Debunking the debunkers on the “myths” of antidepressants
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | August 5, 2024
Recently, The Conversation ran an article which claimed to “debunk” a range of myths about antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
Natalina Salmaso, a clinical psychologist at Carleton University in Canada, highlighted five common myths that make people hesitant to take antidepressants.
Salmaso said hesitancy is often “unfounded” and “may not be grounded in science” and that “debunking the myths surrounding antidepressants is critical to permitting educated treatment decisions for those who suffer.”
However, Salmaso’s article was full of omissions and falsehoods, so we decided to debunk the debunker.
Myth 1 – I am stronger if I do this without meds
Salmaso says that a person with depression is like an athlete with a broken leg.
An athlete cannot compete effectively with a broken leg, in the same way a person with depression cannot function effectively, because their brain “is no longer responding to everyday life.”
She adds that a person’s brain needs to “heal” before they can expect it to function like they did pre-depression and implied antidepressants can help.
This is grossly misguided. This feeds into the false narrative that depression is a brain disease that can be cured by antidepressants.
Antidepressants don’t cure people with depression and their symptomatic effects are so small that they lack clinical relevance.
Studies show that patients actually do better with psychotherapy, which has enduring effects. Further, psychotherapy halves the risk of suicide whereas antidepressants double this risk, in people of all ages.
Myth 2 – I will be dependent on antidepressants to be happy
Salmaso says that antidepressants won’t make people ‘happy’ per se, but they “allow people to experience all emotions in an appropriate and balanced way.”
However, this is not what patients report. SSRIs tend to make people feel “numb” and unable to experience emotions. Some describe it as an inability to feel love, attachment or sexual excitement.
Some experience sexual dysfunction, which can continue long after the drug is discontinued.
Salmaso says that antidepressants “are a long-term (typically at a minimum for a year) and (hopefully) curative treatment, much like chemotherapy for certain types of cancer.”
This is also misguided. Most people become depressed because they have stressful or depressing circumstances, which no drug can cure.
People have been misled to believe that antidepressants can “correct” a chemical imbalance in the brain. A systematic review in 2022 thoroughly debunked the hypothesis that depression is caused a serotonin imbalance.
Salmaso even says that “most studies show that if you take antidepressant medications for a year before coming off of them, the majority of people will not relapse.”
This is also incorrect. The majority of studies on relapse are flawed because they involve subjects already on antidepressants and when they suddenly stop them for the trial they experience withdrawals, which interferes with the assessment of relapse.
Also, the longer someone takes an antidepressant, the higher the probability of that person experiencing withdrawal effects.
Myth 3 – Meds will change who I am, I will be different or feel high
Salmaso says that antidepressants won’t change you, but rather “allow you to view things from a more balanced perspective.”
However, Danish psychiatrists have reported that half of the patients on antidepressants agreed that the treatment could alter their personality and that they had less control over their thoughts and feelings.
Far from rebalancing the brain, antidepressants alter the normal functioning of the brain and disrupt biological processes with potentially devastating consequences.
As far as “changing who you are,” there have been ample reports of out-of-body experiences (including akathisia) where people became suicidal or homicidal on antidepressants, even in people with no history of this behaviour.
A systematic review found that taking antidepressants increased aggression three times more than taking a placebo, in children and adolescents.
Myth 4: I will become addicted
Salmaso says that antidepressants “are generally not addictive and have a low potential for misuse.”
This is not correct. Antidepressants can lead to dependency. Many people experience withdrawal symptoms, which are very similar to those that people experience when they try to come off benzodiazepines.
Salmaso claims that some patients get headaches and other withdrawal symptoms when the stop taking antidepressants “suddenly” but says they are “generally short-lived and can be minimised by tapering off treatment slowly.”
However, it is well-documented that about half of patients on antidepressants cannot stop them without experiencing withdrawals symptoms, which for some, can persist for many years. These symptoms are very difficult to “minimise” even with slow tapering.
Myth 5: Meds should only be used as a last resort
Salmaso disagrees that antidepressants should be used as a last resort.
She says that reserving antidepressants only for extreme cases “doesn’t make sense” because depression can reduce “work productivity and has immense societal consequences.”
“The financial repercussions that can be attributed to depression in terms of the number of workdays missed, jobs lost, accidents caused, etc. are enormous,” she added.
However, studies examining the efficacy of antidepressants have not shown any meaningful effects, such as improvements in quality of life, and they make it more difficult for people to function.
In all countries where this relationship has been examined, the increased use of antidepressants has been accompanied by an increase in disability pensions for mental health reasons.
Salmaso argues that, “Depression significantly increases risk of cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disease, respiratory disease and Parkinson’s disease, to name a few. It also seems to worsen the outcomes for cancer.”
Antidepressants do not improve these conditions either. Overall, it is our view that Salmaso’s evidence and arguments are flawed and misguided.
UK High Court upholds Tory emergency order protecting minors from puberty blockers
By Susan Berry, Ph.D. | CatholicVote | July 29, 2024
A High Court judge in the United Kingdom (UK) ruled Monday that the previous conservative British government’s emergency order safeguarding children and teens from experimental puberty blockers is lawful.
The LGBT activist group TransActual and an unnamed young person brought a challenge to the Tory order issued in May in the wake of the release of a report detailing a comprehensive independent review led by British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass.
Cass and her team conducted a systematic examination of studies and guidelines related to the use of puberty blockers and other procedures associated with so-called “gender-affirming care” for children suffering with gender dysphoria.
They concluded the so-called “gender-affirming care” model of medical intervention for young people is based on “remarkably weak evidence.”
“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress,” Cass wrote, observing that puberty blockers were found in “multiple studies” to compromise bone density and fertility and lead to other harmful effects. The majority of minors who receive prescriptions for puberty blockers move on to cross-sex hormones, the study also found.
Justice Beverly Lang noted in her decision that she is “satisfied that the decision to make the emergency Order on 29 May 2024, was a rational one”:
Parliament has entrusted the Ministers to exercise the powers in section 62 MA 1968, in the exercise of their discretionary judgment. This decision required a complex and multi-factored predictive assessment, involving the application of clinical judgment and the weighing of competing risks and dangers, with which the Court should be slow to interfere.
Lang also observed, “There was cross-party support for this approach as the then Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mr Wes Streeting) said in response to the Statement: ‘I also welcome what she said about the justifiably cautious and responsible approach she is taking in relation to puberty blockers in the light of the Cass report.’”
The Labour Party’s Streeting said he planned to safeguard children against the controversial drugs “via any means, subject to the outcome of a legal hearing.”
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), told CatholicVote the High Court’s decision is “very encouraging news.”
“Governments have the right and responsibility to protect citizens from danger and from crime,” Orient observed, adding:
Giving minors drugs that will interfere with their normal development and likely sterilize them is criminal. It is not possible for minors to give informed consent, even if a judge or counselor asserts that they are “mature.” Puberty blockers keep them from becoming mature, and it is deceptive to claim that the effects are reversible. The drugs have a long list of very severe adverse effects, including osteoporosis with frequent fractures.
In a statement reflecting TransActual’s reaction to the High Court’s ruling, the group said it “condemns” the decision and will decide whether to appeal it.
Chay Brown, TransActual’s director for healthcare, called the ruling “disappointing,” noting that it “leans heavily” on what the group calls “the widely discredited Cass review”:
We are seriously concerned about the safety and welfare of young trans people in the UK. Over the last few years, they have come to view the UK medical establishment as paying lip service to their needs; and all too happy to weaponise their very existence in pursuit of a now discredited culture war. It is essential that NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care now take urgent steps to reverse this perception.
In its statement, the group cited a white paper published in July by Professor Anne Alstott of Yale Law School and Dr. Meredithe McNamara, assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine – both co-founders of Yale’s activist Integrity Project, which tracks and attempts to “correct” and “oppose” efforts to protect children from life-altering transgender medical activists throughout America.
According to the Integrity Project:
Underserved and marginalized people are harmed most by the absence of sound science in law. U.S. states recently have adopted a number of measures based on scientific misinformation, in reproductive health, gender-affirming care and HIV prevention. The Integrity Project acts quickly to correct the scientific record and oppose these harmful measures.
The white paper that attempted to discredit the Cass report is co-authored by other transgender activist medical professionals such as Johanna Olson-Kennedy, M.D., professor of clinical pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and Jack Turban, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry & behavioral sciences at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco.
In a May 2018 paper, Olson-Kennedy recommended that girls as young as 13 with gender dysphoria be subjected to top surgeries (elective double mastectomies). Drawing that conclusion only from 136 “completed surveys” at her gender clinic, she and her colleagues determined:
Chest dysphoria was high among presurgical transmasculine youth, and surgical intervention positively affected both minors and young adults. Given these findings, professional guidelines and clinical practice should consider patients for chest surgery based on individual need rather than chronologic age.
Turban was found in January 2022 by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) to have authored a controversial study at Stanford University that concluded childhood hormone treatment was associated with “favorable mental health outcomes.”
The study was funded by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), which opposes restrictions on gender-affirming care for children. AACAP, in turn, is supported financially by pharmaceutical companies Arbor and Pfizer, both of which manufacture hormonal drugs used for gender transitions, DCNF reported.
“This study is particularly relevant now because many state legislatures are introducing bills that would outlaw this kind of care for transgender youth,” said Turban in the press release about his study. “We are adding to the evidence base that shows why gender-affirming care is beneficial from a mental health perspective.”
Orient underscored in her comments to CatholicVote that “one effect” of hormone drugs to treat gender dysphoria “is to make the recipients life-long patients for a very lucrative industry.”
“Puberty itself is probably the best treatment for ‘gender dysphoria,’” she added. “After experiencing normal puberty, the vast majority of teens will accept their biological sex and escape from the pipeline leading to harmful cross-sex hormones, mutilating surgery, and life-long psychiatric care.”
In the UK, James Esses, co-founder of Thoughtful Therapists and co-ordinator of Declaration for Biological Reality, posted to X that the High Court’s ruling was “seismic.”
“We must never allow children to be irreversibly harmed in the name of an ideology again,” he added.
Shocking testimony regarding Remdesivir
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | July 30, 2024
Some rather shocking testimony has emerged from the USA.
An American doctor working in Everett, Washington (just north of Seattle) called James Miller, recently published an attestation which can be downloaded from here.
This was written to be filed as evidence with some attorneys who are petitioning state Attorney Generals to investigate hospital administrations and others responsible for what some regard as homicides. More about that can be read here.
The whole statement is worth reading, but in our view the following in particular stands:
From just that small extract, the following can be surmised:
- treatment was entirely protocol-driven — this person was well enough to be in a car and her “covid-19” was incidental; there were, however, recommendations in place that notwithstanding that, she should receive remdesivir just because a protocol said so
- usually these protocols were followed, regardless of clinical need, but just because a person had a positive test
- the protocols, however, could be flexibly applied and in this case a doctor decided that a valid criterion for making a decision was how “nice” the patient was
- a treatment was actively avoided here “because she was nice” — indicating that the doctors knew that per-protocol they ought to be giving treatments which they themselves knew to be harmful
The core departure from medical norms on display here from which this fortunate patient escaped — the rigid application of “protocols” by compliant unquestioning doctors resulting in harmful treatment being given — is an extremely disturbing phenomenon. It would be naive to think this only happened in the USA, and was seen only in association with the particular treatment — remdesivir — mentioned here.
It’s worth noting that the tenacious Jessica Hockett has written this article in which she suggests a series of further questions she’d like to ask Dr Miller.
Vaccine Advocate Peter Hotez Calls for Use of Police, Military Against ‘Anti-vaccine Aggression’
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 26, 2024
Vaccine advocate and pharmaceutical industry insider Dr. Peter Hotez, long a proponent of the COVID-19 vaccine, said he favors deploying police and military powers against “anti-vaxers,” whom he blamed for causing hundreds of thousands of deaths during the pandemic.
During an interview July 5 at the Simposio Internacional de Actualización en Pediatría (International Symposium of Pediatric Updates) in Cartagena, Colombia, Hotez suggested organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and NATO should target “anti-vaccine aggression.”
Hotez said:
“What I’ve said to the Biden administration is, the health sector can’t solve this on its own. We’re going to have to bring in Homeland Security, the Commerce Department, Justice Department to help us understand how to do this.
I’ve said the same with — I met with Dr. Tedros [director general of the WHO] last month … to say, I don’t know that the World Health Organization can solve this on our own. We need the other United Nations agencies. NATO. This is a security problem because it’s no longer a theoretical construct or some arcane academic exercise. Two hundred thousand Americans died because of anti-vaccine aggression, anti-science aggression.
The full interview was available on YouTube until Wednesday evening, when it was removed. The Defender obtained a video recording of the full interview.
Hotez is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University College of Medicine and director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, one of the sponsors of the symposium, which was organized by the Colombian Pediatric Society.
Aside from being a vaccine proponent and developer — he helped develop the Corbevax COVID-19 vaccine which was administered in India and has received at least $30 million in vaccine development grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — Hotez has crusaded against so-called “misinformation” about vaccines.
In March, The Hill reported that Hotez has found a “‘parallel career’ fighting misinformation.”
Hotez “finds his efforts to combat misinformation to be ‘meaningful,’” and says “pushing back on the anti-vaccine movement is just as important as developing vaccines,” The Hill wrote.
Hotez also holds six patents on the hookworm (helminth) vaccine, and has several listed patent applications as well, including those for SARS-CoV2 vaccines.
“Peter has cashed in significantly on the COVID-19 pandemic and gets a lot of money when shots go into arms,” said Brian Hooker, Chief Scientific Officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
In his July 5 interview, Hotez called for more stringent action against “anti-vaxers,” whom he connected to entities such as the Russian government, and called for medical schools to educate new doctors about anti-vaccine sentiment.
“‘Anti-science’ and ‘anti-vaxxer’ are propaganda terms Hotez uses to establish a power dynamic over anyone who disagrees with him,” said cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough.
“Now Hotez is calling for a security state to enforce his propaganda instead of engaging in much needed dialogue over vaccine safety with a critical appraisal of short- and long-term side effects from the routine childhood vaccine schedule, including the COVID-19 shots,” McCullough added.
According to Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health:
“Hotez has spent his entire career developing vaccines which have not achieved success in commercial use. His demands to impose public health martial law are reminiscent of the ‘Comité de salut public’ — ‘Committee of Public Safety’ — that Robespierre used to murder his political opponents [during the French Revolution].”
For Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Hotez’s suggestions are a call to violate established international human rights law.
“Coercing vaccines upon human beings without their informed and voluntary consent violates the Nuremberg Code on Medical Experimentation, which is a crime against humanity,” Boyle said. “What we see at work here with Hotez is the Nazi mentality that pervades so many vaccinologists like him. Hotez is revealing his true colors.”
Independent journalist Paul D. Thacker has investigated Hotez for his site, The Disinformation Chronicle. He said, “This crackpot idea that we should deploy military forces to deal with moms worried about vaccine side effects and children … doesn’t that speak for itself?”
Dr. Sukharit Bhakdi, a microbiologist, questioned Hotez’s scientific credentials:
“Simple fact: Hotez is not a real scientist. He has never published any research article based on true scientific research. His publications transmit his personal opinions and beliefs. He has not conducted a single valid vaccine trial and has zero data to back his claims.
“He has been on the globalist team together with [Dr. Anthony] Fauci et al. and is now turning to violence to silence all dissenters. This very fact disqualifies him as a physician.”
“His evolution over the course of the pandemic is curious as he has become more and more shrill as time goes on,” Hooker said. “It seems he is trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame by ‘jumping the shark’ and inciting gestapo-like measures against ‘anti-vaxers’ and ‘science deniers.’ His definition of science is very ‘Fauci-esque’ indeed.”
Claim that unvaccinated caused ‘hundreds of thousands’ of deaths ‘an obvious untruth’
During his July 5 interview, Hotez asserted that the unvaccinated were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said:
“There’s anti-vaccine activity in every country, and each has its own unique national flavor. But the part that I’m worried about now is something very dark and accelerating in the United States.
“And the most dramatic evidence for that is what happened during the COVID pandemic … My estimate is 200,000 Americans died needlessly because they refused COVID vaccines in 2021, 2022.”
Hotez did not provide evidence supporting this figure, but it was similar to claims made by Dr. Anthony Fauci during Congressional testimony last month. Without citing evidence, Fauci said the unvaccinated are “probably responsible for an additional 200,000-300,000 deaths” in the U.S.”
Risch called this claim “an obvious untruth.”
“In the face of repeated major empirical CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] evidence and CDC’s public acknowledgement that the mRNA vaccines largely failed to reduce COVID transmission, Hotez absurdly claims that people choosing not to vaccinate themselves have contributed more to deaths from COVID than all of the large-scale breakthrough infections among vaccinated people,” Risch said.
McCullough said, “Hotez presumes COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective as any vaccinologist would dream. Sadly, his fantasy was over before it started. The COVID-19 vaccines were unsafe and failed to reduce hospitalization and death in prospective randomized trials or in valid observational studies. They never stopped transmission.”
“All experts, including Hotez, agreed theoretical protection from COVID-19 vaccines was just a few months, requiring frequent boosters,” McCullough added.
Hotez calls parents who choose not to vaccinate their children ‘victims’
In his interview, Hotez called for action — including more censorship — to counter what he called a “dark and accelerating” and “dangerous” anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. and globally that is “expanding and extending to childhood immunizations in the United States.”
“My worry is that this anti-vaccine movement, and it’s not misinformation or [an] infodemic, as many call it, it’s organized, it’s deliberate, it’s well-financed and it’s politically motivated … I worry that’s now globalizing to other countries on the African continent, in Asia and even Latin America,” he added.
On the topic of childhood vaccinations, Hotez said, “Parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids are victims” of this campaign, and called for medical schools to train doctors on how to respond to parents who oppose vaccinations.
“Pediatricians need to understand what the anti-vaccine ecosystem is, how it’s organized, how it operates, and to get educated about it,” he said. “I think that’s a first step … in our medical schools, in our pediatric residency training, in our conferences like this, being able to describe what this anti-vaccine monster looks like.”
But for journalist Rodney Palmer, formerly of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the increasing reluctance of parents to vaccinate their children is due to mounting concerns about vaccine safety. He said:
“The rising movement questioning the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines appears to be based on mounting evidence from government health data collection agencies and the life insurance industry.
“The fraud and cover-up of ivermectin as an effective prevention and treatment of COVID-19 caused a segment of the population to question the official guidance around vaccines — more so once they were mandated.”
Hotez blamed legacy and traditional media, as well as foreign governments, for fueling anti-vaccine sentiments.
“Fox News is now a source of anti-vaccine disinformation,” Hotez said. “If the parents are watching Fox News every night … They are going to be coming into your practice believing disinformation.”
Turning to social media, Hotez said, “Twitter, since Elon Musk has taken it over, has become an anti-vaccine site dominated by anti-vaccine groups and individuals who are monetizing the internet. They’re selling fake autism cures because they say vaccines cause autism, which they don’t.”
Hotez continues to be active on X.
Adversarial foreign governments are also to blame for propagating anti-vaccine rhetoric, according to Hotez. “For instance, the Russian government, the Putin government, is spreading anti-vaccine propaganda. The goal of this is to destabilize society and to have caused people to question authority,” he said.
Hotez did not provide any information to support this claim. Russia produces the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, under the auspices of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and The Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology — an arm of the Russian federal government.
Hotez calls ‘anti-vaccine movement’ a tool of the ‘far-right’
Hotez also used the interview as an opportunity to plug his upcoming book, “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning.” He said the book “describes [the anti-vaccine] ecosystem and its political leanings in detail.”
According to the book’s publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press, Hotez “explains how anti-science became a major societal and lethal force” and how “the anti-vaccine movement became a tool of far-right political figures around the world.”
In 2022, Hotez fiercely criticized looming Congressional hearings into a possible lab-leak origin of COVID-19 and whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) prematurely discredited the hypothesis, dismissing this as an “outlandish conspiracy.”
However, Hotez’s own 2012 to 2017 NIH grant — totaling $6.1 million — for the development of a SARS vaccine had the aim of responding to any “accidental release from a laboratory,” in addition to a possible zoonotic (or natural) spillover of the virus.
In a June 2023 interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD’s chairman on leave, podcaster Joe Rogan offered to donate $100,000 to a charity of Hotez’s choice if he agreed to debate Kennedy.
Hotez — with the support of several legacy news media outlets and the American Medical Association — refused Rogan’s offer. He later claimed on social media that a “couple of anti-vaxers” “stalked” and “taunted” him outside his home after he declined the offer to debate Kennedy.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
Common Surgeries Surprisingly Fail to Outperform Placebo
Esteemed orthopedic surgeon Ian Harris joins the Radically Genuine Podcast!
DR. ROGER MCFILLIN | JULY 23, 2024
Welcome to a landmark episode of the Radically Genuine Podcast! I’m thrilled to present our first full video episode, exclusively available to our valued paid subscribers. Your support has made this exciting new format possible, allowing us to bring you an enhanced, immersive experience of our thought-provoking conversations.
In this shocking episode, I interview Professor Ian Harris, an esteemed orthopedic surgeon and author of the book “Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo”. This conversation unravels the complexities of surgical outcomes, challenging conventional wisdom and highlighting the critical need for evidence-based practice in modern medicine.
Key points explored:
1. The placebo effect in surgery: We dissect how patient expectations and non-specific effects can significantly influence surgical outcomes, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing these from the procedure’s direct physiological impacts.
2. Challenges in surgical research: We discuss the difficulties in conducting placebo-controlled surgical trials, shedding light on the methodological hurdles that complicate efforts to establish definitive evidence of surgical efficacy.
3. Surgeon bias and decision-making: The conversation explores the cognitive biases that can affect surgeons’ judgments, potentially leading to unnecessary procedures or overestimation of benefits.
4. Overuse of surgical interventions: Harris presents compelling arguments about the prevalence of surgeries that may lack solid scientific backing, advocating for a more cautious approach to surgical recommendations.
5. Non-operative alternatives: The discussion highlights the often-overlooked potential of conservative treatments, particularly emphasizing the benefits of weight loss and exercise for conditions like knee arthritis.
6. Financial incentives in healthcare: We touch on the complex interplay between economic motivations and medical decision-making, exploring how these factors can influence treatment recommendations.
7. Placebo and nocebo effects: The conversation examines how both positive (placebo) and negative (nocebo) expectations can impact patient outcomes, underscoring the power of patient beliefs in the healing process.
8. Informed consent and patient education: We stress the importance of providing patients with accurate, evidence-based information to facilitate truly informed decision-making about their care.
This episode serves as a compelling call to action for increased scientific rigor in surgical practice and a more critical evaluation of established medical interventions. It challenges listeners to reconsider their assumptions about surgical efficacy and encourages a more nuanced understanding of the factors contributing to medical outcomes.
NEW STUDIES SHOW PEDIATRIC “BEST PRACTICES” NOT BASED IN SCIENCE
The Highwire | July 18, 2024
Learning nothing from the opioid crisis, research misconduct and regulatory failure has opened the door to widespread public harm from new classes of weight loss and trans medicine drugs classes. Also, a new kind of scientific methodology is being brought to the forefront, driven by AI.
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Book Review
Jeffrey Epstein: A Jewish Individual?
The Occidental Observer | February 5, 2023
One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union between Intelligence and Organized Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein (Volume 1 & 2) by Whitney Webb
“Far from being an anomaly, Epstein was one of several men who, over the past century, have engaged in sexual blackmail activities designed to obtain damaging information (i.e., “intelligence”) on powerful individuals with the goal of controlling their activities and securing their compliance.”[1]
Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell is locked away in prison, and the thought-makers of our world seem keen to let the more explosive parts of the scandal dissipate from the public consciousness. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, Epstein and Maxwell were little more than well-connected socialites who ran a sex-trafficking ring for the rich and the powerful, and the focus has shifted instead to the criminal and civil cases seeking to achieve redress for the victims of sexual abuse.
On occasion some newspaper articles will mention the hidden cameras littered across Epstein’s properties, others the reams of CDs and hard drives found within them during the FBI raids. Altogether missing from the Netflix documentaries (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich [2020] and Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich [2022]) or the articles that spend their time narrowly focusing on the links between Epstein and Bill Gates, is the acknowledgement of the true nature of Epstein himself and the ultimate purpose of this sex-trafficking of minors — a sexual blackmail operation.
Not everyone is cowardly enough to let these controversial aspects lie untouched, as the newly released two-volume book One Nation Under Blackmail by independent reporter Whitney Webb seeks to blow wide open this media-enforced blackout. Utilizing primarily open-source information (that is, publicly accessible information such as books, newspapers articles and government reports),[2] Webb’s book delves into the life and times of Jeffrey Epstein and his deep ties to Jewish billionaires and Israeli intelligence. … continue
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