Are there any Credible Scientific Journals Remaining?

re: Jay Bhattycharya

“Openly”?

Jay Bhattycharya MD, PhD of Stanford...

2023-03-21

I'm hard pressed to think of a better way to destroy the trust of (about half or more) of the public in our scientific institutions than to have these institutions openly display their political biases.

WIND: “Openly”? One half has lost trust, the other remains unaware of the structural defect of minds feel free to mix politics with science—100% failure rate.

Has Nature perhaps provided a public service by disabusing us of an illusion, by abusing the presumption of scientific truth to comment on non-science? Pulling the curtain aside just enough to show the sausage being made?

Better that “experts as the science” show their dirty laundry so that in the long term the scientific method retains credibility.

The reason that the scientific method exists, and why it takes decades or longer to produce reliable findings, is that “science” and scientists are highly unreliable in the short term. Short term scientific truth is not a thing.

Only a long term scientific method eventually filters out the false and gets better bearings on the truth. It’s why a century later, scientists are still validating Einstein’s hypotheses, in a field that is as far from politics as most. That drawn-out process is the only reason science has any authority at all. Though simple physical science over history could be much more rapid eg “X can do Y” and is provable by using it to engineer a useful outcome. Engineering is the ultimate proof.

Using the mantle of scientific objectivity to endorse a political candidate while being hoaxed and unaware of it shows a level of self-unawareness, a structural lack of judgment and objectivity that will contaminate every judgment on every topic.

When dozens of hoaxes fool “objective” scientists, when the vast majority of scientists and doctors got everything wrong about COVID, when science is mostly about funding eg follow the money, when science in most every field is influenced or dominated by politics, when some of the most vicious social doctrines are infiltrating science, you can be sure that scientists are among the most rationalization-prone gullible suckers on the planet.

State of Stanford Medicine affirms health equity, diversity and inclusion as core to strategic planning

Medicine is doomed.

State of Stanford Medicine affirms health equity, diversity and inclusion as core to strategic planning

2023-03-21

Stanford Medicine leaders reaffirmed their focus on health equity, diversity and inclusion at the March 7 State of Stanford Medicine address, unveiling an ambitious plan to refresh the integrated strategic plan through 2030 with an emphasis on continuing to implement the Commission on Justice and Equity’s recommendations.

...

WIND: do I get fewer “points” over at Stanford by being white and male as has already been put into place in some institutions?

Stanford is not a one-off. Now the only doctors that can be trained in most all medical schools have to be woke broken-brain civilization-destroying losers intent on dragging humanity into a cesspool or self-hate. Or if they enter without those “qualifications”, they will have to imbibe them.

Race relations are poisoned by DEI, CRT, ESG, with injustice-collecting a civilization-destroying recipe for failure in every aspect of life. These racist assholes at Stanford and their ilk are trying to doom us all to a dismal future. There ought to be a list of everyone signed up for this shit, so patients can avoid their psychosis.

One system works for everyone with its rules that create value in life, and the other (the shit being pushed above) is all about injustice collecting/destroying/tribalism and generally doing nothing useful in life.

To dismantle systemic racism, start by staunching the bloody gaping wound in plain sight: the government school teacher’s unions (and now universities too), which doom millions of children to a dismal future by directly causing their intellectual destruction, and tell you that you should have no choice in the matter. Such as colossal waste of human potential, crimes against humanity is what it really is.

Victor Davis Hanson: What Happened To Stanford?

2023-03-19

Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle. That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone terribly wrong with the university.

...

WIND: as a Stanford graduate, I now loathe my ontemptible alma mater. A steady drumbeat anti-intellectual destruction is now the hallmark of Stanford. The downhill trend started way back in the mid-1990's and the place is now a sewer of the worst of humanity.

In Science, Things do not “work” Unless the Evidence Can be Consistently and Repeatedly Shown to Support the Claim

re: COVID and ethics in medicine
re: psyop and gaslighting and mass hysteria
re: Vinay Prasad MD

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

An MD writes in reference to the substack article by Vinay Prasad below, which critiques Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses.

Anon MD writes:

The acronyms EBM and RCT stand for Evidence-Based Medicine and Random Clinical Trial. These continue to be the gold standards for what we should adopt or abandon in medicine. Behind these are a large group of statistical interpretations , with rankings as to quality of data, size of study, and surety of conclusions, among other things.

All of this stuff can and sadly does get manipulated by people, docs, researchers, politicians, etc to try and influence a policy or behavior or treatment protocol based on this stuff.

The data on masking has gotten so intertwined and obscured by political agendas from all directions that its hard to objectively figure anything out anymore. Frankly I think we now have better solid info on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine than we do on masking.

I am a firm believer in RCTs, and RCTs for much more than medicine. But there’s always some jerk who wants to put their finger on the scales and someone who will refuse the evidence of even a statistically perfect and controlled RCT. Politicians I think are the worst, but there are many many other groups fighting for second place.

It seems so simple. Do the RCT, share the results in an open forum and if the assumption is disproved, abandon and move on. Ha! Like that is ever going to routinely happen. No one trusts anyone anymore, politicians and those with an axe to grind must always be right, and government institutions all routinely lie for their institutional benefit (and have done so since government was invented).

What we need are Shroedinger politicians who can be both right and wrong on both sides of an issue at the same time. If you do the mathematical logic analysis you can show that no matter what they will always be right. That should make them happy and sure to be elected.

God help the rest of us.

...I thought a lot about what I said and I do think the research process more in the US than anywhere else has become corrupted by those with power and a financial stake. Add on top of that the concept that lies and BS are protected free speech under the Constitution and there is no integrity left. My parents were scientists and I grew up in that world. The federal government more than any other payer funded open research regardless of the potential outcome. Pretty much the only directed research was military. As the years have passed, the government a) wants positive results only, b) only wants positive results in the topics congress is interested in, and c) if they had their way all research would be funded by private enterprise rather than taxpayer dollars. 

Segue to today and that’s what we’ve got. Yes, Big Pharma and Big Ag fund research. But if a thread shows something that doesn’t prove their monied supposition, or even worse, totally disproves it, that research will never see the light of day and the researchers and their teams are all constrained under watertight NDAs that threaten their livelihood if not very existence if they so much as fart the wrong way. About the only time something will wiggle its way out is if there is a lawsuit and the discovery involves volumes of seemingly useless material that gets scanned by a smart junior attorney with time on their hands and finds an ill-advised or thought-to-be private Post-It note or email thread. Either that or someone spills the beans on their deathbed 50 years after the fact.

WIND: this communication above caught my special attention in light of recent communication a COVID front-line physician who dismisses the Cochrane study.

The viewpoint difference between doctors is striking. And some still think studies they read in ideological journals like Nature are credible—as if their is some impartial judgment on submitted articles—nothing works that way.

The Cochrane Mask Fiasco

2023-03-15, by Vinay Prasad. Emphasis added.

A Cochrane Report Tells the Truth, But Many Are not Ready to Hear It

Recently, Cochrane & the internet has blown up over the Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses report — specifically the masks portion— and it has already become another riving chapter in the EBM history books. Here, I walk you through the play by play, and leave you with a 5 take home lessons.

The latest update of the Cochrane Report came out on Jan 30, 2023. The first author is Tom Jefferson, who has worked on this protocol since 2006 (remember… 2006). Cochrane, once again, examined all the randomized trials of masking, and came to 2 main conclusions. Let me quote them.

“Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (9 studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test“

And

“More high‐quality RCTs are needed to evaluate the most effective strategies to implement successful physical interventions in practice, both on a small scale and at a population level. It is very unfortunate that more rigorous planning, effort and funding was not provided during the current COVID‐19 pandemic towards high‐quality RCTs of the basic public health measures.”

(emphasis mine)

In my words:

1. the best data fails to show a benefit, and 
2. we needed more trials. Too bad you all (CDC, WHO, and NIAID) f*&D that up. If that sounds familiar, it is because I said that: here and here and here and hereand here, pretty much all damn pandemic, I was a broken record and said just that, over and over.

How did I come to the same conclusion as Cochrane?

Because anyone worth their salt in EBM would reach that same conclusion. It is basic critical appraisal and reading. I even published my own review, which is one of those links above.

After the report came out, the criticism was immediate. Mask advocates claimed that the report did not prove masks don’t work, but just failed to find benefit. They said a large confidence interval meant that masks could work.  The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The problem with this argument was that this is a new standard— just for masks. I pointed out that medicine often abandons practices if RCTs fail to find benefit, even as the lower bound of the 95% CI is compatible with values that would constitute benefit. I show that here and here. Using 2 disparate examples. 

Tom Jefferson himself gave an interview. In that interview he dropped this bombshell:

“In early 2020, when the pandemic was ramping up, we had just updated our Cochrane review ready to publish…but Cochrane held it up for 7 months before it was finally published in November 2020.” He added: [WIND: ovvious signs of inappropriate machinations]

...In other words, it is clear, Cochrane leadership was meddling with the Cochrane review. The unspoken message was clear: They did not want people saying masks lack evidence.

...

In conclusion, Cochrane’s EIC has disgraced herself, mask advocated sabotaged the conduct of RCTs now claim they wanted more, and Tom Jefferson might be one of the last principled scientists around. Now read the actual review and learn some EBM.

WIND: I stand by my position that I asserted more than two years ago after first recommending masks, until solid repeatable evidence shows otherwise: masks as worn by the public were and are ineffective.

Further, I hypothesize that under some circumstances (hyper common!), the filthy and/or inappropriately handled and/or reused and/or poorly-fitted masks might increase transmission. That is not supported by any evidence yet, but the real-world mask usage I saw makes it my default operating assmption.

The whole “it’s for your own good” approach to science has killed millions, and I am talking about science before COVID. Human nature never changes, and institutions seem only to decline in integrity.

Jonathan Turley: “True Stories … Could Fuel Hesitancy”: Stanford Project Worked to Censor Even True Stories on Social Media

re: COVID and ethics in medicine
re: psyop and gaslighting and mass hysteria
re: Jonathan Turley

Sigh.

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Jonathan Turley: “True Stories … Could Fuel Hesitancy”: Stanford Project Worked to Censor Even True Stories on Social Media

2023-03-19, by legal scholar Jonathan Turley. Emphasis added.

The latest Twitter Files revealed a breathtaking effort from Stanford’s Virality Project to censor even true stories. After all, the project insisted “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. The effort included suppressing stories that we now know are legitimate such as natural immunity defenses, the exaggerated value of masks, and questions over vaccine efficacy in preventing second illnesses. The work of the Virality Project to censor even true stories should result in the severance of any connection with Stanford University.

We have learned of an ever-expanding coalition of groups working with the government and social media to target and censor Americans, including government-funded organizations.

However, the new files are chilling in the details allegedly showing how the Virality Project labeled even true stories as “anti-vaccine” and, therefore, subject to censorship. These files would suggest that the Project eagerly worked to limit free speech and suppress alternative scientific viewpoints.

...

WIND: sigh... all you need to know about the past three years and the people who permanently damaged the crediblility of medicine, experts, etc. Whether gaslighting you in a massive psyops campaign or engaging in destructive ad-hominem, the folks at Stanford represent everything that went wrong. Minds in shackles will never move humanity forward.

Despite HPV Vaccine, Cervical Cancer Rates Keep Rising

re: ethics in medicine
re: vaccination
re: follow the money

re: gaslighting and psyop

It does make one wonder whether the increasing number of vaccinations is a boon or a concern. The law of unintended consequences argues against trying too hard to fix too many things.

Despite HPV Vaccine, Cervical Cancer Rates Keep Rising

2023-03-18

It was hailed as a breakthrough that would slash levels of this deadly disease, but 17 years later there is a ‘troubling spike,’ despite 80% being ‘protected.’ Regardless, here’s the medical gaslighting technique they’re using to fool the public.

• More than 200 strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) have been identified, and about 40 of them can cause cancer, including cervical, penile, oral, vaginal, vulvar and anal cancer. Of these, cervical cancer is the most common type of HPV-related cancer in the U.S.
• The first HPV vaccine, Gardasil, was licensed in 2006. The vaccine was hailed as a breakthrough that would slash cervical cancer rates, but in the real world, it has largely failed to deliver. The original vaccine contained four HPV strains. The latest version contains nine
• Since 2006, cancers associated with the four HPV strains included in the original quadrivalent vaccine have declined by 88% among 14- to 19-year-olds and 81% among women aged 20 to 24
• However, when looking at cervical cancer in general, there’s now a “troubling spike” in rates. Between 2001 and 2018, cervical cancer rates have increased by 1.3% per year. The primary cause for this continued rise appears to be because cancers associated with non-vaccine strains are going up.
• Evidence suggests HPV vaccination makes women more susceptible than their nonvaccinated peers to HPV genotypes not covered by the vaccine. So, essentially, women who got the vaccine have traded one risk for another

More than 200 strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) have been identified, and about 40 of them can cause cancer, including cervical, penile, oral, vaginal, vulvar and anal cancer. Of these, cervical cancer is the most common type of HPV-related cancer in the U.S. Some strains are also responsible for genital warts.

...

HPV Vax Has Failed Miserably to Reduce Cervical Cancer Rates

... Now, almost 17 years after the vaccine was introduced, there is a “troubling spike” in cervical cancer rates,[5] despite vaccination rates as high as 80%[6] (although rates vary widely between gender and ethnic groups. In 2019, 73% of female teenagers had received one dose and 57% had received both doses in the series).[7] As reported in the December 2022 issue of the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer:....

Cancers Associated With Vaccine Strains Have Declined

...Since 2006, cancers associated with the four HPV strains included in the original quadrivalent vaccine have declined by 88% among 14- to 19-year-olds and 81% among women aged 20 to 24.[9] Aside from the fact that only 14 cases of cervical cancer a year were occurring in females aged 15 to 19 before the vaccine[10] (meaning an 88% drop isn’t all that impressive), the drop may not be all due to the vaccine, as rates have also declined among unvaccinated women.

...

Serious Adverse Reactions Are Still Downplayed

While the medical establishment maintains that Gardasil is safe and has few side effects, a significant number of young girls and boys have been seriously injured over the years. Serious adverse reactions reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in relation to Gardasil include but are not limited to the following:[19]

• Anaphylaxis
• Guillain-Barre Syndrome
• Transverse myelitis (inflammation of the spinal cord)
• Pancreatitis
• Venous thromboembolic events (blood clots)
• Autoimmune initiated motor neuron disease (a neurodegenerative disease that causes rapidly progressive muscle weakness)
• Multiple sclerosis (MS)
• Sudden death

All of these side effects are acknowledged by the FDA[20] and are included in Gardasil’s labeling. In addition to these, the Gardasil vaccine insert also lists:[21]

• Blood and lymphatic system disorders such as autoimmune hemolytic anemia, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and lymphadenopathy
• Pulmonary embolus
• Arthralgia and myalgia (musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders)
• Nervous system disorders such as acute disseminated encephalomyelitis

Safety Signal Detected for Premature Ovarian Insufficiency

According to a study[22] published in July 2020, VAERS data mining also revealed a disproportionate number of reports of premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) and related problems, including amenorrhea (absence of menstruation), irregular menses, increased follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and premature menopause.

...

Merck Accused of Fraud in Gardasil Safety Testing

There are other reasons to be suspicious of Gardasil’s safety as well. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Merck committed fraud in its safety testing by:

• Testing Gardasil against a toxic placebo, and
• Hiding a 2.3% incidence of autoimmune disease occurring within seven months of vaccination

Aluminum Can Trigger Debilitating Health Problems

The use of aluminum (AAHS) in Gardasil, and its disastrous health effects, was also brought up in a January 2019 court case (Jennifer Robi vs. Merck and Kaiser Permanente). Kennedy was one of the expert witnesses in this trial. As reported by the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) at the time:...

...Finally, Merck’s own data showed that administering the Gardasil vaccine to girls who had previous exposure to HPV actually raised their risk of developing precancerous lesions (or worse) by almost 45%.”

For even more details on how Merck rigged its Gardasil trials, see my 2018 article, “Shocking Flaws in Gardasil Trial Design Prevents Safety Assessment,” republished on LewRockwell.com.

WIND: sounds like the COVID jab farce—fraud, misrepresentation, effects that show up early for a few people as horrible life-destroying issues, and later for others.

We had our 3 daughters vaccinated, Gardasil I think. It feels awful as a parent to wonder if doing so might have harmed them.

Perhaps my 2nd daughter developed auto-immune because of the Merck vaccine. She had never had any health issues until around that time—absolutely perfect prior. And no family history of it.

Exercise More Effective for Depression and Anxiety Than Medication?

re: ethics in medicine

re: How to Know You Triggered Your Critic Into Cognitive Dissonance, Save Yourself Time in Emails, etc

Is it true? I say so, based on my own observations for 30 years. Mood is always better after a good bike ride, no exceptions.

The Epoch Times: Exercise More Effective for Depression and Anxiety Than Medication: Study

Effective in all cases? Almost certainly not, and since depression can undermine motivation. But setting aside such things, there is surely a very large population for which exercise is a vastly better option, and one which carries numerous other benefits, and no side effects.

Ethics in medicine

With tens of millions of Big Pharma drug prescriptions written for depression and anxiety in the USA, one has to ask as a critical ethical question: how many doctors are advising indeed demanding exercise instead and first. What percentage, exactly? And what does failure to make such efforts say about the ethics of doctors who operate that way?

Makes one wonder...

Critical Psychiatry, by Peter C Gøtzsche

My book describes what is wrong with the psychiatry textbooks used by students of medicine, psychology and psychiatry. I read the five most used textbooks in Denmark and uncovered a litany of misleading and erroneous statements about the causes of mental health disorders, if they are genetic, if they can be detected in a brain scan, if they are caused by a chemical imbalance, if psychiatric diagnoses are reliable, and what the benefits and harms are of psychiatric drugs and electroshocks. Much of what is claimed amounts to scientific dishonesty. I also describe fraud and serious manipulations with the data in often cited research. I conclude that biological psychiatry has not led to anything of use, and that psychiatry as a medical specialty is so harmful that it should be disbanded.

WIND: scope of the last claim? . It would be great to see someone with brutal honesty like Jordan Peterson address these claims.

Parents Need to Know: Are Your Children Over-Vaccinated?

re: ethics in medicine
re: vaccination

re: Despite HPV Vaccine, Cervical Cancer Rates Keep Rising

I support many vaccinations. Certain ones it is foolish to skip (polio, MMR, and some others). Others vaccines I have serious reservations about (the flu vaccine scam in particular, and a few others, based on risk/benefit dubiousness).

Is this fear-mongering, or a legitimate concern?

See also: Did the FDA rush to license Pfizer's covid vaccine to enable vaccine mandates?

The Epoch Times: Parents Need to Know: Are Your Children Over-Vaccinated?

2023-03-16. Emphasis added.

Scientists link rise in type 1 juvenile diabetes to over vaccination

...According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood vaccinations prevent at least four million deaths worldwide every year. This is why the CDC recommends such a large number of vaccines for American children, starting with a vaccine against hepatitis B, a sexually transmitted disease, that is recommended for all newborns during the first hours of life.

...Currently, the following fourteen vaccinations are recommended for children from birth through 18 years of age:

Hepatitis B: 3 doses
Rotavirus: 3-4 doses (depending on the brand)
DTaP (diphtheria, pertussis, & tetanus): 5 doses; then another dose of Tdap at age 11
Hib (haemophilus influenzae type b): 3-4 doses (depending on the brand)
PCV (pneumococcal disease): 4 doses
Polio: 4 doses
COVID-19: number of doses depends on the child’s age and type of vaccine given
Flu: 1-2 doses every year
MMR (measles, mumps, & rubella): 2 doses
Chickenpox: 2 doses
Hepatitis A: 2 doses
HPV (human papillomavirus): 2-3 doses
MenACWY (meningococcal disease): 1-2 doses
MenB (meningococcal disease): 2-3 doses

Although school administrators tell parents that vaccines are “mandatory” for school inclusion, different states require different vaccines for children to attend school and every state in the United States allows for medical exemptions.

...The number of vaccinations currently recommended has more than quadrupled since the 1970s... At the same time, children’s health in the United States has seen a marked decline. While these trends may or may not be related, many parents have started to question whether their children really need this many vaccinations this early in their lives in order to stay safe and healthy.

Many parents have started to wonder: Could over-vaccination be contributing to some of the health problems they are seeing in their children?

....experts are also questioning whether certain vaccine ingredients (pdf)—including aluminum and polysorbate 80—are safe.

... Over-vaccination may be a primary cause of autoimmune problems, including diabetes in both children and adults... Such data suggests a dose-response relationship, which in turn suggests causation.

...
Scientists who prove that popular and profitable pharmaceutical products can cause harm risk losing their livelihood as well as their standing in the scientific community...

WIND: I’m not taking a position on the claims here as being true or untrue, but I do think that legitimate concerns are being raised. “Too much of a good thing” is a solid organizing principle in many aspects of life. That might apply here, particularly jabbing a tiny body with multiple vaccines within minutes, for no demonstrated need of immediate necessity.

Is “first do no harm” still a thing today? And doesn’t it require a robust level of scientific certainty? And how can there be certainty when vaccines are never tested in combination?

Moreover, there are toxins in vaccines, and some people react to toxins. Dying from a peanut crumb is a real thing for some, and reactions to toxins is surely a real thing for some.

Bottom line: the hypothesis of vaccine harm is not crazy, but entirely justified. And it applies not only to each and every vaccine separately, especially when given together, but never tested together.

The right operating principle is to take all such concerns very seriously. Otherwise, parents may very reasonably say “you cannot be trusted” and not vaccinate at all. And that’s not good for anyone. Trust is the only consideration for a decision, and trust has to be earned, with a single violation wiping out dozens of 'earns'.

BTW, might refusing some vaccinations be a powerful tool to obtain a homeschooling dispensation from education Kommisars so as to avoid government schools aka school-prison de factor founts of systemic racism? There is an implied gun to parents heads—I personally have recieved more than one letter advsising me that I could be fined and jailed (I am not fucking joking!) because of a few days of absence of my hostage (child) from school.

Yet the medical industry as structured today is repeatedly proving itself unworthy of trust, especially with COVID. The operating principle that individuals should be presumed innocent until proven guilty but the government assumed guilty until proven innocent should be apparent to any non-NPC. Does guilty-until-proven-innocent now apply to the medical industrial complex? IMO, the industry has earned that status.

The damage from COVID shenanigans is incalculable at this point; for an educated nerd like myself to have lost trust in the medical profession is saying something (and I am far from alone, and many doctors are similarly dismayed). I don’t see a path forward in which I would regain trust in it in my lifetime. And I expect woke doctors to become the norm, since most medical schools are now admitting and training not on competence, but on DEI and CRT and similar society-destroying victimization mindsets. Choosing the 2nd rate, and then degrading their competence with that evil crap.

Assembly line medicine

As for prevented deaths worldwide cited by the CDC, that figure is surely vastly lower in the USA, and it is propaganda, by failing to provide proper context for the USA and substituting irrelevant exaggerative context (worldwide).

Why would a vaccine against hepatitis B (sexually transmitted!!) be given at birth? When I asked for the Hep B jab in my vaccine-favoring days about 20 years ago, my doctor rightly questioned my justification for it, even asking if I was homosexual. Yet now we jab newborns?

I still vividly remember my bubbly/happy newborn daughter crying and in pain from being jabbed right after birth with 3 or 4 shots, a callously inappropriate disruption of a joyous moment. But hey, the nurse has a schedule. That I remember it so vividly should be evidence enough of its situational inappropriateness. And I now consider it medical battery because there never informed consent, meaning a form to sign passed off as a formality is not informing. A routine for the convenience of arrogant cocksure doctors with no skin in the game. Making a beautiful new body a repository for whatever toxins the vaccine contains, all dumped in one fell swoop. Maybe that’s why she developed auto-immune at 14, and maybe not... no one can say. But in hindsight, the cocksure presumptuousness of it all is unsettling.

Consdier that (a) vaccines are not tested in combination or frequency, (b) some vaccines are notably higher risk and with much less general applicability. The risks can fairly be assumed to rise dramatically by combinatorial and frequency effects.

It does make you wonder if some vaccines are more of a scam and harm than a benefit...

COVID-19 Vaccines Safety and Effectiveness: Gaslighting and Pysops with Scientific Basis of a Logical Fallacy

re: COVID
re: ethics in medicine
re: follow the money
re: psyop and gaslighting and mass hysteria

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

re: How to Know You Triggered Your Critic Into Cognitive Dissonance, Save Yourself Time in Emails, etc

Apparently it is now safe, even as a government official, to now speak the truth one has always known (see the quote).

The Epoch Times: COVID-19 Vaccines Can Cause ‘Permanent Disabilities,’ Says German Health Minister VACCINES

2023-03-16. Emphasis added.

Germany’s Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, who once claimed that COVID-19 vaccination is free of side effects, admitted last week that he was wrong, saying adverse reactions occur at a rate of one in 10,000 doses and can cause “severe disabilities.”

...

WIND: how many serious injuries? Will we ever know? Three years of suppression (see below) and the destruction of control groups leaves ample room for explaining-away things.

When it comes to government, guilt should be assumed, until proven innocent. History shows that no rational person can assume otherwise.

But the numbers are a sideshow, because when government force is used (aggressive coercion up to and including de facto home arrest as in many countries)... that should be considered by any ethical person for what it is: medical battery.

The 'violent woke' pieces of shit at my disgusting alma mater Stanford University did not and do not care about your life or health. In such an environment of psyops and gaslighting and venemous hostility, anyone who claims the Jab is “safe and effective” is out of touch with reality.

Medical science too often rests on logical fallacy

I know from personal experience that doctors do NOT report even SERIOUS life-changing events eg my nerve damage from Metronidazole, from which I still suffer 8 years later. Panicked emails from readers around the world suffering the same fate proved to me that I was hardly an outlier.

The COVID jab “safe and effective” claim is a gaslighting psyop based on a logical fallacy: absence of proof is proof of absence, which rests on making minimal (if any) efforts to look for issues, falsifying or not collecting the data, ignoring or dismissing it as coincidence when found, and most effective of all: harrasing/firing/intimidating those who dare to raise issues. And with disbanded control groups, plausible deniability is now the “science”.

How would we know how many Jab injuries, when looking for / reporting them was/is grounds for personal destruction?

* psyop = psychological operation eg the shit that the CIA does to influence the public, and now here domestically since it became legal again under Obama.

Physician Assistant Fired for Reporting COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events to VAERS

2023-03-18. Emphasis added.

For her efforts to report injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and to educate others in her hospital system on doing the same, Physician Assistant Deborah Conrad said she was labeled an anti-vaxxer and fired from her job.

...“I was then told that by doing VAERS reports and even discussing VAERS that it was an admission that the vaccines were unsafe, so it’s contributing to vaccine hesitancy,” Conrad said.

From there, it became a “very hostile environment” that compelled her to seek legal counsel, who wrote letters to the Department of Health, the CDC, and the FDA.

“No one cared,” Conrad said. “Finally, I had had it. It was so unethical; I couldn’t take it anymore. These VAERS reports are critical to assuring these vaccines are safe for us all. I could no longer be a part of a system that is lying to the American people.”

Conrad decided to become a whistleblower, telling her story on Del Bigtree’s The Highwire, knowing, she said, that it would cost her job.

“I couldn’t remain silent, even if it meant losing my career and everything I worked for,” she said. “I was fired a few weeks later and walked out like a criminal in front of all my peers.”

...

WIND: the title is a conclusion and that is unacceptable from a news outlet. Yet all the “news” outlets do it and the worst of them contradict the title with the body of the article. Here at least the article supports the claim of the title.

It doesn’t matter what proportion of the claimaint’s allegations are true (caused by the Jab); the real story is the aggressively hostile and unethical environment which destroys the careers of anyone speaking out*.

No rational person could doubt that it was repeated in every medical center in the land. You had to be out of your fucking mind (or very brave) to buck the COVID narrative or the safety and effectiveness of the Jab—you’d be fired and labeled and anti-vaxxer, “denier”, etc. Those that did suffered severely for it.

There can be no “facts” about safety when such an environment existed and still exists. You are were and are being gaslit on the “safe and effective” claims, which are nothing more than a logical fallacy: absence of proof is proof of absence <=== FALSE.

Sometimes the absence of proof is just sloppy work. Sometimes it is actually absent. But too often the absence of proof is the willful failure or willful incompetence to look for issues, But in the case of COVID, it involved active aggression including ( in some countries) threats up to and including criminal charges. Yet we are supposed to believe that the “science” has it all taken care of. There is no science possible in an environment of hostility and fear.

* And not just COVID; any controversial big-money research area eg climate “science” are all fertile ground for bad actors. Follow the money.

COVID Tropes: We Were Never in it Together

re: COVID
re: ethics in medicine
re: follow the money

re: How to Know You Triggered Your Critic Into Cognitive Dissonance, Save Yourself Time in Emails, etc

The theme I keep noting each and every time someone expresses indignation at what I’ve writen in this blog is always the same.

That is, rationalizations justifying coercive force, with the distinguishing characteristic being this: the viewpoint of whose livelihoods remained intact during COVID tyranny is strikingly different than those who were kneecapped by overwhelming government edicts.

See also: Did the FDA rush to license Pfizer's covid vaccine to enable vaccine mandates?

Brownstone Institute: Bonfire of the Covid Vanities

2023-03-14. Emphasis added.

Remember the mega-hit book The Bonfire of the Vanities? While a work of fiction, the book shone a harsh light on the all-too-real world of lies, corruption, and hypocrisy in high places.. the Covid regime was replete with rot, from taped-up basketball nets and masked toddlers to vaccine passports and…

ome of the slogans were carefully crafted by governments, while others sprang from the weeds of social media. They all drew from the same playbook, capitalizing on fear and using emotional manipulation to activate people’s guilt circuits. They served as thought-stopping mantras that precluded honest communication about the pandemic.

Two weeks to flatten the curve. ... Anyone remember what happened when the two weeks were up? ...

Stay home, save lives. This sanctimonious and bossy slogan sent the message that mental health didn’t count, livelihoods didn’t count, arts and culture didn’t count, religious communion didn’t count, and the dreams people had spent years pursuing didn’t count. The only thing that counted was preserving metabolic life—or at least, pretending we were doing that.

Follow the science. “Follow the science” makes no sense. Science is information. It tells you what is, not what to do about it. That depends on our values: ....Whose rights are paramount?...

We’re all in this together. ...Was the worker delivering DoorDash orders in the same boat as the Netflix-and-chill couples perfecting new sourdough recipes during lockdown? Was the event planner who lost a 10-year business in the same boat as the Amazon shareholders? Was the foreign student stuck in a low-ceilinged apartment in the same boat as the well-connected mom who hired a power tutor for her kids?

Muh freedumb. ....Without freedom, we have nothing resembling a life. Pandemic or not, freedom needs a place at the discussion table.

Mask it or casket. Hyperbole much? The glib phrase was designed to frighten, rather than inform...

The virus doesn’t discriminate. ... risk of serious harm from the virus was orders of magnitude higher in certain groups, especially the old and frail. Experts downplayed this sharp risk gradient, plunging everyone into an abyss of fear.

Can’t do X if you’re dead. ...the slogan doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny. It sets an actual scenario (restriction on an activity) against an improbable counterfactual (dying if the restriction is lifted)...

Listen to the experts. OK, but which experts? The scientists that governments allowed to speak? What about the scientists with hundreds of citations in prestigious journals but divergent views... Some of the sharpest insights about Covid have come from people outside of science. We ignore them at our own peril.

My mask protects you, your mask protects me. More naked emotional manipulation... if you don’t mask, you’re a bad person...

Pandemic of the unvaccinated. ...by now we all know that vaccinated people both catch and transmit Covid. What’s more, a Danish meta-analysis was unable to find credible evidence that mRNA vaccines reduced mortality, leaving statisticians with the unenviable job of torturing the data in subgroup analyses...

You may be done with Covid, but Covid isn’t done with you. ...Of course Covid isn’t done with us. Neither is the common cold or the flu. Neither are thunderstorms and volcanoes and earthquakes and a thousand other forces of nature...

Stay safe. ...verbal equivalent of touching wood—a knee-jerk utterance to ward off the evil eye. It always reminded me of the “praise be” muttered by the handmaids...

WIND: of all these, “we’re all in this together” grates most harshly to me. A slogan to suppress those whose lives/dreams/hopes were wantonly crushed by government force from rising up in droves, in sharp juxtaposition vs the lives of those ended up sailing through, if not profiting handsomely as the stock market soared.

Logical Fallacies in Medical Reporting eg 'Correlation is not Causation': “Sleeping Pills Increase Risk of Dementia”

re: The Epoch Times
re: correlation is not causation

I’ve decided to ride my bicycle and drive my car while naked from now on, because 99.9999% of car+bike accidents involve people wearing clothes.

...

The claim below might be true. But it would be hard to prove and take a decade or longer.

MUCH more likely is that poor sleep increases the risk of dementia. And those with poor sleep use sleeping pills excessively.

Anyone engaging in obvious logical fallacies this stupidly should stop embarrassing themselves in public—correlation is not causation. Or start riding your bicycle and driving your car naked.

Sleeping Pills Increase the Risk of Dementia, 4 Tips to Treat Insomnia Naturally

2023-03-14. Emphasis added.

...The study followed approximately 3,000 older whites and blacks without dementia for an average of nine years. It found that white participants who used sleeping pills regularly had a 79 percent increased risk of developing dementia compared to those who rarely used them.

...However, prolonged reliance on sleeping pills can increase the risk of dementia...
[WIND: nonsense; correlation is causation]

...

WIND: from the original study, the appropriate conclusion is made amounting to “why does this occur”, that is, it is conjures up a hypothesis worth studying—nothing more. The implication being “fund us”, which is what you read 99.9% of the time—that’s the game.

Conclusion: Frequent sleep medication use was associated with an increased risk of dementia in White older adults. Further research is needed to determine underlying mechanisms.

This kind of nitwit-grade reporting is everywhere now. It’s ideal for pushing an agenda or sales pitch to the gullible public.

I’m becoming reluctant to cite articles on health by The Epoch Times any more, because the intellectual capability of its medical writers has plunged. I don’t need the extra work of having to explain the stupid and unjustified claims, or my brand contaminated with this kind of bunk.

Anon MD writes:

Emphasis added.

I loved your “correlation is not causation” article. This has been a pet peeve of mine for decades and I think arises from the general lack of critical thinking ability in our society, the desire by news media for a quick clickbait article to draw readers in, and the push within academia to publish (even crap or made-up stuff) or perish. Generally, most of these articles end with a call for more research, presumably to be paid for by the public, or at least someone other than the author.

The issue really is that causation is binary. Something either DOES or DOES NOT cause something. But the latter is not exciting, so if you don’t have unequivocal proof of the former you have to say it MAY cause something, which is a pretty useless statement, but it does draw the feckless morons in. And you can see how this feeds into the general media’s need to attract readership. First you take an asinine statement like “sleeping pills may cause dementia” and then you append “BREAKING NEWS!” and put it as your lead story. At that point the uncritical thinkers who can’t tell BS from click bait will embrace it as true and the statement gets a life of its own, until the next garbage correlation story hits.

I can’t tell you how many times in my long career I’ve read about coffee doing “something” (insert random causation word here: infertility, increased sex drive, impotence, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hemorrhoids, toenail fungus, breast enlargement, penis shrinkage, loss of IQ, increased IQ, leukemia, miraculous cancer cure, etc.). Anyone with the brains that God gave a goose would look at this nonsense after awhile and just ignore it.

And then of course, there is the reverse correlation. Maybe one of the first signs of dementia is increased insomnia, leading to an increased use of sleeping pills. Maybe. To the jackasses out there who publish garbage like this, I say “Get a life and do something useful.” To those who abet this crap by believing in it, I say “Save your energy and just go click on that article about the foods you should avoid to prevent toenail fungus.” The utility of the information gained is about equal but you will have cut the amount of useless crap you read in half, which by any measure is a good thing.

As for me, I plan to go fly fishing with my 9 ft carbon fiber fly rod in an aluminum rowboat on June Lake during a lightning storm wearing nothing but a chain mail thong because my research has shown conclusively that this combination of activities has never in the history of the world resulted in a lighting strike there. And of course this activity must also prevent toenail fungus because I don’t have any. Even a moron should be able to see this. Q.E.D.

WIND: I really enjoy this stuff. There ought to be podcast for it!

COVID: What Did They Get Right?

re: COVID
re: ethics in medicine
re: Brownstone Institute

The news is eerily silent when it comes to bringing the sociopaths in government to account.

See also: COVID: What Did They Get Right?

Brownstone Institute: Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts

2023-03-09. Emphasis added.

At first slowly but in recent weeks with seemingly gathering pace, two trends have emerged. On the one hand, many of the core claims behind lockdowns, masks, and vaccines are unravelling and the prevailing narrative has been in retreat on all three fronts. But there is still a long way to go, as indicated by the cussed refusal of the Biden administration to let Novak Djokovic play at Indian Wells.

...the explosive lockdown files in the UK have blown apart the official narrative. We the sceptics were right in our dark suspicions of the motives, scientific basis, and evidence behind government decisions, but even we did not fully grasp just how venal, evil, and utterly contemptuous of their citizens some of the bastards in charge of our health, lives, livelihoods, and children’s future were...

A mistake is when you spill coffee or take the wrong exit ramp off the highway. Lockdown was a policy pushed hard by politicians and health chiefs even against scientific dissent and substantial public opposition, using tools from every tyrants’ playbook of disinformation and lies whilst attacking and censoring truth... Genuine mistakes were few and are forgivable. Most were deliberate distortions of reality, outright falsehoods, and a systematic campaign to terrorize people into compliance with arbitrary diktats interspersed with efforts to vilify, silence, and cancel all critics by using the full powers of the state to co-opt, bribe, and bully...

What is Now Known and Generally but Not Universally Admitted

Covid is now endemic. It will circulate throughout the world and keep returning with mutating variants...

Meanwhile what is particularly striking is just how many suspicions voiced by sceptics from early 2020 onwards and mocked as conspiracy theories have turned into plausible claims and accepted facts:

1. The virus may have originated in the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology;
2. Covid modeling was dodgy and dressed up outliers as reasonable case scenarios;
3. Lockdowns don’t work;
4. Lockdowns kill through perverse consequences and inflict other damaging harms, including interruptions to critical life-saving children’s immunization campaigns in developing countries;
5. School closures are particularly bad policy. They did not curb transmission but they did cause long-term harm to children’s education, development and emotional well-being;
6. Masks are ineffective. They stop neither infection nor transmission;
7. Infection confers natural immunity at least as effective as vaccination;
8. Covid vaccines do not stop infection, hospitalization, or even death;
9. Covid vaccines do not stop transmission;
10. The safety of vaccines using new technology had not been definitively established, neither for the short term nor for the long term;
11. Vaccine harms are real and substantial but safety signals have been summarily dismissed and ignored;
12. mRNA vaccines are not confined to the arm but spread rapidly to other parts, including reproductive organs, with potentially adverse consequences for fertility and births;
13. The harm-benefit equation of vaccines is, like the disease burden itself, steeply age-differentiated. Healthy young people did not need either initial or booster doses;
14. Vaccination mandates don’t increase vaccine take-up;
15. Vaccine mandates can fuel cross-vaccine hesitancy;
16. Suppression of sceptical and dissenting voices will lessen trust in public health officials, experts and institutions, and possibly also in scientists more generally;
17. Estimates of “Long Covid” were inflated (CDC estimate of 20 percent of Covid infections against UK study’s estimate of 3 percent) by using generalized, non-specific symptoms like mild fatigue and weakness;
18. Health policy interventions involve policy trade-offs just like all other policy choices. Cost-benefit analysis is therefore an essential prerequisite, not an optional add-on.

The Lockdown Files

The last three years have seen lives lost in the millions with tens of millions more yet to be accounted for in the coming years, civilized lifestyles destroyed, previously inviolate freedoms shredded, civil liberties turned into privileges to be granted on the whim of bureaucrats, law enforcement officers corrupted into street thugs brutalizing the very people they are sworn to serve and protect, businesses destroyed, economies wrecked, bodily integrity violated.

The Lockdown Files, a treasure trove of over 100,000 WhatsApp messages in real time between all the principal policymakers on Covid in England while Matt Hancock was the Secretary of Health (2020–26 June 2021), offer an unparalleled and gripping window into the amoral and cynical arrogance circulating in the corridors of power....

WIND: a little more deadly and we’d all be asking for permission to eat, shit, and take a walk. Oh, wait—lots of people around the world did have to ask for permission to go for a walk.

Links

Pfizer Knowingly Allowed Dangerous Components in its Vaccines (Part 1)

And the government is the #1 spreader of mis/disinformation:

CDC Spreads False Information About COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Monitoring

And of course, natural immunity was and is far superior.

Natural Immunity Better Than COVID-19 Vaccination Against Omicron: CDC Study

Increased Risk of Adverse Events After COVID-19 Vaccination Among Naturally Immune: Study

Is every conspiracy theory going to come true? Most have.

Biden Admin Negotiates Deal to Give WHO Authority Over US Pandemic Policies

Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says

Jonathan Turley: Wray Confirms that FBI Accepted Lab Theory as Likely “For Quite Some Time Now”

Jonathan Turley: The Covid Lab Leak is a Scandal of Media and Government Censorship

The system works, sort of

Formerly respectable journals self-immolated by lying to the public via the spectacle of science denying science journals, for example: Three Years Late, the Lancet Recognizes Natural Immunity

The Lancet medical journal this month published a review of 65 studies that concluded prior infection with Covid—i.e., natural immunity—is at least as protective as two doses of mRNA vaccines. The most surprising news was that the study made the mainstream press.

“Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds,” NBC reported on Feb. 16. The study found that prior infection offered 78.6% protection against reinfection from the original Wuhan, Alpha or Delta variants at 40 weeks, which slipped to 36.1% against Omicron. Protection against severe illness remained around 90% across all variants after 40 weeks. These results exceed what other studies have found for two and even three mRNA doses.

The Lancet study’s vindication of natural immunity fits a pandemic pattern: The public-health clerisy rejects an argument that ostensibly threatens its authority; eventually it’s forced to soften its position in the face of incontrovertible evidence; and yet not once does it acknowledge its opponents were right.

...

You might argue that the system (science) works—it is correcting some (a few) of its errors. But that’s off the mark: what we witnessed was politics and power, not science.

Self-correcting systems do not repair the harms they caused. Millions were irreversibly mutilated in various ways.

Peter C Gøtzsche: Should I get chemotherapy for cancer? Probably not

re: Peter C Gøtzsche
re: ethics in medicine

I certainly would want to know this in advance. What about you?

Should I get chemotherapy for cancer? Probably not

2023-01-31, by Peter C Gøtzsche, Institute for Scientific Freedom. Emphasis in (only) red and yellow added.

If you get cancer, one of the most important questions is to decide if you should accept or decline chemotherapy. By far most patients accept chemotherapy, likely because they think that if it wasn’t worthwhile, it wouldn’t be offered.

This is a mistake.

Chemotherapy is rarely worthwhile

We hear a lot about progress against cancer. This narrative increases donations to cancer charities and benefits doctors who do research on cancer therapies, and it affects not only the public but the doctors themselves. Their belief in the effectiveness of chemotherapy is so strong that virtually every cancer patient is offered chemotherapy, even in the last few weeks before they die.1

The truth is that, with a few exceptions, little progress has been made the last 70 years when it comes to chemotherapy.2,3

A 2004 review of the randomised trials showed that the overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to five-year survival of adult cancer patients in USA and Australia was only 2%.  In the vast majority of cancer cases, over 90%, the effect of chemotherapy was marginal, corresponding to a life extension of only three months. And new drugs for solid cancers approved by the European Medicines Agency increased survival by only one month compared to other regimes.4

But when you analyse specific types of cancers, there are a few where chemotherapy has significant benefits. The contribution to five-year survival was 39% for testicular cancer, 39% for Hodgkin’s disease, 12% for cervical cancer, 11% for lymphoma, and 9% for ovarian cancer.

Would doctors accept chemotherapy for themselves?

In Denmark, two journalists asked two prominent doctors what they would do if they got cancer and were offered chemotherapy that gave them a poor chance of surviving. Both would refuse the chemotherapy and one explained he would prefer to enjoy the life he had left.5

Such reasonable ideas have powerful enemies in interest groups. The chair of the Danish Cancer Society, Frede Olesen, reprimanded the doctors, saying they harmed the trust between patients and doctors.

They didn’t, in my opinion. They gave sound and honest advice to the public, which is what the public needs. The patients should enjoy the same privileges as health professionals, and few oncologists and nurses are willing to accept the chemotherapy their patients endure for minimal benefit.  In elderly patients, aggressive treatment is even more misplaced. What is most important to them is to maintain their independence and dignity,  not to gain a few extra weeks of doubtful quality. Ending our lives spending time with our loved ones is far more attractive than being pestered by the toxic effects of chemotherapy, with frequent hospital admissions, which increase the risk that we will die in a hospital bed rather than at home.

I have often witnessed the horrible consequences for the patients, their friends and relatives of fighting till the bitter end. I have also met with people who have been ruthlessly exploited by charlatans, and here is an example...

...Screening for a cancer is useless if it does not make people live longer.  When the patients do not live longer, but live longer with the knowledge that they have cancer because the clock started earlier, the “early detection” of cancer is unequivocally harmful. There are many such offers of useless screenings on the private market.

...

Our spineless drug regulators

...Drug regulators approve new cancer drugs without having a clue whether they are better or worse than those we already have, or even just better than doing nothing.16,17 This broken system has resulted in huge expenditures on cancer drugs with certain toxicity but uncertain benefit.

The authors of a 2019 review reported that approximately one-third of cancer drugs are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration based on response rate, which is the percentage of patients whose tumours shrink beyond an arbitrary threshold, typically assessed in a single-arm study.18 Thus, some new cancer drugs are approved without any evidence from a randomised trial that they work.

Even when randomised trials have been performed and marginal effects have been found, these trivial differences may disappear when the drugs are used in real life on patients suffering from co-morbidities.17

Conclusions

I agree with my Danish colleagues.5 Apart from testicular cancer and lymphomas, I cannot imagine any cancer that would make me accept chemotherapy should I get cancer.

Obituaries often say: “He lost the battle against cancer.” But why the war rhetoric? Why not say something positive, like “He had a good life,” as most of the life was not about fighting cancer?

And should we fight at all? We should not fight a battle we have already lost, and it will surprise most people, doctors included, that, unfortunately, this is the case for most cancer patients.

WIND: trust your doctor? Seems like one more brick in the wall of distrust: is the medical profession (as a whole) about patient benefit, or 99% about follow the money? I will exclude some obvious areas from that (eg trauma and certain curable conditions).

Is chemotherapy largely a profit center for the institution, and a pain-and-suffering proposition for the patient? The consideration of those questions is an especially acute example of ethics in medicine, yet it is rarely if ever considered. Which helps you understand the oxymoron of medical ethics.

Having escaped death twice in bike crashes (by some miracle), and the past few years of impaired function (COVID => thyroid disease and EBV), I’ve given a lot of thought to quality of life, healthspan vs lifepan, and what I would do were I to get cancer or something nasty. I find it curious how feel people are wildly in fear of their own death, which I’ve lost. I fear only suffering and so the article above is particularly interesting to me. Of course, I would assess the particulars if the time comes.

See also: Deadly Medicines & Organised Crime and The Chinese virus: Killed millions and scientific freedom

Dr Malcom Kendrick: Returning to COVID19

re: Dr Malcom Kendrick

Apropos.

See also: Dissecting the Deceptive Plea for COVID-19 Amnesty

Dr Malcom Kendrick: Returning to COVID19

2023-01-31.

With the resignation of Jacinda Ardern, my thoughts were dragged back to Covid once more. Jacinda, as Prime Minster of New Zealand was the ultimate lockdown enforcer. She was feted round the world for her iron will, but I was not a fan, to put it mildly. Whenever I heard her speak, it brought to mind one of my most favourite quotes:

‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’  C.S. Lewis

At one point she actually said the following:

“We will continue to be your single source of truth” “Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.’

If I ruled the world, anyone who said, that, or anything remotely like that, would be taken as far as possible from any position of power, never to be allowed anywhere near it again. Ever.

Yet, there are still many who believe her to have been a great and caring leader. She certainly hugged a lot of people with that well rehearsed pained/caring expression on her face.

...

WIND: New Zealand’s tyranny was shocking. The tyrant is gone, but a country willing to accept a leader like that has no moral right to exist.

But what else can you expect in a world being destroyed by forces like toxic femininity, which admires and lauds victimhood vs learning a skill stack, dooming entire generations to become losers at life.

Newsweek: America' COVID Response Was Based on Lies

re: correlation is not causation
re: Dr Scott Atlas

When a piece like this by Dr Scott Atlas is allowed to be in a rag like Newsweek, then you know the tide has turned and the leftist jackasses are trying to cover their tracks.

See also: Dissecting the Deceptive Plea for COVID-19 Amnesty

Newsweek: America' COVID Response Was Based on Lies

2023-03-07, by Dr Scott Atlas. Emphasis added.

Almost all of America's leaders have gradually pulled back their COVID mandates, requirements, and closures—even in states like California, which had imposed the most stringent and longest-lasting restrictions on the public. At the same time, the media has been gradually acknowledging the ongoing release of studies that totally refute the purported reasons behind those restrictions. This overt reversal is falsely portrayed as "learned" or "new evidence." Little acknowledgement of error is to be found. We have seen no public apology for promulgating false information, or for the vilification and delegitimization of policy experts and medical scientists like myself who spoke out correctly about data, standard knowledge about viral infections and pandemics, and fundamental biology.

The historical record is critical. We have seen a macabre Orwellian attempt to rewrite history and to blame the failure of widespread lockdowns on the lockdowns' critics, alongside absurd denials of officials' own incessant demands for them...

We must acknowledge the abject failure of the Birx-Fauci policies. They were enacted, but they failed to stop the dying, failed to stop the infection from spreading, and inflicted massive damage and destruction particularly on lower-income families and on America's children.

...

Here are the 10 biggest falsehoods—known for years to be false, not recently learned or proven to be so—promoted by America's public health leaders, elected and unelected officials, and now-discredited academics:

1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the flu by several orders of magnitude. (FALSE)
2. Everyone is at significant risk to die from this virus.(FALSE)
3. No one has any immunological protection, because this virus is completely new.(FALSE)
4. Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread.(FALSE)
5. Locking down—closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel—will stop or eliminate the virus.(FALSE)
6. Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.(FALSE)
7. The virus is known to be naturally occurring, and claiming it originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory.(FALSE)
8. Teachers are at especially high risk.(FALSE)
9. COVID vaccines stop the spread of the infection.(FALSE)
10. Immune protection only comes from a vaccine.(FALSE)

None of us are so naïve as to expect a direct apology from critics at my employer, Stanford University, or in government, academic public health, and the media. But to ensure that this never happens again, government leaders, power-driven officials, and influential academics and advisors often harboring conflicts of interest must be held accountable...

...

WIND: it ought to be criminal liability (it was NOT good faith, not after few months!), but no one is going to be held accountable because it reaches all the way to top.

Ever academic and researcher touting these falsehoods should be stripped of their license and banned from the field forever. That includes hundreds of vicious lying-scum doctors at Stanford. Their actions were not benign, but resulted in mass harm and mass death. They are and were criminals, and should be treated as such. But... it won’t happen.

Dr Michael Eades, MD adds:

I would add another to this list. One even more egregious than several mentioned above:

Early treatment for Covid doesn’t exist. (FALSE)

People who tested positive were told to go home, rest, drink plenty of fluids, and come back if their condition got worse. Sorry, but there is nothing we can do for you. Then, if their condition did deteriorate and they returned, many were put on ventilators, which was a death sentence for a lot of them.

The fact is there were a number of treatments available to them, but they were denied because of who knows what reason.

Here is in interview with Fauci on this very subject. <video>

The lead up to this video is that Trump proffered the idea that hydroxychloroquine might be a valid treatment. As it turned out, Trump was correct.

In this video, you can see Fauci lie through his teeth. Or, if I’m being charitable, he is just stupid.

...

WIND: whatever does or does not work, those who died never got a chance to find out. Science was dismembered and fed to the dogs.

And if you want to vomit from disgust at the total lack of intellectual integrity which ought to be a prerequisite for the field: WSJ: Why Scientists Got the Covid Lab Leak Wrong. Thing is, the author is more right than he knows: most scientists and experts are among the very worst among us at recognizing their own flaws. To be successful, you have to stick a piece of iron on your moral compass and steer by money.

Global Sperm Counts Dropped More than 50% in Recent Decades, 2 Main Causes

re: correlation is not causation

Most scientific studies are false. Meta analyses have low credibility in general, due to subjective inclusion/exclusion, differing methods, etc. Experts usually have an axe to grind (eg funding).

Still, this one seems straightforward on the sperm count issue, but causation and so on leave a lot to be researched.

The Epoch Times: Global Sperm Counts Dropped More than 50% in Recent Decades, 2 Main Causes: Experts

2023-03-09

The global sperm counts have fallen more than 50 percent in the last 46 years, and the drop is accelerating, according to a recent meta-analysis.

...Why Sperm Count Matters

Sperm count is not only a parameter of a man’s sperm quality but also an important indicator of his overall health.

“Low sperm count hurts your health directly,” said Swan. “Men with low sperm count and women who have reproductive problems have a shorter life expectancy. They die younger. There are quite a few studies on this.”
[WIND: correlation is not causation and there is no causal link established. If this “expert’ is being quoted correctly, it’s shocking to see the use of a logical fallacy used as a scientific claim]

A 2018 study found that low sperm count was associated with metabolic alterations, cardiovascular risk, and low bone mass. Men with low sperm count also had a higher risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
[WIND: correlation is not causation; it seems that all of these issues stem from an underlying cause, whether it is chemical-based or lifestyle or both]

Even though no causal link has been established between sperm count and infertility, lower sperm count decreases the likelihood to conceive.

You can see that in almost every country in the world, fertility has been declining. And the rate of decline is exactly the rate of decline in sperm count. It’s about 1 percent per year,” said Swan.
[WIND: correlation is not causation, and maybe it is more social than anyting. And maybe not]

... Reduce Chemical Exposure

Swan said a major source of chemicals is food, especially processed food.

“When you process food, you milk a cow, or you make spaghetti sauce, you’re passing it through plastic,” said Swan.

Plastic contains phthalates—a large group of chemicals that are often used to make plastics flexible. Phthalates are not chemically bound to plastic. “So they leave the plastic, and they go into the food, which goes into our body.”

A 2018 systematic review found “robust evidence of an association between DEHP and DBP [two types phthalates] exposure and male reproductive outcomes,” including reduced semen quality and a longer time to achieving pregnancy.

“Another thing you can do is worry about the plastic that’s in your kitchen in various forms or something related, which is Teflon, nonstick, PFAS chemical,” Swan said.

“Try to use glass, china, metal to the extent possible. And, of course, never microwave in plastic. That’s a really bad, bad thing to do.”

...The Harm May Pass on to Future Generations

Chemical exposure and unhealthy lifestyle habits could compromise fetal development and further impact the child’s reproductive health and overall health, or even the child’s next generation, warned Swan.

“If you alter the development of the fetus in a profound way, that is never going to change, and it’s not ever going to affect just one system,” said Swan.

“If you alter, say, testosterone, which is what I study the most, in early pregnancy, you’re not only going to affect reproductive health, you’re going to affect neurodevelopment—the brain also needs the right amount of testosterone. You’re going to affect the entire body when you interfere with hormones in early pregnancy.”
[WIND: does this explain the explosion in the number of feminized beta males? Or maybe it’s government schools doing it too.]

...

In her book, Swan refers to a 2017 study that found some phthalates were associated with changes in sperm DNA that resulted in poorer embryo quality and a lower chance of implantation. The phthalates affected the genes that can influence a male baby’s reproductive development and eventually a grown man’s semen quality and fertility status.

Women are not immune to the effects, either. For example, a grown man who smokes cigarettes typically experiences a 15 percent decline in his sperm count, but he can recover if he quits the habit. However, a mother smoking during pregnancy may lead to her grown son losing his sperm count by up to 40 percent. Even worse, it is irreversible.

...

WIND: I strongly favor avoiding plastics, processed foods, etc. The idea that a few hundred chemicals many of which mimic hormones are “safe” is ludicrous, especially in combination. And, follow the money, no industry willingly changes its ways unless it increase profits. And the idea that our beloved FDA is not asleep at the switch and corrupt is for children and idiots.

Could social factors be more of the issue? Including mental illness (depression), stress, etc.

Populations in some large countries are predicted to implode (eg China and it’s disastrous one-child policy), resulting in major social upheaval when a too-small population of young people cannot support a too-large population of elders. This challenge faces most of the developed countries of the world. It already is hitting some countries hard, like Japan. It has profound implications over the next 10-30 years—not very far off. And it’s not solvable, unlike the climate change farce (hint: nuclear power whatever you think about its credibility).

Here in the USA, the only thing that might save us from a population implosion is the open border policy and the minimally-managed illegal entry of about about 7 million unvetted people in two years. Could what looks like an invasion turn out to have the silver lining of compensating for anotherwise declining US population?

Are Artificial Sweeteners Bad for You? New Worries About Link to Strokes, Heart Attacks

re: atherosclerosis

Most scientific studies are false.

But gaming the system via sugar substitutes is an even worse idea than assuming issues.

WSJ: Are Artificial Sweeteners Bad for You? New Worries About Link to Strokes, Heart Attacks

2023-03-07

Study adds to mounting questions about the health effects of popular sugar substitutes found in everything from low-carb ice cream to baked goods

Some doctors are urging patients to cut back their consumption of sugar substitutes as questions mount about their health effects.

In the latest study, published February in the journal Nature Medicine, Cleveland Clinic researchers found that the commonly used zero-calorie sweetener erythritol was associated with an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and death within three years.

Erythritol, a sugar alcohol produced naturally in the body, is used as a sugar substitute in low-calorie and low-carb products, often in those marketed as keto friendly, such as ice cream, baked goods and condiments. It is also often mixed with other sweeteners. 

...“We can’t say conclusively that [sweeteners] are safe,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, dean and professor of nutrition and medicine at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “I think that’s really worrisome.”...

WIND: good advice, but cutting back is weak sauce. Eliminate all added sugars and do not replace them with fakes. Or just eat the damned sugar and get an hour’s exercise as a penalty and health improver, immediately after eating.

Whether it is risk of deadly issues or gut microbiome disruption, artificial anything is rarely without issues. Ditto for all processed foods. Follow the money—no one is looking out for you except a few lonely researchers scrabbling for dregs of funding.

Fix your sweet tooth instead of using sweeteners—it is an addiction. It will take about 2 weeks and the 1st week is the hardest (craving). But beating addiction is worth it.

Is Magnesium Chloride Superior to Glycinate/Malate/Citrate/etc on the Chloride Aspect?

re: potassium and magnesium and calcium and Vitamin K2 and chloride

re: Magnesium Intake Is Inversely Associated With Coronary Artery Calcification

The body needs all sorts of elements and nutrients to function, including numerous elements in tiny quantities. Moreover, these need to be in balance, and for most people, they are out of balance (eg far too little magnesium relative to calcium*).

The body needs relatively large quantities of the following elements vs trace elements:

• Sodium (Na) — salt, the stuff you sprinkle on food and that excessively permeates nearly all processed foods.
• Magnesium (Mg) — most people have subclinical magnesium deficiency, which drives cardiovascular disease and many very serious problems. Magnesium is relatively difficult to get with ordinary diet and especially with today’s processed food supplies and depleted and chemically-treated soils.
• Calcium(CA) — excessive intake for most. Very damaging to the body over time, precipitating and depositing into arteries, brain, bladder, kidneys, etc when other nutrients are lacking, eg magnesium and Vitamin K2.
• Potassium (K) — relatively easy to get but many people are likely deficient, a claim I make based on assessing my food to the gram; it is relatively difficult to get to 4500mg per day and that figure is the minimum recommendation. True needs are probably double that, and some estimates are up to 10X.
• Iron — dependent on trace amounts of copper and can compete with other elements. I’m personally having trouble with iron, probably due to thyroid disease.

* Solid evidence suggests that a 2:1 ratio of calcium to magnesium is best, but the modern diet trends towards 15:1 or so (because of low magnesium foods). Which would explain dozens of chronic health issues affecting the bulk of the population in at least one way, even if not clinically obvious.

Chloride

One thing rarely mentioned is chloride. Yet it is as essential as the others. You will see it on your annual physical lab blood tests, as it is a critical substance to have at proper levels. A chloride imbalance is a serious health concern, albeit rare.

The most natural form of Na, Mg, Ca, K are the chloride form. Barring some compelling reason (not in evidence!), why would you ingest a glycinate/malate/citrate molecule instead of chloride*? Maybe you are being sold a bill of goods by supplement companies?

Chloride: foods, functions, how much do you need & more

Chloride is involved in many of our bodily functions. Similar to sodium and potassium, chloride creates specific channels in the membranes of our cells which help to carry different vital tasks.

For example, chloride channels are key in controlling the amount of water and the type of compounds and nutrients that go in and out of cells. Overall, they play an important role in keeping the balance of our bodies’ fluids (thus, helping to regulate our blood pressure) as well as the pH.

Wikipedia: Chloride:

Chloride has a major physiological significance, which includes regulation of osmotic pressure, electrolyte balance and acid-base homeostasis. Chloride is present in all body fluids, and is the most abundant extracellular anion which accounts for around one third of extracellular fluid's tonicity.

Chloride is an essential electrolyte, playing a key role in maintaining cell homeostasis and transmitting action potentials in neurons. It can flow through chloride channels (including the GABAA receptor) and is transported by KCC2 and NKCC2 transporters.

The concentration of chloride in the blood is called serum chloride, and this concentration is regulated by the kidneys. A chloride ion is a structural component of some proteins; for example, it is present in the amylase enzyme. For these roles, chloride is one of the essential dietary mineral (listed by its element name chlorine). Serum chloride levels are mainly regulated by the kidneys...

Which leads me to this question...

Non-chloride forcing physiological rebalancing?

My recommended form of magnesium and potassium and Vitamin K2.

If you’re not heard of it, I have personally witnessed hyponatremia in two cycling buddies and come very close to it myself. It’s not fun and can be deadly. And it can happen in just 6 or 7 hours, showing that the electrolyte balance of the body has only a modest operational range. I think of such things when shoveling non-natural salts of magnesium/potassium/etc—the body requires electrolyte balance. Forcing the body to re-establish equilibrium by metabolic processes just seems like a bad idea. If you were to suggest I take my electrolytes during a double century as sodium/magnesium/potassium glycinate, I’d have very serious concerns about chloride imbalance. So why would I do that to myself every day with a supplement?

What if you are (daily) unbalancing the chloride level, via supplementation? A lot of people who supplement magnesium end up choosing the much-hyped glycinate/citrate/malate/threonate forms. All of these forms lack chloride.

What are the implications of taking, say, 400mg of elemental magnesium (or other compound) as magnesium glycinate vs magnesium chloride? What about 1000mg elemental, or 2000mg elemental, as I did for months (as MgCl) with a magnesium deficiency? Those other forms lack chloride and also requires metabolism, but the MgCl form is exactly what the body needs—inherently balanced.

AFAIK, nature does not provide fruits and vegetables or fauna flesh with magnesium malate/citrate/glycinate. Nor do we sprinkle sodium glycinate/citrate/glycinate on our food.

Why use magnesium glycinate/citrate/malate/etc vs chloride*? I’ve seen various claims on absorption,but (excepting MgO, awful stuff), those arguments look piss-poor in terms of findings, designed perhaps to sell product. My personal experience* tells me that MgCl is close to 100% absorbed until and unless I fully top up my body stores, which took me nearly a year of heavy supplementation.

Does taking non-chloride forms of magnesium create a chloride imbalance? Magnesium ions floating around need chloride companions before the body can use it (ditto for K and Na). The body must actively deal with glycinate/citrate/malate/etc before it is usable. And what about the required chloride?

Where does the chloride come from and what must be excreted?

Excess stores of chloride are not just going to be sitting around on the chance event of some magnesium glycinate showing up. The body is going to have to find it somewhere, which surely means excreting excess something eg Mg or K or Na or whatever. Balance and physiological statis must be reestablished. Excess Na+, Ca+, Mg+ cations floating around lacking Cl- anions—the body will have to deal with that imbalance.

Am I wrong? I’m no biologist, but the logic seems simple enough. And seem my comments above on hyponatremia, which one can experience in as little as 5-6 hours, by electrolyte imbalance.

Providing MgCl directly bypasses the physiological need to metabolize and make-ready the other forms of magnesium. Evolution did not design us for getting a big influx of glycinate/malate/citrate/etc every day. Is this a real concern which a physiological scientist could weigh in on with credible assertions? Dunno.

* Dubious marketing hype aside, that hype being based on extremely limited science regarding absorption. My own personal experience is near-100% absorption of MgCl, based on being able to take large quantities without any toilet trips.

A Few Doctors So Cocksure about COVID Jab that Medical Battery on Children is Rationalized

re: COVID
re: ethics in medicine
re: medical battery and child abuse.

re: What is Medical Battery?

The most evil collectivist societies quickly get around to stripping parental rights, which we now see in abundance every day, including and especially government schools.

Here we have a case where a doctor, sworn to “first do no harm” apparently has problematic ethical boundaries to the point of criminality. Substituting personal beliefs for those of the parent while using her considerable power differential over minor children to satisfy her personal cognitive commitments.

This case should shock anyone of good moral character. But the profession is now pocketed with physical and chemical mutilation of children for profit, so it should come as no surprise.

See also: Did the FDA rush to license Pfizer's covid vaccine to enable vaccine mandates?

Mother Sues Doctor Who Allegedly Administered COVID-19 Vaccines to Children Without Consent

2023-03-08

A doctor violated the law by administering COVID-19 vaccines to children without consent, according to a new lawsuit.

Dr. Janine Rethy, chief of community pediatrics at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, is being accused of holding two children in a room until she convinced them to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

The minors are both children of NaTonya McNeil, a Washington resident who brought the suit in D.C. Superior Court.

“Ms. McNeil’s two minor children were held in a room by Defendant until she overcame their will and forcibly vaccinated them while physically preventing them from consulting with their mother, who was right outside the room,” the 9-page suit states.

...

WIND: the above is part of a civil case, but it really is/was a criminal act.

This doctor should not only lose her medical license, she should be criminally prosecuted for medical battery—intent seem clear—and that should mean jail time. Why? If the facts are as claimed, then this doctor acted unethically and with coercion in multiple ways.

It is the role a doctor to aid the patient in making healtchare decision. It is not the doctor’s role to coerce the patient. Particularly with the disparity of authority and age adding tremendous weight to the interaction.

The claim is that the parent was excluded intentionally, which increases the ugliness of the situation, showing intent to deceive/mislead. Intent is a key variable in criminal cases; while no one can read minds, intentional acts (if proven) are persuasive as to intent.

Informed consent is a core tenet of medicine. This rests on two parts (1) objective information, and (2) consent once the information is understood. Without both, there can be no informed consent. Clearly no objective risk/benefit analysis was presented (eg NTT vs side effects + the doctor’s own absurd assertions as quoted), seemingly only propaganda (government talking points) and personal cognitive comittments having no basis in science, as we now now. Thus part (1) was not satisfied, making informed consent an impossibility. Moreover, even if objective informatoin had been presented, it is highly unlikely that children (let alone adults) could evaluate it. They cannot possibly be “informed”, being incapable of understanding it. Moreover, children are presumptively and legally not considered capable of giving consent, thus part (2) also fails. Thus was no “informed” part and there was no “consent” part. An egregious violation of medical ethics that requires strict discipline/sanctions/retraining.

Coercion was employed, including false claims. In other words, fraud. An act committed with intent to deceive is a criminal act.

Battery (unwanted physical contact) was employed (eg the jabs). This is a seriously criminal act, even ignoring the other points. The lack of any possibility of consent (given the facts) immediately establishes it as medical battery. It should be an open/shut criminal case.

Finally, risk was increased by administering another vaccination at the same time. As every doctor knows (or ought to know), vaccines are not tested in combination. The jeopardy/risk can only be increased. This shows willful negligence, especially in the case of a vaccine with a proven history of severe side effects.

Do I want this particular doctor to go to jail? Yes and no—I do not really wish to see a life ruined, one that in theory is benefitting people (patients). OTOH, this particular doctor has allegedly committed criminal acts against those very patients, and that must not go unpunished, somehow. That punishment should not be left to the medical boards, because the acts are not procedural/competence issues, but criminal acts.One wonders whether the district attorney is asleep at the switch.

What is Medical Battery?

re: ethics in medicine
re: medical battery

I looked into what constitutes medical battery, prompted by this case.

Medical battery

Emphasis added.

Battery is the harmful or offensive touching of another person. Medical battery is precisely this, but in a medical setting, where a doctor or medical professional causes a harmful or offensive touching to their patients.

The key to proving a medical battery is proving intent. The doctor must have acted intentionally to cause harm or offensive contact with the patient. With traditional battery, courts are split as to whether the plaintiff has to prove the intent to harm. There is no need to prove the doctor wanted to cause harm in a medical battery, only that the touching was intentional.

The elements of proof for a medical battery claim are:

• Intent;
• Actual cause;
• Proximate cause;
• Harmful or offensive;
• Contact;
• By a medical professional

The most common example of medical battery occurs when a doctor performs a non-emergency medical procedure without getting the patient’s consent first. For example, Dr. X gained consent from a patient to undergo heart surgery. While in surgery, Dr. X removes the kidney. This is a medical battery because Dr. X did not gain consent to remove the patient’s kidney.

However, if Dr. X removed the kidney because, while performing heart surgery, Dr. X realized there were complications. The patient’s best chance for survival would be to remove the kidney. There would most likely be no medical battery claim. Medical battery does not apply when it is an emergency.

Actual injury is not necessary in a medical battery case. This is because harmful does not necessarily mean that harm was caused. If the patient’s kidney is removed without an emergency, and the patient is better off because it was removed, there is still a case of medical battery. Removing a person’s organ without permission is a battery.

...

WIND: seems like this case is an probable case of medical battery.

The Ongoing Cholesterol/Statin Propaganda, Regurgitated by “Experts” and Doctors and Media

re: ethics in medicine

Don’t take your medical advice from a photographer and engineer (me). Trust your doctor. After all, the past few years have shown us the incredibly high ethical and intellectual standards of science and medicine, right?

I once asked a cardiologist friend what effect a statin had on athletes. His response captures it perfectly:

Hope that your competitors are taking them.

And that’s ignoring brain fog and diabetes and a host of other issues, all minimized and rationalized-away by mainstream medicine. If even WebMD (a mainstream sell-out) calls it out, you had better worry about it. Nasty side effects, some clinical and some subclinical with subtle and not so subtle loss of function*, all helpfully ignored by overworked practicing physicians, who must follow SOC or be fired/disciplined.

* See Lipitor® Thief of Memory, by MD Duane Graveline @AMAZON. And I assert that my brilliant PhD uncle had his brain massively degraded by a statin all too early in life—on the advice of his doctor. Living 15 years as an intellectual invalid is a huge loss, and there is zero evidence of any benefit that accrued.

Cholesterol and statin half-truths, lies, propaganda.

I cannot possibly call out all the misleading claims and outright lies about statins and cholesterol but here are some basics:

• Cholesterol is one of the most critical substances in the body necessary for everything from cell structure/repair to sex hormones. Your body is not stupid; it regulates it according to its needs. Which includes more when under duress, adjusting for dietary intake, etc.
• The cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease has no objective basis in scientific reality, being laughably wrong now for 80 years or so. No causal evidence has ever been shown. The hypothesis has been overhauled and changed so many times with so many ridiculous variations and diversification that no objective thinker could possibly buy into the shoddy premises behind it.
• Just as many people with low cholesterol have heart attacks as those with high cholesterol!
• No study has EVER shown that women benefit from statins.
• No study has EVER shown that men benefit from statins, excepting the next point, which is exceptionally weak.
• The ONLY group that ever has shown a (tiny) benefit from statins is men under 65 who have already head a heart attack. This “benefit” probably stems from a mild anti-inflammatory effect and has nothing to do with cholesterol.
• Statins double and might triple the risk of diabetes, a far more serious issue than some non-existent theoretical “benefit”.
• The NTT (number to treat) is obscenely high, with no credible evidence of real benefit, and certainly not weight against the numerous harms.
• Higher cholesterol correlates increasingly strongly with increased longevity the older you get.
• Studies on statins are invariably weak, cut short to hide issues, ignore and minimize serious side effects, do not study many groups they are used, etc. Studies that show issues or lack of efficacy are never published. Side effects are ignored or minimized by doctors.
• Low cholesterol might be associated with violent crime.

In that context, let’s take a look at how the statin propaganda has so thoroughly ingrained itself that non-facts and outright lies are taken implicitly as the basis for further discussion.

Medical persuasion in the media, example.

This example article is one of the more balanced ones!

The title uses the persuasion technique of “thinking past the sale”. That is, a statement is made that the reader is expected to accept without question as part of a following claim. It’s a trick that a debater/persuader might use, but it has no place in science.

The article title below is itself propaganda. That is, virtually no one can benefit from a statin, see above; it’s all downside for 99% of the people taking them. The “you may not need part” is a persuasion trick to get you to accept as a fact that many people *do* need statins. Once accepted, your mind can be molded to what follows, never questioning that claim.

Oddly, this article quickly proceeds to contradict its own title. A better title might have been “Benefits of Statins Unproven, especially for some”.

The Epoch Times: You May Not Need Statins, Even With Elevated ‘Bad’ Cholesterol

2022-03-06, by Allison DeMajistre BSN, RN, CCRN.

For decades, the answer to lowering cholesterol to prevent heart attack or stroke was a statin prescription. Unfortunately, many people prescribed statins stop taking them due to side effects, while others question their efficacy. One study even found that doctors have overprescribed statins worldwide, which can potentially be harmful.
[WIND: good, but why use a title that the first paragraph immediately undermines?]

Is statin therapy suitable for you? A simple test could give you a better idea of your risk for a heart attack or stroke by evaluating your coronary artery calcium (CAC) score.
[WIND: another 'sale' that statins are important and necessary, barring some exception]

...

The “bad” cholesterol is not necessarily bad. It is theorized that one of LDL-C’s primary jobs in the bloodstream is to help repair artery walls from the damage caused by inflammation and bacteria. But once the LDL-C builds up along artery walls over time, it can form hard calcium plaques that block blood flow to the heart, ultimately causing a heart attack.
[WIND: GOOD, some balance. But another false 'sale': no causal link between LDL and atherosclerosis has ever been shown. Thus the logical fallacy of correlation is not causation is another “fact” for you to accept.]

...

Agatston believes up to 50 percent of people who took a statin because of their high cholesterol level didn’t need them after finding their CAC score was zero.
[WIND: another 'sale': the idea that you *do* need a statin if your CAC is high. Yet there is no causal evidence, and no evidence that a statin depressing cholesterol will have any benefit, as noted above. But even if you accept the premise, 2X as many people are taking statins as should be!]

...

WIND: medical insights have gone downhill at The Epoch Times. I’ve observed a steady shift into mainstream medical misinformation, by which I mean the unproven false premises in areas like cholesterol and statins.

To be fair to this article, it does mention the side effects and disputes in solid detail. But by implicitly accepting the premise that statins have a role to play for most of us, it undermines its own credibility.

As for CAC, mine is high, which is very common among ultra endurance athletes. But it’s also true that mortality is unchanged by that high CAC score. My cholesterol is high too, but it’s plain as day that the post-COVID EBV and thyroid disease are responsible—my body is doing what it needs to do to cope.

My doctors all of course tell me I should take a statin (they are required to by SOC guidelines), which I have refused—crackpot medicine. My internist finally acknowledged that my spike in high cholesterol last year was almost certainly due to an active EBV infection—the body increases cholesterol under infective duress. And of course my HDL (the “good” kind though that is now disputed) has been extremely high all through this, which most doctors just ignore.

My wife’s doctor prescribed her a statin, but she has a CAC score of zero (no calcium at all!). I consider that statin recommendation medical malpractice (literally), since no benefit has ever been shown for women. But it is Standard of Care (meaning legalized harm/damage). I wish such doctors could be hounded out of practice.

My mother has had high cholesterol most of her life, and she is 81 and has never had a heart attack or stroke, and her CAC is near-zero. Similarly, my father is 83 and no heart attack or stroke, with low cholesterol.

The cholesterol and statin meme has run its course.

Today’s Health “Care” and “Science” —  a Parasitical Feedlot and Slaughterhouse Symbiosis

re: ethics in medicine
re: follow the money

This is an opinion piece*, based on years of study and personal experience. I’m not going to offer proof; that would require an entire book and others have done that work very well already. Besides, read that first sentence.

It is more comfortable and reassuring to maintain beliefs than to challenge them.

You the reader probably will not like this essay, so stop reading here*.

* Once you get a truth into your head, it cannot be removed, so I hope to improve your life by rupturing your bubble a little and maybe a lot.

The ugly reality of today’s health “care” and ”science”*

The only area of medicine that retains my respect is classical—physical care eg trauma, surgeries, etc. But not leeches generally, though they too have their uses, believe it or not.

Most scientific studies are false. Whether it’s medicine or climate “science”. Follow the money and it will rarely if ever let you down.

Public-facing experts not only are incorrigible liars and manipulators, but that they got everything wrong on COVID is now in evidence. In fact, if you reverse their edicts, they would have gotten most everything right. Prima facie evidence that something wicked happened. The idea that these sociopaths can be trusted in other areas is ludicrous. Follow the money.

Destruction of a noble profession’s intellect

Doctors (and I feel for them) are no longer allowed to think for themselves. Worse, too many go along with this—they are memorizers lacking critical thinking skills, and spineless supplicants to false premises rigidly embedded as cognitive commitments, which is painfully obvious in interactions. That’s on them (that class of doctors).

Of the remainder, being employees (thanks Obamacare!), they now do what they’re told to do by their employers according to the SOC (standard of care). I can only imagine how incredibly stressful and demoralizing that is for a thinking doctor—years of life spent at entering the field but now you have to turn off your most critical skill—independent thought. Assembly line medicine.

And now just to become a doctor, the grotesque destructive powers of CRT, ESG, woke everything is an inescapable requirement of training. Training indeed. Leading to intellectual collapse—a brain cannot be patterned to be both rigorous/scientific while simultaneously holding such “theories” as true. Not without severe side effects.

Today’s doctors must** follow the guidelines written by highly compensated physicians paid off one way or another by Big Pharma and/or Big Food — or else. Your treatment today for almost everything rests on corrupt/unethical “science” and financially and ethically corrupt  “experts” that sit on high-profile advisory organizations, themselves funded by Big Pharma, Big Food, etc. A zero integrity process stemming from financial enrichment. Follow the money.

Is it any wonder that America (USA) keeps getting sicker and sicker, that this superating anti-health system is now infecting early childhood, and that hardly anyone is ever cured of a totally curable disease (eg Type II diabetes)? Is it any wonder that the great killing diseases are more widespread than ever before? At the least, we can say that the medical profession has failed utterly to improve public health on such fronts. Yes, these problems are more “treatable” with hundreds of expensive drugs that do nothing to cure, and come with side effects (more drugs to combat those!) and what drive’s it all: profits. That’s the idea. Follow the money.

* With a modest use of hyperbole. This is an essay, not a proof.
** Doctors are pressured by their state medical boards, insurance companies, employer, patients suing them for not following SOC, etc. It is a horribly oppressive system for any doctor that wants to do his/her best for patients.

Parasitical symbiosis of Big Food and Big Medicine

You are the host.

The Feedlot — Big Food — you are the milche cow

The feedlot (Big Food) makes most of us extremely unhealthy, creating disease, suffering and misery, if not outright criminal behavior. Poor nutrition leads to population-scale subclinical (and clinical) disease states that were surely a major factor in COVID deaths, including magnesium deficiency, massive seed oil consumption, etc. Epidemic rates of obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, etc all stem in large part from such factors. A nutritionally-undermined body cannot fight off any disease well—infectious or idiopathic.

Big Medicine has supported Big Food for 80 years or so now, delivering reams of harmful nutritional advice (very profitable for Big Food), starting many decades ago with the advice to replace butter with trans fats, And altering that recklessly damaging message minimally to this day (eg consume seed oils instead of trans fats (oops!) and/or cut fat way down).

Incredibly bad nutritional advice has been given by Big Medicine for 70 years, and still is. That’s not an honest mistake. It is unavoidable from follow the money. What we have is a vicious and heartless de facto mass abuse damage-and-degrade => assembly line medicine system, with with its pill pushers and procedures. The medical system not only has nothing to offer for real health, but actively degrades health by evading and outright ignoring root causes and a system that could address them. Follow the money.

The Slaughterhouse —  Big Medicine

The “slaughter” is mostly financial, with the world’s most expensive health “care” rarely addressing the underlying disease state, created as noted above.

Except that the slaughter is also real: disease, suffering and misery, and ultimately deaths, the end result of the Feedlot and the Treatment circular assembly line. The slow-acting Dr HODAD* system.

* Dr HODAD = Hands of Death and Destruction

Good news on the way — woke doctors

Doctors today are being admitted/selected based on crude physical characteristics and behaviors (race, sexual preference, etc). This ensures a highly qualified pool of future doctors is in the pipeline.

Future doctors now cannot even be trained without indoctrination into ESG, CRT, etc. Future doctor-patient interactions will be so improved by getting all the details right on your pronouns and all that good stuff.

Worst of all: the selection and training process weeds out the critical thinkers, the independent mind, the outspoken voice. Only the most robust mind could possibly withstand the onslaught, and there are very few such minds anywhere in society.

Recommended reading:

• The Clot Thickens by Malcom Kendrick MD @AMAZON and The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr Malcom Kendrick @AMAZON
• The Truth about Statins by Barbara H Roberts MD @AMAZON
• The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet @AMAZON
• Lies My Doctor Told Me: Medical Myths That Can Harm Your Health @AMAZON
• Lipitor® Thief of Memory, by Duane Graveline @AMAZON

High Dose Vitamin D May Treat Incurable Diseases: Experts

re: Vitamin D

Most scientific studies are false. Experts cannot be trusted. But read my comments below too.

See also: Vitamin D in foods and as supplements

High Dose Vitamin D May Treat Incurable Diseases: Experts

2022-03-03

Vitamin D supplements are currently recommended at a dose of 600 international units (IU) per day by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), alongside a warning about potential toxicities if people take more.

But for some people, supplementing with what would be seen as a very high dose of vitamin D every day may reap health benefits rather than toxicities, experts suggest.

In 2019, board-certified internist Dr. Patrick McCullough published a report on the experiences of three patients who were taking high doses of 20,000 to 60,000 IUs of vitamin D daily for many years, all three of whom have since seen significant health improvements.

...The reference suggests a daily intake of 600 IU to reach a serum level of 20 ng/ml vitamin D in the blood—an adequate amount. It set an upper tolerable limit of 4,000 IUs per day; therefore, any dosage higher than that would be considered a high dose.

Yet some experts believe that the current recommendations are not sufficient for optimal health.

McCullough argued that “the current doses recommended by the IOM are sub-physiologic,” meaning that they are below the natural needs of the body. Instead, McCullough proposed that 10,000 IUs a day would be the adequate physiologic dose.

...

WIND: I’m not signed up for the claims made, which is not a statement that they are wrong/false—who can say whether in specific cases whether benefits are real. We would need a proper trial for that, and that’s the issue: when specific individuals can benefit, but others do not, the results will be touted as a failure. Or be designed to fail by choice of subjects. After all, who would favor of a low-cost and effective dietary supplement that might cut into profit margins of the the Big Medicine assembly line gravy train?

For me and for you, N=1 tests are all that matter if improvement is seen. And I don’t care if it’s the placebo effect.

RDA of Vitamin D is a joke—RDA is a bare minimum for health, not optimal health. IThe government persists in recommending RDA as entirely sufficient for all sorts of nutrients, when in fact it is likely to cause all sorts of subclinical issues. A perfect fit for prescription meds to bandaid-over the fundamental issue of nutritional deficiencies. That’s how modern medicine works.

Personal observations

Sunlight is not enough. Now in my late 50’s, even with 90 minutes of summer sunlight mid-day, I cannot get my Vitamin D levels beyond about 42, only somewhat better than winter, where it will fall into the 30's without supplementation. In other words, my aging body is making poor use of even robust mid-summer mid-day sunlight. Sunlight has other photobiomodulation benefits, but Vitamin D production is marginal for me at this point.

Boosting with supplementation. As an experiment last fall, I supplemented with 20000 IU for 3 months (Oct - Dec). This raised my Vitamin D levels from 42 to 82 ng/mL. (Note: always take Vitamin K2 and magnesium along with extra cholecalciferol (Vitamin D3) or you will steadily deposit excess calcium deposited into your body, e.g. arteries and brain and bladder, etc. My health steadily improved very poor energy in late September to steadily better into December. I dropped it to 5000 IU in early January, and things declined. Coincidence? Probably, but I am going to repeat the experiment because right now things suck in terms of energy.