USAID and the Architecture of Perception
By Joshua Stylman | February 16, 2025
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long portrayed itself as America’s humanitarian aid organization, delivering assistance to developing nations. With an annual budget of nearly $40 billion and operations in over 100 countries, it represents one of the largest foreign aid institutions in the world. But recent disclosures reveal its true nature as something far more systematic: an architect of global consciousness. Consider: Reuters, one of the world’s most trusted news sources, received USAID funding for ‘Large Scale Social Deception’ and ‘Social Engineering Defence.’ While there’s debate about the exact scope of these programs, the implications are staggering: a division of one of the world’s most relied-upon sources for objective reporting was paid by a US government agency for systemic reality construction. This funding goes beyond traditional media support, representing a deliberate infrastructure for discourse framing that fundamentally challenges the concept of ‘objective’ reporting.
But it goes deeper. In what reads like a Michael Crichton plot come to life, the recent USAID revelations show a staggering reach of narrative control. Take Internews Network, a USAID-financed NGO that has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive network, ‘working with’ 4,291 media outlets. In just one year, they produced 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and ‘trained’ over 9,000 journalists. This isn’t just funding – it’s a systematic infrastructure of consciousness manipulation.
The revelations show USAID funding both the Wuhan Lab’s gain-of-function research and the media outlets that would shape the story around what emerged from it. Backing organizations that would fabricate impeachment evidence. Funding both the election systems that facilitate outcomes and the fact-checkers that determine which discussions about those outcomes are permitted. But these disclosures point to something far more significant than mere corruption.
These revelations didn’t emerge from nowhere – they come from government grant disclosures, FOIA requests, and official records that aren’t even hidden, just ignored. As my old friend Mark Schiffer noted the other day, ‘The most important truths today cannot be debated – they must be felt as totalities.’ The pattern, once seen, cannot be unseen. Some may question DOGE’s methods or the rapid pace of these disclosures, and those constitutional concerns deserve serious discussion. But that’s a separate conversation from what these documents reveal. The revelations themselves – documented in official records and grant disclosures – are undeniable and should shock anyone who values truth. The means of exposure matter far less than what’s being exposed: one of the largest narrative control operations in history.
No domain is untouched – markets, tech, culture, health, and obviously, media – and you’ll find the same design. Intelligence agencies are deeply embedded in each domain because shaping how we perceive reality is more powerful than controlling reality itself
Just as fiat currency replaced real value with declared value, we now see the same pattern everywhere: fiat science replaces inquiry with predetermined conclusions, fiat culture replaces organic development with curated influence, fiat history replaces lived experience with manufactured narratives. We live in an era of fiat everything – where reality itself is declared, not discovered.. And just as they create artificial scarcity in monetary systems, they manufacture false choices everywhere else – presenting us with artificial binaries that obscure the true complexity of our world. As Schiffer wrote elsewhere, reality no longer requires consensus, only coherence. But there’s a crucial distinction: real coherence emerges naturally across multiple domains, reflecting deeper truths that cannot be fabricated. The coherence imposed by perception management isn’t truth – it’s a controlled discourse engineered for consistency, not discovery. The USAID receipts now provide concrete evidence of how this manufactured coherence is built: a scripted reality where the appearance of logic is more important than actual substance.
This isn’t just pattern matching – it’s pattern prediction. Just as algorithms learn to recognize and anticipate behavioral patterns, those who understand this system’s architecture can see its next moves before they’re made. The question isn’t whether something is “true” or “false” – it’s understanding how information flows shape consciousness itself.
To understand how deep this goes, let’s examine their methodology. As Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and others have meticulously documented through FOIA requests and government grant disclosures, the pattern emerges through two primary vectors of control:
Information Control:
- $34 million to Politico (which as Tenpenny notes, struggled to make payroll without this funding)
- Extensive payments to New York Times
- Direct funding to BBC Media Action
- $4.5 million to Kazakhstan to combat “disinformation”
Health and Development:
- $84 million to Clinton Foundation health initiatives
- $100 million for AIDS treatment in Ukraine
- Funding for contraceptive programs in developing nations
Cultural Programming:
- $20 million to Sesame Street in Iraq
- $68 million to World Economic Forum
- $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala
- Global cultural initiatives (millions spread across LGBTQ programs in Serbia, DEI projects in Ireland, transgender arts in Colombia and Peru, and tourism promotion in Egypt)
What emerges is not just a list of expenditures, but a blueprint for global reality architecture: From Kazakhstan to Ireland, from Serbia to Peru, from Vietnam to Egypt – there isn’t a corner of the world untouched by this system. This isn’t merely a distribution of resources, but a strategic infrastructure of global influence. Each allocation—whether to media outlets, health initiatives, or cultural programs – represents a carefully placed node in a network designed to shape perception across multiple domains. First, control the flow of information through media funding. Then, establish legitimacy through health and development programs. Finally, reshape social structures through cultural programming. The end goal isn’t just to influence what people think, but to determine the boundaries of what can be thought – and to do so on a planetary scale.
For those who’ve been studying the architecture of censorship, like Mike Benz has been documenting for years, none of this comes as a surprise. It’s perfect symmetry: we knew about the censorship. Now we’re seeing the receipts. One hand feeds them talking points, the other hand feeds them our taxpayer dollars. This isn’t speculation; it’s documented fact. Even Wikipedia’s own funding database contains over 45,000 reports tied to USAID – many detailing corruption, media influence, and financial manipulation. The evidence has always been there, but it was ignored, dismissed, or buried under the very fact-checking apparatus USAID funds. These weren’t crackpot theories; they were warnings. And now, we finally have the receipts.
And it doesn’t stop at controlling information. USAID isn’t just shaping media portrayals – it’s funding the systems that enforce them. Last week, Benz broke a bombshell: USAID gives twice as much money ($27 million) to the fiscal sponsor of the group controlling Soros-funded prosecutors than Soros himself gives ($14 million). This isn’t about one billionaire’s influence – it’s about state-backed enforcement of scripted accounts. The same network that dictates what you can think is dictating who prosecutes crime, what laws are enforced, and who faces consequences.
USAID’s influence isn’t just about funding media control—it extends to direct political interference. It didn’t just send aid to Brazil – it funded censorship, backed left-wing activists, and helped rig the 2022 election against Bolsonaro.
Benz revealed that the agency waged a “holy war of censorship,” systematically suppressing Bolsonaro supporters online while bolstering opposition voices. Millions flowed to NGOs pushing leftist framing, including the Felipe Neto Institute, which received U.S. funding while Bolsonaro allies were deplatformed. USAID also bankrolled Amazon-based activist groups, financed media campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion, and funneled money into Brazilian organizations that pushed for stricter internet regulations.
This wasn’t aid—it was election interference disguised as democracy promotion. USAID used American tax dollars to decide Brazil’s future, and it likely deployed similar tactics in many other countries—all under the guise of humanitarian assistance.
And it’s not just abroad. While USAID’s defenders claim it’s a tool for charity and development in poor nations, the evidence suggests something much more insidious. It’s a $40 billion driver of regime change overseas – and now, evidence points to its involvement in regime change efforts at home. Alongside the CIA, USAID appears to have played a role in the 2019 impeachment of Trump – an illegal effort to overturn a U.S. election using the same tools of perception sculpting and political engineering it deploys abroad.
Left vs right, vaxxed vs unvaxxed, Russia vs Ukraine, believer vs skeptic (on any topic) – these false dichotomies serve to fragment our understanding while reality itself is far more nuanced and multidimensional. Each manufactured crisis spawns not just reactions, but reactions to those reactions, creating endless layers of derivative meaning built on artificial foundations.
The real power isn’t in manufacturing individual facts, but in creating systems where false facts become self-reinforcing. When a fact-checker cites another fact-checker who cites a “trusted source” that’s funded by the same entities funding the fact-checkers, the pattern becomes clear. The truth isn’t in any individual claim – it’s in recognizing how the claims work together to create a closed system of artificial reality.
Take the mRNA vaccine debate for example: The pattern manifests before the explanation – people passionately debate efficacy without realizing the entire framework was constructed. First, they fund the research. Then they fund the media to shape the narrative. Even skeptics often fall into their trap, arguing about effectiveness rates while accepting their basic premise. The moment you debate ‘vaccine efficacy,’ you’ve already lost – you’re using their framework to discuss what is, in reality, an experimental gene therapy. By accepting their terminology, their metrics, their framing of the discussion itself, you’re playing in their constructed reality. Each layer of control is designed not just to influence opinions, but to preemptively structure how those opinions can be formed.
Like learning to spot a staged photo or hearing a false note in music, developing a reliable bullshit detector requires pattern recognition. Once you start seeing how narratives are constructed – how language is weaponized, how frameworks are built – it changes the lens with which you view the whole world. The same intelligence agencies embedding themselves in every domain that shapes our understanding aren’t just controlling information flow – they’re programming how we process that information itself.
The recursive theater plays out in real time. When USAID announced funding cuts, BBC News rushed to amplify humanitarian concerns with dramatic headlines about HIV patients and endangered lives. What they didn’t mention in their reporting? USAID is their top funder, bankrolling BBC Media Action with millions in direct payments. Watch how the system protects itself: the largest recipient of USAID media funding creates emotional propaganda about USAID’s importance while obfuscating their financial relationship in their reporting.
This institutional self-defense illustrates a crucial pattern: organizations funded for reality construction protect themselves through layers of misdirection. When presented with evidence, the fact-checking apparatus funded by these same systems springs into action. They’ll tell you that these payments were for standard “subscriptions,” that programs promoting gender ideology are really just about “equality and rights.” But when USAID awards $2 million to Asociación Lambda in Guatemala for “gender-affirming health care” – which can include surgeries, hormone therapy, and counseling – those same defenders conveniently omit the details, blurring the line between advocacy and direct intervention. The very organizations funded for social architecture are the ones telling you there is no social architecture. It’s akin to asking the arsonist to investigate the fire.
Like characters in a grand production, I watch old friends still trusting in institutions like the New York Times. Even this exposition becomes a potential node in the system – the very act of revealing the mechanics of control might itself be anticipated, another layer of the recursive theater. In my earlier work on technocracy, I explored how our digital world has evolved far beyond Truman Burbank’s physical dome. His world had visible walls, cameras, and scripted encounters – a constructed reality he could theoretically escape by reaching its edges. Our prison is more sophisticated: no walls, no visible limits, just algorithmic containment that shapes thought itself. Truman only had to sail far enough to find the truth. But how do you sail beyond the boundaries of perception when the ocean itself is programmed?
Sure, USAID has done some good work—but so did Al Capone with his soup kitchens. Just as the infamous gangster’s charity work made him untouchable in his community, USAID’s aid programs create a veneer of benevolence that makes questioning their larger agenda politically impossible. Philanthropic window dressing has long been a tool for power players to shield themselves from scrutiny. Consider Jimmy Savile: a celebrated philanthropist whose charity work granted him access to hospitals and vulnerable children while he committed unspeakable crimes in plain sight. His carefully cultivated image made him beyond reproach for decades, just as institutional benevolence now serves as a protective layer for global influence operations. The true function of organizations like USAID isn’t just aid—it’s social architecture, mind shaping, and the laundering of taxpayer dollars through an intricate web of NGOs and foundations.
This layered deception is self-reinforcing – each level of manufactured reality is protected by another level of institutional authority. These institutions don’t just dictate stories; they shape the infrastructure through which narratives are disseminated. For what it’s worth, I believe most tools themselves are neutral. The same digital systems that enable mass surveillance could empower individual sovereignty. The same networks that centralize control could facilitate decentralized cooperation. The question isn’t the technology itself, but whether it’s deployed to concentrate or distribute power.
This understanding didn’t come from nowhere. Those who first sensed this artificiality were dismissed as conspiracy theorists. We noticed the coordination across outlets, the strange synchronicity of messaging, the way certain stories were amplified while others disappeared. Now we have the sales receipts showing exactly how that manipulation was funded and orchestrated.
I know this journey of discovery intimately. When I started understanding the dangers of mRNA technology, I went all in. I connected with the incredibly talented filmmaker Jennifer Sharp and helped with Anecdotals, her film about vaccine injuries. I was ready to tether my whole identity to this cause. But then I started zooming out. I began seeing how COVID might have been a financial crime designed to usher in central bank digital currency. The deeper I looked, the more I realized these weren’t isolated deceptions – it was part of a larger system of control. The very fabric of what I thought was real began to dissolve.
What disturbed me most was seeing how deeply programming relies on mimicry. Humans are imitative creatures by nature – it’s how we learn, how we build culture. But this natural tendency has been weaponized. I’d present friends with peer-reviewed studies, documented evidence, historical connections – only to watch them respond with verbatim talking points from corporate media. It wasn’t that they disagreed – it was that they weren’t even processing the information. They were pattern-matching against pre-approved chronicles, outsourcing their thinking to “trusted experts” who were themselves caught in the same web of manufactured perception. I realized then: none of us knows anything for certain – we’re all just mimicking what we’ve been programmed to believe is authoritative knowledge.
The challenge isn’t just seeing through any single deception – it’s understanding how these systems work together in complex, non-linear ways. When we fixate on individual threads, we miss the larger pattern. Like pulling a thread on a sweater and watching it unravel, eventually you realize there was no sweater in the first place – just an intricately woven illusion. Just as a hologram contains the whole image in each fragment, every piece of this system reflects the larger blueprint for reality construction.
Consider the $34 million to Politico – this isn’t just a funding stream, but a holographic reveal of the entire system. It’s not merely that Politico received money; it’s that this single transaction contains the entire blueprint of perception management. The payment itself is a microcosm: struggling media outlet, government funding, narrative control – each element reflects the whole. This recursive system protects itself through layers of self-validation. When critics point out media bias, fact-checkers funded by the same system declare it ‘debunked.’ When researchers question official accounts, journals funded by the same interests reject their work. Even the language of resistance – ‘speaking truth to power,’ ‘fighting disinformation,’ ‘protecting democracy’ – has been co-opted and weaponized by the very system it was meant to challenge.
The COVID story epitomizes this systemic manipulation. What began as a public health crisis transformed into a global experiment in narrative control – demonstrating how rapidly populations could be reshaped through coordinated messaging, institutional authority, and weaponized fear. The pandemic wasn’t just about a virus; it was a proof of concept for how comprehensively human cognition could be engineered – a single node revealing the true scope and ambition of discourse manipulation.
Think about the cycle: American taxpayers unknowingly funded the crisis itself – then paid again to be deceived about it. They paid for the development of gain-of-function research, then paid again for the messaging that would convince them to accept masks, lockdowns, and experimental interventions. The system is so confident in its psychological control that it doesn’t even bother hiding the evidence anymore.
As I’ve documented in my Engineering Reality series, this framework for consciousness management runs far deeper than most can imagine. USAID’s revelations aren’t isolated incidents—they’re glimpses into a vast system of social design that has been in operation for decades. When the same agency funding your fact-checkers is openly paying for ‘social deception,’ when your trusted news sources are receiving direct payments for ‘social architecture,’ the very framework of what we consider ‘real’ begins to crumble.
We’re not just watching events unfold – we’re watching reactions to artificial events, then reactions to those reactions, creating an infinite regression of derivative meaning. People form passionate positions about issues that were constructed, then others define themselves in opposition to those positions. Each layer of reaction fuels the next phase of steered consensus. What we’re witnessing isn’t just the spread of manufactured realities, but the architecture of cultural and geopolitical trends themselves. Artificial trends spawn authentic reactions, which generate counter-reactions, until we’ve built entire societies responding to carefully orchestrated theater. The social engineers aren’t just steering individual beliefs – they’re reshaping the very foundations of how humans make sense of the world.
These revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone paying attention to the depth and depravity of the corruption knows that this is only the beginning. As more information emerges, the illusion of neutrality, of benevolence, of institutions acting in the public interest, will crumble. No one who truly engages with this information is walking away with renewed faith in the system. The shift is only happening in one direction – some faster than others, but none in reverse. The real question is: what happens when a critical mass reaches the point where their foundational understanding of the world collapses? When they realize that the records shaping their perception were never organic, but manufactured? Some will refuse to look, choosing comfort over confrontation. But for those willing to face it, this is not just about corruption – it’s about the very nature of the reality they thought they inhabited.
The implications are staggering not just for individual awareness, but for our very ability to function as a republic. How can citizens make informed decisions when reality itself has been splintered into competing manufactured tales? When people discover that their most deeply held beliefs were shaped, that their passionate causes were scripted, that even their cultural interests and tastes were curated, that their opposition to certain systems was anticipated and designed – what remains of authentic human experience?
What’s coming will force a choice: either retreat into comfortable denial, dismissing mounting evidence as “right-wing conspiracy theories,” or face the shattering realization that the world we thought we inhabited never actually existed. My research over the past few years points to far more nefarious activities yet to be revealed – operations so heinous that many will simply refuse to process them.
As I wrote about in “The Second Matrix,” there’s always the risk of falling into another layer of controlled awakening. But the greater risk lies in thinking too small, in anchoring ourselves to any single thread of understanding. The USAID revelations aren’t just about exposing one agency’s role in shaping reality – they’re about recognizing how our very thought patterns have been colonized by recursive layers of artificial reality.
This is the true crisis of our time: not just the manipulation of reality, but the fragmentation of human consciousness itself. When people grasp that their beliefs, causes, and even their resistance were shaped within this system, they are forced to confront the deeper question: What does it mean to reclaim one’s own mind?
But here’s what they don’t want you to realize: seeing through these systems is profoundly liberating. When you understand how reality is constructed, you’re no longer bound by its artificial constraints. This isn’t just about exposing deception – it’s about freeing consciousness itself from manufactured limitations.
The jig may be up on USAID’s reality architecture operation. But the deeper challenge lies in reconstructing meaning in a world where the very fabric of reality has been woven from artificial threads. The choice we face isn’t just between comfortable illusion and uncomfortable truth. The old system demanded validation before belief. The new reality requires something else entirely: the ability to recognize patterns before they’re officially confirmed, to feel coherence across multiple domains, to step outside the crafted game completely. This isn’t about choosing sides in their manufactured binaries – it’s about seeing the pattern architecture itself.
What does this liberation look like in practice? It’s catching the pattern of a manufactured crisis before it’s fully deployed. It’s recognizing how seemingly unrelated events – a banking collapse, a health emergency, a social movement – are actually nodes in the same network of control. It’s understanding that true sovereignty isn’t about having all the answers, but about developing the capacity to sense the web of deception before it solidifies into apparent reality. Because the ultimate power isn’t in knowing every answer – it’s in realizing when the question itself has been designed to trap you inside the manufactured paradigm.
As we develop this pattern recognition capacity – this ability to see through algorithmic manipulation – what it means to be human is itself evolving. As these systems of ideological infrastructure crumble, our task isn’t just to preserve individual awakening but to protect and nurture the most conscious elements of humanity. The ultimate liberation isn’t just seeing through the deception – it’s maintaining our essential humanity in a world of tightly controlled perception.
As these systems of reality sculpting crumble, we have an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover what’s real – not through their manufactured frameworks, but through our own direct experience of truth. What’s authentic isn’t always what’s organic – in a mediated world, authenticity means conscious choice rather than unconscious reaction. It means understanding how our minds are shaped while maintaining our capacity for genuine connection, creative expression, and direct experience. The most human elements – love, creativity, intuition, genuine discovery – become more precious precisely because they defy algorithmic control. These are the last frontiers of human freedom—the unpredictable, unquantifiable forces that cannot be reduced to data points or behavioral models.
The ultimate battle isn’t just for truth – it’s for the human spirit itself. A system that can engineer perception can engineer submission. But there’s a beautiful irony here: the very act of recognizing these systems of reality construction is itself an expression of authentic consciousness – a choice that proves they haven’t conquered human perception completely. Free will cannot be engineered precisely because the capacity to see through engineered reality remains ours. In the end, their greatest fear isn’t that we’ll reject their manufactured world – it’s that we’ll remember how to see beyond it.
“This Is Existential”: Billionaire Cancer Researcher Says Covid & Vaccine Likely Causing Surge In Aggressive Cancers
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | March 28, 2025
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong – a transplant surgeon-turned-biotech billionaire renowned for inventing the cancer drug Abraxane – has issued a startling warning in a new in-depth interview with Tucker Carlson.
Soon-Shiong, founder of ImmunityBio ($IBRX) and owner of the Los Angeles Times, claims that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the very vaccines developed to fight it, may be contributing to a global surge in “terrifyingly aggressive” cancers. In the nearly two-hour conversation, the Los Angeles Times owner leveraged his decades of clinical and scientific experience to outline why he suspects an unprecedented cancer epidemic is unfolding. This report examines Dr. Soon-Shiong’s background and assertions, the scientific responses for and against his claims, new data on post-COVID health trends, and the far-reaching implications if his alarming hypothesis proves true.
Dr. Soon-Shiong’s Claims
Soon-Shiong is a veteran surgeon and immunologist who has spent a career studying the human immune system’s fight against cancer. He pioneered novel immunotherapies and even worked on a T-cell based COVID vaccine booster during the pandemic. In the interview, he draws on this background to voice deep concern over rising cancer cases, especially among younger people – something he describes as a “non-infectious pandemic” of cancer. He tells Carlson that in 50 years of medical practice, it was extraordinarily rare to see cancers like pancreatic tumors in children or young adults, yet recently such cases are appearing. For instance, Soon-Shiong was alarmed by seeing a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer, a scenario virtually unheard of in his prior experience.
“I never saw pancreatic cancer in children… the greatest surprise to me was a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer,” Soon-Shiong told Carlson, adding that he’s seen examples of very young patients (even children under 11 with colon cancer) and unusual surges in aggressive diseases like ovarian cancer in women in their 30s. These personal observations of more frequent, aggressive cancers in youth led him to probe what might have changed in recent years.
“We’re clearly seeing an increase in certain types of cancer, like pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer… colon cancer… in younger people.”
— Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
According Soon-Shiong, the COVID era is the obvious change – and suggests that both the SARS-CoV-2 virus infection and the widespread vaccination campaigns could be key drivers behind this cancer spike. He emphasizes the massive scale of human exposure to the virus and its spike protein (via infection or vaccination).
“I don’t know how to say that without saying it. It scares the pants off me because I think what we may be, I don’ think it’s virus versus man now, this is existential. I think when I talk about the largest non-infectious pandemic that we’re afraid of, this is it.”
“Billions of people – literally billions – had the COVID virus. Over a billion got the spike protein vaccine,” said Carlson, adding “So that’s like, we’re talking like a huge percentage of the Earth’s population, unless I’m missing something.”
“Now you understand what keeps you awake at night and kept me awake at night for two years, two and a half years,” Soon-Shiong replied, suggesting that exposure to both is silently undermining the immune system’s natural defenses against cancer on a global scale.
Soon-Shiong frames COVID-era cancers as potentially virally triggered or exacerbated. In the interview, he described cases of “virally induced cancers” in clinics during the pandemic – patients whose cancers may have been kicked into overdrive by the cascade of inflammation and immune stress associated with COVID-19 (Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong: You’re Being Lied to About Cancer, How It’s Caused, and How to Stop It). COVID infection causes a massive inflammatory response, and some cancers are known to exploit inflammation to grow.
TUCKER: “a lot people have pointed to both COVID, the virus, and to the mRNA COVID vaccines as potential causes. Do you think that they’re related?”
SOON-SHIONG: “The best way for me to answer that is to look at history. What we know about virally-induced cancers is well-established. We know that if you get hepatitis, you get liver cancer. Hepatitis is a virus infection. We know if you got human papillomavirus, HPV, you get cervical cancer.”
We know that certain viruses directly cause cancer (e.g. HPV, Epstein-Barr), so it’s not unprecedented for a virus to play a role in oncogenesis. While SARS-CoV-2 is not a known oncovirus, Soon-Shiong worries its indirect effects – chronic inflammation, immune exhaustion, or “suppressor cells” that emerge in the wake of infection/vaccination – could be accelerating tumor development. “The answer is to stop the inflammation… clear the virus from the body,” he argues, positing that until we eradicate lingering virus and restore immune balance, we may see mounting cancer cases.
In sum, Dr. Soon-Shiong’s claim is that the pandemic has set the stage for an explosion of aggressive cancers: the COVID virus itself (especially if it persists in survivors) might suppress immune surveillance, and the mRNA vaccines “that didn’t stop it” might inadvertently contribute to an immunosuppressive environment. These effects, in his theory, could be unleashing cancers that the immune system would ordinarily have kept in check.
Watch:
A number of clinicians and researchers have reported similar worrying observations, though these remain largely anecdotal at this stage. One prominent voice echoing Soon-Shiong’s concern is Dr. Angus Dalgleish, a veteran oncologist and professor at St. George’s, University of London. In late 2022, Dalgleish wrote to the BMJ’s editor after noticing that some cancer patients who had been stable for years experienced “rapid progression of their disease after a COVID-19 booster.” He cited cases of individuals who were doing well until shortly after vaccination – new leukemias, sudden appearance of Stage IV lymphomas, and explosive metastases in patients who had post-vaccine bouts of feeling unwell.
“I am experienced enough to know that these are not coincidental,” Dalgleish wrote, noting that colleagues in Germany, Australia and the U.S. were independently seeing the same pattern. This frontline testimony aligns with Soon-Shiong’s fear: something about the immune system post-vaccination might be removing restraints on latent cancers. Dalgleish specifically pointed to short-term innate immune suppression after mRNA vaccination (lasting for several weeks) as a plausible mechanism. Many of the cancers he saw were ones normally held in check by immune surveillance (melanomas and B-cell cancers), so a temporary post-vaccine drop in immune vigilance could allow a tumor growth spurt. He also alluded to “suppressor gene suppression by mRNA in laboratory experiments” – a reference to preliminary studies that found the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might interfere with key DNA repair or tumor-suppressor proteins in cells. These lab findings (while not yet confirmed in living organisms) lend some biological plausibility to the idea that spike exposure could affect cancer-related pathways.
Beyond individual doctors, some research is probing links between COVID and cancer behavior. For example, a 2022 study in Frontiers in Oncology explored how SARS-CoV-2 proteins interact with cancer cells. It found that the virus’s membrane (M) protein can “induce the mobility, proliferation and in vivo metastasis” of triple-negative breast cancer cells in the lab (Frontiers | SARS-CoV-2 M Protein Facilitates Malignant Transformation of Breast Cancer Cells). In co-culture experiments, breast cancer cells exposed to the viral protein essentially became more aggressive and invasive. The researchers concluded that COVID-19 infection “might promote… aggressive [cancer] phenotypes” and warned that cancer patients who get COVID could face worse outcomes.
While this is one specific context (breast cancer cells and one viral protein), it underpins Soon-Shiong’s general concern: the virus can directly alter the tumor microenvironment to the cancer’s advantage.
Another line of evidence involves latent viruses and inflammation. Doctors have documented unusual reactivations of viruses like Epstein-Barr (which is linked to lymphomas and other malignancies) during both COVID-19 and post-vaccine immune reactions. Such reactivations hint at a period of immune dysregulation that might also let nascent cancer cells slip past defenses.
Or course, fact-checkers and medical authorities argue that there is no credible evidence of vaccines causing meaningful immune suppression. “There isn’t evidence to date that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer or lead to worsening cancer,” one infectious disease expert told FactCheck.org, though they do acknowledge rare side effects like myocarditis or blood clots were found, but not cancer.
Phinance Data Insights: Post-COVID Health Trends
While the scientific community debates mechanistic links between COVID and cancer, independent analysts have been parsing population-level data for unusual patterns. One notable effort is by Phinance Technologies, a research firm co-founded by former BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd. Phinance has been analyzing excess mortality and disability data since the pandemic, looking for signals of broad health impacts in the aftermath of COVID and mass vaccination. Their findings reveal concerning trends, especially among younger, working-age populations, that lend some weight to Dr. Soon-Shiong’s general warning of a post-COVID health crisis (though not specific to cancer alone).
Phinance’s “Vaccine Damage Project” examined the U.S. population aged 16–64 (essentially the workforce) and stratified outcomes into four groups: no effect, mild injuries, severe injuries (disabilities), and death. Using official government databases (the CDC, Bureau of Labor Statistics, etc.), they estimated how each category changed starting in 2021 – when vaccines rolled out and COVID became widespread. The results are sobering. According to Phinance’s analysis, by the end of 2022 the U.S. had experienced approximately 310,000 excess deaths among adults aged 25-64 (a ~23% increase in mortality in that group over normal expectations). Notably, they argue that after mid-2021, with vaccines available and the virus itself becoming less deadly (due to immunity and milder variants), COVID-19 should not have been causing such high excess death rates. Therefore, those 310k “unexplained” deaths in 2021–2022 could represent an upper bound on vaccine-related fatalities or other pandemic collateral damage.
Even more striking is the data on new disabilities. Phinance found that from early 2021 through late 2022, about 1.36 million additional Americans (age 16–64) became disabled – a 24.6% rise in disability in that cohort, far above historical trend. This jump in disabilities among the workforce correlates in time with the vaccine rollout (and was disproportionately higher in the labor force than among those not working). The analysts note that the healthiest segment of the population (employed working-age adults) saw a greater relative increase in disabilities after Q1 2021 than the older or non-working groups. This is unusual, since typically health shocks hit the elderly hardest – but here something was impacting younger, healthy people to a significant degree. Phinance investigated further and found a tight relationship between the cumulative number of vaccine doses administered and the rise in disabilities in 2021-22. In fact, for the 16–64 population, they computed a ratio of about 4 new disabilities per excess death in that period, suggesting many survivors were left with lingering health issues even if they didn’t die.
Is the FDA salvageable?
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | March 26, 2025
Dr Marty Makary—now confirmed as FDA Commissioner—inherits an agency that routinely approves drugs with questionable benefits.
At Makary’s confirmation hearing on March 6th, senators repeatedly hailed the FDA as the “gold standard” of drug regulation—a phrase meant to reassure the public that approved drugs are significantly effective.
But this claim is an illusion.
In 2013, Jonathan J. Darrow, a Harvard legal scholar and expert in drug regulation, published a scathing analysis in the Washington and Lee Law Review, exposing the reality behind this phrase.
Darrow’s paper, Pharmaceutical Efficacy: The Illusory Legal Standard, meticulously details how the FDA’s approval process does not require drugs to be meaningfully effective—only that they show some effect, no matter how trivial.
Since then, the problem has only worsened.
Makary has spent years criticising medical waste and corporate influence in healthcare. But now, as the new FDA Commissioner, can he reform an institution this compromised?
The “gold standard” that fails the public
The phrase “gold standard” suggests uncompromising scientific scrutiny. However, under U.S. law, there is no specific level of efficacy required for a new drug to be approved.
The FDA’s legal framework, Title 21 of the U.S. Code, demands only “substantial evidence” of benefit, without defining what “substantial” actually means.
Darrow explains: “The standard is almost entirely illusory because it leaves to the drug sponsor the ability to specify any non-zero level of efficacy.”
This ambiguity explains why many widely prescribed drugs offer only marginal benefits.
Consider antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft. Research indicates that the majority of patient improvement could be due to the placebo effect, not the drug itself.
Yet, because these medications show statistical improvement in clinical trials, they meet the FDA’s approval threshold and are marketed as transformative treatments.
Darrow reported in 2021 that most newly approved drugs (69%-98%) fail to provide substantial benefits over existing therapies.
Cherry-picking evidence
Another critical flaw in determining drug efficacy is selective trial reporting. Drug companies conduct numerous clinical trials, but the FDA only requires two successful trials for approval—regardless of how many have failed.
This means a company could run 10 trials, discard eight that show no benefit, and submit the two positive ones. This practice is precisely how some SSRI antidepressants were approved.
In a major exposé, researcher Irving Kirsch and his colleagues used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain unpublished clinical trial data on six widely prescribed antidepressants.
FDA approval had been granted based on twelve trials (two per drug). Yet, a FOIA request uncovered 47 trials—many of which showed no meaningful difference between the drug and a placebo.
The registration of trials on public registries like ClinicalTrials.gov was intended to improve transparency, but enforcement remains weak. Many trials that should have been disclosed are not, and financial penalties for non-compliance are rarely enforced.
The result? A regulatory loophole that allows ineffective drugs to be marketed as evidence-based solutions.
Misleading people with statistical tricks
Beyond cherry-picking trials, statistics can be manipulated to make drugs seem more effective than they are. One common tactic is presenting relative risk reduction instead of absolute risk reduction.
Take statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to millions. Clinical trials often claim statins reduce heart attack risk by 30%. However, this figure refers to relative risk—not absolute risk.
In reality, the absolute risk reduction is often less than 2%. This means that out of 100 people taking statins, 98 see no benefit at all. Yet, because the effect meets “statistical significance,” statins are approved and aggressively marketed as essential for heart disease prevention.
Another example is the diabetes drug saxagliptin (Onglyza), approved by the FDA in 2009. Marketed as a breakthrough for blood sugar control, later studies showed the absolute reduction of HbA1c—a key measure of blood sugar—was negligible (0.4% to 0.9%).
Worse, in 2013, a large-scale trial revealed a possible increased risk of heart failure. Yet, the drug remains on the market, illustrating how weak efficacy standards allow ineffective (or even harmful) drugs to persist.
The cost of an ineffective system
Weak efficacy standards don’t just mislead patients—they can also lead to financial strain. This issue is particularly egregious in oncology.
New cancer drugs routinely cost over $100,000 per year, yet many extend life by only weeks or months, if any. Families may drain their savings, hoping for a meaningful survival benefit, only to later learn that the drug offered little more than a statistical blip.
In 2016, the FDA granted accelerated approval to olaratumab, which was hailed as a breakthrough for soft tissue sarcoma. However, it was withdrawn in 2019 after further research failed to show any survival benefit.
The FDA had granted approval based on early-stage trials that created the illusion of efficacy.
This isn’t just a regulatory failure—it’s a moral one.
Why we need clearer drug labelling
Darrow argues that drug labelling is a major part of the problem. “There’s no requirement for pharmaceutical companies to offer any scale of benefit, in a manner that patients can understand,” he wrote.
“Knowing how well a drug might perform relative to an alternative—through clearly presented data—allows doctors and patients to decide whether it’s worth [it].”
He draws a parallel with sunscreen labelling. “A consumer easily understands that SPF30 will give greater protection than SPF10. So why don’t we have better drug labelling?”
Alternatively, he has suggested that drug labels could adopt a similar approach to food labels, “with data presented in columns that show key information and allow for side-by-side comparison.”
Or, the labelling for sleeping pills could “indicate the number of minutes it took those who had used them in clinical trials to fall asleep compared with a placebo.”
The lack of transparency only benefits the pharmaceutical industry from increased drug sales.
Can Makary fix the FDA?
Marty Makary has been a relentless critic of medical waste, unnecessary treatments, and corporate influence in healthcare. However, reforming an agency so deeply entrenched in industry influence is an extraordinary challenge.
Drug companies pay billions in user fees to the FDA, and in return, they influence regulatory decisions. Laws governing drug approval have remained largely unchanged for decades, ensuring that the FDA prioritises speed over scientific rigour and drug safety.
The FDA continues to approve drugs with minimal benefit, it allows companies to cherry-pick positive trials while ignoring negative ones and misleads doctors into believing that weak drugs are more effective than they are.
The public assumes that FDA approval means a drug is significantly effective.
It does not.
If Makary is serious about reform, he must push Congress for sweeping legislative changes to dismantle the pharmaceutical industry’s stranglehold on drug regulation.
The FDA was created to protect the public—not to serve as a rubber stamp for Big Pharma. Right now, the FDA is failing in its mission.
The question is no longer whether the FDA is the “gold standard” of drug regulation. It’s whether the agency is salvageable at all.
New York Takes A Stab At A Green New Deal Demonstration Project: The Case Of Ithaca
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | March 20, 2025
Many political jurisdictions claim to be on a path to eliminating emissions of carbon dioxide from their energy systems. Notable examples include California and New York in the U.S., and the UK and Germany in Europe. The Biden administration during its term in office even claimed to have set the entire U.S. onto a path toward what they called “net zero.” But so far none of these places has gotten anywhere near the goal. Indeed, as of today, many hundreds of billions of dollars into the effort, not one of them has even issued a detailed engineering plan of how this is supposed to be accomplished.
For reasons expressed in some dozens of posts on this blog, with the exception of a vast expansion of nuclear energy, I don’t believe that this “net zero” thing can actually be done, at least without entirely impoverishing the people. However, I’m completely willing to be proved wrong. For many years, I have been calling for a Demonstration Project to prove whether or not an economically-developed community is capable of achieving zero carbon emissions, or anything close to that (example here from 2022). Surely, if the entire U.S. can be expected to accomplish “net zero” in response to a government command, then it should be simple to build a working “net zero” Demonstration Project for a small town of, say, a few tens of thousands of people.
I’ve even proposed the perfect place as my candidate to be the guinea pig for the “net zero” demonstration: Ithaca, New York. After all, Ithaca is the most exquisitely climate virtuous place in what is already a deep blue state. It is home to two thoroughly left-wing academic institutions (Cornell University and Ithaca College), with their thousands of radical left-wing climate activist faculty and students. These people should leap at the chance to show the rest of the world how this “net zero” thing can be done. Also, the population (approximately 50,000) is in about the right range for a net zero demonstration project. (Note that the 50,000 is the combined population of the City of Ithaca and Town of Ithaca. Yes, for reasons known only to the geniuses of New York State local governance, Ithaca consists of two independent adjoining municipalities, a City and a Town, sharing the same name.). If “net zero” doesn’t work in a small place like this, the loss of investment could be large, but not catastrophic.
And in fact, when it comes to talking the talk, Ithaca would appear to be at the forefront of the green energy transition. Back in June 2019, the Ithaca City Common Council unanimously adopted what they called the “Ithaca Green New Deal.” A few months later, in March 2020, the Ithaca Town Council, also unanimously, adopted their own “Green New Deal Resolution.” Although there are differences, the Town’s Resolution incorporated much of the language of the City’s Resolution word-for-word. Not to be caught standing still, the next year, 2021, the City of Ithaca went a step further and announced that it would electrify all of its 6000 buildings. They didn’t actually use the words “demonstration project,” but clearly the key elements were now in place. Should we check in on how it’s going?
The short answer: It’s a complete joke.
First, let’s take note of some of the official goals. From the City of Ithaca Green New Deal resolution:
RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca adopts a goal to meet the electricity needs of City government operations with 100% renewable electricity by 2025. . . . RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca hereby adopts a goal of achieving a carbon neutral city by 2030. . . . RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca endorses the following actions to achieve these goals: Create a climate action plan (CAP) in 2020 to provide details on how to achieve the Ithaca Green New Deal, and update the CAP regularly. . . .
And then there’s this, not found (at least today) on the City of Ithaca’s website, but reported on January 29, 2025 at the website of WSKG, the Ithaca PBS affiliate:
In 2021, the small city of Ithaca announced it would electrify all of its 6,000 buildings.
And how exactly was Ithaca going to electrify 6000 buildings within a few short years?
[Ithaca planned to achieve building electrification] with the help of one key partner: a technology company called BlocPower, whose then-CEO Donnel Baird said the company would make the mass electrification process fast and affordable. “There’s a lot of expensive engineering and financial and workforce development costs,” Baird told Ithaca’s common council in 2021, after it approved the mass electrification plan. “Our job is to remove all of that friction.”
OK, those were the goals. Now for the progress toward achieving them. If you go to the website of the City of Ithaca today, everything seems great:
Ithaca is leading the world. On June 5th, 2019, the City of Ithaca Common Council unanimously adopted the Ithaca Green New Deal resolution, a government-led commitment to community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030 that focuses on addressing historical inequities, economic inequality, and social justice. Two years after the resolution was signed, Ithaca established itself as a world-leader in climate mitigation planning and continues to pave the path forward as a blueprint for other cities across the U.S. and the globe.
But how about some actual facts on the ground. Let’s start with that building electrification thing. From that same January 25 WSKG piece:
[I]n recent months, BlocPower has quietly deserted its electrification and workforce training programs in Ithaca and several other cities, according to municipal leaders and organizations that worked with BlocPower. . . . In Ithaca, BlocPower ended its collaboration with the city after completing the electrification of only 10 buildings, according to Ithaca’s current sustainability director, Rebecca Evans. Last November, the company furloughed its Ithaca staff members and ended all partnerships in the city, Evans said.
6000 buildings, 10, whatever. Here is a picture from WSKG of “sustainability director” Rebecca Evans:
So, Ms. Evans, how about the big Climate Action Plan by which Ithaca will instruct the ignorant world how to get to carbon neutrality? Here’s another piece from WSKG, this one from several months ago (October 2024) reporting on recent revisions to the Plan. Excerpt:
The [Green New Deal] resolution . . . charged city staff with creating a formal climate action plan that would outline how the city would achieve those goals. Ithaca’s sustainability director, Rebecca Evans, wrote in a post on LinkedIn last month that she recently decided to scrap the version of that plan she had been working on. The decision, she said in an interview with WSKG, does not change the goals of the Green New Deal, but instead reframes the city’s approach of how it will achieve its commitments. Evans said that rather than prioritizing reducing emissions, the new plan will prioritize helping residents adapt to living in a warming world, while also working towards the city’s emissions-reduction goals. That could include providing residents with better access to social services, like housing and job training, and improving the city’s emergency response and electricity reliability.
Got it — They’ve given up on reducing emissions. And how about the City’s promise to get 100% of its own electricity from renewable sources by 2025? Are they really doing that right now? I can’t find a recent report, but there’s this from back in December 2011:
Beginning in January [2012], the City of Ithaca will purchase 100% of its electricity consumption from renewable sources. Under a new agreement with Integrys Energy Services of New York, Inc., Ithaca will purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) certified by Green-e Energy for all of its electricity.
Aha! It’s the magic of “Renewable Energy Certificates.” Apparently, those make it possible to get your electricity from wind turbines and solar panels on completely calm nights. If you are willing to believe it. Al Gore would be proud.
In short, everything about Ithaca’s Green New Deal is either a scam, or has been quietly abandoned, or both.
Here in New York City we have our own building electrification mandate called “Local Law 97” that is said to require some 50,000 buildings to convert to electric heat and cooking by 2030. Does anybody really think we can make any more progress toward such a goal than Ithaca?
‘Medical Error’ Led to Death of 6-Year-Old Who Developed Pneumonia After Measles Diagnosis
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 19, 2025
A child who died in a Texas hospital after developing pneumonia following a measles infection died as a result of “medical error” — including failure to administer the correct antibiotic in time, according to a medical expert who reviewed the child’s medical records.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) obtained the medical records from the family of the 6-year-old girl. The parents said they wanted people to know what happened to their daughter so it wouldn’t happen to other children.
The parents obtained the records from Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock where their child died on Feb. 26.
The parents told Dr. Ben Edwards, who successfully treated their other children for measles, that they didn’t want to use the information uncovered in the medical records to inflame the situation. However, they did want to get the word out about the mistake if it could prevent it from happening to other children.
Dr. Pierre Kory, who has extensive experience in pulmonary and critical care medicine, analyzed the records. He said today in an interview on CHD.TV, “I’ve done medical case reviews from malpractice lawyers for a good part of my career, and this case was tragic.”
According to Kory’s analysis of the records, the girl died from a secondary bacterial pneumonia that had “little to do with measles.”
He added, “When I say it has little to do with measles, secondary bacterial pneumonias can happen after any viral infection.”
Kory said the girl “died of a medical error — and that error was a completely inappropriate antibiotic” for treating the kind of pneumonia she had.
The records showed that the girl was initially admitted to the emergency room (ER) for “secondary bacterial pneumonia,” Kory told The Defender. At that time, her measles rash was already fading.
She was not administered the correct antibiotic for treating her secondary bacterial pneumonia until roughly two and a half days later. By that time, she had declined so severely that doctors had already placed her on a mechanical ventilator, Kory said.
Also, it appears there was a delay of more than nine hours from the time when the correct antibiotic was finally ordered and the time it was given, Kory said. “Less than 24 hours later, she died — and she died rather catastrophically … suddenly her blood pressure crashed and she arrested.”
Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., according to a 2016 analysis by Johns Hopkins University researchers including Dr. Marty Makary, Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Hospital initially prescribed inappropriate antibiotic
Kory broke down in more precise medical terms what appears to have happened.
When the girl was admitted to the ER, the staff made a general diagnosis that she had a secondary bacterial pneumonia. “She was clearly being admitted from the community so it was implied that it was a community-acquired pneumonia,” Kory said, referring to how the girl didn’t get the pneumonia from being in a hospital or healthcare facility.
They were “absolutely correct” about that, Kory said.
But what they initially gave her for that diagnosis was incorrect, he said.
Generally, doctors put patients on two antibiotics “to cover all the possibilities” of what specific kind of bacterial pneumonia the patient may have.
Kory said:
“It’s in every guideline — infectious disease, pulmonary — every guideline in the country tells you that for a hospitalized child or adult who gets admitted to the hospital, you put them on two antibiotics.
“One is from a category called beta-lactams, which is like penicillin, cephalosporins. And they [the hospital] got that part correct. They put her on something called ceftriaxone, which was excellent.
“But you always need to pair it with an antibiotic from a different category, which is called a macrolide or a quinolone.”
They didn’t do that part, Kory said. “They didn’t put her on the most common, which is azithromycin.”
Instead, they put her on vancomycin, an antibiotic used for very drug-resistant organisms like MRSA.
According to the Mayo Clinic, MRSA — short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — is an infection caused by a staph bacteria that’s “become resistant to many of the antibiotics used to treat ordinary staph infections.” Most MRSA infections occur in hospitals or healthcare settings, like nursing homes or dialysis centers.
Giving vancomycin to the girl was an inappropriate choice, according to Kory.
He said:
“There’s no reason to think that this child would come in with MRSA from the community, from a Mennonite community. She’s not coming from a facility where a lot of antibiotics are used. So it’s a grievous error and it’s an error which led to her death.”
Hospital didn’t change course of treatment for over two days
The records show that the hospital didn’t adjust the girl’s antibiotics until a test came back showing that she had a type of bacterial pneumonia called “mycoplasma pneumonia.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, mycoplasma is a single form of bacteria that causes an infection that can occur in different parts of the body, such as the respiratory, urinary or genital tracts.
“The tragedy is that mycoplasma is an extremely common — what we call community-acquired — organism,” Kory said. Azithromycin is very effective against mycoplasma, he said.
The hospital staff finally ordered it for her upon seeing her test results. But they should have ordered it much sooner, given that her bacterial pneumonia was community-acquired, Kory said.
Kory said it wasn’t proper doctoring to let her decline for days without adjusting the treatment they were giving her. “You almost have three full days of a seriously declining medical status with no real changes to her treatment plan.”
He added:
“If I’m taking care of someone, and I’m rounding on them every day and I see that today they’re doing a little bit worse than yesterday. And then the next day they’re doing a little bit worse than the day before, I’m going to review exactly what I’m doing and say, ‘What am I missing? What am I missing? What else can I do?’
“And that didn’t happen until a test showed up on a computer. And that’s just not doctoring.”
By this time, the child was in the intensive care unit. “And from my review of the records,” Kory continued, “the antibiotic was ordered at 11:00 p.m., or approximately 11:00 p.m., and as far as I can tell, it was not administered until 9:00 a.m. the next morning.”
“So not only did you have several days delay of decline without the appropriate antibiotic,” he said, “but then when they realized that they were missing the appropriate antibiotic, it took them, as far as I can tell, 10 hours to administer it.”
By the time the girl received the correct antibiotic, she was already on a ventilator.
Father ‘simply wants the truth out’ so the public can talk about measles vs. vaccine risks
Edwards and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker also reviewed the medical records. They concurred with Kory’s analysis.
Edwards said, “As Dr. Kory’s pointed out, unfortunately this was a big mistake, a tragic mistake — and I agree — a fatal mistake.”
However, Edwards said the girl’s father— who gave CHD permission to report on the medical records — didn’t intend “to inflame the situation or cause more division and more just hot rhetoric.”
Edwards told a brief story to illustrate how divisive the media coverage of the West Texas measles outbreak has been.
The day the girl died, Edwards was in the middle of an interview with a reporter. “I remember that reporter grabbing his phone as the alert just came from the news announcing the ‘first measles death.’”
Edwards said there was “almost a giddiness” in the reporter’s response to the news.
“It was disgusting, actually,” he said. “I want people to know Peter [the father] doesn’t want this information to be used on the other side in the same almost giddiness kind of way of, ‘Aha, we got you.’”
The girl’s father “simply wants the truth to be told so that other kids who potentially could go down the same path as his daughter won’t have to.”
The parents aren’t sharing the information “to give one side more ammunition” in the ongoing public debate around measles.
The father told Edwards, “I love my neighbor — and my neighbor’s my enemy. My neighbor’s the one who hurt me. My neighbor’s the one who offends me.”
Edwards said he wants the public to understand the father’s reason for letting the medical records go public so that “we can maybe come to the table on this.”
Edwards added:
“There’s potential risk — complications and death — from MMR [the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine]. We need to have that conversation at the table, both sides in a truthful, honest manner for the sake of these children.
“That’s what he wants.”
Watch CHD.TV interview with Dr. Pierre Kory:
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.
Taxpayers Paid $6.2 Billion to Develop Weight-loss Drugs. Pharma Charges Consumers a Premium — Driving Up Healthcare Costs for Everyone
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 12, 2025
U.S. taxpayers picked up the tab for about $6.2 billion worth of research, development and distribution of GLP-1s, the new class of blockbuster weight-loss drugs, according to an investigation by The Lever.
The “blockbuster drugs” generate annual sales exceeding $1 billion for Big Pharma.
Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound — which belong to the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) class of drugs — are “minting billions of dollars” for Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the companies that make them.
Taxpayers fund the research. Pharma reaps massive profits. And Americans pay up to 11 times more for the drugs than people in other countries. The marked-up prices are inflating insurance premiums and risk bankrupting the country’s healthcare system, according to The Lever.
Researchers at Bentley University shared data with The Lever showing that between 1980 and 2024, the federal government spent $6.2 billion on the discovery and development of GLP-1 molecules, plus research on how to use those molecules to treat diabetes, obesity and other health conditions.
“You have to know a lot to develop a drug and to apply it in people,” Dr. Fred Ledley, professor of Natural and Applied Sciences at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, told The Lever. “What we call a ‘mature body of knowledge’ is not cheap.” Ledley provided the spending data to The Lever.
That research laid the foundation for the development of Ozempic and triggered a wave of similar drugs that spawned a massive market.
Media tout ‘miracle cures’ but weight-loss drugs linked to serious side effects
The drugs are now being hailed in the media as the miracle cure for everything from alcoholism and opioid addiction to leukemia, strokes, heart attacks and aging.
The media has focused less attention on the serious side effects of these drugs, which range from vomiting, diarrhea, and nausea to pancreatitis, stomach paralysis, kidney disease, thyroid cancer and sudden vision loss.
The drugs are so potentially dangerous for pregnant women that doctors have argued they should carry a black box warning.
They’ve also been linked to suicidal ideation and even death.
As of May 2024, more than 15 million people — 1 in 8 adults — were taking GLP-1 drugs, which generated more than $50 billion for the drugmakers in 2024 alone, reportedly leading to drug shortages.
At the time, Novo Nordisk said that at least 25,000 people in the U.S. were starting its drug Wegovy each week, according to CNN.
The Lever reported:
“While the weight-loss drug market booms and related ads flood the airwaves and internet, the drugs’ price markups are wreaking havoc on government budgets and even contributing to electric and gas rate hikes.
“In 2022 alone, the federal health insurance plan Medicare spent $5.7 billion on this class of drugs, 10 times what it spent in 2018.”
Big price tags spawn market for alternatives
A month’s supply of GLP-1 drugs in the U.S costs over $1,000, leading many people to seek alternative versions of the drugs made by compounding pharmacies, which mix the drugs themselves.
Drug compounding companies, like the direct-to-consumer telehealth companies Hims & Hers, Noom, Ro, 23andMe, and WeightWatchers, are also raking in major profits from selling compounded versions of the drugs.
Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned against compounded versions, even though it allows compounding companies to make the drugs during shortages of the brand-name versions.
The agency doesn’t monitor the compounded drugs for safety, efficacy or quality, according to CNN.
Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are pushing the compounding pharmacies to stop making the drugs, according to NPR.
Last year’s shortage of the GLP-1s ended in February, so compounding is no longer permitted, but The Lever said it is uncertain whether the secondary market will be shut down.
Price of GLP-1s driving up healthcare costs and more
Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) launched an investigation into the “outrageously high prices” GLP-1 drug manufacturers charge.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has criticized weight-loss drug manufacturers for the high costs, but also for pushing drugs to solve the obesity problem rather than changing the food system.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid — which pays for the drugs when used for indications other than weight loss by people in those programs — has spent years promoting weight-loss drugs.
Dr. Marty Makary, nominated to lead the FDA, was the chief medical officer at a telehealth company selling compounded weight-loss medications.
A 2023 study by Ledley and colleagues highlighted the crucial role of U.S. government funding in drug development, showing that the National Institutes of Health contributed $187 billion to research that led to almost all drugs approved in the U.S. between 2010 and 2019.
The research focuses on “basic science,” according to The Lever, such as identifying proteins or genes linked to a disease or studying how GLP-1s might work.
Despite U.S. taxpayers’ funding for the research, Ozempic costs about $1,000 per month in the U.S., compared to $147 in Canada, $103 in Germany, $93 in the U.K. and $83 in France.
Wegovy is listed in the U.S. for more than $1,300 per month, compared to $186 in Denmark, $137 in Germany and $92 in the U.K.
The high cost of the drugs in the U.S. is driving up healthcare costs overall.
The Lever reported:
“This year, private health plan costs are expected to rise by 8 percent — the highest increase in 15 years apart from 2021, during the global COVID-19 pandemic — thanks in part to the rising cost of prescription medications. GLP-1 drugs are ‘a major driver of higher prescription drug costs,’ according to recent reports by the benefits consulting firm Segal.
“A Senate report from last May also found that if half of all Medicare and Medicaid patients with obesity took Wegovy and other GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, it could cost the federal health care system $166 billion per year — nearly as much as what Medicare and Medicaid spent on all retail prescription drugs in 2022.”
Those higher costs affect the broader economy. Con Edison, the largest electricity provider in New York City, announced a likely rate hike, citing a 12% increase in employee benefit costs due to the rising costs and use of GLP-1 drugs.
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.
NIH Pulls Plug on ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’ Research — Will mRNA Products Be Next?
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 11, 2025
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will no longer fund research on “vaccine hesitancy” and strategies for increasing vaccine uptake, The Washington Post reported Monday.
According to Science, the NIH sent notices canceling or reducing grants to the affected researchers, stating:
“It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that focus on gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment.”
NIH will terminate at least 33 vaccine hesitancy grants, Science reported. Nine other grants will be modified or reduced.
The terminations came after NIH, on behalf of interim director Matthew Memoli, asked each of its institutes to develop a list of ongoing and future vaccine hesitancy grants.
Science reported that the agency is considering taking similar action for research related to mRNA products.
Of the terminated grants, 14 were funded by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases — the agency formerly led by Dr. Anthony Fauci — and focused on vaccines for COVID-19, chickenpox, mpox (formerly monkeypox), HPV and a hypothetical gonorrhea vaccine.
“The project appeared on the list because one of its aims ‘is to evaluate health care worker’s [sic] and potential patient’s attitudes towards acceptance of a gonorrhea vaccine if one is developed,’” Science reported.
Other canceled grants targeted modeling of disease outbreaks or “promoting vaccine uptake among racial minority groups or understanding why some parents are reluctant to accept childhood and adolescent vaccines.”
Memoli is temporarily leading the NIH pending the confirmation of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University professor of health policy, co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration and President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead NIH.
NIH did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Grants targeted ‘vaccine-hesitant’ minority and conservative communities
The Defender previously reported on multiple taxpayer-funded grants, including some awarded by the NIH, that funded research on decreasing vaccine hesitancy and increasing HPV vaccine uptake.
The Defender obtained the grant information through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in 2023 and 2024
One set of documents, obtained in 2023, revealed that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a $4.7 million grant to a scientist — and paid consultant for Merck — to conduct research on how to increase teen uptake of the HPV vaccine. Merck manufactures Gardasil, the only HPV vaccine available in the U.S.
In 2024, the grant’s principal investigator, Noel Brewer, Ph.D., a psychologist and professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine recommendations.
FOIA documents Children’s Health Defense (CHD) received in 2024 revealed that HHS issued $4 million to fund the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed to “inoculate” social media users against HPV vaccine “misinformation” posted on social media.
Other documents CHD received in 2023 revealed that HHS granted $600,000 for research on how to increase HPV vaccine uptake among Black teens, and that NIH granted $519,399 for a four-year study on a smartphone tool to increase HPV vaccine uptake among adolescents whose parents are “vaccine-hesitant.”
The NIH also funded such studies overseas. FOIA documents CHD received in 2024 showed that NIH awarded $340,000 to test psychological tactics aimed at persuading South African fifth-graders and parents to accept the HPV vaccine.
In 2023, documents showed that the CDC had issued hundreds of millions of dollars in grants since 2021 for the development of “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and for the training of “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines to communities of color in each U.S. state.
The CDC also funded “Chair Care,” a New Mexico program that trained and paid hairstylists as “trusted messengers” that would target the state’s Hispanic, Black, Native American and conservative populations, who were shown to have the lowest vaccine uptake and highest “vaccine hesitancy.”
‘Vaccine hesitancy’ research targeted personal choice not to vaccinate
Toby Rogers, Ph.D., a fellow at the Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research, welcomed the NIH decision to stop such studies. He questioned the premise of the “vaccine hesitancy” research — and the concept of “vaccine hesitancy” itself.
“There’s no such thing as ‘vaccine hesitancy,’” Rogers said. “The term itself is completely Orwellian. It was likely coined by an expensive Big Pharma PR firm. The purpose of the term is to cast aspersions on parents who do proper research on the risks of medical interventions,” Rogers said.
According to Rogers, studies like those being discontinued were likely backed by pharmaceutical companies to ascertain how to increase vaccine demand.
“Studies on so-called ‘vaccine hesitancy’ and ‘overcoming vaccine hesitancy’ are thinly disguised marketing studies on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry,” Rogers said. “Big Pharma makes plenty of money. American taxpayers should not be paying for marketing studies on behalf of one of the most vile industries on Earth.”
Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher said it is inappropriate for the NIH to allocate resources to study people’s personal health choices.
“The purpose of studying vaccine hesitancy is to find ways to increase vaccine uptake in individuals that have made the personal choice to not vaccinate with a particular product,” Hulscher said. “The federal government should simply respect their choice and not waste valuable resources and taxpayer money on trying to change their minds.”
Internal medicine physician Dr. Clayton J. Baker said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to address “vaccine hesitancy” resulted in gimmicks intended to increase uptake of the COVID-19 shots — and punish those who declined vaccination.
“During COVID, we had health officials combating ‘vaccine hesitancy’ with bribes of lottery tickets, donuts, even free beer, and meting out punishments such as being fired from one’s job. Medical practice surrounding vaccines descended to a disgracefully unethical state during COVID,” Baker said.
mRNA research grants next on NIH’s chopping block?
According to Science, the NIH may also curtail grants for mRNA vaccine research.
Citing an internal NIH memo sent March 6, Science reported that Memoli “has requested information on NIH’s investment in mRNA vaccines research,” including ongoing or planned grants and contracts, and collaborations with outside partners.
NIH institutes and programs were asked to respond by this week.
Hulscher drew parallels between mRNA research and “vaccine hesitancy” research.
“Vaccine hesitancy will remain high as a result of the federal government authorizing and mandating experimental modified mRNA injections that are suspected to have killed, injured or permanently disabled over a million Americans. The longer this disaster remains unacknowledged, the harder it will be to regain the trust of Americans,” Hulscher said.
According to the Post, it is “unclear” whether HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “had a role, directly or indirectly, in the move to cancel these grants.”
HHS oversees federal health agencies, including NIH and the CDC.
‘Vaccine hesitancy’ grants funded ‘psychological manipulation programs’
Scientists and doctors quoted by the Post expressed concern over the NIH’s planned cuts of “vaccine hesitancy” research.
Manoj Sharma, Ph.D., a professor of social and behavioral health at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who received a previous CDC grant for vaccine hesitancy research, told the Post, “There is an urgent need to enhance vaccine acceptance behavior, especially due to the potential resurgence of measles and COVID-19 still looming.”
But for Baker, “This statement exemplifies the real goal of these studies, which is not to study behaviors, but to drive behaviors in a predetermined direction.” He added:
“‘Vaccine hesitancy’ grants do not fund scientific inquiry so much as psychological manipulation programs. They reject freedom of choice in favor of a predetermined behavior. It is a form of coercion. Coercion, be it subtle or obvious, is the opposite of informed consent.
“Informed consent is absolutely central to the ethical practice of medicine. NIH should not fund research that undermines the ethical practice of medicine.”
Hulscher suggested that NIH resources previously earmarked for “vaccine hesitancy” studies “should be allocated to proper safety testing of the entire childhood vaccine schedule, where there are currently no products licensed based on long-term placebo-controlled trials.”
Other experts suggested that these resources could be used to rectify harms related to the promotion — or mandate — of COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
“The money saved from cancelling these studies should instead be paid to independent researchers who are documenting the experiences of the millions of Americans injured by vaccines,” Rogers said.
“The grant money would be better used to produce a historical document of the abuses of informed consent during COVID, than to continue these psychological manipulation programs disguised as scientific inquiry,” Baker said.
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.
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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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