Did Head of CDC Vaccine Safety Office Delete COVID Vaccine Injury Records?
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 11, 2025
A key official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) responsible for monitoring vaccine safety and reports of vaccine injuries may have mishandled or deleted official records subpoenaed by Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) alleged earlier this week. The New York Post first reported the story on Thursday.
Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC Immunization Safety Office, maintained the records in question. Shimabukuro previously authored a key paper and participated in public messaging claiming the COVID-19 vaccines were safe and effective for pregnant women.
Johnson, chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, requested the records in a subpoena sent in January to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The subpoena pertained to an investigation into internal COVID-19 vaccine safety communications.
According to the New York Post, the subpoena led HHS to discover “potential discrepancies” in the emails maintained by Shimabukuro.
“HHS officials recently informed me that Dr. Shimabukuro’s records remain lost and, potentially, removed from HHS’s email system altogether,” Johnson wrote in a letter he sent earlier this week to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and HHS Principal Deputy Inspector General Juliet Hodgkins.
Johnson called Shimabukuro’s possible mishandling of his official records “highly concerning.”
Journalist Paul D. Thacker, a former U.S. Senate investigator, said, “Every American should be concerned about government scientists deleting or hiding federal information to shape a political agenda. That information belongs to the taxpayers.”
Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper, whose questioning of the COVID-19 vaccines led the Center for Countering Digital Hate to add him in 2021 to its “Disinformation Dozen” list of the “leading online anti-vaxxers,” said he was “not surprised” by Johnson’s allegations.
“For years, I’ve seen patterns like this before regarding vaccine safety data. The public health establishment often prioritizes profits over people and continuously seems to protect the lies over the truth. The idea that critical records might vanish — whether through negligence or intent — fits a familiar playbook,” Tapper said.
California attorney Rick Jaffe said Johnson’s allegations are “troubling, but not surprising, given longstanding concerns about transparency at the CDC.”
In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last year, the CDC told Children’s Health Defense the agency has no records of certain internal email communications relating to the agency’s follow-up investigation of safety signals associated with COVID-19 vaccines.
HHS, CDC and Johnson’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Missing records ‘could contain unfiltered insights’ into vaccine adverse events
Citing an unnamed aide from Johnson’s office, the New York Post said it is unclear which specific records are missing. But according to Johnson’s letter, Shimabukuro’s role included “monitoring adverse events relating to the COVID-19 vaccines.”
Tapper said Shimabukuro may have been “handling sensitive data on adverse events linked to the COVID-19 vaccines,” including data from the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the V-safe database, as well as studies, raw data and internal communications on vaccine-related safety signals.
Tapper said:
“These records could contain unfiltered insights into side effects that were downplayed or unresolved during the pandemic. For example, I’ve seen cases in my practice where patients developed symptoms like persistent fatigue or heart palpitations post-vaccination, yet struggled to get clear answers from authorities.
“Missing records could hide similar signals, undermining efforts to validate patient experiences or refine vaccine protocols.”
Internal medicine physician Dr. Clayton J. Baker said, “Such records would likely be very damning to all CDC officials who perpetuated the false ‘safe and effective’ narrative about the COVID-19 vaccines from 2021 until the present.”
“Given how damning any evidence of ignored or falsified safety signals would be, I think it is highly likely that Biden-era officials might try to destroy such records if they could. Better to be accused of destruction of federal records than to be charged as an accessory to mass negligent homicide,” Baker said.
In an April 2023 presentation to the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Shimabukuro claimed that surveillance conducted by international regulatory and public health partners “has not detected a safety concern for ischemic stroke following bivalent COVID-19 mRNA booster vaccination.”
Yet, a peer-reviewed study published in November 2024 found that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines pose a 112,000% greater risk of brain clots and strokes than flu vaccines, and a 20,700% greater risk of those symptoms than all other vaccines combined. The study called for a global moratorium on mRNA vaccines.
In 2021, Shimabukuro was the lead author of a study in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women. The study concluded that “preliminary findings did not show obvious safety signals among pregnant persons who received mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.”
However, a peer-reviewed study published in 2022 showed that the authors of the NEJM study performed a “statistical sleight-of-hand” that substantially lowered the miscarriage rate in pregnant women, presenting it as 12.6% instead of 82%.
In a Substack post, epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher said Shimabukuro’s “potential involvement in the deliberate manipulation of critical safety data on COVID-19 mRNA injections during pregnancy carries grave implications — resulting in immeasurable harm to mothers and their unborn children worldwide.”
Shimabukuro ‘may have violated multiple federal laws’
According to a press release from Johnson’s office, Shimabukuro’s actions, if proven to have occurred, “may have violated multiple federal laws.”
Those laws include the Federal Records Act, which requires federal employees to preserve materials “made or received by a Federal agency under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business,” the New York Post reported.
Johnson wrote that the destruction of records subpoenaed by Congress may also be “grounds for contempt of Congress,” which, according to the New York Post, is punishable by up to a six-figure fine and 12 months in prison.
Jaffe said Shimabukuro may also face other penalties. He said:
“Under federal law, he could be charged with obstruction of justice or destruction of official records — risking fines, restitution and up to 20 years in prison. His federal pension could also be garnished to satisfy any judgment against him.
“Beyond criminal penalties, he faces permanent disqualification from federal service and career-ending reputational harm.”
In addition, if records relating to vaccine-injured people are missing or destroyed, impairing their legal cases, “courts could impose evidentiary sanctions or presume the destroyed records were unfavorable to the government,” Jaffe said.
Johnson’s letter also referred to Dr. David Morens, an employee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who was a close aide of the agency’s former director, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Morens allegedly deleted emails and instructed colleagues to contact him at a personal email account to sidestep FOIA rules.
In his letter, Johnson accused HHS of a “lack of transparency” and failure to investigate the allegations against Morens.
“I had always suspected that Dr. Morens was not the sole evader of federal record-keeping requirements at HHS,” Johnson wrote. “The extent to which HHS officials systemically mishandled, deleted, or destroyed their communications, data, and other information relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccines must be thoroughly investigated.”
Johnson’s letter asks the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice and the HHS Inspector General’s Office to investigate the matter, including whether records were intentionally destroyed to “avoid or subvert Congressional oversight or the Freedom of Information Act.”
The letter builds on Johnson’s efforts to investigate COVID-19 vaccine safety.
Earlier this week, Johnson sent letters to the heads of four COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, requesting they turn over records related to the development and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines and their communications with Big Tech platforms about vaccine-related adverse events.
In November 2024, Johnson wrote a letter to HHS, CDC and FDA, asking the agencies to “preserve all records referring or relating to the development, safety, and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.”
In an October 2023 letter to the then-heads of CDC and FDA, Johnson accused the agencies of an “appalling” lack of transparency regarding COVID-19 vaccine safety signals, depriving Americans of “the benefit of informed consent.”
During the Biden administration, Johnson wrote over 70 letters to HHS officials and its health agencies requesting information on COVID-19 vaccine adverse events and related communications, according to a Jan. 29 press release.
Last year, Johnson hosted a congressional roundtable to discuss the risks of COVID-19 vaccines. Medical experts, political figures, journalists and whistleblowers were among the participants.
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.
The Media Playbook for Measles Looks a Lot Like Its COVID Playbook — This Time, Kids Are the Pawns
By Mary Holland, J.D. | The Defender | April 8, 2025
There are moments in the history of a movement that test its resolve. For the medical freedom movement, this is one of those moments.
We are in the midst of another full-on attack by the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, aided and abetted by a beholden mainstream media united around its allegiance to a $69 billion vaccine industry.
Five years ago, we fought back as our government, Big Media and Big Pharma orchestrated and executed a COVID-19 fear campaign — a campaign built on lies, deception and censorship — and then parlayed the public’s fear into dangerous and deadly medical mandates and hospital protocols that continue to cause profound harm.
The upside to COVID-19 global disaster?
It opened the eyes of millions more people to the dangers of shoddily tested vaccines, regulatory agency hubris and one-size-fits-all “medicine.”
As our movement has grown exponentially, so has our threat to Big Pharma.
In response, we’re seeing the same tactics rolled out again. This time, it’s measles. This time, children are the pawns in pharma’s playbook.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) stood strong and stayed true to our mission during COVID. We’re standing just as strong now. We remain just as committed now to the truth, informed consent and medical freedom as we were during the pandemic.
As pharma ramps up its measles playbook, our No. 1 job is to dismantle the vaccine industry’s lies — broadcast far and wide through the industry’s most reliable and faithful megaphone: mainstream media.
The media would have you believe that measles is a “deadly” disease. But any suggestion that MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines are safer than measles infection isn’t supported by facts.
In fact, between 2000 and 2024, nine measles-related deaths were reported to the CDC. During the same period, 141 deaths following MMR or MMRV vaccination were reported in the U.S. to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — suggesting the MMR vaccine can be deadlier than measles.
The media echo the same familiar refrain: The MMR vaccine is “overwhelmingly safe.”
In fact, the MMR vaccine is associated with serious health risks. The package insert for Merck’s MMRII says, “M-M-R II vaccine has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or impairment of fertility.”
Research also shows the MMR vaccine causes febrile seizures, anaphylaxis, meningitis, encephalitis, thrombocytopenia, arthralgia and vasculitis. In 2004, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that boys vaccinated with their first MMR vaccine on time were 67% more likely to be diagnosed with autism compared to boys who got their first vaccine after their 3rd birthday.
The media insist there’s no viable treatment for measles — hence prevention, with the MMR vaccine, is the sole solution.
In fact, as CHD reported, doctors in West Texas are successfully treating measles with budesonide and vitamin A. Even the World Health Organization recommends vitamin A.
Yet some hospitals and doctors are refusing to treat measles patients with budesonide. Texas health officials rejected pleas by a treating physician to endorse the treatment and get the word out to hospitals about its effectiveness.
Sound familiar?
We saw this identical playbook with COVID. Media parroted public health officials’ claim that the vaccine alone would save us — while discouraging, ridiculing and even outright sanctioning the use of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, budesonide and other treatments known to reduce COVID severity and death.
Last month, a 6-year-old child in West Texas died after developing pneumonia while recovering from measles. Media seized the opportunity to disparage the parents, members of a Mennonite community, for not vaccinating their child.
As our science and CHD.TV teams uncovered — after enlisting experts to review the child’s medical records — the little girl died not “from” measles, as media claimed, but from a tragic medical error.
In fact, the hospital properly diagnosed the little girl’s pneumonia — a community-acquired pneumonia that, when treated properly is not life-threatening. Unfortunately, the doctors failed to use the standard antibiotic indicated for treating her pneumonia until it was too late.
Even after CHD exposed the accurate cause of death, The New York Times reported the 6-year-old died from measles — and accused us of making “unfounded claims” about the death.
Last week, a second child in West Texas died. The media and Texas health officials reported the death as “measles pulmonary failure.” CHD is working with the child’s parents to analyze her medical records. We will report, accurately, on what we find.
The media have accused CHD and the health freedom movement — or “anti-vaxxers” as reporters love to call us — of “weaponizing” the tragic death of the 6-year-old who died because of a medical error. (We should point out that death by medical error is not uncommon in the U.S. It’s estimated that at least 250,000 people die every year as a result of the wrong diagnosis or treatment, making it the third-leading cause of death).
The death of any child, for any reason, is heartbreaking. But in this case, who are the real “weaponizers?”
If media are genuinely concerned about children’s lives, where are the reports on children’s injuries and deaths from COVID-19 vaccines? From MMR vaccines? From the other 14 shots on the CDC-recommended schedule?
Last month, CHD reported on the senseless death of a 1-year-old roughly 12 hours after the child’s pediatrician insisted on administering six shots of 12 vaccines at once.
Where were the headlines deploring this child’s death, denouncing the child’s pediatrician? Where were the reports on the known dangers of “catching up” babies and children on vaccines?
As the media remain radio silent on the carnage inflicted on innocent children by a powerful, greedy industry and its minions in Congress, CHD is honoring the legacy of these children by reporting the facts, telling the truth and insisting on the rights of parents to make independent, informed medical decisions.
This latest round of attacks on the health freedom movement is a measure of pharma’s fear. We are winning. Pharma knows it.
We have no intention of backing down from the facts: Vaccines cause serious injuries, including death. As Big Pharma and Big Media wage a renewed battle for the hearts and minds of parents, we must strengthen our resolve, we must stay true to our mission.
Our children deserve nothing less.
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.
US-Funded “Anti-Misinformation” Groups Are Still Quietly Active
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 9, 2025
Despite the big and open push that came in with the new US administration to end the practice of the government funding third-party groups to effectively act as its censorship proxies – some of these arrangements continue to be operational.
Most appear to be working to strengthen previously established “preferred” narratives around health issues – as ever, with “combating misinformation” given as the declarative, overarching purpose behind the effort.
But critics say, that was/remains a smokescreen meant to manipulate public opinion.
The Federalist reports that the National Science Foundation (NSF) – one of the US government’s “independent agencies” designed to channel federal funds – had a number of programs under its “anti-misinformation” umbrella, the Convergence Accelerator.
Among the ones who continue to this day are Chime In, Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT), and Expert Voices Together (EVT).
Chime In’s original name was Course Correct. It was set up at the University of Wisconsin-Madison – with $5 million coming from NSF in 2022 – to provide “anti-misinformation” resources for journalists.
True to the era, its original “mission” was to persuade (Covid) vaccine skeptics to take the jab; and then it went into advocating (“misinformation detecting”) in favor of persuading people there was no reason to be skeptical about genetically modified (GMO) foods, Covid narratives, and vaccines in general, as well as issues like sunscreen product and raw milk safety.
ARTT, meanwhile, came up with its own “AI” chatbot, that focused on political discourse, but according to the Federalist, once again, heavily tied to vaccine hesitancy.
From 2021, ARTT received close to $750,000 from the NSF, and a further $5 million, “to develop practical interventions to build trust and address vaccine hesitancy.”
Another controversial tie-in concerning ARTT was the organization’s plans to partner with, among others, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which the article describes as being “infamous for performing transgender surgeries on, and administering opposite-sex hormones to minors.”
ARTT – now operating as Discourse Labs, a non-profit – was, while one of the groups incubated by NSF’s Convergence Accelerator, backed up by the World Economic Forum (WEF), Wikimedia Foundation, Google, Mozilla, and Meta.
EVT’s “new home” as of 2025 is “the leftist group Right To Be,” the report says.
Some of the issues covered by this group are named, “Bystander Intervention To Support The LGBTQIA+ Community,” “Conflict De-Escalation In Protest Spaces,” and “Bystander Intervention To Stop Police Sponsored Violence and Anti-Black Racism.”
But the Federalist reported earlier that, “a representative from Right To Be” previously told the site EVT “remains under the direction of George Washington University (and) direct inquiries there.”
Lawmakers say RFK Jr. is spreading misinformation about psychiatric drugs
The real threat may be their attempt to silence the debate
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | April 9, 2025
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, established by Executive Order, convened its first meeting last month.
Among the topics discussed was the “threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), antipsychotics, mood stabilisers, and stimulants.”
Shortly thereafter, a group of legislators issued a strongly worded letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, accusing him of “promoting disproven and outright false theories” about these medications—reframing them as “behavioral health medication.”
They argued that even suggesting these drugs might pose a “threat” would “stigmatize” Americans with mental health conditions and potentially deter them from seeking medical care.
But labelling something a “threat” in a policy discussion is not a condemnation; it is an invitation to assess risk—a fundamental responsibility of medical oversight.
The letter, led by Senator Tina Smith, urged Kennedy to “adhere to the well-established and widely accepted scientific and medical consensus” on the matter.
Consensus? This is precisely the problem—they are appealing to authority to shut down inquiry rather than fostering critical examination.
The FDA itself has placed a black box warning on SSRIs, cautioning that studies have shown these drugs double the risk of suicidal ideation and behaviour in certain populations.
Should that warning be revoked for fear of discouraging treatment?
Are we now at a point where simply discussing the risks of medications is considered dangerous? What happened to informed consent?
And if we are to insist on evidence – as the legislators say – where is their study that suggests educating people about the harms and benefits of medication prevents them from seeking treatment?
It does not exist.
In many cases, psychotherapy should be prioritised over medication, as it is safer, more effective in the long run, and aligns with what most patients prefer.
Neither the MAHA Commission nor Kennedy has advocated for anyone to stop taking medication abruptly—a well-known risk—but rather to investigate the full scope of these drugs’ effects.
The legislators cited CDC statistics showing that “43 percent of children between the ages of 3 and 17 took medication for an emotional, concentrational, or behavioral condition,” then immediately noted that “youth mental health needs have only increased in the past five years.”
The contradiction is glaring—if these medications were the solution, why is the problem worsening? This is precisely what Kennedy seeks to investigate.
One of the most contentious points was Kennedy’s claim that SSRIs have been linked to school shootings in the U.S.
The legislators cited studies such as an analysis of FBI data on “educational shootings” from 2000-2017, which concluded that the majority of school shooters had not been previously treated with psychotropic medication.
However, these data are incomplete. Privacy laws restrict access to shooters’ full medical histories, making definitive conclusions about many of these analyses difficult.
Meanwhile, a 2015 study published in PLOS One by Moore et al. found a disproportionate association between certain psychotropic drugs and violent behaviour in the FDA’s adverse event reporting system.
The harms of antidepressants are often downplayed—even in the medical literature.
Comparisons between published studies and confidential regulatory documents have revealed significant discrepancies, including underreporting of suicide attempts and aggressive behaviour.
My point is, Kennedy is not asserting causation—he is calling for more research. The legislators’ dismissal of his concerns as “disproven” serves only to suppress an important discussion that demands further scrutiny.
At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy remarked, “I know people, including members of my family, who’ve had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than getting off of heroin.”
Legislators strongly objected to the comparison in the letter, but Kennedy was referring to the well-documented difficulties of SSRI discontinuation—affecting about half of those who take them, even though their dependency profile differs from that of opioids.
What most people don’t realise is that psychiatrists who specialise in tapering patients off antidepressants report that SSRI-withdrawal can last far longer than withdrawal from heroin.
In fact, some patients remain on SSRIs indefinitely—not by choice, but because withdrawal symptoms are so severe that stopping is unbearable. The legislators’ letter conveniently ignores this reality.
Instead of engaging with the substance of his arguments, Kennedy’s critics attacked his qualifications, claiming he was “unqualified” to weigh in on mental health or addiction.
True, Kennedy is not a psychiatrist—or even a physician. But as a lawyer who has spent decades exposing the failures of public health institutions, he understands where scrutiny is needed.
Moreover, Kennedy is not issuing medical directives—he is demanding accountability in a system that too often fails to critically examine the long-term effects of the medications it prescribes.
As Danish physician Peter Gøtzsche has shown, prescription drugs are a leading cause of death, surpassing even heart disease and cancer—and psychiatric medications alone are the third leading cause of death.
Why are these legislators so adamantly defending what is widely acknowledged as the rampant over-prescription of psychiatric drugs? Could it have anything to do with their deep ties to Big Pharma lobbyists?
Their eagerness to silence dissent suggests that the interests being protected may not be those of the public, but rather those of the industry that funds their campaigns.
I have been writing about this issue for years, exposing the pharmaceutical industry’s role in shaping narratives around psychiatric drugs while downplaying their harms.
The pattern is always the same — suppress uncomfortable discussions, attack those who raise legitimate concerns, and protect the status quo.
How fragile do these legislators think people are, that they shouldn’t be trusted with the full truth about the medications they take? And more disturbingly, what gives them the authority to control what information the public is allowed to access?
Kennedy pledged that “nothing is going to be off limits” in his effort to Make America Healthy Again—this is what he meant.
Raising questions is not misinformation. And shutting down debate is not science.
If policymakers are confident in the safety and efficacy of these drugs, they should welcome scrutiny—not suppress it.
Below is a letter from Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate – addressed to Senator Tina Smith. It requests a meeting to discuss mental health and antidepressant safety concerns, referencing Witczak’s personal experience, attaching 15 studies highlighting issues like clinical trial misconduct and regulatory failures
How Big Pharma Weaves Its Web
By Kim Witczak | Brownstone Institute | April 5, 2025
Inever set out to be an advocate. I wasn’t a doctor, scientist, or policy expert. I was just a regular person who, like so many, blindly trusted that our healthcare system was designed to protect us.
But life has a way of pulling us into the arena when we least expect it.
After the tragic and unexpected loss of my husband Woody to the antidepressant Zoloft he was prescribed for insomnia, I was thrust into a world I never imagined—one where medicine wasn’t solely about healing, but deeply entangled in a system that prioritizes profit over safety, buries harms, and keeps the public in the dark.
For over two decades, I’ve had a front-row seat to how this system truly operates—not the illusion of rigorous oversight we see in medical journals or glossy pharmaceutical ads, but the reality of how industry influence is woven into every stage.
I’ve met with regulators, testified before the FDA and Congress, filed a wrongful death and failure-to-warn lawsuit against Pfizer, and earned a seat on the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee as a consumer representative.
I’ve also spoken at and participated in global conferences like Selling Sickness, Too Much Medicine, and the Harms in Medicine meeting in Erice, Italy—where some of the world’s leading experts acknowledge what few in mainstream medicine dare to say:
Our healthcare system isn’t about health—it’s about business.
And in this business, harm isn’t an accident. It’s built into the system.
The more I uncovered, the more I realized:
We aren’t just patients. We are customers.
And we are all trapped in Big Pharma’s spiderweb of influence.
The Spiderweb of Influence
The more I learned, the more I saw just how deeply embedded the pharmaceutical industry is—not just in drug development and marketing but in every corner of our healthcare system.
That’s why I created the Big Pharma Spider Web of Influence—to visually map out how the system is designed not to prioritize health but to sell sickness while minimizing, downplaying, or outright hiding harms.
From clinical trial design to regulatory approval, from direct-to-consumer advertising to medical education, from controlling medical journals to silencing dissenting voices, the industry has built an intricate and self-reinforcing web—one that traps doctors, patients, and even regulators in a cycle of pharmaceutical dependence.
How the Web Works
- Clinical trials are often designed, funded, and controlled by the very companies that stand to profit. They manipulate data to exaggerate benefits and obscure risks, ensuring that negative results are buried, spun, or never published at all.
- Regulatory agencies like the FDA are deeply entangled with the industry they’re supposed to oversee. More than 50% of the FDA’s budget comes from industry-paid user fees, and a revolving door ensures that many key decision-makers come from—and later return to—pharmaceutical companies.
- Medical journals depend on pharmaceutical funding through advertising, reprint sales, and industry-sponsored studies—severely limiting independent scrutiny of drug safety. Many studies are ghostwritten or crafted by paid “key opinion leaders” (KOLs) who serve as pharma’s trusted messengers.
- Doctors receive education through industry-funded programs, learning “best practices” based on treatment guidelines crafted by the very system that profits from overprescription.
- Patient advocacy groups, once independent grassroots organizations, have been co-opted by industry money, ensuring that the loudest voices often serve pharma’s interests rather than patients’ needs. I call them “astroturf” patient groups—they look like real grassroots organizations, but they’re anything but.
- Screenings and guidelines continuously expand the definitions of disease, turning more people into lifelong customers.
This isn’t about one bad actor or isolated corruption—it’s a systemic issue. The entire structure is designed to push more drugs onto the market, medicalize normal human experiences, and only acknowledge harm when it becomes too big to ignore.
It’s a brilliant business model—but a catastrophic public health strategy.
“To Sell to Everyone:” The Business Model of Medicine
If this sounds like a conspiracy, consider the bold admission made by Henry Gadsden, former CEO of Merck, in a 1976 interview with Fortune Magazine:
“The problem we have had is limiting the potential of drugs to sick people. We could be more like Wrigley’s Gum…it has long been my dream to make drugs for healthy people. To sell to everyone.”
– Former Merck CEO Henry Gadsden
Let that sink in.
This wasn’t about curing disease—it was about expanding markets. Gadsden’s vision wasn’t just to treat illness, but to medicalize everyday life—creating a cradle-to-grave model where every person, healthy or sick, became a customer for life. Just like selling a variety of gum—something for everyone. Juicy Fruit, Big Red, Doublemint, Spearmint, and so on.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Today, we live in a system where:
- Everyday emotions—sadness, worry, shyness—are rebranded as medical conditions requiring treatment.
- Preventive medicine often means lifelong prescriptions, not lifestyle changes.
- Drugs are marketed to the “worried well”, turning normal human experiences into diagnoses.
This isn’t just theory—it’s well documented. In Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients, Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels expose how pharmaceutical companies create diseases, expand diagnostic criteria, and convince the public that normal life experiences require medical intervention.
The goal?
Make medication the default—not the last resort.
Harms Are Always an Afterthought
Harms from medication are not rare, nor are they unexpected.
But in this system, they are treated as acceptable collateral damage—something to be dealt with only after the damage is done, after lives are lost or forever changed.
I’ve sat in FDA Advisory Committee meetings, reviewing new drug applications, and have seen firsthand how safety concerns are often dismissed in favor of “innovation” or “unmet medical need.”
I’ve heard industry representatives and advisory committee members argue that safety signals can be addressed post-market, meaning after a drug is already in circulation and causing harm or a required REMS (Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies) program upon approval.
But by the time post-market safety issues are acknowledged, it’s often too late.
We’ve seen this play out over and over:
- Opioids—marketed as “non-addictive” and pushed aggressively onto patients, leading to an epidemic of addiction and death.
- SSRIs and antidepressants—long linked to increased risks of suicide and violence, particularly in young people, yet downplayed or dismissed for decades. Other hidden harms include withdrawal syndromes and Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD), conditions that many patients were never warned about.
- Antipsychotics—widely prescribed for off-label use, leading to severe metabolic and neurological side effects.
- Covid-19 vaccines—an experimental mRNA platform rushed to market, mandated, and imposed on society despite limited long-term safety data and growing concerns over harms.
Every time, the pattern is the same:
The industry sells the benefits while downplaying the risks—until those risks become too big to ignore.
By then, the drug is a blockbuster, billions have been made, and the system moves on to the next new “breakthrough.”
More Than Degrees: The Truth of Lived Experience
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in this fight is that real-world experience matters just as much as credentials.
Over the years, I’ve been invited to speak at medical schools, PhD programs, and universities, thanks to brave academics willing to challenge the narrative. I share my journey as an accidental advocate—someone who didn’t have a medical degree but discovered America’s broken drug system the hard way.
But let’s be honest—the medical world is driven by credentials. Or, as I like to say, the alphabet soup.
At conferences, attendees wear name tags listing their titles—MD, PhD, JD, MPH. It’s a quick way to size someone up, to assess credibility before even speaking. And I’ve seen it happen: people glance at my name tag, see no impressive letters after my name, and walk right by.
Years ago, I was speaking at the Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference and noticed my badge read: Kim Witczak, BA.
I was horrified. Was that really necessary? Did my name tag need to remind everyone that I only had a BA?
Later, I was telling the story to a doctor friend, and he laughed.
“Next time, tell them BA stands for Bad Ass.”
And he was right.
Because real expertise doesn’t always come from an advanced degree—it comes from lived experience, from asking the right questions, from refusing to accept the status quo.
The Counterargument: But Don’t We Need Experts?
Of course, some will argue that only experts with MDs and PhDs should be trusted to shape healthcare policy.
But that assumes that the system they operate in is free from bias, conflicts of interest, or financial incentives.
The reality is that many of those with the most letters after their names are also the ones benefiting from pharma funding—whether through consulting fees, research grants, or advisory roles.
Meanwhile, patients and their families—the ones living with the consequences—are too often ignored.
That needs to change.
Asking Better Questions: Reclaiming Our Power
If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it’s this: no one is coming to save us. The institutions meant to protect us are too entangled in the web to act with true independence.
My late husband, Woody, used to say: “Follow the money.” And when you do, the truth becomes impossible to ignore. Pharmaceutical profits—not patient well-being—drive the system. That’s why the only way to create real change is through awareness, transparency, and fundamentally shifting how we think about medicine and health.
That starts with asking better questions:
- Who funded this research?
- Does this person or institution have financial ties, intellectual bias, or self-interest that could impact their recommendations?
- Who benefits from this treatment?
- What aren’t we being told?
- What are the long-term consequences of this drug or intervention?
- Are there safer, non-drug alternatives being ignored because they aren’t profitable?
But asking the right questions isn’t enough.
We have to stop outsourcing our health to a system built on financial incentives and guided by corporate interests.
We must demand full transparency, challenge the status quo, and recognize that sometimes the best medicine isn’t a pill but a deeper understanding of what our bodies truly need.
Because once you see the web, you can’t unsee it.
And once you recognize how deeply medicine has been shaped by profit, you’ll realize the most important question isn’t just “What can I take?”—it’s “Who benefits if I do?”
Final Thoughts: Tearing Down the Web
I never wanted to be in this fight, but once you see the web, you can’t unsee it. That’s why I continue to speak out, to challenge the system, and to push for real accountability.
Because the stakes aren’t theoretical. They’re deeply personal.
For me, this fight began over two decades ago with Woody. But for countless others, it begins the moment they or someone they love is caught in the web—trusting a system that was never truly designed to protect them.
It’s time to tear down the web.
And it starts with seeing it for what it really is.
New Study: Recent ‘Unprecedented’ Cloud Cover Decline Driving Modern (And Past) Climate Change
By Kenneth Richard | No Tricks Zone | March 25, 2025
“[T]he increase in absorbed solar radiation is primarily due to natural variations in cloudiness and surface albedo, which have served as the main forcing factors of the flux above the atmosphere over the last 2 decades.” – Diodato et al., 2025
It is commonly accepted that there has been a satellite-observed (CERES) cloud cover albedo decline that has led to an increase in solar radiation absorbed by the Earth’s oceans. This increasing trend in absorbed solar radiation (ASR) explains the post-2000 global-scale temperature increase (Dübal and Vahrenholt, 2021, Loeb et al., 2021, Stephens et al., 2022, Koutsoyiannis et al., 2023, Loeb et al., 2024, Nikolov and Zeller, 2024).
And now, in two new studies (Diodato et al., 2024 and Diodato et al., 2025), scientists have begun formulating reconstructions of cloud cover over the Mediterranean region that can be dated all the way back to the Medieval Warm Period, or 970 CE.
The authors suggest their reconstructions of cloud cover may be representative of more than just this region, as it is a product of large scale processes that may “transcend geographical boundaries.” In other words, what happens in the Mediterranean region may well have global implications.
Their reconstructions indicate the modern declining cloud cover trend may not only have been occurring since 2000, but, except for a brief increasing period from about 1945 to 1980 (that coincided with a global cooling trend), it has been ongoing for over 200 years. The “turning point” years were 1815-1818, following the eruption of Mount Tambora. From that point on there has been a precipitous decline in cloud cover that departs from multi-decadal variability.
The authors suggest the “dominant” factors linked to the post-1800s warming trend include solar forcing, volcanic forcing, and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (Diodato et al., 2024).
In other words, the modern warming as well as the past climate changes may be “primarily due to natural variations in cloudiness and surface albedo, which have served as the main forcing factors” (Diodato et al., 2025).
IDAHO GOV VETOES MEDICAL FREEDOM BILL
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | April 3, 2025
A sweeping bill to ban forced medical interventions in Idaho, including vaccines and masks, passed both chambers only to be vetoed by Governor Brad Little, who ironically cited “medical freedom” in his opposition. Now, a political clash brews as Attorney General Raul Labrador urges lawmakers to override the veto and defend Idahoans from future mandates.
HHS Ousts Peter Marks, Sending Vaccine Stocks Tumbling and Biopharma Lamenting Loss of ‘Ally’ at FDA
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 31, 2025
Pharma stocks tumbled today after Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the agency within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) responsible for authorizing vaccines, resigned under pressure from his new boss, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“If Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at FDA under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy,” an HHS official said in a statement.
Shares of Moderna, BioNTech, Novavax and Pfizer declined 11%, 7%, 6% and 2%, respectively, on the news, Fast Company reported. STAT News reported that Marks’ departure “is a worst-case scenario realized” for investors and “a biopharma industry that saw him as an ally.”
“Given Dr. Marks’ influence on the development of biologics and uncertainty as to who will replace him and how his legacy might continue, his departure will create a significant near-term overhang,” William Blair analyst Matt Phipps told Reuters.
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry lobbying group, said it was “deeply concerned” Marks’ resignation would “broadly impact the development of new, transformative therapies to fight diseases for the American people.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the reaction to Marks’ departure on the part of the markets and the pharmaceutical industry is indicative of the influence Big Pharma had over the FDA. He said:
“Marks gave an over $100 billion gift to Pfizer and Moderna via the woefully undertested and outright dangerous COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. So, yes, for the short term, I would imagine that some investors would not like his departure from the FDA.
“Marks’ departure also signals a shift from ‘sick care’ and ‘customers for life’ where, unfortunately, Pharma invests now, to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ where everyone benefits from ending chronic disease in the U.S.”
John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, welcomed Marks’ departure. “The American people are well-served by Marks’ resignation.” Gilmore cited the “institutional failure” of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) “to use the highest standards for evaluating the safety and efficacy of products that are injected in almost all American children.”
Marks has led the FDA’s CBER since 2012 and “played a key role,” The Wall Street Journal reported, in Operation Warp Speed in 2020, leading to the development of the COVID-19 vaccines.
In his resignation letter, Marks wrote: “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
Marks’ ‘support of immunizations conflicted with Kennedy’s skepticism’
According to the Journal, an HHS official gave Marks a choice between resigning or being fired. His resignation is effective April 5. Marks wanted to remain in his position, but “his support of immunizations conflicted with Kennedy’s skepticism.”
“Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety. and security,” Marks wrote in his resignation letter.
Marks said he was “willing to work to address” Kennedy’s concerns on vaccine safety, including through a series of public meetings, but that these proposals were rejected. He also accused Kennedy of spreading “misinformation and lies” during the “ongoing multistate measles outbreak.”
But in a post on X, Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, said that while Marks “claimed he wanted to stop misinformation,” he “refused all offers to meet with the ‘misinformation spreaders’ to settle the question on just who is spreading the misinformation.”
While Marks claimed he was willing to address questions on vaccine safety, he also wrote, “Efforts currently being advanced by some on the adverse health effects of vaccination are concerning.”
One day before Marks’ resignation, Kennedy announced the creation of a new sub-agency under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to focus on vaccine injuries — part of a broader restructuring of public health agencies, including the FDA.
In February, Kennedy promised that under his watch, HHS and CDC would develop a better system for tracking vaccine injuries.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that unnamed sources within the CDC said the agency was planning to study the possible link between vaccines and autism. The story triggered negative mainstream news reports claiming the study isn’t needed.
Last week, The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that HHS had tapped researcher David Geier — a researcher and expert on the connections between toxic exposures and autism — to lead a study of possible links between vaccines and autism. The Post and other media outlets used the opportunity to attack Geier and the need for such a study.
Marks’ resignation also came as the FDA is considering a petition a group of scientists submitted earlier this year, calling upon the FDA to suspend or withdraw the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Marks ‘became a cheerleader for the jab’
Writing on Substack, investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., said it’s “evident there was a significant clash over vaccine safety” that led to Marks’ resignation. She said Marks’ departure “may be an opportunity for the FDA to refocus on its mission of protecting public health rather than rubber-stamping new vaccine approvals.”
Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher agreed. “Those who believe vaccine safety must not be questioned do not belong in our regulatory agencies. When it comes to injectable products, safety is more important than blind faith in vaccine ideology.”
According to The New York Times, while Marks “was viewed as a steady hand by many during the Covid pandemic,” he was criticized “for being overly generous to companies that sought approvals for therapies with mixed evidence of a benefit.”
The Times cited Marks’ role in pressuring two FDA scientists to approve full licensure of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, leading to the researchers’ resignation. Pfizer’s vaccine was fully licensed in August 2021 — one day later, the Biden administration mandated COVID-19 vaccination for military service members.
The rushed licensure of the Pfizer vaccine was the topic of a congressional hearing last year in which Marks testified. In a post on X Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote, “Instead of verifying safety and efficacy of the shots, Marks swept things under the rug and became a cheerleader for the jab.”
“In order to get the vaccines to people in need when thousands of people were dying, we actually allowed the safety to be authorized with just two months of median follow-up, rather than the normal six to 12. But we were confident that that would capture adverse events,” Marks testified at last year’s hearing.
‘It was clear that he did not want to know about our injuries’
While Marks was actively engaged in the licensure of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, he “remained steadfast” in dismissing concerns about injuries related to the COVID-19 vaccines as “misinformation,” Demasi wrote.
In 2023, The BMJ wrote that “more than once” during FDA meetings, Marks “expressed confusion about why it would matter to doctors whether or not regulators acknowledged that a condition might be related to the vaccine.”
Documents CHD obtained last year through a Freedom of Information Act request showed that Marks was aware of COVID-19 vaccine injuries in early 2021 when several vaccine injury victims emailed him for help. Marks blew off scheduled meetings with them.
According to TrialSite News, even though Marks was aware of the growing number of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, “vaccine injury became a political hot potato under the Biden administration,” leading Marks to abandon the vaccine-injured.
Brianne Dressen, co-founder of React19, an advocacy group for the vaccine-injured, sustained serious injuries after participating in a clinical trial for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in 2020 and later sought meetings with Marks but was rebuffed.
“Constant emails and calls with Marks … sent while I was in constant pain, literally begging for help, begging for them to help others, begging for a lifeline. A lifeline that never ever came,” Dressen said.
Dr. Danice Hertz, a retired gastroenterologist from California injured by the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, also communicated with Marks but said he “brushed off anyone who contacted him regarding vaccine side effects.”
“He systematically refused to hear our pleas for acknowledgment and help,” Hertz said. “This is why the medical community is unaware of these injuries and cannot help us. One would think that the FDA would want to know about serious adverse reactions to the novel COVID vaccines. I can say from first-hand experience that they don’t … It was clear that he did not want to know about our injuries.”
Dressen said it “didn’t matter what we said or how we said it, COVID vaccine injuries were not a priority at the FDA. Didn’t matter if it was safety signals for MIS-V, dysautonomia, neuropathy, tinnitus or reports of suicides. It was never enough. We begged, we pleaded, we pushed as hard as we could, and came up with nothing.”
According to Demasi, Marks instead “blurred the line between regulation and promotion” by participating in FDA videos promoting the COVID-19 vaccines and by authorizing COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for children without sufficient testing.
“Without randomized data regarding clinical outcomes, he repeatedly approved COVID boosters for kids as young as 6 months,” Dr. Vinay Prasad, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on Substack, calling these “some of the biggest regulatory errors in the 21st century.”
Demasi said Marks “repeatedly pointed to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) as proof of rigorous safety monitoring, yet failed to improve its efficiency.”
During last year’s congressional hearing, Marks claimed that numerous false reports of vaccine injuries are submitted to VAERS, a government-run database. However, he acknowledged, “We probably have not done a good enough job of communicating sometimes the actual numbers of deaths versus what’s in VAERS.”
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.
Utah Becomes First State to Ban Fluoride in Public Drinking Water
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 28, 2025
Utah became the first state to ban the addition of fluoride to public drinking water after Gov. Spencer Cox signed the law late Thursday night. The ban will take effect on May 7.
Rep. Stephanie Gricius, who sponsored the bill, said in an email to The Defender that she was thrilled the governor signed it. She said:
“The proper role of government is to provide safe, clean drinking water, not mass medicate the public. While we have banned it from being added to our water systems, we have also increased access to fluoride tablets through the pharmacies so any Utahn who wishes to take it may. But it will now be a decision each individual can make for themselves.”
The new law bans water fluoridation, but also gives pharmacists new authority to prescribe fluoride supplement pills. Typically, such pills can be prescribed only by a dentist or physician.
“What Utah has accomplished is historic, a huge step forward,” said Rick North, board member of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), which won a landmark ruling in a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the agency’s failure to appropriately regulate the chemical.
North said Utah’s law “is a milestone for public health in the country and part of a nationwide trend toward removing this toxin from our water.”
Cox signed the bill amid growing opposition to water fluoridation across the country, driven by new research published in top journals showing that fluoride exposure is linked to lowered IQ in children and other negative neuro-cognitive effects — even at fluoridation levels currently recommended by the public health agencies.
The research also indicates that water fluoridation has little to no effect on dental health.
Utah provided a ‘working scientific study’
Dentist Griffin Cole, conference chairman of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, said Utah provided a “working scientific study” showing that fluoride had no positive effects on dental health because almost half the state already didn’t fluoridate its water.
“They were able to look at decay rates in areas that were fluoridated and areas that weren’t,” he said, “and there was no difference.”
Cox similarly pointed this out in comments to ABC4 Utah earlier this month.
“You would think you would see drastically different outcomes with half the state not getting it and half the state getting it,” Cox told ABC4. “I’ve talked to a lot of dentists. We haven’t seen that. So it’s got to be a really high bar for me if we’re going to require people to be medicated by their government.”
Kathleen Thiessen, Ph.D., who co-authored the 2006 National Resource Council study on fluoride toxicity, said she hopes more states will follow Utah’s example.
She added:
“The evidence over 20+ years indicates an increased risk to children’s health from exposure to fluoride prenatally and during infancy and early childhood, especially for neurodevelopment. Reduced IQ in children has been found for exposures in the range expected with community water fluoridation. Infants fed formula prepared with fluoridated tap water have some of the highest exposures in the population, at an extremely vulnerable developmental stage.”
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland also said that she hoped that Utah’s new law would be a catalyst for further state removals of fluoride. “CHD applauds Utah on this momentous action to remove fluoride from water. As a result, we will likely see significant health improvements there.”
Brenda Staudenmaier, another plaintiff in the fluoride lawsuit, said she was glad to see states making moves to protect their citizens, “particularly the most vulnerable groups — developing fetuses and bottle-fed infants — who are at greatest risk of fluoride neurotoxicity.”
Staudenmaier said that focusing on fluoride for 80 years had “created blind spots with unintended consequences,” and she hopes that now dental associations will “use their large membership to focus on increasing Medicaid reimbursements, ensuring that low-income individuals have access to dental care.”
Staudenmaier added:
“They should advocate for reducing sugar in public school breakfast programs, promoting breastfeeding to support proper mouth development in children, raising public awareness about how mouth breathing impacts decay risk, and encouraging the use of xylitol gum after meals for children with sensory issues and vitamin D supplementation.”
Moms Against Fluoridation, another plaintiff whose mission is to ban fluoridation nationally, also celebrated the news: “By banning adding this ‘drug’ to the water, citizens in Utah have now reclaimed a real freedom — they can choose for themselves whether to take fluoride.”
“The peer reviewed science is now so clear and so abundant that drinking fluoridation chemicals injures health and fails to reduce tooth decay. Water fluoridation has joined the list that includes lead, asbestos and DDT,” the organization added.
FAN Executive Director Stuart Cooper said, “Government-funded science is clear that fluoridation is causing harm to our children on par with lead and arsenic. Utah is the first state to make the practice illegal, but they join Hawaii and 98% of Europe in rejecting the practice.”
CDC, AAP, ADA continue to support fluoridation despite new evidence
The growing body of research showing fluoride’s toxic effects gained national attention when a federal judge ruled in the lawsuit brought by FAN, Mothers Against Fluoridation, Food and Water Watch and others against the EPA that water fluoridation at current U.S. levels poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health and that the agency must regulate it.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s 80-page decision outlined the scientific evidence that fluoride exposure is linked to reduced IQ in children. The EPA announced that it planned to appeal the ruling days before President Joe Biden left office.
Major medical associations and public health agencies — including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Dental Association (ADA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — continue to support adding fluoride to drinking water on the grounds that it helps prevent cavities.
They are supported by the mainstream press, which typically refers to fluoride as a “naturally occurring mineral” and downplays the negative effects of fluoride on children’s health.
Fluoride does occur naturally, but the fluoride added to public drinking water is a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer production — as documents from the fluoride lawsuit confirmed — sold off to public water supplies.
Research that the ADA, AAP, and mainstream outlets cite to support their claim that fluoridation has a significant impact on dental health is outdated. An updated Cochrane Review published in October 2024 found that adding fluoride to drinking water provides very limited dental benefits, if any, especially compared with 50 years ago.
“Fluoridation was thought originally to work both systemically and topically,” said dental researcher Dr. Hardy Limeback, professor emeritus and former head of Preventative Dentistry at University of Toronto. “By swallowing a small amount of fluoride each day it would incorporate into developing teeth of growing children and act as a future reservoir for when the enamel was dissolved by the acid made by bacteria that cause cavities. But there was never enough fluoride to do that.”
Limeback added:
“Eventually researchers showed that fluoridation works topically by building up fluoride in dental plaque, which is then released during demineralization/remineralization cycles by cavity-causing bacteria. The CDC confirmed the topical mechanism was the main mechanism. But with the introduction of so many other sources of fluoride from the 1960s onward (toothpastes, mouthwashes, dental materials), fluoridation had less and less effect to the point that today it had almost no effect.”
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.
How To Claim Your Specialty Suffers From “Climate Change”
And get government money for your pain
By William M Briggs | March 26, 2025
I’ve told you innumerable times that scientists are good at finding evidence which supports their fancies, and just as lousy, or lousier because of their egos, than others when finding evidence which kills their darlings. As you know, the rage in grant-funded academia is “climate change”. Because of the evidence-finding powers of scientists and the great flow of your money, as I’ve shown many, many (many) times, scientists have “discovered” every evil thing is caused by “climate change”. Today the evil thing is lung disease.
The peer-reviewed NIH-grant-funded paper is “Global warming risks dehydrating and inflaming human airways” by Edwards and others in Nature Communications Earth & Environment. Abstract opens with these two contradictory sentences:
Global warming increases water evaporation rates from planetary ecosystems. Here, we show that evaporation rates encountered during human breathing in dehydrating atmospheres promote airway inflammation and potentially exacerbate lung diseases.
Global warming—a refreshing use of the old term, instead of the ill-defined “climate change”—is supposed to increase, not decrease, water vapor content of the atmosphere. Which would make the air wetter, not drier. Here is the old, pre-Trump nervous EPA on this:
Water vapor is another greenhouse gas and plays a key role in climate feedbacks because of its heat-trapping ability. Warmer air holds more moisture than cooler air. Therefore, as greenhouse gas concentrations increase and global temperatures rise, the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere also increases, further amplifying the warming effect.7
Indeed, water vapor, i.e. humidity, at the surface was expected to increase, even in dry and semi-arid areas. Take, for example, the peer-reviewed paper “Increase in Tropospheric Water Vapor Amplifies Global Warming and Climate Change” by Patel and somebody with a name too long to retype. They say “Most regions show positive trends in the annual mean tropospheric water vapor,” etc. The troposphere is where you and I breathe, dear reader.
Yet, others say there hasn’t been any change in moisture. Here’s an article by NCAR (I spent a summer there in the late 1990s, working on climate model skill) with the laconic title “Climate change isn’t producing expected increase in atmospheric moisture over dry regions“.
The laws of thermodynamics dictate that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, but new research has found that atmospheric moisture has not increased as expected over arid and semi-arid regions of the world as the climate has warmed.
The findings are particularly puzzling because climate models have been predicting that the atmosphere will become more moist, even over dry regions. If the atmosphere is drier than anticipated, arid and semi-arid regions may be even more vulnerable to future wildfires and extreme heat than projected.
So one science authority says the air you breathe is growing wetter, and one says it isn’t. Nobody says it’s decreasing. Best I could find was one source saying there was a “weakened” increase. Which is still an increase. There seems to be more agreement that the moisture in the stratosphere, where nobody breathes (unaided), has decreased a bit.
How, then, did our authors get the dry air they needed? By simulating it. I kid you not. “The numerical simulations for urban/rural VPD are carried out using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) version 2.1.” And so on.
After blowing some words explaining how people breathe, and then harassing some poor mice by forcing them to breath extra-dry air to prove their point, Edwards and his pals write “Together with climate model simulations, these findings suggest that most of the United States will be at elevated risk of airway inflammation by the latter half of this century.”
Suggest. Suggest. Suggest.
You paid for this.
Now I am sure they are right, or right enough, about how dry air can cause airway irritation. The vivid red color of the inflamed trachea they use as an illustration is impressive. They even give us some math, and who doesn’t love a few good old-fashioned equations? Airway irritation is their specialty, and I would not want to take the glory from them over how throats crave moisture.
But they don’t know squat about the climate. Though they must have known their careers would be enhanced if they could tie their specialty to “climate change”, which they have been told to believe is bad, and therefore do believe.
A mere tying together of “climate change” and throats is not sufficient, though. If they wrote a paper that said “Climate change will improve breathing”, because moisture will increase, they’d be hounded from their offices. Maybe have some lunatic nitwit activists smearing paint on their cars or FOIAing their emails, which they’d probably have to turn over, given their work was government (i.e. you) funded: “A portion of this research was funded at UNC by NIH grants R01HL125280, P01HL164320, and P30DK065988.”
What makes it worse, is that if it’s true that dry areas are worse for man, then we should see a nice signal in actual data. Here, I don’t know what I don’t know, so I can’t say for sure chronic lower respiratory disease is related. I can say, given CDC’s tracking of mortality rates of it by state, that the death rates-humidity signal is far from clear. Hawaii, which is humid, has the smallest rate. Oklahoma, also humid, has the highest. Nevada and Arizona, both dry, are in the middle.
Pneumonitis, which is lung inflammation, doesn’t seem to be big enough to track, so I couldn’t find much on the geographic distribution of it. One paper in Japan said moister areas, not drier, are more common. Maybe there are better diseases to look for than pneumonitis.
Well, that’s not my job. It was the authors’. They owed us actual observations that show how people out in the world, and not mice hooked to tubes, are affected by drier and wetter air. Instead, they stuffed what they knew (which I don’t question) about lungs and what they hoped was true about the climate into models, ran the models, forgot that all models only say what they’re told to say, then declared the models showed them their worst fears were realized.
This is how it works. This is how your money is blown. This is why government funding of science has to end.
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From the Archives
Sugar: Killing us Sweetly
Staggering Health Consequences of Sugar on Health of Americans
By Dr. Gary Null | Global Research | February 3, 2014
In September 2013, a bombshell report from Credit Suisse’s Research Institute brought into sharp focus the staggering health consequences of sugar on the health of Americans. The group revealed that approximately “30%–40% of healthcare expenditures in the USA go to help address issues that are closely tied to the excess consumption of sugar.”[1]The figures suggest that our national addiction to sugar runs us an incredible $1 trillion in healthcare costs each year. The Credit Suisse report highlighted several health conditions including coronary heart diseases, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome, which numerous studies have linked to excessive sugar intake.[2]
Just a year earlier in 2012, a report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta appearing on 60 Minutes featured the work of Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist from California who gained national attention after a lecture he gave titled “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” went viral in 2009. Lustig’s research has investigated the connection between sugar consumption and the poor health of the American people. He has published twelve articles in peer-reviewed journals identifying sugar as a major factor in the epidemic of degenerative disease that now afflicts our country. The data compiled by Lustig clearly show how excessive sugar consumption plays a key role in the development of many types of cancer, obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. His research has led him to conclude that 75% of all diseases in America today are brought on by the American lifestyle and are entirely preventable.[3]
Until the airing of this program, no one in the “official” world acknowledged anything wrong with sugar, here is a sampling of some the latest research available to them if they chose to look… continue
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- New Study: Canada’s New Brunswick Was 1°C Warmer Than Today During The Medieval Warm Period
- Coal Power Back In Trend As Globe Tries To Keep Pace With Growing Demand For Power
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