https://twitter.com/MidwesternDoc/status/1854781830693581049
Your Local Epidemiologist is worried. This is reassuring…
Mainstream “experts” are panicking about what is in store for public health with vaccine realists at the helm. Here’s my response.

By Madhava Setty | An Insult to Intuition | November 10, 2024
Katelyn Jetelina, PhD is an epidemiologist, biostatistician and mother of two little girls. She writes the “Your Local Epidemiologist” newsletter on substack which boasts over a quarter million subscribers. Those familiar with her content know that while well-intending, she serves as a mouthpiece for the CDC, explaining in easy to follow language what “the experts” are saying.
Her followers are passionate about her work. This is evident from the preponderance of comments which paint her as a true hero of the pandemic. Notably, she only allows comments from paid subscribers. She has created a massive echo chamber and one that pays her some serious dividends. If I remember correctly she has well over ten thousand paying subscribers, earning her an income that far exceeds mine as a full-time anesthesiologist.
I don’t mean to imply that she is a shill who exploits her audience by creating content that she knows is misleading or false. She believes in what she is doing, but she is suffering from the same cognitive blocks that many did four years ago: the experts know the most, we need to listen to them and grant them leniency when they get things wrong.
I have been a paid subscriber to her newsletter for almost two years. I pay to leave comments, hoping to encourage her audience to regard her position with a more critical eye. I have occasionally made some arguments that received a great deal of support from her non-paying readers. Those who contribute materially to her substack, on the other hand, usually respond with rebuke.
She has often derided the work of Children’s Health Defense. A year ago, I outed myself in her comment section, informing her that I was involved with the content RFK Jr’s organization produces as the science editor for The Defender. I expected that she would respond to my questions and critiques. What an excellent opportunity to dismantle the biggest “misinformation spreader” in front of her large audience. She never did.
Not surprisingly, her camp is in full crisis mode now. Here’s her latest:
In this brief article she encourages her audience to be strong, citing the following strategies:
- Building bridges instead of manning the barricades by finding common ground, which requires active engagement and humility. (It always helps me focus on one fact: No one wants to die. Then I move from there.)
- Recognizing what you say matters. That is, if you want people to hear you. Through literally the words we use, the framing, and the approach.
- Communicate with empathy, as anger and shame will only drive people further away.
- Listening (not simply hearing) so we can respond better to the needs on the ground. Americans need their questions answered, not to be told what to believe.
- Making strategic choices about which battles to fight, at what time, and at what level of government. Political capital is as scarce as financial resources—and needs to be allocated carefully.
This is a sensible strategy for everyone on both sides of the public health/vaccine debate. However she continues to double down on her basic hypothesis: The rise of vaccine skepticism is the direct result of misinformation.
I think she is wrong. Vaccine hesitancy and distrust of the medical orthodoxy is the direct result of true information that has finally percolated into public discourse despite the greatest effort to censor dissent I have ever witnessed.
Here is the comment I left on her article:
“Please don’t panic folks. We are witnessing a shift towards transparency and rigor from our agencies of public health. I understand why this readership is freaking out. This is an echo chamber. The real voices of clarity do not pay for a subscription here so you haven’t heard from them, and you don’t seek them out. You are only listening to voices like Katelyn’s who echo CDC PSA’s and their data as if it cannot be questioned.
I am a physician and an engineer. I left my practice in 2021 to work for RFK Jr’s Children’s Health Defense as the Senior Science Editor for The Defender, CHD’s on-line publication. I have since left, but I still stand behind every single article I have written and edited for that organization. I have been leaving comments on this substack for two years. Katelyn has never responded to any of my questions and critiques.
Isn’t that odd? One would think that she would be able to dismantle everything I share here in this public forum for the greater good.
Let me explain why there is such a growing “antivax” movement championed by Bobby and highly published physicians like Joe Ladapo. It has very little to do with so-called misinformation spreaders. It has to do with the public finally being informed about some difficult truths. The public is a lot smarter than you think.
1) Vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued if their products are found, even in an isolated case, to have caused harm. There is no other product like that. Obviously, there is much less incentive to do the proper safety testing if there are no consequences. The public knows this.
2) Nobody can deny that there has been an explosion of childhood diseases concomitant with the expansion of the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule following the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. OF COURSE correlation doesn’t equal causation. But if there was some causation, this is EXACTLY what we would be seeing. The public knows this.
3) The CDC could easily dispel all suspicion by doing a large retrospective study examining the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children with regard to chronic disease rates. They have the data. They have not done the study and they refuse to release the data. Why?? There is no reasonable answer to this question except for the obvious: They don’t want to know the answer. The public knows this too.
4) During the Covid pandemic, the mRNA shots were authorized after an initial observational period of only six weeks on average. Note that the median observational period was two months. Mathematically, that means that half of the 40,000 participants were observed for less than four weeks at most. There is NO WAY to make any claim about long term safety yet the CDC simply states that these shots have been rigorously tested for safety. That is a lie. The public knows this now.
5) I have never met a single person, scientist or otherwise, who has read RFK Jr.’s “The Real Anthony Fauci”, who could debunk any of his claims. That book was released at the height of the pandemic and excoriates the record of the pandemic czar, yet no defamation lawsuit was ever filed. Why is that? Obviously it is because everything is true and the receipts are there for all to see. The last thing the CDC and vaccine manufacturers want would be to have the evidence for Kennedy’s claims appear in open court. Their strategy is to keep the evidence out of the public’s eye. It is an extremely effective strategy that has worked for decades.
6) RFK Jr.’s message is finally getting out, and he is making sense. Why on earth would anyone be against having vaccines tested by the same standards we use for medicines? Instead of pointing out the obvious, that that is an excellent idea for public health, the media runs hit piece after hit piece on this man. For every person who reads those character attacks and smiles a knowing smile, there are two more that see this as a desperate attempt to squelch some difficult truths.
7) Every other commercial on legacy media is for some sort of pharmaceutical product. It’s a joke. These companies don’t pay hundreds of millions of dollars to run ads to sell more product. They are buying good media coverage. People are seeing this too.
8) The idea that the pharmaceutical industry is out to improve public health is ridiculous. These are for profit companies and their executives’ first priority is to the shareholders. They don’t make the most money curing diseases. That eliminates demand for their product. They aren’t trying to kill everybody. That also decreases demand. Whether you are willing to consider it or not, the most profit is made when the public suffers from a chronic disease epidemic. That is what we have. Our Covid mortality rates were among the highest of any country despite access to the shots and our overpriced health care system. This is staring us in right in the face.
I have no animosity towards those who disagree with me. I am just calling it as I see it. This is the way the public is starting to see it too. Every effort to discredit the movement towards a healthy America with pejoratives like “antiscience” and “antivax” is going to backfire more and more. The public is waking up. Relax and give people like Kennedy and Ladapo a chance. Let’s see what happens. We all want our kids to grow up healthy and happy.
Madhava Setty, MD
As Cancer Rates for Young Adults Continue to Climb, Are Doctors ‘Dancing Around the Elephant in the Room’?
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender |November 13, 2024
Cancer rates among Generation X (Gen X) and millennials are on the rise. A USA Today report cited environmental and dietary changes as possible contributing factors — but some experts say that’s only part of the story.
Dr. Mike Varshavski, a family medicine physician and health influencer, told USA Today the factors are “usually so complex and multifactorial” but that “one of the major drivers of cancers [are] the rising rates of obesity in the United States and across the globe.”
However, Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, said the USA Today story “dismantles its own solution” — because some doctors noted that their younger cancer patients were frequently “healthy” before their diagnosis.
“The U.S. is ranked fourth in the world for age-standardized incidence of cancer — 367 per 100,000 — and 19th for adult obesity (42.7%),” Jablonowski said. “The cancer epidemic is way beyond diet and exercise.”
USA Today cited figures from an American Cancer Society (ACS) study, published in The Lancet in August. According to the study, 17 types of cancer — including breast, colorectal, liver, gastric, ovarian and pancreatic cancer — are rising among younger adults. Mortality trends connected to some cancers have also increased.
USA Today also listed celebrities with recent cancer diagnoses — including Princess Kate, Elle Macpherson, Jenna Fischer and Olivia Munn — all Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980) or millennials (born between 1981 and 1996).
The article recommended younger adults be vigilant about their health. Experts who spoke with The Defender welcomed this message. However, they criticized what they said was an attempt to normalize rising cancer rates among young adults while ignoring other possible underlying causes, including vaccines.
“If you normalize a disease, you will alter the health behaviors addressing the disease,” Jablonowski said. “If you believe cancer is inevitable or occurs at random, then you believe your health behavior has no impact on the chances of developing cancer.”
Dr. Margaret Christensen, a clinical educator and co-founder of the Carpathia Collaborative, said USA Today’s recommendations that younger people engage in “fine-tuning” their “diet and exercise routines,” stay up-to-date on cancer screenings and visit their doctor regularly, are important.
“But where is the information on prevention?” Christensen asked. “Nothing is mentioned about the toxic chemicals and ultra-processed foods and antibiotics in the food supply that are impairing our immune system to begin with.”
There’s been a ‘sea change in the cancer message’
Many doctors and scientists noted the timing of rising cancer rates among young adults.
Dr. Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at St. George’s, University of London, told The Defender, “Colorectal [cancer] has been slowly rising in young people for well over a decade and probably more. However, there has been an inflection in the rate of rise from mid-2021. This is worldwide.”
John Beaudoin Sr., author of “The Real CdC” and “THE CDC MEMORANDUM,” told The Defender that while incidence rates for such cancers have risen for a decade, “the change in rate or rise is what decries a new issue introduced into society.”
Beaudoin said that if the annual increase was 2% per year consistent with a 2% population increase, that is understandable. “But if the rate then goes to a 4% annual increase, then there is a major issue. The rate doubled and is not consistent with population increase.”
Dr. Pierre Kory, founder of the Leading Edge Clinic and president emeritus and co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), agreed. He said the USA Today report and the study in The Lancet mark “a sea change in the cancer message.”
Childhood vaccination ‘set the scene’ for rising young adult cancer rates
According to USA Today, there’s “no exact cause known for the rise in cancers among young people,” although “researchers are trying to figure it out.”
However, the article suggested that environmental factors, namely “changes to our microbiome over time — the environment, air, water, etc.” — may be partly responsible.
Christensen agreed, at least in part. “The same factors — environmental toxins in the food, water, air and many medications that cause insulin resistance and obesity — are causing cancers,” she said. “However, even in countries with lower rates of obesity, we are still seeing increased levels of cancers in younger folks.”
With environmental factors and obesity accounting only partially for the rising onset of cancer in younger adults, experts told The Defender vaccines likely contribute significantly to this increase.
“This has led me to look at childhood vaccines and I am afraid they have set the scene,” Dalgleish said. “There are now far too many. The adjuvants alone correlate with autism and ADHD,” attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
“The chronic inflammatory states recorded after some of the joint vaccines are highly likely to boost the induction of early cancer,” Dalgleish said.
Dr. Paul Marik, co-founder of the FLCCC, said he believes COVID-19 vaccines may have contributed to the more recent increases in cancer incidence recorded by the CDC.
“The rapid increase in cancers was noted in 2021, 2022 and 2023 after the rollout of the mRNA jabs,” said Marik, author of “Cancer Care: The Role of Repurposed Drugs and Metabolic Interventions in Treating Cancer.”
He added:
“There is strong mechanistic data to explain how the jabs may lead to cancer. This association is strong. There does not appear to be another plausible explanation. Obesity rates have increased slowly [and] cannot explain the massive increase in cancers noted recently.”
Christensen said USA Today and organizations like the ACS “are dancing around the elephant in the room” by “not wanting to make the connection to the vaccines while stating the obvious problems we can’t ignore.”
“Mainstream media have been completely negligent, in my view, for not holding our concerns regarding the vaccines and cancer to account,” Dalgleish said.
Instead of ignoring the problem, “The concept of turbo cancer needs to be accepted,” Marik said. “More research is required to more precisely determine who is at risk, what the incidence is and how to prevent and treat this disease.”
“The best way to stop the young person’s cancer epidemic is to stop the cause,” Jablonowski 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.
FACT-CHECKING MSM: RFK JR.’S TRUE PLANS FOR HEALTH REFORM
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | November 14, 2024
Legacy media have already launched hit pieces on RFK Jr. in an attempt to sew division, and generate opposition to his role in the Trump Administration. Hear what he actually has said on his plans for helping clean up the corruption in our health agencies.
#MAHA #MakeAmericaHealthAgain
Congressional Investigation into Authors of ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Intensifies
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 15, 2024
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), authors of the “Disinformation Dozen,” faces a Nov. 21 deadline to provide Congress with documents related to its alleged collusion with the Biden administration and social media platforms to censor online users.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Nov. 7 subpoenaed CCDH as part of an ongoing congressional investigation, launched in August 2023, into the nonprofit’s censorship-related activities.
The subpoena requests all communications and documents “between or among CCDH, the Executive Branch, or third parties, including social media companies, relating to the identification of groups, accounts, channels, or posts for moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, or reduced circulation.”
The subpoena also requests all records, notes, and other “documents of interactions between or among CCDH and the Executive Branch referring or relating to ‘killing’ or taking adverse action against Elon Musk’s X social media platform.”
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1854563397859193136
CCDH previously included Kennedy on its “Disinformation Dozen” list, published in March 2021, of the 12 “leading online anti-vaxxers.”
Leaked CCDH documents released last month by investigative journalists Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi revealed that CCDH sought to “kill” Twitter and launch “black ops” against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
CCDH included Kennedy, founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), on its list of “The Disinformation Dozen” when he was still chairman of CHD.
“Black ops” are defined as a “secret mission or campaign carried out by a military, governmental or other organization, typically one in which the organization conceals or denies its involvement.”
A subsequent report by Taibbi and Thacker showed that CCDH employed tactics it initially developed to help U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the U.S. Democratic Party, to target Musk, Kennedy and others.
CCDH used ‘explicit military terminology’ to target speech
Thacker told The Defender the leaked documents “definitely spurred” Jordan’s subpoena.
Sayer Ji, the founder of GreenMedInfo, was also listed among “The Disinformation Dozen.” He said the leaked documents were “chilling” and that CCDH’s efforts were part of “the largest coordinated foreign influence operation targeting American speech since 1776.”
Ji told The Defender :
“The leaked documents confirm what we experienced firsthand: CCDH wasn’t just targeting 12 individuals — we were test cases for deploying military-grade psychological operations against civilians at scale.
“Just as the British Crown once used seditious libel laws to silence colonial dissent, CCDH’s operation expanded to silence hundreds of millions globally, from doctors sharing clinical observations to parents discussing vaccine injuries.”
Ohio physician Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, also on “The Disinformation Dozen” list, told The Defender, “The exposure of the manipulation that went on behind the scenes to silence us is what we suspected, and now we know … We have the sad last laugh against their attacks. They are the ones with blood on their hands.”
Ji said CCDH’s internal communications reveal not just bias, “but explicit military terminology — ‘black ops,’ ‘target acquisition,’ ‘strategic deployment’ — coordinated between Five Eyes networks and dark money interests to target constitutionally protected speech.”
Writing on GreenMedInfo, Ji said, “CCDH’s ‘black ops’ approach includes coordinated media smears, economic isolation, and digital censorship.” Ji said CCDH’s activities represent “a new level of institutionalized power directed at civilian targets, often bypassing constitutional safeguards.”
Thacker said Jordan’s investigation should expand to include CCDH’s “black ops.”
“I don’t want to speculate on what CCDH was doing with ‘black ops’ against Kennedy,” Thacker said. “I think that should be explored by a congressional committee, with CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed put under oath,” Thacker said.
CCDH facing multiple lawsuits, possible Trump administration investigation
Jordan’s subpoena is the latest in a series of legal challenges for CCDH. According to GreenMedInfo, the organization faces several lawsuits and government investigations.
Following last month’s CCDH document leak, the Trump campaign said an investigation into CCDH “will be at the top of the list.”
The campaign also filed a complaint against the Harris campaign with the Federal Election Commission, “for making and accepting illegal foreign national contributions” — namely, from the U.K. Labour Party.
This followed the release of evidence indicating that the Biden administration coordinated with the U.K. Foreign Office as part of what GreenMedInfo described “as a systematic censorship regime involving CCDH and affiliated organizations.”
A lawsuit Musk filed against CCDH in July 2023 for allegedly illegally obtaining data and using it in a “scare campaign” to deter advertisers from X will likely proceed on appeal. A federal court initially dismissed the lawsuit in March.
Discovery in the Missouri v. Biden free speech lawsuit may also “shed further light and legal scrutiny on the critical role that CCDH played in allegedly suppressing and violating the civil liberties of U.S. citizens,” according to GreenMedInfo.
CCDH, others flee X in protest
Earlier this week, CCDH deleted its account on X, the platform it wanted to “kill.”
Writing on Substack, Ji said CCDH’s departure from X, during the same week Trump nominated Kennedy to lead HHS, represents a “seismic shift” and marks “a watershed moment, signaling the unraveling of entrenched systems of control and the rise of a new era for health freedom and open discourse.”
Several other left-leaning organizations and individuals, including The Guardian and journalist Don Lemon, also said they will stop using X, after Trump tapped Musk to lead a federal agency tasked with increasing government efficiency.
According to NBC News, many ordinary users are also fleeing X, citing “bots, partisan advertisements and harassment, which they all felt reached a tipping point when Donald Trump was elected president last week with Musk’s support.”
But according to Adweek, X’s former top advertisers, including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Lionsgate Entertainment, resumed ad spending on the platform this year, but at “much lower rates” than before.
“Elon Musk’s ties with Donald Trump might spur some advertisers to think spending on X is good for business,” Adweek reported.
Thacker said CCDH’s deletion of its X account was “aligned” with the departure of “other organizations and ‘journalists’ aligned with the Democratic Party.” He said it appears to have been a “coordinated protest.”
Ji said organizations like CCDH view X “as an existential threat.” He added:
“Having experienced both Twitter 1.0’s AI-driven censorship system and X’s more open environment, I understand exactly why CCDH sees X as an existential threat. X represents what Twitter 1.0’s embedded censorship infrastructure was designed to prevent: a truly free digital public square.
“Under Musk’s commitment to free speech, their tactical advantage disappeared. They’re not leaving because X is toxic. They’re leaving because they can’t control it.”
Online censorship ‘may no longer be sustainable under intensified scrutiny’
According to GreenMedInfo, CCDH’s departure from X “appears to reflect an internal recognition that their operational model — characterized by critics as a US-U.K. intelligence ‘cut-out’ facilitating unconstitutional suppression of civil liberties — may no longer be sustainable under intensified scrutiny.”
In recent months, several mainstream media outlets have corrected stories that relied upon CCDH reports claiming “The Disinformation Dozen” was responsible for up to two-thirds of vaccine-related “misinformation” online.
According to Thacker, this reflects an increasing awareness by such outlets that readers are turning their backs on such reporting.
“The outlets that promoted CCDH propaganda are being investigated by their own readers, who are fleeing in droves. Readers are voting against this type of propaganda by refusing to subscribe to these media outlets,” Thacker said.
Yet, “many outlets continue to host these demonstrably false narratives without correction,” Ji said.
According to Ji, these false narratives resulted in medical professionals fearing the loss of their licenses for expressing non-establishment views, self-censorship among scientists “to avoid career destruction,” suppression of “critical public health discussions” and the labeling of millions of posts as “misinformation.”
“This isn’t just about suppressing speech. It’s about establishing a new form of digital control that echoes the colonial-era suppression our founders fought against,” Ji said.
“CCDH has polluted political discourse by pretending there is some absolute definition of the term ‘misinformation’ and that they hold the dictionary,” Thacker said. “That’s nonsense. They spread hate and misinformation to attack perceived political enemies of the Democratic Party.”
Ji called upon Congress to investigate “The full scope of those silenced beyond the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’” the “systematic suppression of scientific debate,” “media organizations’ role in amplifying foreign influence operations” and “dark money funding networks” supporting such organizations.
Thacker said Congress should examine possible CCDH violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. “We need to also look at how much foreign money they took in and whether we as a nation are comfortable with foreign influence trying to alter the law and political discussions.”
“The fight isn’t just about correcting past wrongs or personal vindication. It’s about preserving fundamental rights to free speech and scientific inquiry in the digital age,” Ji said. “If we don’t address this systematic abuse of power, we risk surrendering the very freedoms our founders fought to establish.”
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.
Trump names RFK Jr. to cabinet position
RT | November 14, 2024
US President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), declaring that the former Democrat will ensure that “everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals [and] pollutants.”
Trump announced his choice in a social media post on Thursday evening. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health,” he wrote.
“HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis in this country,” he continued. “Mr. Kennedy will restore these agencies to the traditions of gold standard scientific research… to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
The New York Post claimed the previous day that some of Trump’s closest advisers were pushing for Kennedy to be given an advisory position, but that the former Democrat was “stubborn” in demanding control of HHS.
If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other sub-agencies. Kennedy has been vocally critical of all of these agencies, and vowed to enact sweeping reforms if placed in charge of them.
A long-time vaccine skeptic and proponent of organic agriculture, Kennedy has promised to “get processed food out of school lunch immediately,” to recommend that fluoride be removed from the water supply, and to crack down on the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides in farming.
Kennedy announced last October that he would run for the presidency as an independent candidate, ending his bid to challenge President Joe Biden in the Democratic Party’s primary elections. He suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump in August, citing Trump’s support for free speech, his promise to end the Ukraine conflict, and his willingness to tackle what Kennedy called “the chronic disease epidemic” afflicting American children.
DNA Contamination in Vaccines: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 8, 2024
Legacy media fact-checkers and regulators across the world repeatedly claim that DNA contamination in vaccines — and particularly in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — poses no risk to vaccine recipients.
Some have gone so far as to claim that concerns raised about this issue by countless researchers are “baseless,” “misinformation” and “conspiracy theory.”
They concede that both older vaccines and the newer mRNA vaccines can contain residual DNA leftover from the manufacturing process — but say that remnant DNA is “expected and considered safe” and that there are regulatory steps in place to make sure it occurs only in limited quantities.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) dismissed concerns published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry about HPV (human papillomavirus) DNA fragments found in products like Merck’s Gardasil HPV vaccine. The agency claims the fragments are “not contaminants” and not a risk or a safety factor.
The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration last month issued a statement saying that recent studies claiming mRNA vaccines are contaminated with excessive levels of DNA lack scientific rigor and that residual DNA has been in biotech products for a long time anyway.
Australian regulators emphasized that “the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the potential risks.”
But some scientists — including Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, who spoke with The Defender — say residual DNA in vaccines should not be dismissed — the danger he said stems from both known and unknown risks.
Jablonowski said those risks have long been present in many existing vaccines, but they are even greater in the mRNA vaccines. Through the lipid nanoparticles contained in the mRNA shots, the DNA fragments “have an open pass to every membrane in your body.”
Why does DNA contamination happen?
Biology is complex, Jablonowski told The Defender. Nothing in it is very pure, so there are contaminations in everything.
He said there have been problems with contaminants in vaccines since what the journal Pediatrics described as the “First Modern Medical Disaster” — when 13 children administered a contaminated diphtheria antitoxin died.
Today, vaccines are produced in several different ways, but living cells play a part in the manufacturing of most vaccines, Jablonowski explained. Vaccines typically work by introducing a weakened bacteria or virus, or pieces of them — often with an adjuvant to amplify its effect — into the body to trigger an immune response.
Viruses need living cells to grow, so viral vaccines use some kind of living cell in the production process. The viruses can be grown in bacteria, yeast, animal or human fetal cells, for example.
That DNA in those cells is typically destroyed or fragmented in the process of making the vaccine. However, the process might not eliminate all of it — some remnant, fragmented DNA can remain present.
The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines used a different process. Rather than introducing a viral protein, they introduced messenger RNA, which trains cells to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the immune system recognizes that protein and produces antibodies.
The COVD-19 vaccines used an RNA-making enzyme — an RNA polymerase — which uses a DNA template to synthesize the RNA in a lab process called “in vitro transcription.”
The DNA used in the process first has to be amplified. Vaccine makers like Pfizer amplified the DNA for the vaccine using a plasmid. Plasmids are small circular pieces of DNA that reside in bacteria and get reproduced when a bacteria reproduces. For the COVID-19 vaccines, they used E. coli, a commonly used bacteria in vaccine production, for rapid amplification.
This DNA template comes with additional risk because the DNA of the plasmid used to create the template has to be removed from the vaccine before it can be injected into people.
Kevin McKernan, the researcher who first identified the DNA in the COVID-19 vaccines, found that the vaccine makers tried to get rid of that DNA by “chewing it up with an enzyme” called deoxyribonuclease or DNase, which breaks down DNA. However, they failed to completely eliminate it.
What are the potential dangers?
The potential risks of residual DNA in vaccines have been debated for decades without resolution, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Some researchers claim the remnant DNA is inert. Others argue it is an important risk factor that may be oncogenic — cancer-causing — or infectious.
The immune system, a delicate system of sensors, has a threshold for how much foreign material it can tolerate in the body, Jablownoski said. When DNA is present outside of cells and in the bloodstream, it can initiate a powerful immune response — called an interferon response — which will aggressively seek out the harmful pathogen.
This can create an overblown immune system response that could be a vector for autoimmune issues related to vaccine contamination.
For example, pathologist and molecular gene detection expert Sin Hang Lee identified the residual RNA in the HPV vaccine Gardasil, which he tested for fragment DNA after a 13-year-old girl developed acute juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., reported.
In the Gardasil vaccine, Lee found the HPV DNA present bound tightly to the aluminum adjuvant. As a result it doesn’t easily break down as it should. Lee theorized that immune cells such as macrophages, which are laden with aluminum adjuvant, travel from the injection site through the blood to various organs.
According to Demasi, the HPV DNA that is bound to the adjuvant “can cause chronic immune-inflammatory reactions that lead to autoimmune conditions in some people.”
Jablonowski said the mRNA vaccines pose a new and more serious problem. That’s because before the introduction of the mRNA vaccine, foreign DNA had no mechanism to get inside of a cell. However, the lipid nanoparticles make that possible.
“The appropriate amount of foreign DNA inside the cell is zero,” Jablonowski said. “It can run amuck with all of the delicate biology necessary to operate a cell.”
Foreign DNA could cause cells to become diseased, it can disrupt regulation, and if the DNA is present at cell division, it could get inside the nucleus and create a host of problems, he said.
Some researchers have argued there is evidence this contaminant DNA could be linked to rising cancer rates.
What do the regulators say?
In 1985, the FDA set an upper limit of 10 picograms per dose. In 1987, the WHO ncreased its recommended limit to 100 picograms and then increased it again to 10 nanograms (i.e., 100 times higher) — a limit now adopted by the FDA, Demasi reported.
Researchers like Lee and McKernan say in the case of Gardasil, this limit doesn’t offer adequate protection, because the HPV DNA can be hard to detect when it binds to the adjuvant.
Jablonowski said when this threshold was set, regulators were only considering how much residual DNA might be in the bloodstream from vaccines — because at that time there wasn’t a mechanism for the DNA to get into the cell. But with mRNA vaccines, that threshold can likely pose a serious danger.
Why did DNA contamination become so controversial?
Researchers and scientists have had concerns about DNA contaminants in vaccines for decades. However, last year, genomics researcher McKernan reported finding that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is contaminated with plasmid DNA — which should not be present in an mRNA vaccine.
He said this raises concerns that the plasmid DNA could lead to cancers or autoimmune issues in some vaccine recipients.
After McKernan’s lab made its findings public, and other researchers confirmed them, Health Canada also confirmed that the Pfizer vaccine contains this DNA.
McKernan also reported that Pfizer concealed this information from regulators. In the manufacturing process for the drug’s clinical trials, Pfizer used PCR testing rather than the plasmid DNA it later used for mass production. So the first version of the drug — granted emergency use authorization by the FDA — didn’t contain the DNA.
It was later revealed that the Moderna vaccines used the same production method — so Moderna’s mRNA vaccines also were contaminated with the remnant DNA.
The issue quickly became politicized, with those claiming the vaccines are “safe and effective” calling the claims “misinformation” and a conspiracy theory, dubbed “plasmid-gate.”
Critics of the COVID-19 vaccines, like Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo, called on regulators to address the issue.
The FDA said in a response letter that “based on a thorough assessment of the entire manufacturing process, FDA is confident in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines.” However, the agency provided none of the evidence on which it based that conclusion.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who serves on an FDA advisory committee for the COVID vaccines — and who is himself a vaccine inventor and patent holder on RotaTeq, the rotavirus vaccine recommended for universal use in infants by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — in a YouTube video dismissed the concerns raised by MeKernan, Ladapo and others.
He said it is possible that there is fragment DNA in the vaccines, but that it is impossible for the DNA fragments to enter people’s cells or to cause disease.
Jablonowski said that for Offit’s explanation to make sense, biology would have to be very simple and straightforward. But it’s not, he said. “Biology is really messy and there are almost always exceptions.”
The immune system is the second-most complicated system, and there is a lot we don’t know about it, he added.
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.
COVID Vaccines Pose 112,000% Greater Risk of Brain Clots, Strokes Than Flu Shots
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 7, 2024
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, according to a peer-reviewed study that calls for a global moratorium on the vaccines.
The study, published last week in the International Journal of Innovative Research in Medical Science, found reports of 5,137 cases of cerebral thromboembolism after COVID-19 shots over 36 months. This compares to 52 reported cases following flu vaccination and 282 cases for all vaccines over the past 34 years.
According to the study, this represents an “alarming breach in the safety signal threshold concerning cerebral thrombosis adverse events” following COVID-19 vaccination.
The study’s authors — independent researcher Claire Rogers, obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. James A. Thorp, independent researcher Kirstin Cosgrove and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough — used data from the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), for their analysis.
The data also indicated 9,821 reports of atrial fibrillation — an irregular heart rhythm that is “the most common identifiable cause of cerebral arterial thromboembolism” — following COVID-19 vaccination in 41 months, compared to 797 cases reported in 34 years for all other vaccines combined.
Rogers told The Defender the findings confirm anecdotal evidence of an increased incidence of stroke seen during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rogers said:
“Cerebral thrombosis case reports in VAERS substantially increased after the COVID vaccines. Not only have clinicians witnessed this in the hospital setting, but the average citizen has seen increased reports of stroke in celebrities, athletes and young people.”
McCullough told The Defender the study employed a “reasonable vaccine safety research strategy” by comparing “a new vaccine to the routine influenza vaccination as a ‘safe’ standard.” He said the results showed “horrific outcomes” following COVID-19 vaccination.
These outcomes led the study’s authors to call for an immediate global moratorium on the use of COVID-19 vaccines “to mitigate further risk with an absolute contraindication in women of reproductive age.”
“Our study joins the growing chorus of analyses calling for all COVID-19 vaccines to be removed from the market,” McCullough said. The withdrawal “should be the first priority” for the next administration.
Spike protein implicated in increased stroke risk
According to the study, the spike protein found in the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 vaccines is likely a significant contributor to brain clots and strokes.
“Early in the COVID pandemic, it became evident that there was a thrombogenic effect of the Sars-CoV-2 virus and it is now believed that the spike proteins [are] one of the major contributors to this thrombogenic effect,” the study said.
According to the study, the original strain of the virus led to “a variety of severe thromboembolic events.” However over time, “natural evolution may have resulted in less virulent strains.”
This original risk was replaced by an increase in the incidence of microclots, “affecting the smaller vessels in the circulatory system.” The study noted that it is “widely understood that cumulative exposure to the spike protein” leads to an increased risk of such clots in patients.
According to Rogers, “One mechanism by which the spike protein is thought to contribute to this pathogenesis is by triggering endothelial dysfunction” — a condition that exists when coronary arteries are constricted even though there isn’t a physical blockage.
The study did not compare the different COVID-19 vaccine types — the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, and the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) and AstraZeneca adenovirus-based vaccines. Rogers noted, though, that the adenovirus vaccines were withdrawn in the U.S. and Europe following reports of blood clots.
Noting that VAERS “is regulated, owned, and maintained” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the study addressed the relative advantages and disadvantages of using this database for such an analysis.
“Despite the bias of the CDC/FDA and their attempts to hide, conceal, and ‘throttle’ the deaths and injuries caused by the COVID-19 vaccines, there remains an unprecedented breach of the safety signal using their own criteria,” the study said.
This safety signal is evident even though the “relative underreporting factor … in VAERS is thought to be in the range of 30-100.”
A 2011 Harvard study found that less than 1% of all adverse events are reported to VAERS.
Calls intensify for a moratorium on COVID shots
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender that despite “the limitations of using VAERS data to infer risk,” he was “startled” by the study’s results. He said the study adds to the growing number of voices calling for a moratorium on the administration of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“While one study does not justify a moratorium, a cacophony of studies does,” Jablonowski said.
According to the study, “There are now 3,580 studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals documenting injuries, disabilities, and deaths after COVID-19 vaccines,” strengthening calls for their withdrawal.
Last month, Idaho’s Southwest District Health said it would stop offering COVID-19 vaccines, following testimony by members of the local community and by experts including McCullough and Thorp.
This followed last month’s release of a Slovak government report calling mRNA shots “dangerous” and calling for their ban. Also last month, a town council in Western Australia called for a ban on mRNA products.
In January, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo called for a “halt in the use of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines” over safety concerns.
Psychotherapist Joseph Sansone, Ph.D., author of the “Ban the Jab” resolution adopted by 10 Florida counties, supported the study’s call for a moratorium on the COVID-19 vaccines.
He said:
“COVID-19 and mRNA nanoparticle injections are biological and technological weapons of mass destruction. It is time for the medical community to tell the truth and admit they were lied to like everybody else. These injections harm those injected and those not injected, via the shedding of this technology.
“All mRNA nanoparticle injections need to be prohibited immediately and there needs to be a thorough investigation into the criminals behind this attack on humanity.”
Organizations including the World Council for Health, Doctors for COVID Ethics and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons have also called for a moratorium on the COVID-19 vaccines.
“COVID vaccine uptake by the public is at an all-time low,” Rogers said. “The need is no longer there for production of these products.”
Jablonowski said:
“A global moratorium on the COVID-19 vaccines would be a major step forward for humanity, not just in human health but for our humility.
“We would have to admit that we were fooled into taking a dangerous product and that our governments, scientists and pharmaceutical companies were all too willing to fool us. Our brighter future starts when we come to these terms.”
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.
RFK Jr. Could Pose Existential Threat to Big Pharma If He Joins Trump’s Cabinet: Here’s Why
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – November 9, 2024
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is primed for a possible senior job in Trump’s White House, promising to “Make America Healthy Again” by reining in big pharma’s enormous influence on US health policy, and by improving food standards. Here’s why the pharmaceutical lobby is going to have a hard time accepting that.
“He’s going to have a big role in health care, a very big role. He knows it better than anybody,” Donald Trump said last week when asked about RFK Jr.’s possible future in his administration. “He’s got some views that I happen to agree with very strongly and I have for a long time.”
Sources told media Saturday that Kennedy has already been asked to make recommendations to the Trump team on appointments to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies have already prepared for the worst, with some execs reportedly hoping Trump and and RFK Jr. have a falling out before Kennedy can do any damage to their respective bottom lines.
“We need to have somebody who is going to be grounded by science and evidence and not somebody who rejects it,” John Maraganore, former CEO of Boston-based biotech firm Alnylam, told FT in a story published Friday, commenting on Kennedy’s prospects.
Kennedy involvement in Trump’s health policy “would be awful on a lot of levels,” a senior unnamed health exec said. “RFK is going to blow up. He’s marching around saying what he wants the administration to do before Trump’s had a chance to take a breath. Eventually Trump will sour on him,” another suggested.
Kennedy’s poor reputation with pharmaceutical companies is understandable, given the attention he’s gotten on the campaign trail during his 2024 presidential run, and before that – for his work as an environmental lawyer, Children’s Health Defense chairman and author of the 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, which spent twenty weeks on NYT’s bestseller list.
Kennedy used the national attention he got over the past three years to promote his favorite causes – vaccine safety and public health. His stinging remarks on these issues, and ability to now have the president-elect’s ear, explain why big pharma finds him so dangerous. Here’s a selection:
Anti-Vaxxer?
Smeared, throttled and censored by legacy media as an “anti-vaxxer” in virtually every article that mentions him, Kennedy has said repeatedly that he’s “never been anti-vaccine.”
“I fought against mercury in fish for 40 years. Nobody called me anti-fish. I like the idea that we have seatbelts in cars. Nobody calls me anti-automobile. I want vaccines that are safe just like every other medication and that are adequately tested. It doesn’t mean I’m anti-vaccine. It just means that I’m sensible and have common sense,” Kennedy said in a tense PBS interview in 2023.
‘Criminal’ Drug Companies
“The pharmaceutical industry is – I don’t want to say because this is going to seem extreme – a criminal enterprise, but if you look at the history, that is an applicable characterization. For example, the four biggest vaccine makers, Sanofi, Merck, Pfizer and Glaxo make all of the 72 vaccines that are now effectively mandated for American children. Collectively, those companies have paid $35 billion in criminal penalties and damages in the last decade,” he told Lex Fridman in 2023.
“And the problem is that they’re serial felons,” Kennedy said, citing the example of Merck’s non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx. “They killed people by falsifying science. And they did it. They lied to the public. They said, ‘this is a headache medication and an arthritis painkiller’. But they didn’t tell people that it also gave you heart attacks… We found when we sued them the memos from their bean counters saying ‘we’re going to kill this many people, but we’re still going to make money,” Kennedy said.
“The way that the system is set up, the way that it’s sold to doctors, the way that nobody ever goes to jail so there’s really no penalty [and] it all becomes part of the cost of doing business,” Kennedy said.
Big Pharma’s Role in Hooking Americans on Opioids
The opioid epidemic is a perfect example of big pharma’s corrupting influence, Kennedy believes, recalling the latter’s’ lobbying the FDA to tell doctors oxycodone isn’t addictive, and getting “a whole generation addicted to oxycodone. And when they got caught, and we made it harder to get oxycodone, now all those addicted kids are going to fentanyl and dying.”
“This year it killed 106,000. That’s twice as many people who were killed during the 20-year Vietnam War. But in one year, twice as many American kids. They knew it was going to happen and they did it to make money. So I don’t know what you call that other than saying that’s a criminal enterprise,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy vs. Mutilation of Children
RFK Jr. has stepped out against ‘gender-affirming care’ and hormone therapy for children, referring to the former as “surgical mutilation” and the latter as “castration drugs.”
“Minors cannot drive, vote, join the army, get a tattoo, smoke, or drink, because we know that children do not fully understand the consequences of decisions with life-long ramifications… People with gender dysphoria or who want to change their gender deserve compassion and respect, but these terribly consequential procedures should be deferred till adulthood. We must protect our children,” he tweeted in May.
That’s more bad news for the pharmaceutical industry, which has walked lock-step in support of the trans rights movement, and profited immensely from hormone therapy drugs and surgical procedures from the late 2000s onward.
RFK Jr. on Chronic Disease
Kennedy has also vowed to “end the chronic disease epidemic” facing America, another potential blow to big pharma, this one possibly the most serious.
“There is nothing more profitable in our society today than a sick child,” RFK Jr. told Tucker Carlson in August.
“Because all of these entities are making money on him – the insurance companies, the hospitals, the medical cartel, the pharmaceutical companies have lifetime annuities… They want [them] sick for the rest of their lives… When my uncle was president, 6% of Americans had chronic disease. Today it’s 60%. When my uncle was president, do you know what the annual cost of treating chronic disease was in this country? Zero. There weren’t even any drugs invented for it. Zero. Today it’s about $4.3 trln,” Kennedy said.
RFK Jr.’s Solution? Sweeping Reforms
RFK Jr. has pointed to statistics suggesting that effectively half of the FDA’s budget comes from the pharma companies they’re supposed to be regulating, and said this needs to stop. He’s also said that “entire departments” at the federal agency should be “cleared out,” and that many of the problems caused by big pharma could be “fixed” with effective regulation, tougher penalties for harmful products, taking a page from the regulatory and health care environments of other countries, and a change in the overall culture of the US health care system.




