Statins Increase Diabetes Risk by 38%

re: ethics in medicine
re: statins
re: cholesterol
re: atherosclerosis
re: diabetes

I thought it was 3X the risk according to some sources (a disaster).

But 38% is still more than the claimed relative risk reduction* of 25% or so.

* Relative risk reduction is a con-game used by Big Pharma and your doctors to mislead you—all most people here is “25%” or whatever it is. Few people even understand the math of it.

See also: Statins Do More Harm Than Good.

Statins Increase Diabetes Risk by 38%

2022-07-01, by JOSEPH MERCOLA

Evidence continues to grow that shows the devastating effects of statins on health and longevity. Before taking them, consider the results of these studies.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• Data from one study showed people taking statin medications have a 38% increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Scientists have identified several factors that may play a part in elevating risk, including impaired insulin sensitivity and the impact on epigenetics that influence insulin traits
• Data released in early 2021 have also shown that people taking statin medications have an increased risk of cardiovascular events in all but the highest risk group
• In a presentation at the University of Sydney and in a peer-reviewed narrative review, Maryanne Demasi looked at the evidence that has divided medical professionals over statins and shows how by simply revising definitions and hiding data, the industry has misled consumers and pocketed billions
• Instead of relying on cholesterol numbers that have little benefit unless the total is over 300, consider evaluating your cholesterol-to-HDL and triglyceride-to-HDL ratios, as well as your ferritin and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) levels

...

WIND: follow the money. And now more than ever, the Scientism dogma.

No doctor ever got fired or sued for prescribing a statin, and no doctor has skin in the game for doing so—not their problem (indeed, it is good for business at that medical center when you are damaged by a statin). And no one can prove anything. But doctors do get harrassed for not prescribing according to the paint-by-numbers guidelines. Bottom line is that your best outcome is not part of the calculation with today’s assembly line medicine.

COVID-19 Vaccination Reactivates Highly Contagious Virus: Studies

re: ethics in medicine

Safe and effective?

COVID-19 Vaccination Reactivates Highly Contagious Virus: Studies

2022-06-22, by Meiling Lee

Doctors and scientists are seeing an increase in the reactivation of the chickenpox virus, known as varicella-zoster virus (VZV), following the COVID-19 injections.

The chickenpox virus is one of the eight herpes viruses known to infect humans. After a person contracts and recovers from chickenpox, the virus never leaves the body but lies dormant in the nervous system for life.

The chickenpox virus will show up as shingles, or herpes zoster (HZ) when it gets reactivated.

Federal health authorities claim that there’s no correlation between COVID-19 injections and shingles, but studies show that there is a higher incidence of shingles in people who’ve received the vaccine.

...

WIND: I have little doubt that this claim is true, since I am certain that COVID itself reactivated both Epstein Barr Virus and HHV-6 in me, leading to my 2 year ordeal.

How long will the CDC gaslight the public on the safety of the COVID jabs?

Twitter Quietly Removes Warning Added to a CDC Study

Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment, posted about the recent blunder on Twitter, saying that the network had “slapped a warning on the **Journal of the American Medical Association** for the wrongthink crime of publishing data showing rapid waning of COVID vaccines in children.” Kerpen had posted the study back in May to his account.

The COVID News that Ain’t

re: ethics in medicine
re: risk assessment
re: follow the money
re: Pfizer, Moderna Shots More Likely to Cause Serious Injury Than Reduce Risk of COVID-Related Hospitalization
re: Moderna and Pfizer Vaccines Greatly increase Myocarditis Risk in Young Adults: Peer-Reviewed Study

It doesn’t matter how many of the claims below are true or unproven or debatable. There are so many warning signs and so much evidence accumulating that you have to have serious cognitive dissonance and/or superhero-grade rationalization powers to keep ignoring it.

The 'thing' is the opposite of the thing, right in front of you. Safety mean harm, proven means guessing, good for you means profitable, and ethics means brute force.

Articles like those below might be old news to you, since they are totally covered on CNN and FOX and that cornerstone of credibility, MSNBC/CIA. These paragons of journalistic excellence can be counted on to keep you up to date on exactly what you should know.

Follow the money

Doesn’t everyone like a payday? On the general follow the money front:

FDA Wants COVID-19 Boosters Targeting Omicron BA.4, BA.5 Subvariants

WHO Behind FDA Scheme to Skip All Future Clinical Trials for COVID Vaccines

Why Officials Are Desperate to Get COVID Shots on Childhood Schedule Before ‘Emergency’ Ends

Damaging health for money

Vaccines—Not Just COVID Shots—Linked to Type 1 Diabetes Because of Damage to These Types of Cells

Pfizer, Moderna Shots More Likely to Cause Serious Injury Than Reduce Risk of COVID-Related Hospitalization

Why Three COVID Jabs Are Worse Than Two

Child abuse

On the grotesque yet accelerating child abuse front, the propaganda drumbeat is in fine fettle:

Elmo, Now Vaccinated, Advertises COVID-19 Vaccine Shots for Children Under 5

No Safety Data to Back CDC’s Recommendation on Co-administering COVID-19 Injections and Other Vaccines in Children

Brownstone Insitute: There Is No Basis for the FDA to Authorize COVID Vaccines for Toddlers

The Normalization of Child Abuse by COVID Policy

Birthing people

My wife gave birth to 3 beautiful girls, and late in life. What a woman!

COVID Vaccines Increase Menstrual Irregularities Thousandfold, Fetal Abnormalities Hundredfold: Doctors’ VAERS Analysis

Pfizer, Moderna Shots More Likely to Cause Serious Injury Than Reduce Risk of COVID-Related Hospitalization

re: ethics in medicine
re: risk assessment
re: follow the money

Safe and effective? Effective is out the window within months (it it ever was), safety was never there. Maybe the COVID jab was a good thing for a small fraction of the population. That made sense on a risk assessment basis. Nothing else did or does.

See also: Moderna and Pfizer Vaccines Greatly increase Myocarditis Risk in Young Adults: Peer-Reviewed Study

Pfizer, Moderna Shots More Likely to Cause Serious Injury Than Reduce Risk of COVID-Related Hospitalization

2022-06-30, BY SUZANNE BURDICK

A new analysis of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine trial data shows the risk of serious injury following the vaccine is greater than the reduction in COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to a study posted June 23 on Social Science Research Network.

“Combining the trials, there was a 43% increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest and an absolute risk increase of 12.5 serious adverse events of special interest per 10,000 vaccinated participants,” the authors of the pre-print paper wrote.

Based on their findings, the authors called for a harm-benefit analysis of COVID-19 vaccines.

...Doshi leads the Restoring Invisible & Abandoned Trials (RIAT) initiative, which seeks to ensure clinical trial publications are accurate and complete, and data are publicly available. The study’s other authors are:

• Robert Kaplan, Ph.D., who leads Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center and previously led the behavioral and social sciences programs at the National Institutes of Health and served as the chief science officer at the U.S. Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.
• Dr. Patrick Whelan, M.D., Ph.D., associate clinical professor of pediatrics in the division of rheumatology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
• Sander Greenland, Ph.D., professor emeritus of epidemiology and statistics at UCLA who served as an advisor for the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Academy of Sciences.
• Mark Jones, Ph.D., associate professor of health sciences and medicine at the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, as well as a biostatistician at Bond University in Robina, Australia.
• Juan Erviti, Ph.D. Pharm. D., qualified hospital pharmacist at Navarre Health Service, Spain.
• Dr. Joseph Fraiman, emergency medicine doctor at Louisiana State University’s Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center.

“This important study uses actual Pfizer and Moderna clinical trial data to show that the risks of serious adverse events outweigh the benefits of these vaccines against COVID-19 hospitalization,” said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense chief scientific officer and associate professor of biology at Simpson University in Redding, California where he specializes in microbiology and biotechnology.

...

WIND: I’m not a big fan of meta analysis, but what else can you do with this vaccine scandal, where the control groups were eliminated (surely not an accident).

Could the “impossible” decrease in birth rates in Taiwan (heavily vaccinated) and the 6-sigma* increase in deaths in adults of working age in the USA have a causal relationship to the COVID jabs? Ditto for Germany.

Nothing adds up from a science or logic perspective. Maybe it was all planned. Because follow the money will rarely if ever fail you in life.

Poorly-tested medical interventions are now the rule. The rule is that if it’s profitable, it gets approved, one way or another, regardless of safety profile.

Ethics in medicine are a dumpster fire, with many doctors signing up for whatever the latest medical experiment happens to be, without objection. Meanwhile, ethicists who question things are fired.

To assume that your doctor can be trusted to have your best interests at heart is for children and idiots.

Which is not to malign the few independent-thinking trustworthy doctors out there. But the body of medicine is covered with festering boils of conformity, wokeness, and propaganda. And with most doctors now having a paycheck tied to toeing the line—locked up intellectually at risk of being fired from the corporate entity that employs them.

Moderna and Pfizer Vaccines Greatly increase Myocarditis Risk in Young Adults: Peer-Reviewed Study

re: ethics in medicine
re: risk assessment
re: follow the money

See also: Pfizer, Moderna Shots More Likely to Cause Serious Injury Than Reduce Risk of COVID-Related Hospitalization

Safe and effective? Effective is out the window within months, safety was never there. The myocarditis concerns are surely the tip of the toxiberg.

Could it be that the 23-sigma* decrease in birth rates and the 6-sigma* increase in deaths in adults of working age in the USA has a causal relationship to the COVID jabs? No other explanation that I’ve heard fits.

* “Impossible” statistics never seen in modern history anywhere in the world, yet it is happening.

Below, unlike the COVID jabs, an actual control group. What a novel concept...

Moderna Vaccine Increases Myocarditis Risk by 44 Times in Young Adults: Peer-Reviewed Study

2022-06-28

A French peer-reviewed study concluded that for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the risk of myocarditis skyrockets a week after vaccination.

The risk of myocarditis after mRNA vaccination was 8 times and 30 times greater than unvaccinated control groups for BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna), respectively.

The largest association for myocarditis following the Moderna jab was 44 times higher risk for persons aged 18 to 24 years.

As for the Pfizer shot, in relation to the same age group, the risk was 13 times higher.

Infection with the Chinese Communist Party virus yielded, by comparison, a 9 times greater risk of the same condition.

...

Sudden Adult Death Syndrome

Recently, a new term has been highlighted in media outlets: “sudden adult death syndrome,” or SADS...

WIND: with young adults at nil risk for COVID (even less for children, as in less than zero as in beneficial to train the immune system), the medical system has devolved into a vicious busines of damaging a million people to help a handful for a very short time, all for $100B in profit.

Poorly-tested medical interventions are now the rule. Ethics in medicine are a dumpster fire with many doctors signing up for whatever the latest medical experiment happens to be, without objection. Like jabbing babies and children for COVID. These doctors should lose their medical licenses. A big FU to any doctor who rationalizes such child abuse, rare special cases excepted perhaps.

Anon MD (medical doctor) writes:

It is indeed a mess. Any findings contrary to the worship of the vaccine idol is squashed both by the media and peer review. Both are heavily biased.

So the pro-vaccine data are hard to believe because they fit the narrative and are therefore favorably and uncritically reviewed. By contrast. the studies regarding adverse effects as you have presented, are released as pre-prints and will seldom survive peer review because of the bias of the reviewers. You'll never see these articles published in the NEJM or JAMA, both of which are the medical equivalents of the main stream media. The critical hard data for determining the true risk/benefit does not exist because Pfizer eliminated the control groups by inoculating them as you have repeatedly pointed out.

Whereas long-term safety data for vaccination in the highest risk population early on in the trials may not have been as critical (relatively short life expectancy and beyond their years of contribution to the gene pool), approval of vaccines for low/no risk individuals is unconscionable!

You are indeed correct to follow the money with Big Pharma sitting at the bottom of the trough.

WIND: peer review being a farce foisted on a gullible public and a goodly number of gullible doctors. Indeed, peer review is the new Scientism, though perhaps that has been decades in the making, given the corruption by money of all of science.

The ideas you won’t see in the “news”

It doesn’t matter how many of the claims below are true or weak. There are so many warning signs and so much evidence accumulating that you have to have serious cognitive dissonanceand superhero-grade rationalization powers to keep ignoring it.

Articles like this might be old news to you, since they are like totally all over CNN and FOX and that pillar of credibility, MSNBC/CIA. These paragons of journalistic excellence can be counted on to keep you up to date on exactly what you should know. And how the 'thing' is the opposite of the thing.

Follow the money

Doesn’t everyone like a payday? On the general follow the money front:

FDA Wants COVID-19 Boosters Targeting Omicron BA.4, BA.5 Subvariants

WHO Behind FDA Scheme to Skip All Future Clinical Trials for COVID Vaccines

Why Officials Are Desperate to Get COVID Shots on Childhood Schedule Before ‘Emergency’ Ends

Damaging health for money

Vaccines—Not Just COVID Shots—Linked to Type 1 Diabetes Because of Damage to These Types of Cells

Pfizer, Moderna Shots More Likely to Cause Serious Injury Than Reduce Risk of COVID-Related Hospitalization

Why Three COVID Jabs Are Worse Than Two

Child abuse

On the accelerating child abuse front, the propaganda drumbeat is in fine fettle:

Elmo, Now Vaccinated, Advertises COVID-19 Vaccine Shots for Children Under 5

No Safety Data to Back CDC’s Recommendation on Co-administering COVID-19 Injections and Other Vaccines in Children

Birthing people

My wife gave birth to 3 beautiful girls, and late in life. What a woman!

COVID Vaccines Increase Menstrual Irregularities Thousandfold, Fetal Abnormalities Hundredfold: Doctors’ VAERS Analysis

COVID Non-Cures and Big Pharma Gambling with Your Health: the Pfizer Paxlovid Dumpster Fire

re: ethics in medicine
re: risk assessment
re: follow the money

Poorly-tested drugs are now the rule, as ethics in medicine are a dumpster fire.

Fauci Suffers "Much Worse" COVID Symptoms After 'Paxlovid Rebound'

2022-06-19

But no. During an event at Foreign Policy’s Global Health Forum, Fauci admitted he had not had a good experience:

“After I finished the five days of Paxlovid, I reverted to negative on an antigen test for three days in a row,” Fauci said Tuesday .

“And then on the fourth day, just to be absolutely certain, I tested myself again. I reverted back to positive.”

Interestingly, Fauci admitted:

"...this is becoming more and more typical based on more clinical studies..."

As Bloomberg reports, large numbers of patients have reported the phenomenon, often called Covid rebound or Paxlovid rebound, of returning symptoms after taking a full course of Pfizer’s drug.

While Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in May that doctors could prescribe a second course of treatment to such patients, US drug regulators have said there’s no evidence that a repeat will help.

However, Fauci said he started taking a second course of Paxlovid after experiencing symptoms “much worse than in the first go around.” 

...Finally, as we reported less than two weeks ago, Pfizer stopped enrolling in a clinical trial for Paxlovid for standard-risk COVID-19 patients after the latest results suggested the drug did not reduce symptoms or hospitalizations and deaths to a statistically significant degree.

...

WIND: follow the money.

Time to give Ivermectin an objective clinical trial? Our feckless killer government should be funding an objective trial of Ivermectin and other things, but being wholly in cahoots with Big Pharma, never will. But... it’s all follow the money of The Scientism.

94 Percent of Medication Not Supported by High-Quality Evidence, Harms Underreported: Study

re: ethics in medicine
re: risk assessment
re: follow the money
re: The Epoch Times

Sounds about right. I would have guessed 85% to 90%.

Referencing: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology Volume 148 August 2022: Most healthcare interventions tested in Cochrane Reviews are not effective according to high quality evidence: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The Epoch Times: 94 Percent of Medication Not Supported by High-Quality Evidence, Harms Underreported: Study

2022-06-19

Less than 6 percent of medical drugs have high-quality evidence to support their benefits, according to a recent study by the University of Oxford.

The study found that, of the 1,567 eligible medications tested within Cochrane Reviews from 2008 to 2021, more than 94 percent weren’t supported by high-quality evidence.

Cochrane Reviews is a British international charitable organization that has made a name for itself by conducting systematic reviews. Essentially, the organization will look at a large number of studies and analyze them to formulate conclusions about whatever the area of study was, from treatments for cancer to the effects of different vitamins.

...

“It is particularly worrying that the harms of healthcare interventions are rarely quantified,” Dr. Jeremy Howick, one of the co-authors of the study, wrote in The Conversation.

“For a doctor or patient to decide whether to use a treatment, they need to know whether the benefits outweigh the harms. If the harms are inadequately measured, an ‘informed choice’ is not possible.”

..

A 2020 U.S. study published in JAMA also indicated the problem of medications being approved without rigorous testing, and then causing harm. The study examined drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 1983 to 2018 and found that while the number of novel biologics approved increased, the FDA’s review period decreased.

...Dr. David Light from Harvard University argued in a 2014 article that the majority of newly approved drugs bring little to no improvement, with 1 in 5 new prescriptions causing severe adverse events. At the same time, pharmaceutical prices for new drugs have soared with drug median release prices growing 85 times higher from 2008 to 2022.

“Potential harms should be measured with the same rigor as potential benefits,” Howick concluded. “The evidence-based medicine community is correct to continue calling for higher-quality research, and also justified in their skepticism that high-quality evidence for medical treatments is common or even improving.”

WIND: there you have it: risk management is NOT a thing when it comes to medicine. Fake news and now fake medicine.

You are a milch cow for Big Pharma 94% of the time. It’s all big business and you are the grist for the pill mill.

Follow the money. It will rarely if ever fail you for understanding reality, though scoundrels and crooks go to great pains to camouflage their activities.Always there behind the curtain to be found. It applies to drugs, and it definitely applies to gravy trains like COVID vaccines.

Reversing Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis? More like a Cycle

re: health, nutrition

Back in early May, I wrote about the wonderful uptick in energy, downtick in sleep needs, etc, as my thyroid peroxidase levels plummeted (see chart below). My “old” energy level returned, and I’ve enjoyed 6-7 weeks of the good life—because without health none of us have much.

Early June came with troubling signals that things weren’t going so well. A steady but inexorable slide back down to low energy, increased sleep needs, cognitive impairment, swings in appetite, pain, et. At a lousy low now, and hoping it’s hit bottom because it’s at a level that is seriously damaging my productivity, not to mention an uneasy unpleasant feel to my days—hard to explain. The system just isn’t happy.

I hear from others with different auto-immune disease that they can be cyclical. That’s what it looks like for me

I hold out some hope that I will see shorter and higher “lows” and longer and higher highs for me over time, but only time will tell. I have not rested TPO as graphed below, but I’d bet it has soared again.

Thyroid Peroxidase (TPO) plummets from 877 to 63 in just 4 months

COVID Shot Child Abuse Gaining Steam

re: ethics in medicine
re: risk assessment
re: follow the money

Medical ethics are fucked.

Brownstone Insitute: There Is No Basis for the FDA to Authorize COVID Vaccines for Toddlers

2022-06-24

In a historically embarrassing decision, the FDA recently became the only international regulatory body to authorize the use of mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer for children aged six months to five years.

For the overwhelming majority of young children and toddlers, there is likely no justification or need for this concerning authorization.

They are at vanishingly small risk of serious complications from COVID, meaning that the risk-benefit calculation is precarious at best, and potentially negative at worst.

It’s also a testament to the disturbingly successful politicization of the U.S. regulatory agencies that essentially no other internationally respected country anywhere on earth has made this bewildering decision.

The United States is now going to be vaccinating children as young as six months old with the same product that Sweden has banned for use in anyone under 30, citing side effects that tilt the risk-benefit numbers.

...

Natural Immunity

The FDA in their infinite wisdom also ignored that the CDC’s own estimates, which state that 75% of kids have already had COVID: ...

...

Vaccine efficacy calculations, even excluding the gigantic confidence intervals, were far below the arbitrary 50% target they created for emergency use authorization among adults.

It’s yet another terrifying indicator of just how politically motivated the FDA has become, and how activism has distorted intellectual honesty.

...

WIND: follow the money. It will rarely if every fail you.

They’re just making shit up now: CDC Director Falsely Says COVID-19 One of Top Five Causes of Death for Children

You cannot trust these corrupt bureaucrats with the quality of your pet food, let alone your health and very life. The damage that has been done to public trust will take a generation to repair, if it can ever be repaired.

The Scientism

Rarely has there been (ever?) so contentious a medical issue. If there is that much disagrement, then by definition the science is far from settled, and those pushing vaccines are worse than pushers push heroin—at least drug use is proven to deliver to expecations.

Vaccines for 6-Month-Olds ‘Makes Absolutely No Sense’: Dr. Jeffrey Barke

Serious Adverse Events of Special Interest Following mRNA Vaccination in Randomized Trials

re: ethics in medicine
re: risk assessment

A group of respected academics dares speak out against the propaganda narrative that the vaccines are good for us.

See also: The FDA’s ‘Future Framework’ for COVID Vaccines Is a Reckless Plan and There Is No Basis for the FDA to Authorize COVID Vaccines for Toddlers

Serious Adverse Events of Special Interest Following mRNA Vaccination in Randomized Trials

23 Jun 2022, by , Joseph Fraiman Louisiana State University - Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center, Juan Erviti Navarre Health Service, Mark Jones Bond University - Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Sander Greenland University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, Patrick Whelan University of California at Los Angeles, Robert M. Kaplan Stanford University, Peter Doshi University of Maryland - School of Pharmacy

...

Results: Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest, with an absolute risk increase of 10.1 and 15.1 per 10,000 vaccinated over placebo baselines of 17.6 and 42.2 (95% CI -0.4 to 20.6 and -3.6 to 33.8), respectively. Combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with an absolute risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 (95% CI 2.1 to 22.9). The excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest surpassed the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization relative to the placebo group in both Pfizer and Moderna trials (2.3 and 6.4 per 10,000 participants, respectively).

Discussion: The excess risk of serious adverse events found in our study points to the need for formal harm-benefit analyses, particularly those that are stratified according to risk of serious COVID-19 outcomes such as hospitalization or death.

...

WIND: in simple terms, this means that it looks like the mRNA vaccines hurt more people than they helped. Maybe a LOT more. It always was an irresponsible thuggish mass experiment and one that used brute force to coerce people into it. Pure evil.

Anyone discusing COVID vaccines failing to put risk assessment foremost has a hidden agenda that is as anti-scientific as it gets.

Will this paper get traction? Too many powerful interests would prefer it not. Therefore, you can expect every variety of hit piece and underhanded effort to undermine the findings, but few if any legitimate scientific objections.

What Bird or Animal is Destroying my Large Sunflowers By Tearing/Rending/Ripping off the Head/Tops?

If it's not enough to have small pretty birds pecking away the sunflower leaves literally down to the skeletal support, like some giant caterpillar (observed directly today). I had never found any insects day or night to explain it—damned birds are doing it.

This is far worse, because the plant is totally ruined; this sunflower variety (Mammoth) does not tend to sprout little crotch flowers as many do when the leading tip is damaged; last year the one destroyed just sat there, as if puzzled and never did anything more.

What’s violently tearing the heads off my sunflowers? This happened once last year to my largest and best sunflower. Now whatever is doing it is back with a vengeance.

Yesterday, my three largest and most vigorous sunflowers (approx heights, 6.5 feet, 5 feet, 4 feet) all had their tops violently ripped off, as shown. And in a curious break in patter, a 4th but much smaller 1.5 foot one was mangled, but at ground level.

• NOT a deer; yard is fenced and no tracks.
• NOT a squirrel; squirrels run off with the heads and make clean cuts and only go for the mature heads with their seeds.
• NOT a skunk or other nighttime critter; happened in mid afternoon.
• NO tracks in soil.
• NO damage to lower trunk, no puncture marks, nothing.

Which makes me think: large bird.

• Head is usually take, or partially eaten.
• Puncture marks always seen 6 to 9 inches below the head, usuallly with sheared/torn branches.
• No signs of chewing, but tearing and maybe pecking.

My best working theory is a crow. With lots of them around, I cannot think of any other bird large and powerful enough to mangle the plants this way.

Mangled head section of 6.5-foot mammoth sunflower

Mangled head section of 6.5-foot mammoth sunflower

Update: the next day, the last of 5 large sunflowers was destroyed by around noon; this 5-foot-tall sunflower had been fully intact at 10 AM.

Mangled head section of 6.5-foot mammoth sunflower

Cancer Trial Using Monoclonal Antibody Finds Remission in Every Patient: Report

Godsend.

Since it’s hard to fake complete cure in 100% of patients, I’m working on the assumption that the study is true and accurate, unlike the vast majority of studies.

The Epoch Times: Cancer Trial Using Monoclonal Antibody Finds Remission in Every Patient: Report

2022-06-06, by Katabella Roberts

A cancer trial has reportedly become the first in the world to completely remove the disease in every patient, according to a study published Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

...

WIND: it will take time for this technique to be worked out for other cancers, and maybe some cancers might prove challenging to treat this way. But it is better than miracle already.

Benefits of Blueberries for Heart Disease

This is the season for fresh wonderful blueberries such as can be had at a local farmer’s market.

Blueberries are my #1 favorite fruit of all time. While most of them are marginal or outright crap much of the time (overly large and with little flavor), maybe they still have benefits even inthat case.

A good blueberry should be sweet with some tartness too.

I grew up on wild blueberries which are unrivalled. Along with the antills nearby and the aggressive ants that made picking them more than a chore.

Try Wyman’s frozen wild blueberries available in large bags at some stores. Freezing destroys the texture and degrades the flavor, but for smoothies and yogurt they are fine, and far superior to the overly large tasteless frozen kind.

The Epoch Times: Benefits of Blueberries for Heart Disease

2022-06-06, by Katabella Roberts

In this new review on the intake of berries and their brightly colored pigments, called anthocyanins, they note four out of five studies “suggest that increased…intake is significantly associated with a reduction in risk of” coronary heart disease, the number one killer of men and women, by between 12 and 32 percent. That lower range is from studies of older individuals, and the greater reduction of risk was noted in younger populations. So, perhaps the earlier we start eating berries, the better? And, maybe the more the better—a 47-percent drop in heart attack risk for those in the top 10 percent of berry consumption. It’s almost like one to one. For every 15 mg increase a day, a 17 percent drop in risk. So, how can you get 100 mg a day? By eating less than a half-cup of blueberries a day—my Daily Dozen recommendation for berry intake.

Why the drop in risk, though? What do berries have to do with the heart? There have been over 20 randomized, controlled trials putting berries to the test in more than 1,000 people, and berries were shown to help control bad cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugars, body weight, diabetes, and inflammation. Now, lots of plant foods can do this; is there something special about berries? Like cholesterol. All whole plant foods have fiber; fiber lowers cholesterol. But even blueberry tea can lower cholesterol, even in kids who are genetically predisposed to high cholesterol.

...

WIND: are the health claims solid? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s a great excuse and a no-brainer to enjoy blueberries.

I don’t 'buy' the whole diet cholesterol hypothesis—one of the most pathetic of all time (constantly changing, never shown to be causal, disproven over and over, follow the money, reams of contrary evidence, etc). More likely, good food displacing processed food garbage that most people eat explains most everything. Because healthy inputs = healthy outputs .

A 47% relative risk reduction is better than a statin poisons, which tens of millions of people take. Statins are claimed to have a 25% relative risk reduction, meaning they’re a con job, and you harm thousands of people fors every life “saved” while the other 999/1000 have all sorts of side effects, including neurological problems, muscle damage, stroke, diabetes, etc. Get ride of the statin and eat a lot of blueberries! Consult your doctor first, who will almost certainly inform you that internet idiots like me are not trained mouthpieces regurgitating The Science medical doctors.

Double-Vaxxed and Boosted Daughter Gets COVID, but "The Pandemic" Ignores Me a 3rd Time

My daughter (one of them) had to get vaxxed (2021) and boosted (Jan 2022) for school. The callous anti-scientific propagandists who created the requirements left her no choice.

So 12 hours before her college graduation ceremony, she starts feeling bad and sure enough a positive COVID test and she’s feeling pretty crappy all night. No graduation ceremony, for which I am actually thankful (sitting 3 hours in a crowd in hot sun at 95°F would have stressed the whole family). I had shot photos of her that very evening on campus, so “check” on that thing.

Aside from feeling crappy for 3-4 days she is fine, a slight lung irritation but her lungs are sensitive from being born 3 months too early. The infection also killed her trip abroad, and it doubled the airfare cost, hard-earned money gone. But she is on her way a week later.

Good thing the “vaccination” and booster snake oil Big Pharma profit engine “protected” her all that time from something a lot nicer than most of the flu cases I’ve had.

But at least now she has natural immunity, you know, the protection that actually works, vs the profit-making people-damaging crap they call a “vaccination”. Yeah, I know that it probably helped some weak/older people, let them have it/get it. But it is irrelevant to my daughters and me as we were never at risk. All risk, no upside.

This latest “vaccination” fiasco is so pathetic—my wife was double-vaxxed and got COVID 4 months later, another daughter was vaxxed and got COVID, and my other daughter (most at risk due to a medical condition!) was NEVER vaxxed and finally got COVID a month ago and got over it in a week no big deal other than getting a little behind in homework.

Is COVID just like a common cold for many of us or at least a fractional flu?

All evidence points to that in my family. The propagandists can Toobinate over COVID all they want on the news, and it won’t change the reality, which is that it is a disease of the elderly and weak and those who eat garbage for food and never exercise, a cohort hard-hit by all infectious and non-infectious diseases. Meanwhile, Pfizer is $50 billion dollars richer, at taxpayer expense, and we have $10T in new government debt, which our children can pay off for us. Which means we got a lot for our taxes, as usual.

Meanwhile, these household infections have passed me by three (3) times now. Makes me wonder if my April 2020 infection granted me a natural immunity so strong that COVID cannot touch me? I’m not counting on that, but I’m betting it’s the case.

The COVID theater continues, with the psychiatric damage to much of the population on display every day out there, not the least of which is the still rampant child abuse of masking and childhood COVID vaccinations. The fear porn hit the San Fransicko @AMAZON Bay Area hard, and its effects are still very much seen.

Nina Teicholz: Why are We Basing Food Policy on Black Box Data?

re: unsettled science

Nina Teicholz is the author of The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet @AMAZON, on my recommended reading list.

Read the whole article (long). It is replete with verifiable claims, quite refreshing.

Nina Teicholz: Why are We Basing Food Policy on Black Box Data?

2022-05-16

This news item is about a $380 million, influential study backed by the Gates Foundation, which is informing global health policies yet turns out to be producing highly unreliable numbers on the health risks of foods—red meat, especially. The study authors acknowledge that some numbers in a recent paper were inaccurate, yet they do not plan to correct or retract the paper.

Why are We Basing Food Policy on Black Box Data?

It turns out that a highly influential 2019 claim—that no amount of unprocessed red meat is safe for health—was completely inaccurate, according to a statement in March by the authors of the Global Burdens of Disease study (GBD), an on-going project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Two years earlier, in 2017, these same authors had judged red meat to be the least likely cause of death among 15 risk factors analyzed. Then, in 2019, red-meat’s risk jumped 36-fold. A forthcoming publication will correct these errors, and the risk will drop significantly, said the lead author Christopher Murray, in an interview. Despite the inaccuracies, however, he says he does not intend to correct or retract the paper.

...Indeed, the 2019 paper, what IHME calls its “capstone publication,” has, as of this writing, been cited by 861 papers and 13 policy documents, including the UK National Food Policy--which states that red and processed meats are responsible for 29% of all diet-related deaths and disabilities, a statistic based on the flawed 2019 GBD paper.  

Altering the world’s diet along these lines is intended to stop global warming, yet anyone can agree that global policy affecting human health ought to have a foundation in reliable data. With the still-rising epidemics of obesity and diabetes, we can’t afford false steps. In this light, GBD’s wildly fluctuating food-risk estimates look perilous.

...In fact, other food risks calculated by GBD also changed dramatically from 2017 to 2019. The risk of salt dropped by 40%, while risks attributed to diets low in fruit, nuts and seeds, vegetables, seafood omega-3 fatty acids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids declined by more than 50%.

The letter to the Lancet was a wake-up call on these issues. It “raises serious questions about the methods and results of the GBD project and their estimates related to diet,” wrote Yusuf, although he also emphasized his belief that Murray is committed to good science and that collaborations with outside scientists in the future could lead to more robust results and conclusions.

...

WIND: the crap that passes for science these days is really about manipulating the public.

The only rational viewpoint in the face of this onslaught on science is to start out by assuming that it is ALL bullshit, which it almost certainly is almost all of the time. Follow the money will rarely if ever fail you in life.

The Lancet, once respected, has become just another propaganda tool and political opinion outlet, now engaging not just in publishing bad “science” but active political expression. Witness that latest editorial on abortion rights, trans rights, etc (regardless of your viewpoint on those matters, they are unfit for a scientific journal). The Lancet has become a festering pustule on science.

The Impact of Helminth Infection on the Incidence of Metabolic Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

re: double century

Co-evolving over millions of years, it only makes sense that parasitic worms (helminths) would have a role to play in the human body, including a symbiosis of sorts (in addition to causing problems too).

The Impact of Helminth Infection on the Incidence of Metabolic Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

2021-08-12

...is growing support for the idea that controlled infection with live parasitic worms offers a novel strategy for the treatment of metabolic disorders caused by the chronic inflammation induced by obesity...

...Currently the benefit of live helminth infection to individuals with central obesity and at least one MetS risk factor is being assessed in a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Patients will be infected with 40 larvae of the human hookworm Necator americanus and changes in insulin sensitivity, body mass index and waist circumference will be measured over a 2-year period (ACTRN12617000818336) (38). Despite the limitations of our meta-analysis, the overall results clearly showed that infection with intestinal worms, such as hookworm, was less efficacious than the tissue dwelling parasites S. mansoniand O. viverrini.

... Despite the limitations of our meta-analysis, the overall results clearly showed that infection with intestinal worms, such as hookworm, was less efficacious than the tissue dwelling parasites S. mansoniand O. viverrini. In all cases where an outcome could be compared, the impact of intestinal parasites was underwhelming, with no effect on HbAIc (50, 54, 56) or HOMA-IR (26, 56), only a modest effect on fasting blood glucose (26), and except for one study (47), either no effect or an increase in T2D (48, 49). In contrast, for every outcome, infection with S. mansoni, resulted in a significant positive effect (51).

The choice of hookworm [Necator americanus] for a clinical trial is based primarily on the lack of pathology that results from infection with this parasite. Other than a mild itch as the larval worms enter the body through the skin, for doses of up to 40 larvae, no discomfort has been reported in previous human safety trials (73–75). This parasite resides in the intestine of its human host where it attaches to the intestinal epithelium and feeds on blood. For a low dose/controlled infection, this has little pathological consequence, unlike with high doses where intestinal hemorrhage and iron deficiency anemia are common (76). Although S. mansoni also infects its human hosts through the skin, it resides in the mesenteric blood vessels, where the adult male and female worms mate to produce eggs that are then excreted from the body in order for the life cycle of the parasite to continue. While infection is rarely fatal, it can result in significant morbidities and loss of quality-of-life (77). Eggs that are not correctly secreted from the body can become trapped in the liver leading to the formation of granulomas and fibrosis which can result in portal hypertension and congestive splenomegaly (78). Liver enlargement and periportal fibrosis are commonly associated with advanced chronic infection. Children that are repeatedly infected can develop anemia and malnutrition which lead to significant developmental defects. Such outcomes clearly preclude the consideration of this parasite for live helminth therapy.

...

Combining these observations with the current meta-analysis, strongly support the proposal that helminth parasites have the capacity to regulate obesity driven inflammation to mediate a positive effect on metabolic outcomes. However, consideration for the variations between different parasites and a deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved is required before helminth-based therapies can progress to the clinic. This advancement would be greatly supported if future studies in the field included an accurate diagnosis of the parasite infection, information on the immunological and inflammatory status of patients, and consistent measures of metabolic outcomes. As this type of information is expanded and underscored with enhanced knowledge of the biochemistry and function of parasite-derived molecules, there is every possibility that helminth-derived therapy will be a clinical reality for patients with MetS.

WIND: would like you some hookworms (Necator americanus) with your Metformin? Because blood flukes create some issues.