Taxpayer-Funded Initiative Urges Dentists to Push HPV Vaccines
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 2, 2023
The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) awarded over $685,000 to HealthPartners Institute to test strategies for getting dentists to recommend the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to children and young adults ages 11-26, documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed.
The NIDCR operates under the government’s taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The HealthPartners study is being conducted three years after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added prevention of oropharyngeal cancer, a form of head and neck cancer, to a growing list of indications for the HPV vaccine — despite a lack of clinical evidence to support the claim.
Dentists remain generally reluctant to recommend or administer the vaccine to their patients, studies show.
The NIDCR funding covers the first two years of a six-year, $3.5 million proposal for the healthcare nonprofit to experiment with training dental providers to deliver scripted messages to their patients about why they should get the HPV vaccine.
HealthPartners will then run a clinical trial in 21 dental clinics to determine whether the training and messages lead more dental providers to recommend the vaccine, and more patients to take it.
The grant is one of nearly 50 identified by CHD in June — totaling more than $40 million — awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to universities, healthcare systems and public health departments to increase HPV vaccine uptake among adolescents.
The NIDCR is the latest of several HHS sub-agencies to fund behavior modification research aimed at providers and patients in order to increase vaccine uptake.
Why would dentists be charged with recommending the HPV vaccine?
Dentists are uniquely positioned to promote the HPV vaccine because they tend to have more regular contact with young patients than other healthcare providers, the HealthPartners proposal states.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Dental Association and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry all recommend that dental providers promote HPV vaccination — but most dental providers don’t see vaccine promotion as part of dentistry.
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. Most people will get the infection at some point in their lives, but more than 90% of infections clear on their own with no residual health consequences on clinical follow-up.
High-risk HPV types can cause cervical cell abnormalities that are precursors to cancer, however, HPV infection is not the sole risk factor for cervical cancer.
Regular pap screening has been found to reduce the incidence of and mortality from cervical cancer among women by at least 80%.
Merck’s Gardasil 9 — the only HPV vaccine marketed in the U.S. — is a widely used vaccine commonly administered to teens and young adults before they are sexually active to protect against nine of more than 200 strands of HPV that can be sexually transmitted later in life.
Despite Merck marketing Gardasil as a vaccine that protects against some forms of cancer, clinical trials for Gardasil did not test whether the vaccine protected against any cancer — only whether it had efficacy against the indicated strains of HPV.
Gardasil has been associated with a number of serious adverse events.
Some of the signature impacts observed following HPV vaccination include permanently disabling autoimmune and neurological conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
More than 80 lawsuits against Merck now pending in federal courts allege the drugmaker fast-tracked Gardasil through the FDA’s approval process and deceptively conducted clinical trials to mask serious side effects and exaggerate the vaccine’s effectiveness.
In June 2020, the FDA added the prevention of oropharyngeal and other head and neck cancers to the list of indications for the HPV vaccine under the “accelerated approval licensure pathway.”
That pathway allows treatments to be approved before clinical data demonstrating benefit exists, based on early clinical predictions that the treatment will likely produce a benefit.
Later, if a clinical benefit is never found, the FDA “can seek withdrawal” of the drug from the market.
According to the HealthPartners grant proposal, HPV is the leading cause of oropharyngeal cancers in the U.S., However, the references cited to support that claim are from 2014 — and they don’t appear to support the claim.
The CDC estimates 70% of oropharyngeal cancers in the U.S. are “thought to be” caused by HPV, and qualifies even that claim by adding, “It is unclear if having HPV alone is enough to cause oropharyngeal cancers.”
There is no evidence that the HPV vaccine prevents oropharyngeal cancers, but some trials have found that it does have efficacy against vaccine-type oral strains of HPV.
Top NIH-funded Merck consultants in the field, like Noel Brewer, Ph.D. — who developed and promotes the “announcement approach” to increasing vaccine uptake — have long looked to expand HPV vaccination into settings outside of primary care.
On that basis, the HealthPartners study aims to change dental providers’ behavior so they consistently recommend the HPV vaccine to their patients. Dr. Brad Rindal, a dentist, and Patricia Mabry, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, are co-leading the study.
The proposal falls within HHS’ mission to understand the mechanisms of behavior change in order to develop methods of “experimental manipulation or intervention” with providers and patients that can help it meet its targets in various aspects of public health.
HHS, through the NIH, has been funding behavioral studies to assess and influence providers’ willingness to recommend and administer the HPV vaccine in order to increase rates of vaccine uptake since shortly after the vaccine was first licensed in 2006.
Study design explicitly waives informed consent for patients
In the study, a team of researchers from HealthPartners — which provides healthcare, coverage, research and education to 1.8 million plan members — will train providers, teaching them about the relationship between the HPV vaccine and the risk of oropharyngeal cancer.
Trained providers also will receive scripts for use in patient conversations tailored to “reduce fear” that such conversations will negatively impact provider-patient relationships. They also will learn how to refer their patients to a vaccine scheduler.
Researchers will then measure changes in provider behavior through direct provider reporting — they press a button in their office when they make a recommendation — and follow-up surveys.
Patients or patient parents or guardians will receive follow-up survey calls after the office visits to assess how effective the provider communication was.
Researchers will measure changes in patient behavior by assessing how many patients receive initial and follow-up doses of the HPV vaccine within 30 days of their office visit.
In the first two years of the study — funded by the initial grant — the team will develop and pilot test their training and scripts. Their control group will receive patient education brochures and untailored scripts and their intervention group will receive the training and the tailored scripts.
In the next phase, they will test the efficacy of these interventions in clinic-randomized trials, comparing the control and intervention groups. Twenty-one HealthPartners Dental Group clinics and their providers will participate.
Patients 11-26 years old who go to HealthPartners dental clinics and whose electronic health records indicate they have not initiated or completed the HPV vaccine series will be automatically enrolled in the study without their knowledge. HealthPartners estimates there will be approximately 8,000 qualifying visits with HPV unvaccinated patients.
Verbal informed consent will be obtained for participation in the post-intervention patient/parent phone survey.
The patients will not otherwise be informed of the study.
The study requests a waiver of informed consent for patients by arguing that the dental providers will only be making recommendations already endorsed by the CDC, the American Cancer Society and the National HPV Roundtable, which is a joint venture of the CDC and the American Cancer Society.
“Therefore,” they state, “the recommendations conform to current standards of care and don’t present a risk to patients that exceed the risks that patients assume when they seek care within any healthcare system focused on disease prevention through vaccination promotion.”
They also argue that the research “would not be feasible without such a waiver” because it would bias the provider involvement and patient response.
They add that patients sign a HIPAA authorization form that allows them to opt out of using health data for research purposes and that they will be certain to check that list.
Finally, they note that “patients can elect not to pursue vaccination despite the recommendation of the dental care provider” — even though the intervention is designed to change their behavior so they don’t make such an election.
Merck, federal public health agencies, and WHO looking to grow market for HPV shots
Merck’s Gardasil was first licensed in 2006 for use in girls and women ages 9-26 to prevent four high-risk strains of HPV.
The FDA in 2009 expanded the license for use in males ages 9-26 for the prevention of genital warts and in 2011, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended it for routine use in boys.
In 2014, the FDA approved Gardasil 9, designed to protect against 9 HPV strains, for use in the prevention of HPV-related cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers in females and HPV-related anogenital lesions and anal cancers in males and females.
The FDA also expanded the age range of potential HPV vaccines to males and females between the ages of 9 and 45.
Early marketing strategies focused on promoting the drug as guarding against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease. But in 2016, as vaccination rates lagged, the CDC recommended that doctors stress the HPV vaccine’s cancer-prevention benefits, rather than talking about STDs as a way to get more parents to vaccinate younger kids.
And in 2020, it added oropharyngeal and other head and neck cancers to the list.
Over the last several years, HHS has invested tens of millions of dollars in research to get U.S. HPV vaccine uptake numbers to HHS’ “healthy people” target rates of 80% of children and teens vaccinated by 2030.
Meanwhile, Merck has expanded its ad campaigns beyond teenagers to target parents of young children and adults.
In 2020, the WHO set a goal of vaccinating 90% of teenage girls by 2030. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is currently launching a series of campaigns to vaccinate tens of millions of girls in Africa, following similar campaigns in India and Indonesia.
Last week Merck announced its third-quarter earnings from Gardasil were up 13% to $2.9 billion. Allied Market Research predicts the global HPV vaccine market — in which Merck is the primary player, although GSK also markets its Cervarix outside of the U.S. — will grow to $10.8 billion.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Grooming our children, Part 1: Getting parents out of the picture
By Belinda Brown | TCW Defending Freedom | November 2, 2023
Are parents aware of what children from four years old are being taught about sex in our schools? Belinda Brown thinks not. In a series of articles she makes the case that, with the agreement of the Department for Education, our children are being exposed to what is tantamount to a national grooming programme. The first step of this successful sex educators’ coup, she explains today, was to get parents out of the picture, to take over their role, and then deny them any access to lessons. Miriam Cates is one MP who is fighting back.
IN JUNE Conservative MP Miriam Cates introduced the ‘sex education transparency’ Private Members’ Bill, putting Rishi Sunak under pressure to give schools a legal duty to publish materials used in sex education lessons. Backed by 70 Conservative MPs, the aim of the Bill is to secure parents’ rights to see their children’s Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) lesson plans: rights which parents thought they had, only to find them being denied.
Cates had already called for an urgent Government review into what was being taught in RSE since this programme was rolled out in September 2020, of such concern were the materials and lessons parents gleaned from their children. RSE, it emerged, was the brainchild of the ‘progressive’ independent Sex Education Forum, a busy organisation with a stipend of £200,000 a year and a clear ‘beyond biology’ agenda. The Prime Minister responded to Cates’s call and ordered the review last March. Unaccountably, his Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, refused to publish the findings and has no plans to do so. Why, we do not know. MPs had claimed the Department for Education’s (DfE) most recent relationships and sex education guidance, produced in 2019 in consultation with the LGBT+ charity Stonewall, had allowed ‘activist groups’ to overly influence teaching materials. The guidance does not set age limits on what can be taught.
In the meanwhile, the position of parents has not changed. One story catalysed Cates’s most recent initiative. Two years ago, Clare Page found out that her daughter had been taught at school that ‘heteronormativity’ (preferring the opposite sex) was a bad thing and had been told that she should be ‘sex positive’. Like any decent mother, she wanted to know more. Her request to see the material used in her daughter’s classroom was turned down, first by the Information Commissioner’s Office and then by a first-tier tribunal. She was not even allowed to find out whether her daughter had been taught by the ‘master fetish trainer’ who worked for the School of Sexuality Education (SSE) employed by her daughter’s school.
Page’s case marks another step in the long march through the institutions whereby parents are being excluded from once personal and family-based aspects of their children’s upbringing, now inappropriately and dangerously taken over by schools.
Her experience is far from exceptional. In Wales, where children are being exposed to a mandatory diet of explicit and highly ideological sex education, parents are not allowed to remove their children from these classes. Attempts to do so are repeatedly turned down.
Likewise, parents such as those trying to protect their children from sexual extremism in the London Borough of Redbridge are portrayed as religious fundamentalists and radical homophobic Islamists.
Some schools and local authorities even have a policy of not informing parents when a child expresses what the school categorises as ‘feelings of gender distress,’ a study found, though this flies in the face of safeguarding rules. More recent research indicates that it could be that the school’s teaching that is the source of distress.
In theory, parents do have rights in law. Under the European Convention of Human Rights, ‘the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions’. The 2002 Education Act Guidance repeatedly emphasises the role of parents. ‘Teaching must be done with respect to the backgrounds and beliefs of pupils and parents . . . All schools should work closely with parents when planning and delivering these subjects. Schools should ensure that parents know what will be taught and when, and clearly communicate the fact.’
Yet this is not happening. Any criticism that teaching places insufficient emphasis on the value of traditional marriage between a man and a woman, for example, is ignored.
When the School of Sexuality Education complained that the Department of Education’s guidance gave ‘problematic credence’ to long-term relationships and marriage, they had the government’s ear (p10). These sex education activists ‘provide in-school workshops on consent, sexual health, porn and positive relationships’. Their approach, they say, is rights-based – whose rights they do not say. They proclaim themselves as ‘sex-positive, non-binary and trauma informed’.
When they criticised the guidance section that suggested that primary schools should only teach pupils about LGBT when it was ‘age appropriate’ rather than from reception, these phrases were obligingly removed by the DfE.
Gillian Keegan should ask herself who these sex education providers are and why they want the material they are pushing at our children to be unrestricted by age.
This contempt for parents was expressed early on in an ‘Educate and Celebrate’ guidebook foisted on schools. Their proposal was that rather than get parents’ permission for children to attend LGBT events, they would organise LGBT events in the school (p24). When parents tried to protect their children from all this, they were told they were breaking the law.
The result of the government’s inadequate guidance, Cates says, is ‘a permission slip for teaching almost anything that is loosely associated with gender, sexuality or sexual practice – often with an assumption of the earlier, the better’ (p71).
Without providing any apparent curriculum, and without parents able to monitor what was being taught, these so-called specialist sex ‘educators’, heavily funded by the government, with clearly articulated curricula and political agendas, have zealously filled the gap.
Foremost of these is the ideology of queer theory that asserts that ‘heteronormativity’ – the natural biological sex preference for the opposite sex, should be ‘smashed’. It rejects all ‘binaries’ including distinctions between homosexuality and heterosexuality, male and female, and even more disturbingly, between adult and child.
This is the ideology that’s the foundation of the RSE curriculum that a Conservative government has sanctioned. It will be explored in greater depth in the rest of the series. Parents have a right to know, reject it and protest.
To be continued.
How Long Has Netanyahu Got Left?
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 2, 2023
Is Israel really losing the media war? In a conflict where the truth seems to be the first and most predominant casualty, this might be the only truth, certainly when we look at recent events. The war in Gaza is not an irony-free zone though. Recently, Israel stormed social media with claims that the Palestinians were faking videos and they took one of a medic giving resuscitation to a victim, claiming that the technique was erroneous, and so, therefore, the video must have been faked. How are we to take this? Given that Israel is the expert on faking videos to support its heinous war crimes, was the logic behind the claims “trust us, we know what we’re talking about when we talk about faked videos”? In either case it failed. The mob justice of social media didn’t give any gravitas to the claims and soon enough the Red Cross said that the health worker was using the right technique.
But how interesting that Israel is now resorting to this level, to stoop so low makes many wonder if they are even close to winning the war. It doesn’t smack of a victorious side to do this and there are other examples, even, previously. When the Baptist hospital was bombed, the IDF didn’t seem bothered that there was documented evidence to prove that it had actually warned the bosses of it, that they, the IDF, were about to bomb it. Almost as soon as it was bombed and Israel fed the revolting swine of western journalists feeding from the teat of mother Israel for all of their information with the assertion that the Palestinians actually blew it up themselves by a faulty rocket which Hamas had just recently fired close to the hospital. The IDF even produced audio of a conversation which apparently confirmed this. The problem with this though was that the audio was faked. There is actually a history of the IDF faking audio conversations. Some will remember the 2010 storming of the Turkish aid boat where the IDF murdered in cold blood ten activists at point blank range. Audio tape of the activists insulting Israel’s special forces soldiers turned out to be fake.
Western media are playing a role in helping Israel though simply by accepting the carefully arranged circus that they have been invited into. No western journalists that I can see are working within Gaza as it’s simply too dangerous so they are forced to lap up the information which is handed to them on a plate standing on the touchlines and being really nothing more than a spectator to a secret war which they can’t and won’t understand. The holocaust which is taking place is about the annihilation of the Palestinians in Gaza. We can’t really call it a war as this would suggest that both sides have a fair chance to compete on a level playing field. In Gaza, the Israelis are starving the Palestinians so that even if they survive, they will be too weak to fight when, or if, the IDF finally go in with their tank divisions.
The story which isn’t being reported by western journalists is how Hamas is already having some victories in hitting tanks with RPGs and how phosphorous is being dropped on civilians. Of course Netanyahu has been promised by the Biden administration that he can break every war crime ever recorded with the knowledge that he and his people will never face any legal action. And this is really a big part of America’s support to Netanyahu as what we are witnessing – but are unable to film due to Israel cutting off electricity and internet – are war crimes which we have never really seen before in the last 100 years except with the holocaust itself during WWII.
The total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which will never be reported as such by British journalists, which citizens of the free world cannot actually see, so it will continue until only a few hundred thousand Palestinians remain, who then will be convinced by Israel and the West to move onto another location. In fact, there is documentation to prove that the Israelis were planning all along to move out Palestinian citizens out of Gaza all together with the assistance of Egypt.
The big question is time. Time is really an important component in this war. It is only a matter of time before Biden messes up and is drawn into a war with Israel against Iran. Biden doesn’t want this but he is unfortunately stupid and weak and Netanyahu likes American presidents this way. A looming speech from Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah is expected to give an ultimatum to Israel to stop the mass murder of Palestinians, we will soon be reminded who are the most important players: Iran and Turkey.
Both these countries, although from different Muslim faiths who, in other parts of the Middle East are killing each other, seem to be united in their defiance of Israel. It is no longer a question of if they will react to the Gaza holocaust but when. Biden is out of his depth and the Iranians know this. He has only one real ace to play, which is to get rid of Netanyahu which if he was any other U.S. president, he could probably pull this off. But this is Biden we’re talking about whose foreign policy sheet includes the hugely embarrassing exit from Afghanistan and the 130 billion dollar colossal waste of sending cash to Ukraine, the most corrupt country in the world, which most Americans can’t even find on a map of Europe.
The rumours are that Biden is thinking in the longer term than Israel and that he believes that Netanyahu doesn’t have long in office as many Israelis don’t support his war crimes strategy, a point made by Haaretz recently which pointed out his demise was not long off. Something’s got to give. The servile, revolting, passive international press pack might be all that Netanyahu has left.
Why a global anti-Hamas coalition pushed by Macron is a bad idea
By Rachel Marsden | RT | November 2, 2023
Last week, standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Jerusalem, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested recycling the global coalition of 86 nations against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) to focus on Hamas.
“Hamas is a terrorist group, whose objective is the destruction of the state of Israel. This is also the case of ISIS, of Al-Qaeda, of all those associated with them, either by actions or by intentions,” Macron said, betraying a short and selective memory. The stated goal of IS wasn’t to eradicate Israel – it was to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, then broaden it into Arab countries. IS was first and foremost a threat to the stability of Syria – the same country whose government the US and its Western allies actively hindered in its fight against terrorism by making a failed attempt at overthrowing President Bashar Assad through Pentagon and CIA-backed training and equipping of “Syrian rebel” jihadists. As for Al-Qaeda, Israel was even reportedly at one point helping treat wounded militants from the group who were fighting their common enemy, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, in Syria – in turn effectively hindering the fight against IS, as Syria and Hezbollah worked to destroy it.
The Global Coalition against Daesh (another name for IS), founded in 2014, explicitly excluded Russia, whose invitation by Damascus to help it eradicate the terrorist threat can be largely credited for Syria’s stabilization, and the fact that it’s rare to even hear any talk of IS anymore. Russia’s involvement in neutralizing the terrorist group, coupled with former US President Donald Trump’s refusal to continue funding Washington’s incursion into Syria, beyond hunkering down in the oil-rich Kurdish part, was the ultimate key to IS’ defeat. So with apparently little left for it to do now, Macron recommends that the coalition that mostly sat and watched – while Russia, Iran, and Syria did the heavy lifting – take on Hamas. Who does he think is going to do the work this time? Russia, which is still excluded from the coalition? Syria, which has recently taken incoming missile fire from Israel? Iran’s Hezbollah allies, who lost 1,000 men fighting IS in Syria – and whom Netanyahu has placed in the same basket as Hamas as an enemy of Israel? Good luck with that.
So with the most effective anti-IS fighters excluded from fighting Hamas, who’s left in Macron’s proposed coalition? There’s the Global South, including some African countries that just kicked out French troops for their own failed counterterrorism missions which had led to multiple coups and the flourishing of jihadism. It’s doubtful these nations will now be keen to embark on yet another counterterrorism mission alongside the same forces that they just expelled.
Then there are all those members of the international community who are quietly thinking what United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres dared to say aloud last week – that Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7, which left close to a thousand civilians and hundreds of military and security personnel dead, “did not happen in a vacuum.” He was, of course, hinting at Israel’s longstanding, UN-recognized oppression of civilians in Gaza. His statement begs yet another question: Is Hamas really a global threat? Or is it just Israel’s problem?
Anti-Israel unrest has reverberated outside of the immediate conflict zone, including in Western Europe and the US, but these protests have nothing to do with Hamas. Instead, citizens elsewhere in the world are merely reacting to perceived injustices, particularly in light of what they consider to be an overwhelmingly pro-Israel bias on the part of the Western establishment, which initially and drastically minimized concerns over the protection of Palestinian civilians. So any global action against Hamas seems futile.
The anti-IS coalition targeted the terror group’s propaganda, with its website stating that IS’ “use of social media tied to acts of terrorism is well-documented. In response, Coalition partners are working together to expose the falsehoods that lie at the heart” of its ideology. They’re free to do that, but why bother when there’s already open debate among those who have the opportunity to see reports from the ground and assess the situation for themselves? Governments can’t be trusted not to promote their own propaganda under the guise of combating it – all to secure an advantage for their preferred narrative.
Just consider the recent example of propaganda emitted by one of the self-styled gatekeepers of truth: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “Russia and Hamas are alike… their essence is the same,” she said. Nah, actually they aren’t the same at all. And not even Israel has been saying that, but still, “Vladimir Putin wants to wipe Ukraine from the map. Hamas, supported by Iran, wants to wipe Israel from the map,” von der Leyen explained. Besides the hot take on Putin’s intentions regarding Ukraine, that’s like saying that since Warren Buffet has a bank account, and I have a bank account, then I’m also a billionaire. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that Western anti-propaganda campaigns end up spewing.
The anti-IS coalition was made to tackle IS. If that’s no longer an issue, then just toss it in the trash. How many interventionist entities does the West need to spearhead, anyway? There are already more than enough vehicles and coordination mechanisms for intelligence sharing, propagandizing, and security operations. Besides, there’s no proof that better intelligence could have helped Israel when Egyptian and American officials have claimed that Netanyahu had warning of the impending Hamas attack. About the only thing that more useless Western-led bureaucracy would help is the West’s own hunger for more of it.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
As the German Health Ministry drowns in millions of unwanted vaccine doses, Karl Lauterbach begs Germans to please, please line up for their fifth jab

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | November 1, 2023
From the erstwhile vaccine propagandists at Der Spiegel, who I think are also tiring of the insipid autumnal vaccination liturgy and its noxious political enablers:
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has again called on people to get a booster vaccination. “Despite the pandemic and awareness campaigns, the importance of the Covid booster is apparently greatly underestimated,” he tells Spiegel. “So far, unfortunately, only a fraction of those for whom it is recommended have had a booster vaccination.” He calls on all at-risk groups and older people to catch up and ideally combine it with a flu vaccination.
According to the vaccine uptake statistics of the Robert Koch Institute, only about 2.5 million people have received three or more boosters. This means that only a fraction of those over 60 are likely to have sufficient protection against Covid …
They let Lauterbach flap his gums a little more about population immunity, Long Covid, secondary infections and how the vaccines can make all this better because reasons, before sticking the knife in him:
Lauterbach urgently needs to boost vaccine uptake. The pharmaceutical contracts concluded under his predecessor Jens Spahn have secured much larger quantities of vaccine than are currently being used. Between September and November, about 14.1 million vaccine doses of monovalent vaccine targeted at XBB 1.5. will be delivered. An additional 10.6 million vaccine doses of Novavax XBB 1.5. vaccines will also become available, as soon as they are approved by the European Commission.
Our dissolute snake oil salesmen – who is either so stupid or so desperate that he actually tweeted a link to this not-so-subtle takedown – is currently sitting on 11.5 million Pfizer/BioNTech doses, trembling at the prospect of Novavax dropping another 10 million on his head, with no hope at all that more than 5 million Germans will ever line up for these worthless products. This is despite the best efforts of the regional press, who have been trying to gaslight their elderly readers into getting yet another jab since September. Today the Main Post published a typical piece, claiming that vaccine demand is starting to creep up now, really it is; while yesterday it was the turn of Münchner Merkur to claim that everyone is talking about the shiny new vaccines and to drag in some pulmonologist to talk about the “predominantly positive reception” they’ve enjoyed.
Dear idiot reporters: The official vaccine dashboards may be down, but the RKI still publish day-by-day uptake statistics. Stop lying.
Place where protests didn’t happen does support Israel
By Yves Engler | October 29, 2023
Apologists for Israeli crimes are constantly gaslighting Palestinians and their supporters. They seek to make those opposing violence and colonialism feel like oppressors.
Last Friday a rally was held in front of Deputy Prime Minister Christya Freeland’s office in Toronto. Freeland recently declared that “Canada stands with Israel” and when she was foreign minister said Canada would act as an “asset for Israel” on the United Nations Security Council.
The poster announcing the rally declared: “PROTEST DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA CHRYSTIA FREELAND OUTSIDE HER TORONTO OFFICE”. During the rally bodies of babies were placed in front of Freeland’s office and at some point a man with an Israeli flag went directly in front of Freeland’s office in a bid to provoke the protesters. There’s video of police intervening and standing in front of the building housing Freeland’s office.
As the rally grew, it reportedly spilled onto the street and intersection directly in front of the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre (MNJCC). According to a Canada Files post, someone came out of the community centre to complain and film the Palestine solidarity rally. Footage was later posted to X claiming a Jewish community centre was targeted by protesters. According to multiple comments online, the initial post was deleted after being bombarded with derisive comments about their inability to look at a map. But Canada United for Israel shared the video tweeting, “Targeting a Jewish community center where there is a kindergarten is pure antisemitism. How can the anti-Israel movement justify scaring children?”
Far right Rebel News founder Ezra Levant quote tweeted that statement claiming “Hamas protesters target a Jewish kindergarten” while the head of the ‘progressive’ media watchdog CanadaLand, Jesse Brown, made a similar claim. The incident was referenced by the Toronto Sun, Toronto Star, National Post and other media.
In a transparent bid to enable Israeli violence and colonialism, apartheid apologists regularly fabricate or distort events to claim victimhood. Over two decades I’ve been privy to repeated examples of this. While I no longer consider the tactic noteworthy, an element of the psychological side of it is. In other domains it would be called gaslighting.
In brief, those screaming loudest “it’s just a Jewish institution that has nothing to do with Israel” are generally best placed to know this is untrue. Those who’ve been through the MNJCC – and similar institutions – know they are deeply Zionistic.
MNJCC operates an “Israel Connection” program and promotes the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Toronto’s annual Walk for Israel. It hosted and cosponsored an Israeli general’s talk, which was held in tandem with the Israeli consulate.
The Thomas & Marjorie Schwartz preschool centre & Junior Kindergarten housed there has three pictures posted on MNJCC’s site. In one the kindergartners are smiling with an Israeli and Canadian flag hanging on the wall. In its “core elements” the kindergarten describes “Israel as a Source and Resource”.
The MNJCC elementary school shows a picture with dozens of Israeli flags. On its Instragram the Paul Penna Downtown Jewish Day School (DJDS) recently posted that “Jewish people have always had and always will have a relationship with Israel. We continue to stand in solidarity with Israel.” Days into that country’s horrific siege and violence in Gaza, DJDS posted on October 13 that “classes created inspirational cards for Israeli soldiers, and sent cards full of well wishes to former classmates now living in Israel.” The MNJCC school’s site notes, “Each year, our school warmly welcomes two young Israelis to the Paul Penna DJDS community. We are delighted to partner with UJA Federation, the Downtown Jewish Community School, and The First Narayever Congregation on this fantastic initiative. These teens have completed high school and have chosen to defer their army service in order to become Israeli ambassadors or ‘shlichim’, spending a year focused on presenting contemporary Israel to our students in passionate, creative ways.”
MNJCC has deep ties to UJA Toronto, which brings young Israeli ‘shlichim’ to live with Toronto families so they can do outreach in schools and community organizations. At the top of UJA’s website, which is prominently linked on the MNJCC site, is an Israel financial appeal and its official advocacy arm is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
Alongside a link to UJA Toronto, MNJCC’s site links prominently to the JCC Association of North America. The top of that site notes “JCCs of North America Stand With Israel”.
MNJCC’s namesake funded a major project at the racist Jewish National Fund’s Canada Park, which is built on the remnants of three Palestinian villages in the West Bank. On the board of the JCC, Miles Nidal is a staunch anti-Palestinian.
Even if the target of Friday’s protest had been the JCC it would be altogether legitimate (though considering the political climate, organizers should seek to detail the JCC’s anti-Palestinianism in promotional literature). No organization that promotes and defends Israel the way MNJCC does can then claim, “we are simply Jews, not backing Israel” when it becomes convenient to deny the connection.
It’s highly manipulative for individuals who know the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre is part of a network of anti-Palestinian institutions to claim protesting it is antisemitic. Call the complaints what they really are: gaslighting.
How Pfizer Hid Nearly 80% of COVID Vaccine Trial Deaths From Regulators
By Angelo DePalma, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 27, 2023
Pfizer-BioNTech delayed reporting vaccine-associated deaths among BNT162b2 clinical trial participants until after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the product.
The vaccine makers also failed to account for a large number of subjects who dropped out of the trial.
Together, these strategies kept regulators and the public ignorant of a 3.7-fold increase in cardiac deaths among subjects who received the vaccine, according to analysis in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.
The authors of the paper described it as a “forensic analysis,” defined by the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology as “the use of scientific methods or expertise to investigate crimes or examine evidence that might be presented in a court of law.”
What the analysis shows
Corinne Michels, Ph.D., retired distinguished professor of biology at Queens College, New York, led the DailyClout Pfizer/BioNTech Documents Investigations Team on what the authors claim was the first independent examination of original data from the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (BNT162b2) clinical trial.
Investigators looked at each of the 38 deaths occurring between July 27, 2020, the start of phase 2/3 of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trial, and March 13, 2020, the end date culminating in Pfizer-BioNTech’s 6-month interim report.
This trial phase involved 44,060 subjects. Half received a dose of BNT162b2, half got a placebo consisting of an inactive sterile salt solution.
The trial was unusual because at week 20 after the FDA issued the EUA for the vaccine, trial subjects in the placebo group were allowed to switch to the vaccinated group and receive their first BNT162b2 shot.
Switching from the placebo to the vaccinated group — or “unblinding” — normally occurs when the benefit of the drug is so great that not treating subjects becomes unethical. For example, investigators might consider unblinding a cancer trial if at some point all untreated patients deteriorated or died but all treated patients improved.
Unblinding conditions may be specified in the study design, but they usually involve input or review from medical ethicists.
Of 20,794 unblinded placebo subjects in the Pfizer trial, 19,685 received at least one dose of BNT162b2.
Normally the decision to unblind a vaccine trial would be based on the product’s safety and effectiveness in reaching certain endpoints or objectives. Endpoints for a drug to prevent viral infections might be a positive test or self-reported COVID-19 illness (the “case” numbers that drove much of COVID-19 policy), illness requiring hospitalization or death.
But, perhaps unexpectedly, after 33 weeks the data revealed no significant difference between deaths in the vaccinated and placebo groups for the initial 20-week placebo-controlled portion of the trial.
After week 20, after most former placebo subjects had received the vaccine, deaths among those in the vaccine group continued unabated.
The authors revealed “inconsistencies” between data presented in Pfizer-BioNTech’s 6-month interim report and subsequent publications by Pfizer-BioNTech trial site administrators:
“Most importantly, we found evidence of an over 3.7-fold increase in the number of deaths due to cardiac events in the BNT162b2 vaccinated individuals compared to those who received only the placebo.”
This means that 79% of relevant deaths were not recorded in time to be included in Pfizer’s regulatory paperwork.
By not including relevant subject deaths in the case report, Pfizer obscured cardiac adverse event signals, allowing the EUA to proceed unchallenged.
How did Pfizer get around legal, ethical obligations?
The Pfizer-BioNTech data, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, uncovered four additional deaths in the vaccine group and one more in the placebo group — but Pfizer failed to include these data in their FDA submission despite an explicit study design requirement to do so.
These data, and how they differ from what Pfizer-BioNTech reported in their applications, are summarized in Table 3 of Michels’ study.
One case involved a 63-year-old woman who died 41 days after receiving the shot, but whose death only entered the data pool 37 days later. Another was a 58-year-old woman whose death 72 days after vaccination went unreported for 26 days.
Had Pfizer-BioNTech met their legal and ethical obligation to report all serious adverse events their data would have shown equal deaths in placebo and vaccine groups — which would have shown no clear benefit for the vaccine.
How were they able to skirt those obligations?
For one, they were able to hide behind the the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which provided an almost impenetrable liability shield for vaccine manufacturers for “medical countermeasures” in response to any “public health emergency.”
Second, because COVID-19 was viewed as a national health emergency, regulators abandoned the established, patient-centered, safety-based approval process requiring years of preclinical animal testing — and Pfizer-BioNTech unsurprisingly went along.
Timing of death reports raises questions
Michels also raised issues regarding total death reports and their timing.
Since the death total from both study groups, 38, appeared “surprisingly low” to study authors — particularly during a pandemic — they undertook their own analysis based on population mortality expectations at the time.
Assuming that age-adjusted death rates for the study subjects were similar to those of the general population, they estimated that 222 subjects should have died from July 27, 2020, to March 13, 2021. The reported number, 38, is just 18% of the expected number.
Michels explained this by the large number, 4.2% of “discontinued subjects.” The most concerning of these were subjects “lost to follow-up,” which means missing scheduled visits or other required activities.
Pfizer-BioNTech tried to reach these subjects via phone, certified mail or through their emergency contact but despite their efforts could not account for 395 subjects who had dropped out.
The authors wrote:
“These are not insignificant numbers and could easily account for the low number of deaths reported in this safety period of the trial. Given the importance of knowing the status of each trial subject, there should have been greater effort to locate these individuals.
“Additionally, Pfizer/BioNTech was responsible for oversight of the trial sites. Sites with excessive numbers of lost to follow-up should have been evaluated for performance.”
Michels was also concerned over how certain trial centers had many dropped-out subjects while others had none or just a few.
Ninety-six of 153 trial sites (63%) reported 0 or 1 subjects lost to follow-up and 34 (22%) reported 2-5 dropouts. But four sites reported more than 20 subjects lost to follow-up, amounting to about 5% of all trial subjects.
Since the vaccine makers were responsible for trial site oversight, the authors wrote, “Sites with excessive numbers of lost to follow-up should have been evaluated for performance.”
Finally, based on the data, it appears Pfizer-BioNTech was in no hurry to enter death reports before the EUA submission deadline, particularly for the BNT162b2 group.
Of the 38 reported deaths only one case was added on the day the subject died. Delays of 20+ and 30+ days were common.
One death took 72 days to find its way into the database, and all were entered as occurring on the reporting day, not on the actual date of death.
Of the eight subjects in the vaccine group that should have been reported by Dec. 10, 2020, the EUA application cutoff, the average reporting delay was 17.5 days for subjects in the vaccine group, but just 5.9 days for deaths among subjects in the placebo group.
Angelo DePalma, Ph.D., is a science reporter/editor for The Defender.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.



