1-Minute Junking: Emissions caused Hurricane Helene to intensify?
JunkScience.com | September 30, 2024
US universities losing hundreds of billions as top Chinese scientists and researchers go home
Inside China Business | September 29, 2024
Research and Development (R&D) is a major profit center for the top universities in the United States. Besides the nearly $100 billion they earn in grants from the US government and private sources, university-based researchers create patents and inventions that generate many more billions annually.
China is the largest foreign source of scientists and researchers, and they are concentrated in the hard sciences and in engineering, where over 95% of R&D spending takes place. But since 2018, Chinese scientists are increasingly deciding to return to China to set up new research departments. Of those who are still in the US, over 60% admit they are strongly considering moving, and over half now refuse to work on projects that involve funding by US government sources.
To American universities, the loss of these scientists, along with future contributions to scientific research and commercial applications and market value, are incalculable. But losses probably already exceed a trillion dollars, given the departures of so many top scientists in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, medicine, biochemistry, materials science, nanotechnology, and quantum computing.
Resources and links:
More Chinese Students Are Staying in China to Study https://erudera.com/news/more-chinese…
Surge in Chinese Scientists Leaving US for Home Institutions https://erudera.com/news/surge-in-chi…
Caught in the crossfire: Fears of Chinese–American scientists https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas…
Scientists of Chinese descent leaving the US at an accelerating pace https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/s…
Reverse Brain Drain? Exploring Trends among Chinese Scientists in the U.S. https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-…
Resources on the Patent Revenue Budget Model https://financeandbusiness.ucdavis.ed…
R&D Expenditures at U.S. Universities Increased by $8 Billion in FY 2022 https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf24307
South China Morning Post, Nanotech pioneer Wang Zhonglin leaves US to work in China ‘full time’ https://www.scmp.com/news/china/scien…
SCMP, The Chinese scientists leaving top US universities to take up high-profile roles in China, boosting Beijing in its race for global talent https://www.scmp.com/news/china/scien…
Closing scene, Suzhou, Jiangsu
Another letter to the four Chief Medical Officers of the UK
Is it acceptable that 60% of young people with vaccine-induced myocarditis have cardiac damage?
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | September 30, 2024
Open letter to the Chief Medical Officers of the 4 nations of the UK
Professor Chris Whitty – CMO England: Email [email protected]
Sir Michael McBride – CMO Northern Ireland: [email protected]
Dr Gregor Smith – CMO Scotland: [email protected]
Dr Frank Atherton – CMO Wales: [email protected]
30th September 2024
Dear Professor Whitty, Dr McBride, Dr Smith and Dr Atherton,
Sixty doctors and scientists wrote to you on 6th September 2021 urging you against rolling out Covid-19 vaccines to healthy children. We had written previously to Professor Whitty in May and again in June of that year to flag up our concerns. As you know, the JCVI in their statement on 3rd September 2021, had decided against recommending these products for children’s direct benefit in view of the mild nature of SARS-CoV-2 infection for their age range coupled with concerns about the known and as yet unknown adverse effects.
They had held a conference call with cardiologists from the USA and also Israel, both countries which had started vaccinating children ahead of the UK. These groups had both reported on vaccine-induced-myocarditis, with the US group having studied a case series of 63 children and finding 89% of affected children showing Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) on cardiac MRI scanning. This finding is known to be indicative of cardiac scarring and to be a predictor of deaths in the 5-years following. The group were planning a follow-up study and members of the JCVI specifically requested a delay of 6 months to await this data before making a decision.
Finally, almost 3 years later, this study has been published and it does not make for happy reading, especially if you are a parent of a child or young person who was affected. Of the 333 children and young adults enrolled, and despite an apparently mild clinical course, 82% showed LGE on their initial cardiac MRI scans, and in 60% these changes were still present at the 6 months follow-up scan. Long-term data is still awaited and risk of cardiac failure sudden death is still unquantified. A new systematic review has confirmed that LGE is a risk factor for all cause mortality, cardiac deaths, arrhythmias and heart failure.
This letter is to put on record the failure of due diligence which you, as a group of chief medical officers, showed when recommending these products for use in healthy children. “The view of the UK CMOs is that the additional likely benefits of reducing educational disruption, and the consequent reduction in public health harm from educational disruption, on balance provide sufficient extra advantage in addition to the marginal advantage at an individual level identified by the JCVI to recommend in favour of vaccinating this group.” The argument that vaccinating children would reduce school disruption seemed to ignore the fact that most of the disruption was arising from the combined policy of (a) routine testing of asymptomatic children and (b) the quarantining of whole classes or in some cases even whole year groups if one child tested positive. In England, this policy had been discontinued on 19 July 2021 just 2 days before the end of the summer term and with no time to assess the likely improvement in school attendance. It was also admitted that the calculations of possible school time saved were not balanced against any potential for school time lost, even for the vaccination process itself, let alone any possible adverse events.
When you advised the rollout of the vaccines to children, did you also advise a prospective study of cardiac health to be carried out in any of the four nations?
If the answer is yes, we would be very grateful to see the results.
If the answer is no, this surely should be organised as a matter of urgency.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Rosamond Jones, MBBS, MD, FRCPCH, retired consultant paediatrician, convenor of CCVAC
-Professor Anthony J Brookes, Department of Genetics & Genome Biology, University of Leicester
-Professor Richard Ennos, MA, PhD. Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Edinburgh
-Professor Karol Sikora, MA, MBBChir, PhD, FRCR, FRCP, FFPM, Dean of Medicine, Buckingham University, Professor of Oncology
–Professor David Livermore, BSc, PhD, Professor of Medical Microbiology, University of East Anglia
-Professor Keith Willison, PhD, Professor of Chemical Biology, Imperial, London
–Professor Angus Dalgleish, MD, FRCP, FRACP, FRCPath, FMed Sci, Emeritus Professor of Oncology, University of London, Principal, Institute for Cancer Vaccines & Immunotherapy
–Professor John Fairclough FRCS FFSEM retired Honorary Consultant Surgeon
-Professor Norman Fenton, CEng, CMath, PhD, FBCS, MIET, Professor of Risk Information Management, Queen Mary University of London
-Professor John Watkins, Consultant Epidemiologist Cardiff University
–Lord Moonie, MBChB, MRCPsych, MFCM, MSc, House of Lords, former parliamentary under-secretary of state 2001-2003, former consultant in Public Health Medicine
-Dr Theresa Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD, Director, Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd, Bath
-Dr Roland Salmon, MB BS, MRCGP, FFPH, Consultant Epidemiologist (retired), former Director, Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (Wales)
-Dr Alan Mordue, MBChB, FFPH. Retired Consultant in Public Health Medicine & Epidemiology
-Dr John Flack, BPharm, PhD. Retired Director of Safety Evaluation,Beecham Pharmaceuticals 1980-1989 and Senior Vice-president for Drug Discovery 1990-92 SmithKline Beecham
-Dr Gerry Quinn, PhD. Postdoctoral researcher in microbiology and immunology
-Dr Karen Horridge, MBChB(Hons), MSc, MRCP, FRCPCH, Consultant Paediatrician (Disability)
-Mr Anthony Hinton, MBChB, FRCS, Consultant ENT surgeon, London
-Dr Geoffrey Maidment, MBBS, MD, FRCP, retired consultant physician
-Mr Malcolm Loudon, MBChB, MD, FRCSEd, FRCS(Gen Surg), MIHM,VR, Consultant Surgeon
-Dr Christina Peers, MBBS,DRCOG,DFSRH,FFSRH, Consultant in Reproductive Health
-Dr Noel Thomas, MA, MBChB, DCH, DObsRCOG, DTM&H, MFHom, retired doctor
-Dr Elizabeth Evans MA(Cantab), MBBS, DRCOG, Retired Doctor
-Katherine MacGilchrist, BSc (Hons), MSc, CEO/Systematic Review Director, Epidemica Ltd.
-Dr Greta Mushet, MBChB, MRCPsych, retired Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy
-Mr James Royle, MBChB, FRCS, MMedEd, Colorectal surgeon
–Mr Ian F Comaish, MA, BM BCh, FRCOphth, FRANZCO, Consultant ophthalmologist
-Dr Helen Westwood MBChB MRCGP DCH DRCOG, General Practitioner
-Dr Jonathan Engler, MBChB, LlB (hons), DipPharmMed
-Dr Renée Hoenderkamp, General Practitioner
-Mr Colin Natali, BSc(hons) MBBS, FRCS (orth) ,Consultant Spinal Surgeon
–Dr Alan Black, MBBS, MSc, DipPharmMed, retired pharmaceutical physician
–Dr Mark A Bell, MBChB, MRCP(UK), FRCEM, Consultant in Emergency Medicine
-Dr Livia Tossici-Bolt, PhD, NHS Clinical Scientist
-Dr Zac Cox, BDS, LCPH, Holistic Dentist, Homeopath
-Dr Samuel McBride, BSc(Hons) Medical Microbiology & Immunobiology, MBBCh BAO, MSc in Clinical Gerontology, MRCP(UK), FRCEM, FRCP(Edinburgh), NHS Emergency Medicine & geriatrics
-Dr Branko Latinkic, BSc, PhD, Reader in Biosciences
-Dr Kulvinder Singh Manik, MBBS, General Practitioner
-Dr Michael D Bell, MBChB, MRCGP, retired General Practitioner
-Dr Jason Lester, MRCP, FRCR, Consultant Clinical Oncologist, Rutherford Cancer Centre, Newport
-Dr Clare Craig, BMBCh, FRCPath, Pathologist
-Dr Scott McLachan, FAIDH, MCSE, MCT, DSysEng, LLM, MPhil, Postdoctoral researcher, Risk & Information Group
-Dr Franziska Meuschel, MD, ND, PhD, LFHom, BSEM, Nutritional, Environmental and Integrated Medicine
-Dr Emma Brierly, MRCGP, General Practitioner
-Dr Sarah Myhill, MBBS, Dip NM, Retired GP, Independent Naturopathic Physician
-Michael Cockayne, MSc, PGDip, SCPHNOH, BA, RN, Occupational health practitioner
–Dr Christopher Exley, PhD, FRSB, retired professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry
-Julie Annakin, RN, Immunisation specialist nurse
-Dr Charles Forsyth, MBBS, BSEM, Independent Medical Practitioner
-Dr Marco Chiesa, MD, FRCPsych, Consultant Psychiatrist & Visiting Professor, UCL
-Dr Paul Cuddon, PhD, Pharmaceutical Equity Research Analyst, Head of Healthcare and Life Sciences
-Margaret Moss, MA (Cantab), CBiol, MRSB, Director, The Nutrition and Allergy Clinic, Cheshire
-Prof Anthony Fryer, PhD, FRCPath, Professor of Clinical Biochemistry, Keele University
-Dr David Critchley, BSc, PhD, 32 years in pharmaceutical R&D as a clinical research scientist.
-Dr David Morris, MBChB, MRCP(UK), General Practitioner
-Dr Scott Mitchell, MBChB, MRCS, Associate Specialist in Emergency Medicine
-Dr Pauline Jones, MB BS, retired General Practitioner
-Sarah Waters, BA (Hons), MBACP, Psychotherapist, Therapeutic Parenting Practitioner
-Dr. Eashwarran Kohilathas, BMBS, GP Trainee
-Dr Rohaan Seth, Bsc (hons), MBChB (hons), MRCGP General Practitioner
-Dr Jessica Robinson, BSc(Hons), MBBS, MRCPsych, MFHom, Psychiatrist & Integrative Medicine
-Dr Dee Marshall, MBBS, MFHom, Nutritional Medicine
-Dr Jenny Goodman, MA, MB ChB, Ecological Medicine
-Dr Elizabeth Burton, MBChB, retired general practitioner
-Dr Sam White, MBChB, MRCGP, General Practitioner, Functional medicine practitioner
-Dr Rachel Nicoll, PhD, Medical researcher
-Dr Ruth Wilde, MB BCh, MRCEM, AFMCP, Integrative & Functional Medicine Doctor
-Dr Damien Downing, MBBS, MRSB, private physician
-Dr Andrew Isaac, MB BCh, Physician, retired
-Jemma Dale, BSc (Hons), Biomedical Scientist
-Angela Chamberlain, Bsc (Hons), Midwife
-Alex Hicks, MEng, MCIPS, Compliance Director (Supply Chain)
-Sophie Gidet, RM, Midwife
-Helen Auburn, Dip ION, MBANT, CNHC, Registered Nutritional Therapist
-Dr Ali Haggett, PhD, Mental health community work, former lecturer in the history of medicine
Facebook Gave CDC ‘Backdoor’ Access to Help Remove Millions of Social Media Posts
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 30, 2024
Facebook provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “backdoor” access to its platform so the CDC could submit requests to remove COVID-19 “misinformation,” according to an internal Facebook document made public for the first time as part of an ongoing legal case.
America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2021, after then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed the Biden administration was flagging purported “disinformation” on social media platforms, including content posted by members of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen.”
When the Biden administration didn’t comply with the FOIA request, America First Legal sued, leading to the release of the documents as part of the discovery process.
According to Reclaim the Net, in 2021, Facebook developed a “Content Request System” (see pages 54-72) — also called a “Government Reporting System” — accessible to CDC staff. The documents show Facebook “was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the US government’s thought control initiative.”
The Facebook-CDC partnership helped Facebook remove millions of posts, the documents show.
Gene Hamilton, executive director of America First Legal, told The Defender, “These documents show precisely how one of the social media platforms facilitated the federal government’s engagement in unconstitutional censorship activities.”
“The federal government cannot violate the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to the private sector, yet these documents clearly show that Facebook and the Biden-Harris administration collaborated and colluded on removing speech that did not comport with the federal government’s preferences,” Hamilton said.
Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, told The Defender that following the release of the “Twitter Files,” it should not come as a surprise “that the government has been actively trying to censor citizens through back doors and loopholes.”
“This censorship effort is yet another example of a public-private collaboration that fuses corporation and state,” Hinchliffe said. “Where the government can’t legally censor, it has the private sector to do its bidding. The question here is how much coercion was needed for Facebook to provide the backdoor?”
These latest revelations come as other entities ramp up their own efforts to target purported “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) and TikTok announced a new partnership to promote “science-based information.” Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a Big Pharma lobbying group, this month urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “expand drug manufacturers’ powers to correct misinformation about their products.”
‘Red-carpet treatment’ for government to ‘silence critics and manage dissent’
Calling it a “fast lane for speech suppression,” Reclaim the Net reported that Facebook “built a slick ‘end-to-end workflow’ tailored to the White House’s censorship needs,” which provided CDC staff with a four-step process to flag COVID-19 “misinformation” for removal.
“This was the red-carpet treatment for anyone in the Biden Administration looking to silence critics and manage dissent,” Reclaim the Net reported. “The system could handle up to twenty censorship requests simultaneously.”
The Facebook document stated, “We empower and safeguard users with policies that are: Principled, Operable, Explicable.” These policies were aligned with Facebook’s “community standards” and adopted “a multi-pronged approach to combating COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation.”
The policies — aimed at “bringing 50 million people a step closer to vaccinations” — included the removal of “false information that has been debunked by public health experts.”
Other types of content Facebook explicitly targeted include claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous to people than the common flu or cold, and content discouraging “good health practices” — such as wearing a face mask, social distancing, getting tested for COVID-19 and getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Claims about the COVID-19 vaccines’ safety, side effects and efficacy also were targeted for removal, as were “widely debunked vaccine hoaxes” — including claims that vaccines cause autism.
The document also revealed that as of 2021, Facebook and Instagram had removed “more than 16 million pieces of content … for violating our COVID-19 and vaccine policies.”
Repeat offenders faced restrictions, including (but not limited to) reduced distribution, removal from recommendations, or “removal from our site.”
The platform also allowed government officials to bypass federal transparency laws.
“By using this specialized portal, and not email, the government could skirt those pesky federal record-keeping laws. FOIA requests? Public oversight? Forget about it. The new system made sure government actions were neatly tucked away in proprietary software,” Reclaim the Net reported.
‘The closest thing to a Ministry of Truth’
According to Reclaim the Net, Robert Flaherty, then-White House director of Digital Strategy and now a member of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, was “barking orders at Facebook to tighten the leash.”
“Twitter Files” documents have shown that Flaherty pressured social media platforms to censor the accounts of public figures such Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then-chairman and chief litigation counsel of Children’s Health Defense (now chairman on leave). Kennedy was one of the figures named in “The Disinformation Dozen” report.
“The bureaucratic whims of entrenched CDC personnel and leadership determined what Americans could and could not say — the closest thing to a Ministry of Truth you can imagine in the United States,” Hamilton said.
Author Naomi Wolf, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of DailyClout, told The Defender, “This shocking new revelation of still more unlawful pressure by the U.S. government on social media companies to strip Americans of First Amendment rights, also fails to shock as it is evidence added to a mountain of documentation of such collusion.”
According to Hamilton, these and other documents may affect several ongoing lawsuits against the Biden administration on First Amendment grounds.
“As more records are uncovered through our lawsuit and other open records requests, as well as discovery in litigation, we are confident that courts will have the definitive links necessary to show the government’s facilitation of an unconstitutional censorship enterprise,” Hamilton said.
The latest revelations came just a month after Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta — parent company of Facebook and Instagram — admitted that Biden administration officials pressured Meta to censor content related to COVID-19 during the pandemic.
“If the government can exert that much pressure on one of the largest platforms and its CEO, then it can do it to anybody,” Hinchliffe said.
In an interview earlier this month on “The Kim Iversen Show,” former U.S. State Department official Mike Benz, founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said the U.S. government coerced social media platforms to use “weapons of mass deletion” to censor content and as a workaround to the First Amendment.
According to Benz, this includes government coercion obliging these platforms to adopt automated censorship tools which employ artificial intelligence to sweep platforms for specific keywords or narratives. Benz said many of these tools were initially developed a decade ago for the fight against ISIS.
Benz said the U.S. government urged authorities in the United Kingdom and European Union (EU) to pass censorship laws, in order to then sidestep the First Amendment at home by obliging social media platforms to comply with more restrictive foreign laws.
Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst told The Defender the EU uses legislation such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) “to stop free speech outside EU borders.”
“According to the EU, the DSA prevents illegal and harmful activities online and protects fundamental rights,” Terhorst said. This means that the EU Commission can decide what is right and what is wrong, including ‘harmful disinformation.’”
TikTok ‘a propaganda arm’ of the United Nations?
TikTok and the WHO on Sept. 26 announced a new collaboration targeting health-related “misinformation.” The year-long partnership is “aimed at providing people with reliable, science-based health information.”
According to the WHO, the new collaboration will promote “evidence-based content and encourage positive health dialogues.”
The WHO quoted Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar, who said, “This collaboration can prove to be an inflection point in how platforms can be more socially-responsible.”
Farrar collaborated with Dr. Anthony Fauci and key virologists to draft “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published March 2020 in Nature Medicine. The paper has been used by media and the U.S. government to debunk the lab-leak theory of the COVID-19 outbreak and accuse its proponents of being “conspiracy theorists.”
According to public health physician Dr. David Bell, partnerships like the one between the WHO and TikTok are inappropriate. He told The Defender :
“WHO, as an organization subject to member states and with no direct standing over their citizens, should not be involved in such direct messaging. This is a clear infringement of the rights, role and sovereignty of the states themselves.
“WHO acts increasingly like a tool of colonialist corporate interests as it pushes their messages over the top of legitimate authorities and interferes in the running of health systems within countries.”
According to Hinchliffe, this is not the first TikTok partnership with the United Nations (U.N.). As part of a previous project, Team Halo, “the U.N. trained scientists and doctors on TikTok and worked with TikTok to boost their profiles in an effort to combat ‘misinformation’ while promoting ‘authoritative sources’ during the pandemic.”
“This latest partnership shows that TikTok is honored to once again be a propaganda arm for the U.N.,” Hinchliffe said.
The WHO previously established similar partnerships with other social media platforms, including YouTube, which last year revised its “medical misinformation” policy to allow for the deletion of content that contradicts WHO guidance.
The announcement of the TikTok partnership with the WHO — a U.N. agency — comes just days after U.N. member states passed the Pact for the Future.
The pact’s “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms” policy brief addresses “threats to information integrity,” such as so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation,” calling for the promotion of “empirically-backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge” — without clarifying how this “consensus” would be determined.
The TikTok partnership with the WHO also comes before the January 2025 legislative deadline for TikTok to divest its U.S. operations or face shutdown in the U.S.
Pharma wants expanded powers to ‘correct misinformation’
In another related development lobbyists for Big Pharma earlier this month asked the FDA “to expand drug manufacturers’ powers to correct misinformation about their products, including by allowing them to respond to opinions, value judgments or personal experiences and communications made offline,” Fierce Pharma reported.
The call was a response to the FDA’s draft guidance on “Addressing Misinformation About Medical Devices and Prescription Drugs.” Released in July and now open for public comment, the guidance would allow pharmaceutical companies to issue “tailored” responses to internet-based posts about their products, and “general medical product communications” that would address “misinformation.”
According to Fierce Pharma, “The FDA proposed prohibiting companies from posting tailored responsive communications in response to misinformation spread offline and in response to an individual’s posts about their own experience, opinion and value judgments. PhRMA wants the FDA to lift those restrictions.”
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.
UN Official’s Battle With “Toxic Information” Raises Censorship Fears Ahead of US Election
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 30, 2024
United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming’s focus is “disinformation” and “toxic information systems” – and she presents those as standing in the way of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
SDGs are the UN’s plan that opponents say is “toxic” in itself since it seeks to promote such controversial things as censorship and digital ID and, to make matters worse, that’s supported by major countries.
Now, Fleming seems to be keen to add to the avalanche of pressure on Big Tech – even though the term she no doubt carefully uses instead is “domination of public discourse” in places where this alleged disinformation is most present.
Coincidentally or not this is coming right before a US presidential election, but Fleming is framing her parroting of the “disinformation” narrative in terms of the social platforms, as purely an “SDGs and UN” issue.
She is even trying to link this with the UN’s purpose, which is (rather, should be) peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, but from which the world organization has been disconnecting for a while.
Responding to a question lumping disinformation, climate change, and conflict resolution into one, Fleming asserted that disinformation and “toxic information systems” are damaging humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts, not to mention SDGs (she doesn’t quite explain this assertion).
Fleming’s official UN bio says one of her roles is “far-reaching efforts to address mis- and disinformation, and hate speech,” while supposedly simultaneously promoting “free and independent media.”
However, she started her career with an outlet that’s anything but free and independent: Fleming used to work for “Radio Free Europe,” funded by the US authorities (originally through the CIA).
Now, no doubt thanks to Fleming, the UN has something called DG Media Zone and it is there and during this year’s UN General Assembly that Fleming sounded her alarm bells, going as far as to say that “every single one” of UN’s priorities is these days under threat due to disinformation. (“Climate change” is now proudly listed among those priorities, in case you missed that.)
Fleming’s solution: collusion. This time (and publicly) “merely” with “civil society and people” who need to “work on our information ecosystems together.”
A word of warning about “civil society,” though: it’s often a moniker behind which groups implementing censorship through “fact-checking” etc, like to hide.
“under the Intermediate Scenario”
Tony Heller | September 24, 2024
NOAA has launched a new sea level website which is based on unsupportable claims and appeals to authority.
New Scientist jumps the climate gun
Is the Pacific Jet Stream drifting poleward?
By Dr David Whitehouse | NetZero Watch | September 26, 2024
This week’s prize for jumping the climate gun goes to New Scientist, twice.
Firstly, it tells us that low sea ice levels in Antarctica signal a permanent shift. This, they say, because for the second year in a row Antarctic sea ice has reached near-record low levels, “initiating concern that climate change has initiated a ‘regime shift’ in the amount of ice that forms in the Southern Ocean each year.”
Sorry New Scientist, but two years does not a trend make. Looking at the data, 2023 was indeed a record low and 2024 slightly above that, but if you look at previous years, especially the 2011–2020 average, you will see no trend, just confirmation that 2023 and 2024 are outliers. Much more data than the past two years will be required to signal a permanent regime change.
Their second example of spurious trend-setting concerns the questions of if there is a long-term poleward shift in the jet stream, and if it might be the result of global warming. The jet stream is powered by the Earth’s rotation and by temperature differences between the tropics and higher latitudes. Its poleward drift is a prediction of some climate models.
According to New Scientist, a new analysis indicates that the Pacific Jet Stream has started its poleward drift, moving at 30–80 km a decade. The problem with this research, which is clearly stated in the paper, is that the Jet Stream’s natural bounds of variability are not known, and despite the data going back several decades, if the past ten years are excluded from the analysis then no poleward trend is seen. The researchers say it’s going to take to the end of this century to be sure of any systematic Pacific Jet Stream drift.
Over the past few months, something very unusual has been happening in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean. Temperatures have declined at their fastest for over 40 years. Climate scientists are at loss to explain it, as the usual culprit – trade winds – haven’t developed as expected.
It has been called an “Atlantic Niña.” Along with the developing La Niña in the Pacific, it is expected to reduce global temperatures. It’s a puzzle, as the equatorial Atlantic was hot throughout 2023 – in fact the warmest for decades. Again the reaction by some has been alarmist, fearing that the climate system has gone off the rails, but my initial response is to wait and see, as it is probably an example of misunderstanding of natural variability.
20 State AGs Put Top U.S. Pediatric Group On Notice for “Abusive” and “Experimental” Trans Therapy Guidance
By Jefferey Jaxen | September 26, 2024
“It is abusive to treat a child with biologically altering drugs that have an unknown physiological trajectory and end point. It is also inhumane to endorse such experimentation without a confident safety profile, especially if more times than not, it proves to be medically unnecessary.”
This statement unpins the tone of the legal notice signed by 20 state Attorneys General to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asking the group to answer to possible violations of state consumer protection statutes over its questionable standards on gender dysphoria care for minors.
“… the AAP continues to authoritatively declare that puberty blockers are ‘reversible,’” the letter continued. “That claim is scientifically unsupported and contradicts what is medically known. And because that claim raises questions under most state consumer protection laws, it has the undersigned alarmed,” the letter goes on to state.
Idaho AG and co-signer of the action letter Raúl Labrador stated, “It is shameful the most basic tenet of medicine – do no harm – has been abandoned by professional associations when politically pressured,” said Attorney General Labrador. “These organizations are sacrificing the health and well-being of children with medically unproven treatments that leave a wake of permanent damage.”
Why are these AGs acting now? The momentum has gained breakaway speed regarding the science of gender affirming care for minors.
Puberty blockers are not fully reversible and come with serious long-term consequences. According to the Cass Report commissioned by NHS England, using puberty blockers are used to suppress hormones during or before puberty can interfere with neurocognitive development, compromise bone density and may negatively affect metabolic health and weight.
And when puberty blocker use is followed directly by cross-sex hormone use, which is often the case, infertility and sterility is a known consequence.
The controversial world of gender care isn’t the only space that the AAP has dove into without an abundance of caution. The group made headlines in 2023 by radically altering their front line weight loss recommendations children ages 12 and up to include a new class of risky drugs and weight-loss surgery.
The AAP’s murky ‘science’ recommendations reached an early level of appalling shame in 2019 when, during a public hearing in 2019 to discuss an act before it was signed into law, pediatrician Dr. Helene Felman, representing Washington D.C.’s chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), stated:
“As a pediatrician, I like the legislation as it stands because it offers the opportunity to capture those young adults who can make informed decisions at technically any age.”
11 was ultimately decided upon until a federal court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction in a case funded by The Informed Consent Action Network.
The American Medical Association (AMA) had also thrown its full weight behind attempting to remove the parents from medical decisions involving their children.
Looking at where their energy has gone in key moments, one thing appears clear, the AAP wants children isolated from their parents and given over to the medical system for pharmaceutical interventions with known risk profiles. Why?
Runaway Pesticide Toxicity of Food Supply Shows Generational EPA Failure
By Jefferey Jaxen | September 24, 2024
The decades-long push to clean up the American food supply has received supercharged momentum over the last month thanks, in part, to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His media messaging to reform regulatory agencies has gained critical mass through social media outlets along with breaking into the mainstream of political talking points.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently acted using a rare emergency order for the first time in 40 years to stop the use of a problematic pesticide, Dacthal, from the market.
Why? According to their press release, “EPA has taken this action because unborn babies whose pregnant mothers are exposed to DCPA, sometimes without even knowing the exposure has occurred, could experience changes to fetal thyroid hormone levels, and these changes are generally linked to low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ, and impaired motor skills later in life, some of which may be irreversible.”
Does this prove the agency is listening to The People and responding to the current social momentum towards healthy food? Is the Biden–Harris administration (or whoever is truly running the country) making historic change?
Not really…
The issue of toxins, agrochemicals, and inferior ingredients harming American health through our food supply has long been a bipartisan operation – handed down from administration to administration without pause from what could only be deemed a food industrial complex… a corporate health deep state of sorts.
The EPA classified Dacthal as a “possible carcinogen” in 1995 after its studies done by the manufacturer found it could cause thyroid tumors in animals.
The entire European Union banned the pesticide in 2009 due to irrefutable health concerns. Not the EPA… it was big business as usual.
The Environmental Working Group reports:
“In 2013, the EPA required AMVAC, the sole DCPA manufacturer in the U.S., to submit an additional study showing the chemical’s effects on the fetal thyroid among other information.
AMVAC’s research, finally submitted to the EPA in 2022, showed even low doses of DCPA exposure can harm the developing fetus.
During the nearly 10 years before it finally complied with the EPA’s requirement, the company continued producing and selling Dacthal.”
In other words, the EPA dragged its feet, through multiple administrations, to slow roll the removal of this known, health-damaging pesticide.
Another point in play is the EPA’s regulatory hypocrisy claiming it removed Dacthal because it caused changes in fetal thyroid hormone levels, low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ, and impaired motor skills later in life.
Lowered IQ… Changes in thyroid function…
Meanwhile, the EPA is literally defending in court, for multiple years, the practice of widespread water fluoridation. Even though a new government report from the Department of Health and Human Services’s National Toxicology Program found it lowered IQ in children… which has been known for a long time.
Furthermore, a review of developmental fluoride neurotoxicity research shows fluoride is an endocrine disrupter causing toxicity to the thyroid gland that can affect thyroid function at intake levels as low as 0.01 to 0.03 mg/kg/day in individuals with iodine deficiency.
Yet fluoride can’t be touched. The EPA defends this practice considered one of the greatest public health achievements over the last 100 years.
How about glyphosate? The EPA acted fast on that one right?
The chemical was only removed from the U.S. market by its manufacturer due to overwhelming litigation costs of lost lawsuits threatening the corporate viability of Bayer. EPA… silent.
So here we are with an EPA that’s still broken. The results?
Continued tests of the American food supply reveals widespread pesticide contamination with a recent finding of a cocktail of 21 different pesticides in Target’s baby food. Twelve of the pesticides found are classified as highly hazardous to the environment and/or human health and eight are banned in the European Union.
A new systematic review looking at the impact of organic foods on chronic diseases found:
“A significant inverse relationship between organic food consumption and cardiometabolic risk factors, including obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia, was observed in the majority of prospective studies… Clinical trials consistently indicated lower pesticide exposure in participants on organic diets, suggesting potential health benefits.”
While its been clear to anyone paying attention that the U.S. regulatory agencies often act as barriers to optimal health rather than protectors. The parents, activists, non-profits and lawyers have stepped up, continuously, to fill the role of watchdog often battling the very agencies being funded to the tune of untold billions to oversee the regulation of environmental, medical, and health products and concerns of Americans.
As this narrative gets breathing room, the current messaging of clean, healthy food is also running head long into record low consumer confidence and higher food prices making basics challenging for most Americans. For it to continue the staying power it needs and desperately deserves, real change will be required from a combined political and grassroots union to overturn the very culture of regulatory agencies away from corporate capture and the conflicts of interest revolving door influence that has corrupted the core of American oversight for over half a century. No small task.
Fluoride in Water Poses ‘Unreasonable Risk’ to Children, Federal Judge Rules
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 25, 2024
In a decision that could end the practice of water fluoridation in the U.S., a federal judge late Tuesday ruled that water fluoridation at current U.S. levels poses an “unreasonable risk” of reduced IQ in children.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can no longer ignore that risk, and must take regulatory action, Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California wrote in the long-awaited landmark decision.
More than 200 million Americans drink water treated with fluoride at the “optimal” level of 0.7 milligrams per liter (mg/L). However, Chen ruled that a preponderance of scientific evidence shows this level of fluoride exposure may damage human health, particularly that of pregnant mothers and young children.
The verdict delivers a major blow to the EPA, public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and professional lobbying groups like the American Dental Association (ADA), which have staked their reputations on the claim that water fluoridation is one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century and an unqualified public good.
Fluoride proponents refused to reexamine that stance despite mounting scientific evidence from top researchers and government agencies of fluoride’s neurotoxic risks, particularly for infants’ developing brains.
Instead, they attempted to weaken and suppress the research and discredit the scientists carrying it out.
Rick North, board member of Fluoride Action Network, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told The Defender, “What’s false is the CDC claiming that fluoridation is one of the 10 greatest health achievements of the 20th century. What’s true is that ending fluoridation will be one of the 10 greatest health achievements of the 21st century.”
“The judge did what EPA has long refused to do, and that is to apply the EPA standard risk assessment framework to fluoride,” said Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs. “In so doing, the court has shown that the widespread exposure to fluoride that we now have in the United States is unreasonably and precariously close to the levels that we know cause harm.”
The EPA can appeal Tuesday’s decision. The agency told The Defender it is reviewing the decision and has no comment at this time. The U.S. Department of Justice, which represents the EPA in the lawsuit, also said it has no comment.
EPA’s argument ‘not persuasive’
The ruling concludes a historic lawsuit — one that has dragged on for seven years — brought against the EPA by environmental and consumer advocacy organizations like the Fluoride Action Network, Moms Against Fluoridation and Food & Water Watch, along with individual parents and children.
It is the first lawsuit to go to a federal trial under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as amended by Congress in 2016. The TSCA allows U.S. citizens to petition the EPA to evaluate whether a chemical presents an unreasonable risk to public health and should be regulated.
If the EPA denies a TSCA citizen petition — which the agency did when the plaintiffs asked it to reexamine water fluoridation in 2016 — the petitioners are entitled to a “de novo” judicial review of the science without the deference to the agency typically afforded it in legal cases.
Chen’s 80-page ruling, issued six months after closing arguments in February, offers a careful and detailed articulation of the EPA’s review process for chemicals that pose a hazard to human health and evaluates and summarizes the extensive scientific data presented at trial.
Chen wrote, “EPA’s own expert agrees that fluoride is hazardous at some level.” He cited a key report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) National Toxicology Program (NTP), which undertook a systematic review of all available scientific research at the time of publication.
The report “concluded that fluoride is indeed associated with reduced IQ in children, at least at exposure levels at or above 1.5 mg/L,” Chen wrote.
The NTP also reported that although there are technical challenges to measuring fluoride’s toxic effects at low levels, “scientists have observed a statistically significant association between fluoride and adverse effects in children even at such ‘lower’ exposure levels,” Chen wrote.
He said that despite recognizing that fluoride is hazardous, the EPA’s defense rested largely on the fact that the exact level at which it is hazardous is too unclear for the agency to determine whether the chemical presents an unreasonable risk.
This argument is “not persuasive,” Chen wrote.
Pregnant women exposed to fluoride in water at levels exceeding the hazard level
The EPA requires a margin of error by a factor of at least 10 to exist between the hazard level for a toxin and the acceptable human exposure level. “Put differently, only an exposure that is below 1/10th of the hazard level would be deemed safe under Amended TSCA, given the margin of error required,” Chen wrote.
That means that even if the hazard level were 4 mg/L — well above the 1.5 mg/L identified by the NTP — the safe level of fluoride exposure would be 0.4 mg/L, well below the current “optimal” fluoride level in the U.S., Chen wrote.
The much lower probable hazard level established by high-quality studies indicates that many pregnant women in the U.S. are already exposed to fluoride in water at levels exceeding the hazard level.
“Under even the most conservative estimates of this level, there is not enough of a margin between the accepted hazard level and the actual human exposure levels to find that fluoride is safe,” Chen concluded.
“Simply put, the risk to health at exposure levels in United States drinking water is sufficiently high to trigger regulatory response by the EPA under Amended TSCA.”
The law dictates that the EPA must take regulatory action, but it does not specify what that action has to be. EPA regulatory actions can range from notifying the public of risks to banning chemicals.
Philippe Grandjean, M.D., Ph.D., adjunct professor in environmental health at Harvard and chair of environmental medicine at the University of Southern Denmark, top researcher on fluoride’s neurotoxicity and expert witness for plaintiffs in the case told The Defender he thought the court’s decision was “well-justified.”
He said the ruling made it incumbent on the EPA to go beyond simply ending water fluoridation.
“EPA will have to consider what to do in the southwestern parts of the country where the fluoride content of groundwater is too high due to minerals in the soil containing fluoride,” he said. “And then there is the question about ingestion of toothpaste.”
The CDC and the ADA did not immediately respond to The Defender’s request for comment.
More than 70 years of controversy
For more than seven decades, U.S. public health officials have steadfastly supported water fluoridation, claiming the practice is a key strategy for maintaining and improving dental health.
Proponents of water fluoridation, with help from the mainstream press, often attempted to cast those questioning fluoride’s benefits and raising concerns about its safety as conspiracy theorists.
The EPA in 1975 recommended adding fluoride to water at an optimal level of 1.2 mg/L for its dental benefits, but recommended a maximum level of 4 mg/L, the ruling said.
As more evidence has emerged about fluoride’s adverse health effects, including skeletal fluorosis, recommended levels were revised.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, officially lowered the recommended dosage for water fluoridation in 2015 from 0.7-1.2 mg/L to 0.7 mg/L after considering “adverse health effects” along with alleged benefits.
However, evidence that fluoride poses a neurotoxic risk has existed for decades.
In 2017, after the EPA rejected their citizen petition to end fluoridation of drinking water in the U.S. based on evidence of health risks, namely neurotoxicity, the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit.
A seven-day trial took place in federal court in San Francisco in June 2020, but Chen put the proceedings on hold pending the release of the NTP’s systematic review of research available on the neurotoxic effects of fluoride.
The NTP sought to publish its report — which consisted of a “state of the science” monograph and a meta-analysis — in May 2022, but dental officials at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research pressured HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine to prevent the review from being published.
The ADA also sought to suppress the report.
Levine told the NTP to not publish the report but to put it on hold and allow for further review.
Plaintiffs submitted documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act exposing this intervention to the court. The revelation prompted Chen to rule that the trial should go forward using the draft report from the NTP.
The trial resumed in January in San Francisco, with arguments presented over the course of two weeks.
The NTP’s monograph was finalized and published last month on its website. The meta-analysis is forthcoming in a peer-reviewed journal.
Connett said that Congress created the citizen petition provision in TSCA as a counterweight to bureaucratic lethargy and as a check on the EPA.
The statute, he said, is a powerful tool for overcoming politicized science.
“When science becomes fossilized in political inertia, the citizen petition provision of TSCA is a very powerful tool for citizens,” Connett said. “Through this case, we have been able to effectuate what Congress had envisioned with this part of the statute.”
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.
Featured Video
The Sordid History of the CIA – Part 2
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu: Leave No Palestinian or Arab Alive
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | July 23, 2017
Israeli Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu seems to have picked up where the late Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef left off. The Israeli army, Eliyahu said, must slaughter the Palestinians “and leave no one alive.” The Palestinians, the good rabbi continued, must be “destroyed and crushed in order to end violence.” Here is Eliyahu’s algorithm:
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million.”
There is more to this “logic” than meets the eye and ear. Eliyahu even postulated that the Israeli army ought not to get involved in arresting Palestinians because “If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people. We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”
You may say that this is just an isolated case. No Israeli official believes that, right? … continue
Blog Roll
Recent Comments
Aletho News- Jeffrey Epstein’s sinister shadow over West Asia
- The Sordid History of the CIA – Part 2
- French FM under fire over ‘false’ claims about UN rapporteur
- Israel Wants ISIS-Linked Militias To Control Rafah Crossing — The New Order in Gaza
- ISIS never left Syria, it just changed uniforms
- Why ARE the US and Israel Obsessed With Eliminating Iran’s Ballistic Missiles?
- Kremlin comments on EU ‘myopia’ over dialogue with Russia
- Russia more adapted to contemporary military technology than NATO
- Germany puts caveat on more missiles for Ukraine
- UK High Court rules Palestine Action ban unlawful
- If Americans Knew
- Noor’s short life of unimaginable suffering
- Israel Destroyed Gaza’s Hospitals. Now It’s Banning Doctors Without Borders.
- Is Spite of What Zionists Say, It’s a Good Thing to Criticize Governments
- Palestinian mother, daughter recount strip searches, harsh conditions in Israeli detention
- Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate
- ADL’s Stats Twist Israel’s Critics Into Antisemites
- Why Is the World Silent When the Gaza Genocide Is Not Over?
- In Gaza: 8,000 bodies under rubble, 3,000 missing – Not a ceasefire Day 126
- AZAPAC, the new PAC opposing Israeli domination of U.S policies
- Haim Saban: Billionaire for Israel
- No Tricks Zone
- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
- Pollen Reconstructions Show The Last Glacial’s Warming Events Were Global, 10x Greater Than Modern
- Germany’s Natural Gas Storage Level Dwindles To Just 28%… Increasingly Critical
- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
- Polar Bear Numbers Rising And Health Improving In Areas With The Most Rapid Sea Ice Decline
- One Reason Only For Germany’s Heating Gas Crisis: Its Hardcore-Dumbass Energy Policy
- 130 Years Later: The CO2 Greenhouse Effect Is Still Only An Imaginary-World Thought Experiment
- New Study Affirms Rising CO2’s Greening Impact Across India – A Region With No Net Warming In 75 Years
- Germany’s Natural Gas Crisis Escalates … One Storage Site Near Empty …Government Silent
Aletho News 