they are embarrassed that Trump caved in to the Deep State over Covid, and has not apologised, they simply cannot understand how a crook like Biden can occupy the White House, and, especially with Ukraine, they see US foreign policy run by a weird concoction of neocons and the military industrial complex. They are also convinced that the democrat machine will again rig the election, and that Trump will fail again, irrespective of whether he is likely to make the nation great again. In summary, from my perspective, the alliance with the USA is far more nuanced than before, despite the elites’ continued embrace of the alliance, seen through defence agreements and initiatives such as AUKUS. It is hard to say whether the left still hates America in the way it used to. Our current Prime Minister sucks up to Biden, but, as a leftist, probably because Biden’s regime is far left as well rather than because of any deeply held labor Party love for the USA.
The long march is a Marxist strategy for capturing power by infiltrating the key institutions of society and embedding revolutionary ideologies to effect permanent social change. They target and seek to undermine the key institutions of social power – the family, the Church, the bureaucracy, the universities, the media. It was born of the Italian Marxist Gramsci and perfected by 1960s radicals in the USA and Europe. Marxists came to believe that the working class was useless in advancing the communist revolution, and that the real action was not in the economy but in the culture. Especially after the collapse of Stalinism and the USSR in the 1980s, they realised that the workers didn’t want socialism but had aspirations to middle class comforts. The Marxist pivot was secured by then. The post-Gramsci strategy was firmly in place. The fruits of the strategy are plentiful. The bureaucracy is captured, as are the universities, the NGOs, the churches, and even right-of-centre political parties. It has been a brilliant and successful strategy. The modern Marxists now hate the working class and their (perceived) racist, homophobic, xenophobic attitudes. The beauty of the long march strategy has been that no one knew it was happening, until it was too late. The capture of the public imagination has been comprehensive. The leftists could never have imagined, for example, that their ideology would so totally capture the corporations, who now embrace woke ideology and are that ideology’s chief champions. Complete victory. And vindication of the Gramsci plan.
Jane Halton is a “retired” senior health bureaucrat from Australia. She is also impeccably connected to the establishment here, being married to a very senior public sector statistician who happens to be the brother of Brett Sutton, Victoria’s former Chief Health officer responsible for enforcing the Western world’s toughest and most brutal lockdown. Halton left the Australian public service for international roles in public health, including at the World Health Organisation. I have previously termed her Bill Gates’ girl down under, for her role in the CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) , Gates’ funded Event 201 in October 2019, which conducted simulations of a coronavirus-type pandemic mere months before the Wuhan outbreak. Astonishingly, and with much lobbying of governments by Gates and others in the “family” – see Fauci, Daszak, Baric, Jeremy Farrar, Neil Ferguson, Tedros, Schwab, Deborah Birx, Walensky and friends – CEPI’s simulation turned into global pandemic policy. Halton was therefore front and centre in the push to enforce lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine rollouts and the defenestration of democracy and economic strength across the world. She is the international health bureaucrat’s international health bureaucrat, and continues to be closely involved with the organisation of the next global public health panic. She chairs the OECD’s health committee and numerous other international bodies. She is an enemy of freedom and human rights to health autonomy. She has escaped punishment, has not apologised, and must be outed. Inevitably, she did a review of aspects of Covid vaccine policy for the Australian Government, avoiding the real issues, like excess deaths, vaccine harms, the failure of lockdowns, and the rest of the existential harms done to our nation by covid policy. An unelected member of the administrative state, Halton would be utterly unknown to most Australians. Hence her extreme “covert power”. Halton’s continued presence at the global health policy table will ensure she will have a central role in future pretend health crises.
First, I think there is now a large, growing and distinct third group of dissenters from the collectivist mindset and policy drive. These are the outsiders who cherish freedom, recognise that it has been taken from them, and hate the privileged insider class and all of its works. They aren’t necessarily conservatives or libertarians in the traditional sense, but they are dismayed and disillusioned. They want governments to keep their promises, safeguard the interests of the dispossessed, stop being crooked, disengage from corporate power, stop giving jobs to their mates, and to take elections seriously again. Covid radicalised them. They are nationalists, and reject globalism. They possibly read Compact magazine if they are intellectually inclined, rather than Reason or National Review. The new divide is insiders versus outsiders, and the rejection of executive power and the deep state. So the hew hybrid, call it social conservatism + social democracy, isn’t the same as the old enemies of collectivism, and the new enemy isn’t just collectivism either. So I would recast the question a little. Which isn’t to say that collectivism isn’t a problem. t just now has several new faces, like the nanny state, the administrative state, the post-Covid state, the military fact-checker complex, the cancel culture, the woke establishment. It is a hydra-headed beast. What are the push-back alternatives? Conventional party politics is out as a solution in the age if the UniParty, where the two major parties in each polity are often in agreement on the big issues, and often the only difference between them is the speed at which we are hurtling towards the cliff. So it is a must to support minor freedom parties and build coalitions that will hopefully win seats in legislatures and hold to account whichever of the major parties holds power. Electoral systems work against this and against minor parties. Outside of electoral politics, there are two possible strategies. One is to abandon the system altogether, to retreat to the cave. The American writer Rod Dreher calls this the Benedict Option. Perhaps the “cave” is a foreign country like Hungary (at present). Since all of the Western institutions have been captured, there is little hope (in our lifetimes) of a reversal of direction in the bureaucracy, the NGOs, the corporates, the universities and the legacy media. The other option, which a number of thinkers have suggested, is to form “parallel societies” and operate outside the system. Shop local. Use cash. Have large families. Home school them. Form online and other communities of shared interests. Avoid paying tax. Get offline where possible. Shun social media. Avoid digital ID if you can. But still engage with civil society. Attend peaceful protests against tyranny. Conventional politics and ideologies are legacy tools. Most politicians are chancers, bought up or ineffectual and spineless. Playing those games is a waste of time, when the enemy is at the gate already.
I once asked the doyen of Australian climate realists, Ian Plimer, why he still bothered to fight the good fight on climate change. My view is that this war is over, and no amount of rational, evidence based argument against the net zero nutters will persuade them to change their minds. Ian agreed up to a point, but said that he and others on the side of climate truth had a duty to place on the record the real picture, for future generations and future historians. Hence his continued crusade. I largely stopped writing about climate change a decade ago, since rational debate is now impossible with climate emoters, and, in any case, the private equity funds that run the world had put their chips on renewables. Nevertheless, the deceptions over climate policy are real, disastrous and ongoing, so one does have that duty. Especially when clowns like Michael Mann win court cases against the likes of Mark Steyn. The “climate madness” consists of a series of highly dubious propositions linked by a false logic path, and the acceptance of this nonsense by policy-makers and the public, or at least enough of the public for politicians to fear the electoral consequences of climate “inaction”. These propositions are as follows. The earth’s temperature is rising. It is rising substantially. The rise is caused by man. Governments of the world can do something about this. Governments of the world should do something about this. None of these propositions is true. Yet we have global action on climate, action that will impoverish the world’s economies, kill countless people, destroy freedom and blast us all back to the stone age. So, what are the five stages of descent into climate madness? First, there was the greenhouse gases theory of the Swede Arrhenius, and others, and the linking of rising emissions to the industrial revolution. Next came the realization by early generation green radicals that climate could be the big global threat they could use to garner support for their extremist anti-capitalist crusade. Third came the end of the Cold War and the eclipse of traditional Soviet style Marxism, and the emergence of cultural Marxism and post-modernism as drivers of leftist thought. The pivot away from the working class and towards alleged victims of oppression came with a green tinge, and the acceptance of “sustainability” as the new unifying ideology of radicals. Fourth came the leftists’ capture of science and scientists only too eager to harvest the research funding that the new world promised. This has been called academic “grant troughing”. Finally, the last stage has been the capture of both governments and corporates by the watermelon ideology, as James Delingpole has called it. It is all another example of convergent opportunism, you might say. Everyone in the establishment is a winner. Greenies win. Academics get their grants. Politicians salve their consciences. Bankers and other capitalists get their profits through green-washing and ponzi schemes, their green investments typically paid for by the taxpayer. Bureaucrats have new jobs for life. Yes, it turns out that the case for taking up the fight, seemingly hopeless, remains strong.
I can’t really comment on feminism in other countries, but will focus instead on some of the harmful consequences of feminism and especially me-tooism as they have emerged in Australia. I suspect that Australian feminism isn’t that different from the practices and views of the sisterhood in other places. Some of the worst consequences of feminism as it emerged in the 1960s have been the trashing of the traditional family, the raising of children by childcare workers, the lies told to women that persuaded several generations to assume they have to be wage slaves, making taxpayers pay for the raising of children in childcare centres, at great and growing cost, massive house price inflation resulting from the emergence of two income families as the norm, and the hounding of innocent men wrongly accused – either through the courts or in the court of public opinion – of sexual assault. It isn’t just feminism on its own, of course. It is leftist feminism typically part of an ideological package that also includes socialism, multiculturalism and environmentalism. Few radical feminists are not also rabid socialists, greenies, anti-Israel and supporters of mass immigration. They often support the suppression of free speech, create moral panics over rape and sex abuse, and especially go after the churches and churchmen. We saw the destruction of Cardinal George Pell’s reputation and his imprisonment on false charges, and the attack on him was led by radical feminists in the Victorian legal system, the police, the publishing industry and the media. I have written upwards of 50,000 words on the Pell case, and was threatened by The Age newspaper with contempt of court over one of the articles I wrote.
As I have noted, the WEF has “penetrated ze cabinets”. It isn’t just some country club for rich, greenie wankers, who meet in the snow once a year. It isn’t simply a fantasy made up by “conspiracy theorists”. Yes, thousands of gas guzzling private jets ferrying oligarchs into a Swiss village do make for good copy and a charge of hypocrisy. Their use of $3000-a-time sex workers, the same. These people are not clowns. They make a difference to the world. Money talks. So does proximity to power. It has become clear who really has that power, and it isn’t the puppet politicians. Establishment types like the Spectator’s Toby Young like to mock those who see the world run by Bond villains. They are so unawake it isn’t funny. As many others have pointed out, Klaus Schwab, initially a messenger boy for Henry Kissinger, writes books on his and the WEF’s vision for the world, and he means business. They are not secretive, not like the Bilderbergs, the Trilateral Commission, the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome and the other world-dominator types, with whom the WEF share fraternal bonds and overlapping membership. The WEF puts it all out there, and hides nothing. They are confident that half the world will agree with them, and the other half will shrug them off. They win. The things they are pushing, with real resources and lethal intent, include the destruction of farming, global digital vaccine passports, WHO control of national public health policy, digital currencies, the end of cash, programmable spending by individuals, social credit, depopulation, eugenics, abortion, socialism for the peasants, the end of global travel for the masses, and censorship. Oh, and the much-adored Chinese model. The penetration of ze cabinets has included Australia. The Health Minister during Covid was a former employee of the WEF. Many other Australians, like the American born Julie Inman Grant, our eSafety Commissar, who is a Davos girl, are regulars. Former participants in the WEF’s Young Global Leaders Program are scattered across the world’s governments. And the merest casual observer of world politics these days will have noticed the utter alignment of the policies of all the major parties, of whichever hue, with the tripe coming out of Geneva. No coincidence, that.
Mass immigration is a blight on Australian culture and a ponzi scheme for the economy. We now have, post-Covid and under a far-left Government, upwards of half a million migrants arriving every year. This was never agreed to by voters in any election. A referendum on the subject would end in catastrophic defeat for supporters of huge migrant numbers. The arrivals put upward pressure on infrastructure costs, housing prices and the cost of living. They lead to the apartment booms in our cities, where often the jerry-built structures simply fall down after a few years. The apartment boom has become a form of urban blight, especially in middle ring suburbs traditionally the homes of the middle classes and older people and families. These are now under threat from the vertical expansion said to be needed because of the exploding population. (The trendy new urbanism embraced by most town planners is, of course, a cause as well as bloated in-migrant populations. Mass immigration has also led to the formation of enclaves. We don’t have multiculturalism so much as multi mono-culturalism. Half of Australia’s people now have at least one parent born overseas. About one third were born overseas themselves. And the mix is by no means conducive to social harmony, as many Jews here are now finding out. One commentator has noted that “they hate us before they get here”. Many new Australians do not accept our values, yet we keep on bringing more in, in increasing numbers. It is a recipe for disaster. Some have called it “replacement theory”. If you don’t like the population, and its racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic values, well change the population. Leftists call this theory a nasty conspiracy theory. To me it is simple reality, and it is utterly plausible that replacement is the aim, as well as the effect, of the policy. And the economic impact? Neutral, at best, many economists agree. Businesses love mass migration – cheap labour to do the nasty jobs many Australians won’t do. Governments keep inviting more migrants in order to cover up their own economic mismanagement.
See also the answer to Q 8. Many people have traded freedom for convenience, and boredom for wall-to-wall entertainment, since the arrival of smartphones. A retired Australian judge, in explaining the willingness of our people to follow Covid tyrannical instructions, once said Australians were content so long as they had Netflix, full bellies and a warm place to defaecate. He had that pretty right. In other words, many are in the passive conformist quadrant in the quadrant of conformity. They don’t see, for example, digital IDs as anything to be remotely worried about. How the active dissidents and non-conformists can change the attitudes of the former group is a question to which I have no real answers. For those who do wish to resist, as I have said, do all of the things that the elites don’t want you to do. Use cash, form parallel communities, ditch the search engines that lie and track you, live off-line, shop local, ditch the big corporates, throw away the newspaper subscriptions, avoid tax, scrub social media. Elite control is worsening, so the task will only get harder. Bringing the dangers of elite control, even the existence of it, to the attention of the unawake will get harder over time, but also it will become more urgent. Some observers have argued that using rational counter-arguments is pointless, at least at the beginning of a process of educating others. Data comes later. First try emotive counter-arguments, exaggerate, get their attention, find personal examples of general phenomena. Tell people how many people YOU know who have had vaccine injuries, rather that quoting the latest study by (for example) Denis Rancourt or Steve Kirsch or Bret Weinstein, brilliant and necessary though their work is. In other words, there are two issues with resistance. There is your own resistance as an individual or family. Then there is influencing the broader debates and the behaviour of others.
This question is linked to my answers to Questions 8 and 13. There is a crisis of meaninglessness in the West, a crisis of alienation, a crisis of addiction and a crisis of loneliness. The evidence for these trends is everywhere, and their relevance to the collapse of community is equally clear. Robert Putnam in his famous book, Bowling Alone, cottoned on to it, well before the advent of the Web 2.0 and social media arrived and took over so many lives. And way before Covid lockdowns crushed the whole notion of “community”. Other observers have picked up on aspects of the crises. Like Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, Australia’s former Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, the late Roger Scruton, and the writers at Compact magazine. What is the evidence? Friendship has given way to fake friends online, half of marriages break up, children are lonely and suffer from depression and anxiety, suicides are increasing, JD Vance and others have highlighted the opioid crisis, huge numbers of people are medicated for mental health ailments, violence is increasing, identity hatreds now trump civilised debates and friendships across the aisle are far fewer. The sense of place is diminished, belonging now means belonging to victim groups rather than real communities, and globalization and mass migration are killing nationhood and patriotism. Working from home and online learning are destroying real work and real study, respectively. These are existential threats to the traditional order, an order thoroughly upended by the class of 68 and the post-modernist ideas they transmitted. Again, as in answers to Questions 8 and 13, the choice is retreat to the cave, live and operate in parallel societies, build real as opposed to online communities, speak out on the ills that befall us. Or simply go with the trends and watch our societies sink into the mire. One solution sometimes floated is localism, and this sums up much of the thinking of those who argue for “parallel societies”. There are many who do not see any of these things as problems to be addressed or even lamented. This, above all, is our biggest problem. And I don’t just speak of the enemies of freedom and community, but also of those who simply shrug their shoulders. Those who appeal for world peace normally say – start at home, be people of peace yourselves. This strikes one as pretty lame, but what else is there?
With the world as insane as it is, with democracies trashed, with individual rights removed, with government out of control, with traditional families and their values under constant siege, with world war a real possibility, and with education systems failing, the world of a political commentator is “target rich”. As a political scientist, I tend to focus on government failure and on the changing nature of ideology. Australian politics are always in view, with both major parties abandoning their roots and their base and an election coming in a year’s time. I write less on conservatism than I used to, less on climate change and less on US politics. The 2020 presidential election took away a lot of my interest in taking American politics seriously, the system is so flawed. Trump’s performance during Covid disillusioned me. Covid provided a rich vein of commentary, such was the sheer madness and evil on display as well as the abandonment of all pretence at following medical science and good practice. The absence of any apologies by anyone means that there is still work to be done in outing the Covid criminals. And the ramping up of post-Covid totalitarianism, seen in the war on cash, digital IDs and the institutionalisation of cancel culture, as merely three example deserves ongoing exposure and critique. The changing dynamics of ideologies and new, hybrid ideological forms are of increasing interest to me, especially the increasing convergence of social leftism (and globalism) with belief in the virtues of economic freedom on the one hand, and the emergence of social democrat/social conservatives on the other. The former has solidified into a distinct class, with progressive, green, pro-Covid-state, woke, globalist worldviews emerging across the political spectrum and solidifying. This is likely to be a history of ideas project. I am still interested in classical liberalism, from my Master of Arts thesis days in the 1980s. In that project, I examined the crossovers in libertarian thought exemplified by FA Hayek and Robert Nozick. Finally, because of my writing gig at Britain’s Conservative Woman (TCW), I have spent an increasing amount of time studying British politics.
May 9, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Australia, Covid-19, Human rights |
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Scientists trying to reinfect people with the COVID-19 virus so they could test vaccines and treatments found high levels of immunity made it nearly impossible, according to results from the COVID-19 “Human Challenge” trials in the U.K.
The results, published May 1 in The Lancet Microbe, “raise questions about the usefulness of COVID-19 challenge trials for testing vaccines, drugs and other therapeutics,” Nature reported.
“If you can’t get people infected, then you can’t test those things,” Tom Peacock, Ph.D., a virologist at Imperial College London, told Nature.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense told The Defender, “The results show the power of natural immunity as compared to the many breakthrough infections in ‘naive’ vaccinated individuals.”
“Any assertion that vaccination-based immunity is more powerful than natural immunity is complete lunacy — the acquired immune system is a beautiful thing and vaccination is a cheaper and much less effective substitute,” he said.
Challenge trials require deliberately infecting healthy people with a virus, typically so scientists can understand infections and test the effectiveness of existing vaccines and treatments, and develop new ones.
When the U.K. government announced the first human COVID-19 trials in 2021, they were highly controversial.
Proponents argued the trials were necessary to speed the development of countermeasures and that the low relative risk was worth the benefit. Critics countered it was unethical to infect people with a disease for which there is no cure.
After months of ethical debate, the first study launched in March 2021. In that study, researchers exposed 36 people ages 18-29 to the original strain of COVID-19 via nasal droplets.
About 53% of the participants eventually tested PCR-positive for COVID-19 but had very mild or no symptoms. And there was no correlation between symptom severity and viral load.
The second study, whose results were reported in The Lancet Microbe last week, infected people with COVID-19 who already had natural immunity because they were previously infected “by a range of variants,” Nature reported. Some were vaccinated and some weren’t.
Between May 6, 2021, and Nov. 24, 2022, scientists inoculated 36 people with different doses of SARS-CoV-2. They quarantined the subjects for 14 days and tested them for the virus during that time and throughout 12 months of follow-up.
When the first participants did not become infected, the researchers continued increasing the dose until it reached 10,000 times the original dose.
They were unable to induce sustained infection in any of the volunteers. Five of them later got mild infections during the Omicron period.
“We were quite surprised,” Susan Jackson, a study clinician at Oxford and co-author of the latest study, told Nature. “Moving forward, if you want a COVID challenge study, you’re going to have to find a dose that infects people.”
The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the U.K.’s Department of Health and Social Care.
Nature reported that another challenge trial is ongoing at Imperial College London, where participants are being given the Delta variant. However, that trial has also had problems infecting participants. The scientist leading that study, Christopher Chiu, told Nature that the level of infections study subjects are sustaining is “probably not enough for a study testing whether a vaccine works.”
They are continuing to try to develop ways to actually infect trial subjects so they can develop vaccines. Those methods include giving people multiple doses of the vaccine or finding people who have low levels of immune protection.
Chiu is heading up a consortium that has received a $57 million grant from the European Union and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to use challenge trials to develop inhaled and intranasal COVID-19 vaccines.
This grant was awarded in March and will focus on using human challenge trials to develop these vaccines. That is despite the challenges to infecting subjects reported in the human challenge trials so far.
In that study, more than a dozen teams will use human challenge studies to test experimental vaccines that are either inhaled or given through the nose to see if they can induce mucosal immunity in the nose, throat and lungs.
The researchers say they are developing new vaccines against betacoronaviruses, the subfamily of coronaviruses that includes COVID-19, and other seasonal viruses that cause common colds.
In 2022, CEPI launched a broader $200 million initiative to develop more vaccines for COVID-19 and other betacoronaviruses.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
May 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine |
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On Dermatology
I was listening to a close friend recently talk about his regular visits to his Dermatologist to remove basal cell carcinomas, it was in connection to the stench of the burning skin.
I’d just read AMD’s long essay on the subject. At some point I’ll have to tell him about the Dermatology racket.
In a recent conversation with a different friend, I found myself explaining “meta ideas” that multiple industries rely on to make their living.
I explained it as a wall that is required to push against. Without that wall, you cannot generate enough force to go in your desired direction.
One of the biggest meta ideas within Cartel Medicine is Cancer, the big C.
Cancer and Virus have been competing for the top spot of Meta Ideas, with Virus I think now winning in that race, but for most of the last 50-70 years Cancer has been the biggest Meta Idea and the source of most fear and the source of most industrial profit for a wide variety of Interdependent Cartels.
This stack is about the Dermatology Cartel, that has relied on the Cancer “wall” and the demonization of the Sun; to generate all the force and energy it needs progress towards its profit goals.
I have created a list of Q&As relying on the wonderful and important work of AMD, Yoho and Mercola. Without these guys doing the heavy lifting on these subjects it would be impossible for people like me to come along and synthesize this material.
These are the three articles I have relied on:
Dermatology’s Disastrous War Against The Sun (midwesterndoctor.com)
FAILED CANCER TREATMENTS chapter from Butchered by “Healthcare” (substack.com)
Many Pathologists Agree Skin Cancer Is Overdiagnosed (substack.com)
But before we look at the Q&As, here are 15 of the most material statistics from the three texts.
Statistics
- Chemotherapy added only 2.1% to the 5-year survival for US adults treated for cancer, according to a literature search by Drs. Graeme Morgan and colleagues published in Clinical Oncology in 2004.
- By 2013, 65 to 70 percent of oncologists’ income was drug charges.
- New chemotherapy medications can be 300 times (not 300 percent) more expensive than old ones.
- Twenty percent of all Mohs surgeries are performed on people over 85 years old, many in the last year or weeks of life.
- Only 22% of melanomas occur in regions of the body with significant sunlight exposure, compared to 87% of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cases and 82.5% of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) cases.
- Outdoor workers have a lower incidence of melanoma and half the risk compared to indoor workers, despite receiving 3-10 times the annual UV dose.
- A 1997 meta-analysis found workers with significant occupational sunlight exposure were 14% less likely to get melanoma.
- A 1982 study found fluorescent light exposure at work increased women’s risk of developing malignant melanoma by 2.1 times, with risk increasing based on exposure duration and intensity.
- In a survey of 115 dermatopathologists, 68% believed overdiagnosis was a public health issue for atypical nevi, 47% for melanoma in situ, and 35% for invasive melanoma.
- Dermatologists freeze millions of actinic keratoses (AKs) with liquid nitrogen, but studies show over half of AKs disappear on their own, with only 1% changing to skin cancer after a year and 4% after four years.
- The ideal blood level of vitamin D for disease prevention is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL, while 40 ng/mL is considered the low end of sufficiency, and 30 ng/mL is the minimum to prevent disease.
- In 2014, the average annual treatment cost for skin cancer was $8.1 billion for 4.9 million adults, a 44% increase in people diagnosed and a 125% increase in cost compared to 2002-2006.
- Curaderm, a topical cream containing eggplant extract, has a success rate of 66-78% in treating basal cell carcinoma.
- Valisure tested 294 sunscreen products and found 27% contained benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels at least three times higher than the FDA allows under special circumstances.
- The 2019 and 2020 JAMA studies found that certain sunscreen ingredients (avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, homosalate, octisalate, and octinoxate) may build up in the body at unhealthy levels after just one day of use and can persist in the body.
Questions and Answers
Question 1: What did the American Academy of Dermatology do in the 1980s to raise public awareness about skin cancer?
Answer: In the early 1980s, the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) hired a prominent New York advertising agency for over 2 million dollars to raise the public’s appreciation of dermatology. The agency recommended “educating” the public that dermatologists are skin cancer experts, not just pimple poppers, and established free National Skin Cancer Screening Day.
Skin cancers are by far the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, so to prevent them, the public is constantly told to avoid the sun. However, while the relatively benign skin cancers are caused by sun exposure, the ones responsible for most skin cancer deaths are due to a lack of sunlight. – AMD
Answer: Actinic keratoses (AKs) are skin bumps that dermatologists call precancerous. Many seniors have dozens, if not hundreds of these. Dermatologists treat millions of AKs with liquid nitrogen devices resembling tiny blow-torches, billing Medicare for each treatment.
Answer: Studies show that over half of all actinic keratoses (AKs) disappear on their own. Only one percent change to skin cancer after a year, and four percent after four years. These skin cancers are virtually all slow-growing and easily treatable.
Answer: Mohs surgery is a procedure where dermatologists remove skin cancer layer by layer, examining each layer under a microscope until all diseased tissue is removed. Patients may spend a full day in an operating room, and dermatologists bill for each cut, slide preparation, and microscopic examination. Older methods involved scratching, burning, or cutting away skin cancers and following up for recurrence.
Answer: According to Robert Stern, a Harvard dermatologist, “The decision to utilize [Mohs] is likely to reflect the economic advantage to the provider rather than a substantial clinical advantage for the patient.” He reported wide variations in usage by practice and region.
Answer: Twenty percent of all Mohs surgeries are performed on people over 85 years old. Many are performed in the last year of life, and even in the last weeks before death. Demented people in nursing homes get frozen, biopsied, and operated on.
Answer: Dermatologists almost universally refer melanoma cases to plastic surgeons for removal and then to oncologists for chemotherapy. Few skin doctors want to get involved with a fatal disease.
Answer: While melanoma diagnosis rates have increased dramatically, the total deaths from melanoma have not increased. The disease-specific mortality for melanoma has remained unchanged despite the extra procedures performed to treat them.
Answer: The survey of 115 dermatopathologists showed that 68% believed overdiagnosis was a public health issue for atypical nevi, 47% thought melanoma in situ was overdiagnosed, and 35% thought invasive melanoma was overdiagnosed.
Answer: Lead researcher Kathleen Kerr said, “Melanoma diagnoses have been rising in the U.S. If there were truly an epidemic of melanoma, we would expect deaths from melanoma to show a corresponding rise, since there hasn’t been a major breakthrough in treatment during this time. Yet melanoma deaths have been remarkably constant. This suggests that the rise in melanoma diagnoses is largely due to overdiagnosis.”
Answer: The three primary risk factors for basal cell carcinoma (BCC) are excessive sun exposure, fair skin (which makes you more susceptible to excessive sunlight penetrating your skin), and a family history of skin cancer.
Answer: The recurrence rate for basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) after removal ranges from 65% to 95%, depending on the source. Most sources say BCC has a 0% fatality rate.
Answer: Unlike basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) can metastasize. If SCC is removed prior to metastasizing, it has a 99% survival rate, but if removed after metastasis, the survival rate drops to 56%. The average survival rate for SCC is around 95%.
Answer: Only 22% of melanomas occur in regions of the body with significant sunlight exposure, such as the face. In contrast, 87% of all SCC cases and 82.5% of BCC cases occur in these regions.
Answer: Outdoor workers get 3-10 times the annual UV dose that indoor workers get, yet they have lower incidences of cutaneous malignant melanoma and an odds ratio (risk) that is half that of their indoor colleagues.
Answer: A 1997 meta-analysis of the available literature found workers with significant occupational sunlight exposure were 14% less likely to get melanoma.
One of the oldest “proven” therapies in medicine was having people bathe in sunlight (e.g., it was one of the few things that actually had success in treating the 1918 influenza, prior to antibiotics it was one of the most effective treatments for treating tuberculosis and it was also widely used for a variety of other diseases). In turn, since it is safe, effective, and freely available, it stands to reason that unscrupulous individuals who wanted to monopolize the practice of medicine would want to cut off the public’s access to it. – AMD
Note: the success of sunbathing was the original inspiration for ultraviolet blood irradiation.
Answer: Existing research has found using sunscreen either has no effect on the rates of malignant melanoma or increases it.
Answer: A 1982 study of 274 women found that fluorescent light exposure at work caused a 2.1 times increase in their risk of developing malignant melanoma, with this risk increasing with more fluorescent light exposure, either due to the exposure at their job (1.8X with moderate exposure jobs, 2.6X with high exposure jobs) or the time spent working at it (i.e., 2.4X more likely for 1-9 years of work, 2.8X for 10-19 years, and 4.1X for over 20 years).
Answer: The 1987 study, which analyzed samples of fat tissue from 100 melanoma patients and 100 people without melanoma, found an increase in linoleic acid in the tissue of all subjects. However, the percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) was significantly higher in the melanoma patients’ tissue. The researchers suggested that increased consumption of dietary polyunsaturates may have a contributory effect in the etiology of melanoma.
Answer: Linoleic acid is the primary fat found in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, including vegetable/seed oils, and accounts for about 80% of the fat composition of vegetable oils. It is found in virtually every processed food, including restaurant foods, sauces, salad dressings, and “healthy” foods like chicken, pork, and some olive oil.
Answer: Valisure tested 294 sunscreen products and found that 27% contained benzene, a known human carcinogen, at levels at least three times higher than the FDA allows under special circumstances.
Answer: Oxybenzone, found in an estimated 70% of sunscreens, is a known endocrine disruptor linked to reduced sperm count in men and endometriosis in women.
Answer: According to a Danish study, 8 out of 29 sunscreen chemicals allowed in the US and/or European Union can reduce male fertility by affecting calcium signaling in the sperm, in part by exerting a progesterone-like effect.
Answer: The 2019 and 2020 JAMA studies found that certain sunscreen ingredients (avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, homosalate, octisalate, and octinoxate) may build up in the body at unhealthy levels. The ingredients were absorbed after only one day’s exposure, and some persisted in the body after use.
Answer: According to the research cited, the ideal blood level of vitamin D for disease prevention is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL, while 40 ng/mL is considered the low end of sufficiency, and 30 ng/mL is the minimum to prevent disease.
Answer: Signs and symptoms that may indicate low vitamin D levels include ongoing musculoskeletal pain and achy bones, frequent infections or illnesses, neurological symptoms (such as depression, cognitive impairment, and migraines), and fatigue and daytime sleepiness.
Answer: Astaxanthin is a potent antioxidant that acts as an internal sunscreen by protecting against UV radiation exposure and gene expression changes that lead to skin photoaging, such as sagging and wrinkles. It has strong free radical scavenging activity that protects against oxidative damage.
Answer: Other nutrients mentioned that may provide photoprotection for the skin include lycopene, beta-carotene, vitamin D, and vitamin E.
Answer: Dr. David Elpern believes that the American Academy of Dermatology’s (AAD) campaign in the 1980s to educate the public about dermatologists being skin cancer experts led to inflated health anxiety about skin cancer, resulting in the overdiagnosis of melanoma and an increase in expensive, low-value procedures for skin cancer and actinic keratosis.
Answer: The study found no statistically significant associations between dermatopathologists’ perceptions about overdiagnosis and their interpretive behavior when diagnosing skin biopsy cases. Dermatopathologists who believed invasive melanoma was overdiagnosed were slightly more likely to diagnose invasive melanoma compared to other dermatopathologists examining identical cases.
Answer: Overdiagnosing melanoma can have significant consequences for patients on both an emotional and financial level.
Answer: According to lead researcher Kathleen Kerr, reducing overdiagnosis of skin cancer will be challenging as it requires cooperation between patients, primary care physicians, and pathologists.
Answer: The studies from 1991, 2008, 2002, and 2011 demonstrated the effectiveness of a topical cream containing a nightshade extract (solasodine glycosides) in treating various types of skin cancer, including actinic keratosis, basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). The 1991 trial showed complete regression of lesions with no adverse effects, the 2008 trial found a 66% success rate for treating BCC, the 2002 English trial showed a 78% success rate for treating BCC with a short duration of treatment, and the 2011 case report showed good cosmetic outcomes for large BCC and SCC lesions.
Answer: There are several natural and alternative treatments for skin cancer that have been scientifically studied and have shown promising results. One such treatment is Curaderm, a topical cream containing solasodine glycosides, which are derived from eggplant extract. Studies have demonstrated that Curaderm has a success rate of 66-78% in treating basal cell carcinoma (BCC), the most common type of skin cancer.
In addition to Curaderm, other natural and alternative treatments that have undergone scientific study include topical creams containing vitamin B3 (niacinamide) and vitamin A (retinoids). While these treatments have shown potential, more research is needed to fully establish their effectiveness and safety.
Despite the reported success rates of these alternative therapies, they are not widely known or utilized in the mainstream treatment of skin cancer. This lack of awareness and adoption can be attributed to several factors, one of which is the potential threat they pose to the lucrative business model of the dermatology profession.
One of the major mistakes Americans frequently make is the belief that if something is good for you, more of it is better. This very much holds true for sun exposure, as (assuming you are caucasian) once your skin starts turning pink, you lose the ability to utilize the sunlight you are being exposed to (e.g., you stop producing vitamin D), and in time also begin to burn (which can damage the skin). For this reason, many advise stopping sunbathing once your skin starts to turn pink and making sure to have regular small bursts of sunlight rather than intermittent large ones.
Note: doing this often completely eliminates the need for vitamin D and is one of the things that I’ve repeatedly seen greatly helps with longevity.
Additionally, there is a “good” type of ultraviolet light (UVB) and a bad type (UVA), and depending upon the time of day, different types are in prominence. For this reason, the absolute best time to be outside is between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., which interestingly is the time Chinese Medicine recognizes that the energy of the heart peaks (an organ I believe is particularly sensitive to the energy of sunlight).
Conversely, most windows block UVB (but not UVA) so it’s actually not a good idea to get your direct light exposure through the window.
Note: specialized materials exist which don’t do this (e.g., quartz glass), but they are a bit expensive and hard to find.
Finally, something many do not appreciate about sunscreens is that two forms of them exist—ones that work by having chemicals which absorb UV light (and decrease it) and ones that simply block and reflect it. The chemicals that absorb UV light are often quite toxic, and a case can be made they are actually responsible for some of the increase in skin cancer that has been observed. With the reflecting ones, either titanium oxide or zinc oxide are typically used. Zinc oxide is the better option (people don’t react to it, and it can sometimes help heal the skin), so when selecting a sunscreen, the main thing to look for is one that uses zinc oxide and doesn’t have any questionable chemicals in it.
Note: there are now beginning to be pushes to stop the use of more toxic sunscreens in areas with abundant aquatic life because they poison the reefs. This raises the point that if a small amount of sunscreen diluted in the water is too toxic for an ecosystem to handle, why would you want to put it on your skin where it can directly absorb into the body at its full concentration?
May 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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Irish comedian and storyteller, Aidan Killian travelled around Ireland during ‘lockdown’ and this shows another side of the story about how many lived, connected, and gathered during these dark times.
May 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Could Millions in Government Funding Explain Why?
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) missed a May 1 deadline to explain why the organization recommends COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women despite growing evidence that they pose a serious risk.
Reform Pharma, a Children’s Health Defense (CHD) initiative, sent ACOG a letter on March 22 outlining the extensive and mounting scientific research documenting the risks of the vaccines to mothers and infants.
The letter also addressed grant money ACOG accepted from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The funding was contingent on the organization’s full compliance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidance endorsing the vaccine during pregnancy.
The grant also stipulated that ACOG admonish doctors who failed to follow CDC protocols and track women who declined the vaccine, then target them with follow-up pressure to get the shot.
Reform Pharma demanded ACOG end its practice of recommending COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant women and explain why it has continued to push the shot until now.
The letter stated:
“It’s time for ACOG to reconcile and admit its mistake. … Our team demands that ACOG stop intimidating and misleading both physicians and pregnant women. …
“It is imperative that ACOG take proper action now to prevent needless further injury and death, as it is under a legal, ethical, and moral obligation to stop the shots!”
After ACOG didn’t respond, Reform Pharma sent a follow-up letter on April 22 via certified mail and email to the ACOG president and its chief legal officer.
The letter gave ACOG until May 1 to explain, in writing, why it continues to push the COVID-19 vaccines.
ACOG President Verda J. Hicks responded by blocking Reform Pharma’s email.
An automated out-of-office reply was the only response from the organization’s chief legal officer, Molly Meegan.
“The fact that the ACOG president blocked us shows that they are not even willing to have a conversation to explain why they continue to push COVID-19 shots on pregnant women despite mounting scientific evidence of the safety risks,” Reform Pharma co-director Amy Miller told The Defender.
Reform Pharma continues working to publicize what it says is ACOG’s corruption.
“The American people need to know that ACOG is using its authority and influence to push dangerous COVID-19 shots on pregnant women but failed to disclose its backdoor deal with the CDC,” Justine Tanguay, an attorney and Reform Pharma’s co-director, told The Defender.
“Sacrificing the lives and health of pregnant women and their unborn babies in exchange for money is unacceptable,” she added.
Reform Pharma’s mission is to systematically end corruption in Big Pharma and restore integrity to the U.S. healthcare system.
“Reform Pharma is doing critically important work shining a light on organizations like ACOG which purport to represent the interests of their member physicians and the patients those physicians treat,” Kim Mack Rosenberg, CHD general counsel and a signatory to the letter, told The Defender.
“In reality, money talks, and it appears that payments and incentives from pharmaceutical companies may influence and capture such organizations.”
ACOG a ‘massively powerful’ organization that dominates maternal-fetal health
ACOG is a “massively powerful” organization with 60,000 members, maternal-fetal medicine expert Dr. James Thorp told The Defender.
The professional membership organization for obstetricians and gynecologists produces practice guidelines, educational materials and initiatives to improve women’s health, according to its website.
It is also — along with the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) and American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) — a key gatekeeper organization for the field of obstetrics and gynecology, exercising tremendous power over the practices and norms among its members who are practitioners in women’s health, Thorp said.
According to Reform Pharma, ACOG takes its marching orders from Big Pharma and public health agencies.
“It functions primarily as a shill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and, in particular, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — both lobbying arms for the pharmaceutical industry,” Reform Pharma wrote in its letter.
This became even more concerning once ACOG started promoting the COVID-19 vaccines, Reform Pharma said.
When the vaccines came on the market in December 2020, ACOG held a neutral position on vaccination during pregnancy, recommending pregnant women “be free to make their own decision regarding COVID-19 vaccination.”
That changed in July 2021, when the organization began encouraging its members to “enthusiastically recommend vaccination to their patients,” after accepting $11 million in grant money from HHS and CDC to adopt and promote the agencies’ positions on COVID-19 to its members.
“If ACOG should waver or fail to toe the line, ACOG would be required to return all the grant money it received,” according to Reform Pharma’s letter.
“ACOG made a deal with the devil and willingly sacrificed the health of pregnant women and their unborn babies in exchange for money,” Reform Pharma said.
Reform Pharma also accused ACOG of pressuring and intimidating doctors into strongly recommending the vaccine to their patients and directing them to “harass” women who refused until they capitulated.
Attorney Maggie Thorp, who last year identified the HHS grant funding — which she told The Defender is now up to $17 million since the COVID-19 pandemic period began — said she believes the CDC is just using ACOG as its mouthpiece.
Based on her analysis of the documents acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, Maggie Thorp said the collaboration between the public health agency and the private organization is so tight that it was “hard to identify where CDC ended and where ACOG began.”
She said HHS is using ACOG to do what it cannot — “dictate the content of private conversations that happen between doctors and their pregnant patients.”
In that sense, Maggie Thorp said, HHS is “using ACOG to quell doctors’ free speech and their ability to express dissent.”
As a result, she said, patients don’t get access to the information they need to give “true, valid informed consent.”
James Thorp said that ACOG then collaborates with its partner organizations, SMFM, ABOG, and the Federation of State Medical Boards, which can take away doctors’ medical licenses or accreditation if they don’t comply, as the federation openly said it would in a July 2021 letter.
“They have the power to fire doctors or remove their accreditation from the medical board. That destroys an obstetrician,” he said. “So it’s extraordinarily intimidating.”
‘Sad’ that ACOG ‘ignores the science’
Reform Pharma provided ACOG with an extensively footnoted overview of current science showing the risks COVID-19 shots pose to pregnant women and the general population.
For example, studies have shown that the vaccine can pass through the blood-brain barrier and the placenta.
Early reporting in 2021 by the CDC’s Dr. Tom Shimabukuro in the New England Journal of Medicine claiming the shots were safe based on the CDC’s own Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and Vaccine Safety Monitoring System (V-safe) data was statistically flawed, the letter stated.
Shimabukuro concluded there were no “obvious safety signals” among pregnant women who received the vaccine. However, he presented the numbers in a misleading manner that obscured the actual rate of spontaneous abortions.
According to Reform Pharma’s letter:
“Failure to disclose the true incidence of spontaneous abortion is at best gross incompetence and at worst malfeasance. The true incidence of spontaneous abortion [in his statistics, among first- and second-trimester pregnancies] is alarming, ranging between 82% to 91%.”
Early research also linked the shot to “autism-like behaviors” in newborn rats, indicating the shot could complicate neurodevelopment and underscoring the need for more studies.
Several studies in top journals have shown that nursing mothers shed the spike protein in their breast milk, causing potentially serious adverse reactions in their newborn babies.
And, according to the letter, the COVID-19 shots pose safety risks for all people that also extend beyond complications associated with pregnancy. That data has been published extensively in places ranging from VAERS to peer-reviewed studies and beyond — sources readily available to anyone at ACOG who cares to investigate.
Given the extensive evidence summarized in the letter, “It is sad that ACOG appears not to be doing a deep dive into all the science concerning COVID-19 injections, instead taking the word of the pharmaceutical companies themselves and the FDA and CDC, which similarly rely on pharma science,” Mack Rosenberg said.
“Particularly tragic is the failure of ACOG to acknowledge and investigate the important evidence from patients themselves of the tragic impact these injections have had on pregnant women, their babies and their families,” she added.
“Pregnant women should never take this vaccine,” said James Thorp, who also has extensively documented the literature on the dangers of the COVID-19 shots for pregnant women.
“It isn’t even really a vaccine,” he said. “It’s an experimental genetic therapy with absolutely zero long-term follow-up. This is unprecedented. This is a complete violation of the golden rule of pregnancy.”
‘Wrongdoers will be held accountable’
The “public health emergency” has been officially over since May 11, 2023, and it has been demonstrated that vaccines don’t stop transmission and that there is extensive evidence regarding risks to pregnant women and all people, Reform Pharma wrote.
That means, “the only explanation for ACOG continuing to push this poison on pregnant women and their unborn children is that the organization is ‘bought off,’” the letter said. “Wrongdoers will be held accountable.”
Reform Pharma reiterated its concerns in the second letter, but aside from the blocked email and out-of-office notifications, ACOG has not responded.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
May 6, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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A recent article by the LA Times editorial board claims that California is experiencing record high temperatures. Jefferey Jaxen does a fact check on their claims. As President Joe Biden mulls the idea of declaring a climate emergency, we look into the potential powers that could be gained from this move. Will we have a climate lockdown on our horizon?
May 6, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, United States |
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From ‘calling the shots’ to calling out their safety and efficacy — Dr. Suzanne Humphries is one of the countless conventionally-trained physicians who dug into the research on pharmaceuticals rather than blindly prescribing them and “saw something that they thought was worth risking everything for.” But what would a world without these products, such as vaccines, look like? Dr. Humphries and Dr. Thomas discuss, this week, on ‘Pediatric Perspectives.’
May 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video |
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