Battle for Climate Earth
ClimateCraze | July 5, 2021
There is no climate crisis — just climate alarmism.
Eris vaccine marketing hits Germany, complete with panic about a nonexistent August “Covid wave”
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | August 20, 2023
We will not be free of the virus until we are free of the vaccinators.
The leftist taz newspaper on 17 August: New German Wave: The new Covid variant Eris has arrived in Germany. Concerns about a new wave are growing – but the country is not well prepared.
The pandemic is over, but the virus is still dangerous: Reports of the new variant EG.5.1. seem to confirm this analysis. EG.5.1. (Eris) has been considered a “variant of interest” since 9 August. According to the WHO, the phenotype does not differ fundamentally from other Omicron lineages and does not require special public health measures …
With the announced end of the pandemic, virtually all mandated protective measures have been lifted in Germany. The most important instrument in the fight against Covid-19 is thus the immunisation of the population through infection or vaccination.
Das Erste, state media, on 19 August: Covid Variant “Eris”: How Dangerous is the New Mutation EG.5?
The World Health Organisation WHO has upgraded the new Covid mutationEG.5. This variant, called “Eris,” now belongs to the “variants of interest.” …
As WHO Covid expert Maria Van Kerkhove explained in Geneva on Wednesday, more severe outcomes have not been observed with Eris, but vaccination confers less protection than with other virus variants. …
Even though the new variant is unlikely to cause severe disease, the [German vaccine regulatory authority] STIKO still recommends getting vaccinated – above all to avoid possible long-term consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection and to protect employees in medical and nursing care.
n-tv, a subsidiary broadcaster of RTL, on 18 August: The Number of Coivd-19-Cases Continues to Rise.
The pharmaceutical company Moderna has announced that its updated Covid vaccine according to an initial study is effective against the Eris sub-variant. The company now expects to launch the new vaccine in time for the autumn vaccination season. Approval from vaccine regulators however is still pending.
Moderna, like vaccine manufacturers Novavax and Pfizer, has developed versions of its vaccines with Biontech SE that target Eris subvariants. Shortly before, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer had reported that its revised vaccine had been effective against Eris in a study with mice. …
Most recently, it was suspected that the cinema hype surrounding the feel-good film “Barbie” and the gloomy biopic “Oppenheimer” may have caused many infections. At the same time, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) recorded an increase in the number of reported Covid infections. Experts, however, see no reason for concern so far.
Frankfurter Rundschau, a regional Frankfurt paper, on 17 August: Covid comeback with “Eris”: First experts demand return to masking.
Is Covid on the attack again? There are indications that the virus is once on the rise once more. …
British doctors are already calling for a return to masking. [Relentless virus charlatan and deranged hypermasker] Trisha Greenhalgh suggests that, “in view of the spread of new variants,” masking in high-risk situations should be considered.
The [virus surveillance] of the Federal Ministry of Health shows that the numbers are also on the rise in Germany. … “Eris” is already responsible for every fourth corona infection, according to new figures from the RKI. “The number of Covid-19 cases reported to the RKI .. seems to be related to the increasing circulation of this ‘variant of interest’,” the Robert Koch Institute says.
The increase in the case numbers – at least in Great Britain – coincides with the opening of the blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” in British cinemas, which has given rise to talk of the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon. It is well known that larger crowds in enclosed indoor spaces are associated with an increased risk of corona infection. So is it time for a mask renaissance?
In the USA, more and more voices calling for one. [Relentless virus pest] Eric Feigl-Ding … used the hashtag #MaskUp on Twitter to call once again for protecting oneself from Covid infections with masks. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach shared the post, warning that the latest Covid data from New York is “worrying.” …
“There is still a risk that a more dangerous variant will emerge, which could lead to a sudden increase in cases and deaths,” emphasises WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Not only adapted vaccines that take the new variants into account, but also wearing a mask would then help to protect oneself and others, Frankfurt virologist Martin Stürmer told Spiegel.
tagesschau, state media, on 17 August: Covid Case Numbers are Rising Again.
The number of laboratory-confirmed Corona cases in Germany is rising again – but at a relatively low level. This development has been ongoing for around a month, reports the Influenza Working Group at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) … According to the report, about 2,400 confirmed cases of Covid-19 were reported nationwide last week. This is more than double the number reported in the week ending 9 July, when there were about 1,000. …
According to the RKI report, the activity of acute respiratory diseases in general in the population was “at a low summer level.” … “Anyone with symptoms of an acute respiratory infection should stay at home for three to five days and until the symptoms have clearly improved,” advises the RKI. …
Despite all of this obnoxious verbiage, absolutely nothing of virological note is happening in Germany. Official Covid testing has been all but abolished here, forcing our journaloids to unearth statistics from RKI influenza surveillance – something they refused to do during the pandemic itself, because the flu people routinely posted data that undermined their panic narrative. Here, I’ve circled in red the scary rise in infections from the latest RKI report that we’re meant to be worried about:
This microscopic uptick is dwarfed by the February/March wave that peaked between weeks 8 and 13. Our media luminaries took next to no notice of this frightening late-winter surge, and as I type this, Covid diagnoses have not even re-achieved their June levels. The difference between the state of things now and the state of things in February is not the unremarkable Eris variant. XBB was also debuting across Europe early this year, driving the post-February case peak, and nobody cared. The only thing that is different now, is the proximity of the autumnal vaccination liturgy and the prospect of new, updated vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax. That is why we are hearing about variants and masks and Long Covid all over again. It is also why many of these articles contain buried within them somewhere the advice to line up for the shiny new anti-Covid juice this Fall. This whole thing is, very plainly, a psy-op, if a very low-effort one.
There are several patterns in the German reporting that are worth noting. First of all, the latest hysteria was unleashed on 17 August, prompted by a report on Eris from the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Particularly in the realm of routine reporting, the news agencies are a powerful coordinating force, and their influence here means that the full media panic machine is not engaged. We’re looking instead at pieces thrown together by low-level staff desperate to fill column inches. Second, all the German stories are firmly downstream from Anglophone sources, going so far as to recycle from British tabloids the improbable theory of a “Barbenheimer” wave (it is painful even to type this stupid word). Third, at least German health authorities – Karl Lauterbach excepted – resolutely refuse to provide virus doom quotes. Thus the Frankfurter Rundschau had to appropriate the tweets of Anglosphere mask hysterics like Greenhalgh and Feigl-Ding to make Eris sound scary.
I know there are rumours that American authorities are planning to bring back mask mandates and other restrictions in the coming months, and I’ll be honest: We should be so lucky. If the pandemicists try to kick up another round of non-pharmaceutical interventions this fall, they’ll be flirting with self destruction. There are important prerequisites for virus panic: You need a plausibly novel pathogen, the risk of which can be exaggerated. You need a prevailing sense of stability, with nothing else much going on, because the public health interventions themselves have to seem new. Risk, excitement and the prospect of a break from routine are important enticements. That’s all gone now. Covid is not a new scary virus anymore; nearly everyone has had personal experience with it. Solid majorities everywhere have learned to hate lockdowns, despise masking and avoid the mRNA vaccines. The pandemicists need a plausibly new virus to reopen the circus, and they need a lot of people to forget about what a misery the last pandemic response was. They’ll have another chance in ten or fifteen years, I’d guess. Then, it’ll be time to worry.
Greg Tucker-Kellogg publishes fraudulent study to attack ivermectin
Tucker-Kellogg aimed to review research conducted in Brazil and conclude that ivermectin was ineffective against Covid-19. In order to do so, he and his colleagues had to fabricate over 250 fatalities.
Illustration. Reproduction photo from Greg’s YouTube channel.
Médicos Pela Vida | August 17, 2023
Greg Tucker-Kellogg, from the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore, who receives compensation from YouTube for creating content against scientific misinformation, along with two other authors, Ana Carolina Peçanha and Robin Mills, published a study on the Medrxiv platform on August 15th. The study used fraudulent data with the aim of undermining the research on ivermectin conducted in Itajaí, located on the coast of Santa Catarina, Brazil.
The study conducted in Itajaí, peer-reviewed and published in the prestigious Cureus journal in early 2022, concluded the effectiveness of ivermectin in its prophylactic use against COVID-19. The results were positive: among individuals who took ivermectin preventively, there were 68% fewer deaths, 56% fewer hospitalizations, and 44% fewer infections.
The False Data
Tucker-Kellogg and colleagues’ study, which aimed to recalculate and nullify the positive results, used fraudulent data to achieve its goal. In the article, they claim that the data is official.
The authors stated that 499 individuals died between July and December 2020, a period during which the effectiveness of ivermectin was studied in the city.
However, the data of 499 COVID-19 deaths during the six months of the study in Itajaí is indeed false. In order to achieve their desired outcome, the number of deaths had to be inflated. You can verify the original PDF of the reanalysis here on page 3.
How We Investigated
The purported 499 deaths in six months, used as a basis for the calculations, raised suspicions due to being an unusually high number for the period in a city with just over 200,000 inhabitants. Consequently, the first step we took was to research the city’s epidemiological bulletins during that timeframe.
The official epidemiological bulletin, published on the Itajaí city government’s website on December 28, 2020, stated that a total of 254 individuals had died since the beginning of the pandemic. This figure represents deaths from when the virus first spread in the city in early 2020. Therefore, the deaths between July and December were even fewer, far from the reported 499.
In a second attempt to verify the numbers, we accessed consolidated data from the Brazilian Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde or SUS) through the OpendataSUS database, which is considered one of the most comprehensive and accurate in the world. As Brazil has a publicly funded healthcare system, data for all patients in the country is rigorously monitored.
The OpenDataSUS Numbers:
Deaths caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), with dates ranging from July to December 2020, among residents of the city. Database downloaded on March 13, 2023.
Based on the date of hospitalization:
Total SARS-related deaths: 234
Deaths due to Covid-19 only: 222
Based on the date of symptom onset:
Total SARS-related deaths: 256
Deaths due to Covid-19 only: 237
Based on the date of data entry:
Total SARS-related deaths: 240
Deaths due to Covid-19 only: 222
The Numbers from Brasil.IO
According to the information from the Brasil.IO database, which compiles data from confirmed cases and deaths from the bulletins of the State Health Departments (Secretarias Estaduais de Saúde or SES), during the period of the Itajaí study, the data were as follows:
Total Covid-19 deaths: 227
Fraudulent Study Used for Attacks
The authors of the original study have a long history in science and impeccable reputations. Lucy Kerr, the lead author, is the daughter of the late Warwick Stevam Kerr, and she deeply values his legacy. Warwick was the Scientific Director of FAPESP, served as the president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science, and received the Order of Scientific Merit in the Grand Cross category. Other authors include Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, a researcher with several COVID-19 studies, Dr. Fernando Baldi, a professor at the São Paulo State University (UNESP), Dr. Pierre Kory, an American medical professor, and Dr. Jennifer A. Hibberd from the University of Toronto, among others.
Following the publication of the reanalysis with fraudulent data, the attacks on the authors’ reputations turned defamatory. “There are people who prefer to keep believing in charlatans,” said Chloé Pinheiro, a journalist from Veja, one of Brazil’s major magazines.
Leandro Tessler, a professor at Unicamp, who represents the respected university in classifying true or false news on the internet and has admitted to not reading studies on cheap, generic, and unpatented treatments that he criticized, claimed that the original positive study had “cooked data.” Furthermore, Leandro criticized the journal’s quality by saying, “It’s something for Cureus.”
“Statistical trickery,” said Julio Ponce, a doctor in epidemiology and host of the podcast “Escuta a Ciência,” in response to the positive results of the original study.
Isaac Schrarstzhaupt, coordinator of the Rede Análise, criticized the quality of the Cureus journal. He stated that the original publication falls among the “lesser journals,” and he phrased it this way “to avoid using other terms.“
Original Authors Always Prioritized Transparency
The authors of the original study on ivermectin in Itajaí, responding to a call from the BMJ – British Medical Journal, which requested the publication of public data from studies on medications and vaccines, decided to make their raw data available for reanalysis.
This action was highly praised. “It’s excellent that they have released their data anonymously. They have true confidence in the results of their analyses. This is how good science is carried out,” stated Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at Yale University, USA, emphasizing that patients’ personal data had been preserved.
Previously, the scientific community had speculated that the authors would not make their data available.
The doctor has been attacking the authors for some time
Ana Carolina, one of the authors of the study, has been attacking Dr. Flavio Cadegiani for some time. He is also the author of other studies involving different medications against Covid-19, such as those involving proxalutamide. She claims that those researches are a “hoax.” Regarding the study she chose to reanalyze now, inserting fraudulent data, Ana Carolina had already committed in early 2022 to disqualify it. She referred to it as an “international embarrassment” at the time and used quotation marks to refer to the researchers, seemingly implying doubt about their work.
“They had already decided that ivermectin doesn’t work. So, they tried – and made a great effort – to find calculations that ‘fit’ their pre-established conclusion. This is the exact opposite of what science is, which involves accepting results whether they contradict or support the hypothesis. In their quest to find the desired data, they most likely forgot to look at their own analyses – and even worse, at basic numbers. Furthermore, it seems to me that they didn’t quite understand the study, as I couldn’t find analyses related to rates derived from infections, matched with Propensity Score Matching,” stated Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, one of the authors of the Itajaí study.
“The most important thing is that this ‘study,’ by demonstrating its inability to invalidate us, has only reinforced our findings, and for that, we cannot help but be grateful,” he added.
MPV Comment
Scientific fraud is presenting unverified data as if it were official. And this wasn’t a small error. It was the central data point used to generate the result. It’s not a minor mistake that wouldn’t affect the studied outcomes. In order for the authors to attack the study and arrive at the conclusion of inefficacy, they needed to increase the number of deaths.
All those who subsequently attacked, even labeling the authors as “charlatans,” supposedly had the capacity and training to spot the fraudulent numbers. They are doctors, professors, epidemiologists, and data scientists. They either didn’t see it or feigned ignorance.
So far, all the scientific frauds published during the pandemic have targeted inexpensive, generic, and unpatented medications, or they were frauds promoting expensive and patented drugs. Surely, this is just a coincidence.
This is the second time the Itajaí study has been attacked without valid scientific arguments. In June 2022, the USP – University of São Paulo journal attacked it, even spreading false information. Our analysis can be read here: “COVID-19: USP Journal Lies and Distorts Science to Attack Ivermectin. Read the full analysis.” (portuguese).
We, at MPV (Médicos pela Vida) – Doctors for Life, are grateful for the collaboration of Professor Daniel Tausk from USP, for compiling data from official databases. His collaboration was essential for the report. Additionally, we thank the French researcher Massimaux, who prefers to remain anonymous on Twitter, for quickly pointing out fraudulent data. According to him, it was a “sanity check.” It didn’t pass.
Sources
Data from OpendataSUS
Data from Brasil.IO
Epidemiological Bulletin of Itajaí
London City Hall Tries to Put Pressure on Scientists Who Doubted Climate Policy – Report
Sputnik – 20.08.2023
London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office tried to “silence” scientists who called into question the effectiveness of the ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) policy promoted by the head of the city, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.
Shirley Rodrigues, the London Mayor’s deputy for environment and energy, told in emails to Imperial College London professor Frank Kelly that she was “really disappointed” by scientists publishing results that cast doubt on the effectiveness of Ulez, the newspaper reported, adding that the corresponding complaint was sent in November 2021.
In particular, Rodrigues said that she was “deeply concerned” about the damage done to the credibility of the Mayor’s office and Ulez. In response, Kelly promised to write a Ulez-friendly report, the report added.
The report stated that since 2021, Kelly’s research group has received over 800,000 pounds ($1.018 million) from the mayor’s office. However, the publication by scientists led to a cooling in their relations with the London city hall. This, in turn, caused the reluctance of representatives of the scientific community to write any new materials about Ulez, the newspaper noted.
The Ulez initiative was first announced by then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson in 2015. Later, Khan launched an initiative that included, among other things, the installation of special traffic signs and cameras. Since 2020, the London authorities have had to spend over 850,000 pounds to rebuild infrastructure for the initiative, which has been repeatedly damaged by vandals.
Critics Slam JAMA Study Claiming 52 U.S. Doctors Spread COVID ‘Misinformation’
By Monica Dutcher | The Defender | August 18, 2023
Critics of a study published this week in JAMA concluding 52 doctors from across the U.S., propagated “COVID-19 misinformation about vaccines, treatments, and masks on large social media and other online platforms” called the study nothing more than “propaganda.”
“Ultimately, misinformation is just a weaponized term meaning nothing,” said Vinay Prasad, M.D., MPH. “People who use it are often completely ignorant of science and truth.
Prasad and others pointed to several flaws in the study, including the researchers’ definition of “misinformation,” the reported percentage of those with post-COVID-19 condition, or “long COVID” and the false claim that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine alone led to deaths — as deaths also have been linked to the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.
The CDC as the arbiter of COVID truths
The University of Massachusetts researchers who produced the study defined misinformation as “assertions unsupported by or contradicting U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] guidance on COVID-19 prevention and treatment during the period assessed or contradicting the existing state of scientific evidence for any topics not covered by the CDC.”
But in an Aug. 16 Substack article, Prasad — a hematologist-oncologist and professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco — challenged the notion of using the CDC as the litmus test for pandemic-related information.
CDC “made many errors,” Prasad wrote, citing a paper he published in March, documenting 25 statistical or numerical errors made by the CDC that he said raised questions about the agency’s “real or perceived systematic bias.”
It’s also well documented that the agency constantly changed its mask guidance and published conflicting information about vaccine effectiveness.
Dominique Brossard, professor and chair of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who studies medical misinformation, told USA Today, “The guidance kept on changing … Communication around the vaccine was horrible.”
Dr. Jeff Barke, an Orange County, California, primary care physician and founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors, called the CDC “a captured agency,” saying “it makes no sense whatsoever to recommend this toxic product [COVID-19 vaccines] to children.”
The CDC never came out with early treatment guidelines, Barke said. It was always about vaccines and masks. Barke recalled prescribing ivermectin to his patients and the pharmacists not filling it, asking him for the “diagnostic code” in order to proceed.
Barke told The Defender :
“The pharmacy never asks for a diagnostic code if you prescribe OxyContin for a patient. So it’s OK for a doctor to prescribe a Schedule II narcotic — no questions asked — but I can’t prescribe a product that has a proven safety record of 50 or 60 years.”
Barke is a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit to stop a California law that subjects the state’s doctors to discipline, including the suspension of their medical licenses, for sharing “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19 with their patients.
What exactly is ‘misinformation’?
The study’s authors identified four categories of “misinformation”:
- Claiming vaccines were unsafe and/or ineffective.
- Promoting unapproved medications for prevention or treatment.
- Disputing mask-wearing effectiveness.
- “Other misinformation,” to include conspiracy theories and the virus’s origins.
The authors reviewed COVID-19-related posts from doctors on the social media platforms Twitter (now X), Facebook, Instagram, Parler and YouTube between January 2021 and December 2022.
The researchers initially focused their Twitter review on America’s Frontline Doctors’ profile because of the organization’s “volume of COVID-19 misinformation in its tweets” and “large following.”
Physicians who followed America’s Frontline Doctors’ Twitter page were targeted on Twitter and other platforms.
Using the search terms “COVID,” “vaccine,” “doctor,” “physician,” “ineffective,” “pharmaceutical,” “ivermectin,” “hydroxychloroquine” and others, the authors of the study identified 52 doctors — 50 licensed and two unlicensed — who used social media to spread COVID-19 “misinformation.”
Results showed most of the 52 physicians (76.9%) who posted “misinformation” did so in more than one of the four categories identified. The majority posted vaccine “misinformation.”
Dr. Meryl Nass — who on Thursday sued the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine and its individual members, alleging the board violated her First Amendment rights and her rights under the Maine Constitution — called the JAMA study “a piece of propaganda.”
Nass said:
“There is no science. They [the authors] are trying to make it look like they’re doing something quantitative when they’re not. There was a lot known about the ineffectiveness of the vaccines at the time they were working on this paper.”
Unpacking the misinformation in the misinformation study
The University of Massachusetts researchers said doctors’ claims that myocarditis was common in children who received the vaccine and that the risks of myocarditis outweighed the risk of vaccination were “unfounded.”
But myocarditis “does outweigh the benefits of vaccinations for some ages — in men — and some doses,” said Prasad, citing an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
The paper, which focused on booster mandates at American universities, concluded the mandates were unethical because they could result in greater health risks, like booster-associated myocarditis, than benefits to healthy young adults.
Several other studies have shown either myocarditis deaths across all age groups, or elevated myocardial injury after vaccination.
The researchers also flagged any posts discussing pre-pandemic studies that definitively concluded masks do not prevent the spread of respiratory viral infections. And they deemed as misinformation any post that undermined the role of masks in slowing the spread of the infection and that pointed to rising cases in areas with mask mandates.
But a plethora of studies on mask ineffectiveness emerged during the time the Massachusetts team was conducting its research on physicians and “misinformation.”
There were also reports on “The Foegen effect” — the idea that deep re-inhalation of droplets and virions caught on facemasks might make COVID-19 infection more likely or more severe. German physician Dr. Zacharias Fögen introduced the concept in a study that concluded: “mask use might pose a yet unknown threat to the user instead of protecting them, making mask mandates a debatable epidemiologic intervention.”
“The totality of the evidence to date shows no benefit from community mask wearing,” said Prasad, who pointed to Cochrane’s multiple analyses.
According to the JAMA study, doctors who said the COVID-19 vaccines were ineffective at preventing COVID-19 spread or that the virus originated in a lab in China were propagators of misinformation.
Yet plenty of data show the vaccines did not prevent transmission, and scientists even testified to evidence that COVID-19 could have resulted from controversial gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In the wake of the pandemic, multiple organizations have published guidelines on “medical misinformation” — including YouTube and the American Medical Association (AMA).
Last June, the AMA adopted a new policy to limit medical disinformation, including ensuring that medical licensing boards can take disciplinary action against health professionals who spread health-related disinformation.
In California, however, a judge ruled in January that the state does not have the power to penalize doctors who spread “misinformation” or “disinformation.”
“COVID-19 is a quickly evolving area of science that in many aspects eludes consensus,” the judge decided.
Monica Dutcher is a Maryland-based senior reporter for The Defender.
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.
Can You Overdose on Ivermectin? Dr. Pierre Kory’s Answer Will Shock You
The Vigilant Fox | Vigilant News | August 17, 2023
“Of all the harmful misinformation spread over the past couple of years, one of the most disturbing false narratives was targeted at the Nobel-Prize-winning, human medicine ivermectin,” expressed filmmaker Mikki Willis in his ground-breaking documentary titled, Ivermectin: The Truth.
Ivermectin is “one of the safest and most effective medicines of this era. A medicine that, according to the numerous top scientists I’ve interviewed … could have ended the pandemic before it began.”
But Ivermectin is “horse dewormer,” the media said. “It could put you in a coma.” “It can kill you,” pundits warned.
But is this actually true?
Popular podcaster Greg Hunter, AKA USA Watchdog, asked Dr. Pierre Kory, one of the world’s leading experts on Ivermectin, straight-up, “Can I OD (overdose) on Ivermectin if I get two or three times the [standard] dose. Can I kill myself?”
“Let me answer scientifically. So there is a world-famous toxicologist named Jacques Descotes, and he’s French. And two years ago, he was commissioned to do a scoping review of the entire data on the safety of Ivermectin in its history. And his conclusion after doing this comprehensive review is that he does not believe that there has been one single case of anyone dying from an Ivermectin overdose.”
Prof. Jacques Descotes: Image – Academica.edu
“Oh, Lord,” reacted Greg Hunter. “How many pills have been given worldwide? I heard 4 billion, but it must be more than that.”
“Over 4 billion,” Dr. Kory confirmed. “Now, people have died where the deaths were reported as caused by Ivermectin. But when he [Prof. Jacques Descotes] reviewed those cases, he didn’t think those arguments [were] credible.”
Let’s dive deeper into Prof. Descotes’ analysis.
But first, a quick look at his impressive credentials. “Pr. Jacques Descotes, MD, PharmD, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Claude Bernard University of Lyon (France), [is] a world-known toxicologist with a 40-year track [record] as an independent consultant for the pharmaceutical industry as well as an advisor to regulatory bodies worldwide,” BusinessWire wrote.
In March 2021, he conducted a review of Ivermectin’s safety profile based on over 350 articles – plus accessible web sources. Here are his conclusions:
“Ivermectin has been administered orally to hundreds of millions of people throughout the world in the past three decades. The assessment of reported adverse events temporally associated with Ivermectin exposure shows that Ivermectin-induced adverse effects have so far been infrequent and usually mild to moderate.
“It is noteworthy that no deaths have seemingly ever been reported after an accidental or suicidal overdose of Ivermectin. No greater toxicity of Ivermectin has been substantiated in elderly people despite repeated assertions that an ageing blood-brain barrier might lead to increased Ivermectin toxicity level. The positive clinical experience accumulated with Ivermectin administration led many medical experts to break away from early adamant contra-indications in pregnant women. Finally, several national pharmacovigilance networks around the world released information and opinions to ascertain Ivermectin safety in human subjects. So far, there are no critical safety limitations to Ivermectin prescription in current indications.
I also want to point out that no severe adverse event has been reported in dozens of completed or ongoing studies involving thousands of participants worldwide to evaluate the efficacy of Ivermectin against COVID-19.”
“In order to overdose from Ivermectin, you have to take either a hundred or a thousand times the standard dose,” declared Dr. Kory.
“And there have been accidental poisonings where people have taken large amounts. But you know what happens every time? When they take these massive amounts of Ivermectin, it tends to affect them neurologically. They’ll get confused. They might be stumbling — uncoordinated. They go to the hospital, and there’s no treatment required. But within days, the patients return to normal. So, there’s been no life-ending injuries. No deaths reported with Ivermectin. So, that shows you why it’s one of the safest drugs in history, even at massive overdoses.
Greg Hunter’s full interview with Dr. Pierre Kory is available to watch.
Medical Board Chief who wanted Doctors delicensed for ‘misinformation’ in bed with PR firm tied to CDC, Pfizer, Moderna
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 18, 2023
The head of a national medical organization who publicly called for doctors to lose their licenses unless they supported government narratives on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines concealed his relationship with a public relations firm whose client list also included Pfizer, Moderna and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Dr. Richard Baron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is a client of Weber Shandwick, investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker reported on Wednesday.
In late 2021, Baron publicly pushed for doctors who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19 and the vaccines to lose their license and certification. Baron said then that “putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic.”
Weber, the world’s second-largest PR firm, has branded its team as “misinformation and disinformation” experts and says it provides clients with services to help manage any perceived threats posed by spreaders of such information.
The firm has organized conference panels on “medical misinformation” in which Baron participated.
Last year, Baron partnered with Weber Shandwick to propose a South by Southwest (SXSW) panel titled “When Doctors Prescribe Misinformation.” The proposal was subsequently accepted and the panel took place at SXSW in Austin, Texas, on March 13.
According to Thacker, “Weber Shandwick’s panel featuring Dr. Baron has been widely promoted by the PR firm’s employees,” including Sarah Mahoney, executive vice president, Healthcare Communications, Strategy & Planning for Weber Shandwick, who in a LinkedIn post, wrote she “can’t think of a more important topic right now.”
The CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) in September 2020 awarded Weber a $50 million contract “to promote the vaccination of children, pregnant women and those at risk for flu and increase the general acceptance and use of vaccines,” according to the PR firm’s website.
Under the contract, Weber employees were embedded in the NCIRD to “communicate the risks and recommended actions for outbreaks and convey vaccine recommendations to healthcare providers,” according to Thacker.
Medicine has always been ‘in bed with Big Pharma’
Several doctors have faced disciplinary action by state medical boards for allegedly spreading “misinformation.” One of them is internist and biological warfare epidemiologist Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of Children Health Defense’s scientific advisory committee.
Nass on Thursday sued the Maine Board of Licensure, which suspended her license in January 2022.
The board’s suspension arose from its adoption of a position statement promulgated by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) threatening physicians “who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” with suspension or revocation of their medical license.
In 2021, ABIM and FSMB collaborated to create the statement used to discipline Nass.
Nass told The Defender that in order to get certified by organizations like ABIM, there are several requirements, primarily related to demonstrating competence in one’s field of specialization, including completing a residency, being certified by the residency director, and paying for and passing the board examinations.
Nass told The Defender that in order to get certified by organizations like ABIM, there are several requirements. She explained:
“You complete a medical residency in your field of specialization. Your residency director certifies your competence and moral character, and you must pay for and pass your board examination to demonstrate your command of your specialty.
“When you’ve paid them for board certification and successfully completed all the requirements, how can they change the rules 20 or 50 years later and say, ‘we’re going to decertify you now because we don’t like your viewpoint?’
“There was nothing in any documentation from the Board of Internal Medicine about misinformation, or any other standards that the board can impose apart from competency to practice when it issued certifications.”
Dr. Richard Eggleston, a retired ophthalmologist in Clarkston, Washington, also faces disciplinary action — by the Washington Medical Commission — arising from articles he published in a local newspaper in 2021, questioning the official narrative and medical advice related to COVID-19.
Doctors aren’t being targeted exclusively for spreading “misinformation” — some, like Dr. Mary Kelly Sutton, an integrative physician, were targeted for their less-than-100% support for COVID-19 vaccines.
Last month, the Massachusetts medical board revoked Sutton’s medical license, claiming she improperly exempted eight children from required school vaccinations. This came a year after California also revoked Sutton’s medical license.
Sutton told The Defender, “The voice of medicine today is determined by the marketing wisdom of Madison Avenue, not by what is sound information from scientific research.”
Sutton said the whole practice of medicine rests on sharing and providing information necessary for informed decisions and consent. When specialty boards issue vague accusations, they engage in “harassment,” and an “egregious overreach of power” and are obstructing the practice of medicine.
A California law aimed at punishing doctors for providing “misinformation” to their patients is now in “legal limbo” following conflicting rulings in state courts earlier this year, which could affect Sutton’s and other California doctors’ cases going through the courts.
This trail of evidence demonstrates medical boards are not simply acting on their own authority but in collusion with state governments, federal agencies and private companies.
“There’s no one who is a ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ expert whose opinion does not align with the government and with the corporations,” Thacker told The Defender. “That’s what makes them an ‘expert.’”
“What’s always been true is that medicine has been in bed with Big Pharma,” he added. “It’s now becoming a lot more transparent. These relationships are much more transparent.”
‘A very political attempt to shut down people from having alternative viewpoints’
According to Thacker, Baron began his “crusade for the biopharmaceutical industry” in September 2021. In a post for ABIM’s blog, Baron said, “I want to state unequivocally that ABIM can and does take action, independent of state licensing boards, to remove certification from physicians for unprofessional and unethical behavior.”
For Thacker, Baron’s concern about “misinformation” was first triggered when physicians spoke out against COVID-19 vaccine safety, efficacy and side effects. “These are the same concerns held by Weber Shandwick, who Pfizer and Moderna are paying big buck[s] to promote their vaccines,” he said.
“Baron’s relationship with Weber Shandwick was not disclosed” by JAMA, Thacker said, “nor in an accompanying viewpoint Baron wrote for JAMA.”
After an inquiry by Thacker, JAMA’s editor-in-chief, Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, said, “We initiated our internal investigation earlier this week, in accordance with our standard processes for allegations of non-disclosure of conflicts.”
“It is notable that Baron has done his best to mislead the public and other physicians about what he is doing,” Nass said. “He claims the ABIM is trying to ‘protect the legitimacy of medical expertise’ rather than censoring viewpoints it does not like.”
Nass said Baron “conjures up examples of what the board might censure.” She pointed to a Feb. 23, 2023, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article Baron co-authored with attorney Carl J. Coleman, which stated:
“When a licensed physician insists that viruses don’t cause disease or that COVID-19 vaccines magnetize people or connect them to cell towers, professional bodies must be able to take action in support of fact and evidence based practice.”
“Yet this is a fabrication,” Nass said, adding:
“Instead, Dr. Baron, who earns about $1.2 million yearly from the ABIM and the ABIM Foundation, has decertified Drs. Peter McCullough, Paul Marik and Pierre Kory — all highly celebrated, published and esteemed doctors in their fields.
“None of them have uttered any mumbo-jumbo about cell towers, magnetism or a non-viral etiology for COVID-19. All have had their board certifications revoked for the viewpoints they expressed — viewpoints that are supported by a preponderance of the medical literature.”
In a January 2022 article for Health Affairs, Coleman wrote, “Licensing boards are state agencies subject to the First Amendment, and as such they are limited in their ability to penalize physicians based on the content of their speech.”
Yet, a 2022 NEJM article co-authored by Baron argued that while “Differences of opinion in medicine are necessary for progress … there are some opinions that have been so thoroughly repudiated by existing evidence as to be considered definitively wrong.”
‘All this money is sloshing around now for misinformation research’
According to Thacker, “PR firms are now moving into the ‘disinformation’ space after decades of deceit on behalf of multiple industries,” with Weber Shandwick having “expanded into the disinformation space in late 2021,” promoting tactics that help “brands combat misinformation and disinformation that may implicate them.”
Speaking to Thacker, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, director of bioethics at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said, “The ABIM is clearly part of this ‘medical misinformation’ push, which is orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies and their PR allies” and which serves “the interests of Big Pharma.”
Remarking on the presence of a “medical misinformation” panel at SXSW, long known as a music, film and technology festival, Thacker told The Defender, “Anyone and everyone is getting involved in ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’”
“Baron has given a TED Talk, for instance. Why is TED Talks involved in this?” he asked.
In 2019 Baron delivered a talk at TEDx Chicago titled, “Please Don’t Confuse Your Google Search with My Medical Degree.”
For Thacker, the answer relates to financial interests. “All this money is sloshing around now for ‘misinformation’ research. Anyone can hop up and down saying ‘I’m an expert on misinformation and disinformation, get me a grant, get me on a panel,’” he said.
Weber embedded staffers within the CDC while representing Pfizer, Moderna
Thacker wrote that prior to discovering Baron’s ties to Weber Shandwick, he had confirmed the PR firm’s ties to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna.
These ties did not prevent the CDC from awarding the $50 million contract to Weber Shandwick in September 2020 to push vaccines. The Daily Mail subsequently reported Thacker’s findings.
Medical Marketing and Media reported “Weber’s duties include providing 10 on-site health communications staffers, seven health comms specialists, two health research specialists and one social media specialist” to NCIRD, as well as “generating story ideas, distributing articles and conducting outreach to news, media and entertainment organizations.”
In October 2020, a blog post by Stacy Montejo, senior vice president at Weber Shandwick, disclosed that Pfizer is one of the firm’s clients. A month later, with Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine awaiting Emergency Use Authorization, the company hired Weber Shandwick to handle the vaccine’s publicity, according to PR Week.
Such relationships have continued to the present. In June, Moderna announced a new communications strategy “to further educate the world about Moderna’s mRNA technology and its promise to transform the future of human health.”
The effort is led by Laura Schoen, “who is sometimes titled president of global healthcare at Weber Shandwick, and other times chief healthcare officer at IPG DXTRA, Weber Shandwick’s parent company,” Thacker wrote.
Lucy Rieck, a Weber Shandwick employee, previously publicly tweeted support for a panel Moderna proposed for this year’s SXSW, titled “COVID, Monkeypox, Disease X, What’s Next?” That proposal does not appear to have been accepted for presentation.
Conflicts of interest between Weber Shandwick, the CDC and NCIRD, and Pfizer and Moderna do not appear to have been disclosed.
In October 2022, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sent a letter to the CDC inquiring about its relationship with Weber Shandwick and requesting “information regarding the nature of Weber’s work for the NCIRD.” It’s unclear whether the CDC complied with the request.
Todd S. Richardson, one of the attorneys representing Eggleston, told The Defender “While it is certainly understandable that governmental agencies will hire PR firms to help them get their message out … it becomes of real concern to me when those agencies, or people working within the agencies, try to silence those who disagree.”
According to Thacker, the web of relationships between Weber Shandwick doesn’t just extend to Big Pharma companies, the CDC and its agencies, or to doctors such as Baron. Academics such as Brown University’s Claire Wardle, Ph.D., a key figure in the “misinformation research” space, have participated in some of the firm’s events.
Wardle, a professor of the practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at Brown University who has no scientific or medical credentials, participated in an online meeting organized by Weber Shandwick in October 2020 to discuss “election misinformation.”
Subsequently, Wardle played a key advisory role in the Biden administration, federal agencies, social media platforms and Ivy League institutions as they sought to censor content that ran counter to the government’s COVID-19 narrative.
According to Thacker, she “helped organize many of today’s campus disinformation groups … with funding from Google” and later sent Twitter a report aimed at countering the “growing threat of disinformation to trust in COVID-19 vaccines.”
Thacker said the biopharmaceutical industry is “the smartest at putting out disinformation. What other industry has bought off the medical community and the science community?” he asked. “They bought off the researchers, the government, the academic journals.”
Thacker said he believes much of what is labeled “misinformation” in medicine and academic research “is really just corporate PR,” and that “Congress needs to take a harder look at funding for ‘misinformation research.’“
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.
“There Is No Climate Crisis”… 1600 Scientists Worldwide, Nobel Prize Laureate Sign Declaration
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | August 15, 2023
1609 signatories recently signed a declaration that states there is no climate crisis, thus casting doubt over man’s alleged role in climate change and extreme weather.
Their doubt is based on data showing that natural factors are very much at play, the warming is slower than predicted, the models are unreliable, that CO2 has great benefits and weather disasters have not increased. The media hysteria and weather hype are not supported by data.
Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.
Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming
The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.
Warming is far slower than predicted
The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, they also ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.
CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.
Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are.”
Growing skepticism
Nobel Laureate in Physics Dr John F. Clauser also signed the manifesto.
The message is clear: there is no climate crisis. The number of critical scientists who no longer submit to the dogma of the alleged man-made climate catastrophe is growing.
Iran Commences Construction of Most Advanced-Ever Satellites
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.08.2023
A fledgling space power with some of the best-developed space-based capabilities in the Muslim World, Iran’s space program has successfully launched over a dozen civilian and military satellites, created cosmodromes and built a range of homegrown space rockets using knowhow gained in the military sphere.
Iran has formally announced the start of design and construction work on two of its latest generation earth-imaging satellites.
“We had previously made promises regarding the construction of high-precision observation satellites, and today I proudly announce that the Iranian Space Agency has taken a significant step in designing and building domestic high-precision observation satellites. In this regard, the design and construction of two important projects, named Pars 2 and Pars 3, have officially commenced,” Iranian Space Agency chief Hossein Salariyeh told a media event Thursday.
The Pars 2 “is essentially a project to build an observation satellite with 4-meter imaging precision. The process of design and construction has begun for this satellite,” Salariyeh explained. As for the Pars 3, its development will provide Iran with its “most modern and highly accurate” imaging capabilities ever, with “an imaging precision of approximately 2 meters.”
The Pars series (lit. ‘Persia’ or ‘Iran’ in Persian) is one of Iran’s most ambitious satellite projects to date, with the remote-sensing spacecraft to be fitted with high-resolution earth imaging capabilities which can be used in agriculture, natural resource management, environmental and border monitoring, water sciences and mining.
Iran has one of the most advanced home-grown space programs in the Middle East, and in 2009 became the first Muslim nation to independently launch a satellite into orbit. The Iranian Space Agency has also engaged in deep cooperation with Russia and China, engaging in cooperative joint research programs, and piggybacking spacecraft on Soyuz rockets from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Last year, a Russian rocket helped launch the Khayyam, a 600 kg remote sensing satellite which became fully operational and started its remote sensing activities last month.
Speaking at Thursday’s event, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi hailed the progress reached in Iran’s space endeavors, and said the country, whose peaceful space ambitions were born after the victory of the 1979 Revolution, is already reaping economic benefits from its space program.
Home to one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations, Iran has gifted the world with many of its earliest space scholars, including mathematicians and astronomers Omar Khayyam, Al-Khwarizmi, and Ibn al-Haytham. After the Muslim conquest of Persia during the 7th century, Ancient Persian astronomy became intermeshed with that of the wider medieval Islamic World, with Persian scholars contributing heavily to the creation of advanced mathematical formulas to calculate the movement of the Sun and planets in our solar system and the positions of various heavenly bodies. Persian contributions to ancient Islamic astronomical sciences helped spark the broader flourishing of the sciences in the Islamic World from the 8th through 13th centuries.
Modern Iran’s space-based efforts have been subject to derision by some US officials, with now former United States Space Command chief John Raymond once ridiculing the Islamic Republic’s Noor (‘Light’) satellite as a “tumbling webcam in space” unlikely to provide any useful intel. Several months later, the Noor, operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Command, sent back detailed snapshots of Al-Udeid Airbase, largest US military facility in the Persian Gulf region.
Iran repeated the feat in 2022, with the Noor-2 sending back a panoramic image centered on the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
Dr. Meryl Nass sues Maine Medical Board over suspension, alleges Board violated her first amendment rights
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 17, 2023
Dr. Meryl Nass today filed suit against the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine and its individual members, alleging the board violated her First Amendment rights and her rights under the Maine Constitution.
The complaint alleges the board engaged in retaliatory conduct against Nass, a practicing internal medicine physician and member of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientific advisory board, when the board suspended her medical license for publicly expressing her dissenting views on official COVID-19 policies, the COVID-19 vaccine and alternative treatments.
“Because she was outspoken, the board targeted Dr. Nass as someone to silence,” her attorney, Gene Libby told The Defender.
In fall 2021, the board issued a position statement, quoted in the complaint, stating that licensees could face disciplinary action if they “generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation.”
In October 2021, soon after the statement was issued, the board received a complaint alleging Nass was spreading misinformation online and soon after launched an investigation.
The board suspended Nass’ medical license on Jan. 12, 2022, without a hearing, accusing her of engaging in “unprofessional conduct” by spreading “misinformation about COVID-19.”
It also accused her of improperly prescribing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for three patients for off-label uses of those drugs.
The board suspended Nass’ license and ordered a neuropsychological evaluation, implying she was mentally impaired or a substance abuser and incompetent to practice medicine.
“There were no grounds to order a mental health examination,” Libby said. “That was simply a means to communicate to the public that there was something wrong with Dr. Nass, to discredit her and tarnish her reputation.”
After Nass moved to have the board dismiss its complaint against her, alleging First Amendment violations, the board on Sept. 26, 2022, withdrew its accusations of “misinformation”, just prior to her first hearing date, Oct. 11, 2022.
The board’s case now rests on Nass’ alleged non-adherence to the medical “standard of care” as it pertained to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 and on the alleged “record-keeping” issues.
Nass told The Defender :
“The two primary complaints against me were that my statements were misleading and that I was prescribing drugs off-label. My speech — which I should note, was not simply opinion, it was an educated opinion developed after consulting the medical literature — is protected by the First Amendment.
“And prescribing drugs off-label is a perfectly legal thing to do, as explicitly stated on the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] website. Somewhere between 20-50% of drugs are prescribed off-label. The lawyers on the board staff know all of this. It’s their job to know the law with respect to medicine.
“They didn’t do this because they thought I had committed some kind of violation. They did it because they thought I’m older and I wouldn’t have the money to challenge them and so they could get away with it — they thought they could turn me into a poster child to scare all the doctors in the country.
“It is part of this broader attempt by the U.S. government and governments across the world to criminalize dissent by criminalizing so-called ‘misinformation.’”
Libby said the remaining allegations against Dr. Nass “are simply a pretext to discipline her. Because now, from an institutional standpoint, the board has to do something. She’s been under suspension for 19 months, which is the longest suspension that I’m aware of for any physician in the state.”
The board refused to schedule hearings on Nass’ suspension on consecutive days. Instead, it has held one day of hearings every other month. There have been six days of hearings so far over 10 months — and Nass’ license has been suspended the entire time.
“This is fundamentally unfair to Dr. Nass, but she’s within the grip of an institution that doesn’t want her speaking out,” Libby said.
In her lawsuit, Nass alleges the board and its members used their power to “crush dissenting views and chill disfavored speech.”
Nass is asking the court for declaratory relief, for an injunction to stop the board from continuing to retaliate against her and for monetary damages and legal fees.
CHD is providing financial and legal resources to Nass’ Maine-based legal team.
CHD President Mary Holland told The Defender :
“CHD is proud to support Dr. Nass’ lawsuit against the Maine medical board and its individual members.
“The board and its members have deprived Dr. Nass of her license and livelihood for over a year with no basis whatsoever. This kind of censorship, intimidation and punishment of doctors of conscience must stop.
“People need independent, thoughtful, caring physicians like Dr. Nass to be honored, not hounded as the board has done.
“I am pleased to see this case move forward in the courts in the interests of justice, for Dr. Nass, her patients and the broader society.”
Board provided resources to ‘combat spread of vaccine misinformation’
The Maine board’s Fall 2021 position statement expressed its support for a statement by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) — a private organization with no regulatory authority — which threatened physicians “who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” with suspension or revocation of their medical license.
According to the statement, physicians have a high degree of public trust and therefore a responsibility to “share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health.”
The Maine board’s statement endorsed the FSMB statement, encouraged physicians to address misinformation when encountered, directed physicians to use circulated materials from the American Medical Association (AMA) and said that questioning the COVID-19 vaccine qualifies as “misinformation,” according to the complaint.
The AMA materials provide scripts, talking points and strategies for “combating the spread of vaccine misinformation.”
The Maine board’s chair, Dr. Maroulla Gleaton, is also an FSMB director.
Nass is a widely recognized expert on the anthrax vaccine and biological warfare. She testified before Congress six times and was quoted in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
She has also been a prominent critic of governmental handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the suppression of effective treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and the safety and risks of the vaccine — all topics she has discussed in her Substack, on the radio, in interviews and elsewhere.
But, the complaint notes, her positions have been in conflict with those asserted in the position statement and the resources it highlights as “supporting the fight against COVID-19 misinformation.”
This was merely an attempt by the board to justify its decision to immediately suspend Nass and to intimidate her, the complaint alleges.
Board’s only concern was ‘silencing’ Nass and ‘branding her as crazy’
When Nass questioned the board’s authority to investigate a complaint unrelated to the practice of medicine and instead “focused entirely on a statement made in her private life,” the board responded, on Oct. 14, 2021, that she was engaged in “alleged unprofessional conduct” by provisioning “misleading and/or inaccurate” information.
In the January board meeting where the board decided to suspend her license, the conversation focused on Nass’ “unprofessional conduct due to the spreading of misinformation about COVID-19.”
The board also cited three matters related to treating patients, alleging Nass improperly diagnosed a patient “over the phone,” that she had provided misinformation to a pharmacist about why she was prescribing ivermectin for a patient, and that she had improperly issued another prescription.
On Sept. 7, 2022, Nass moved to dismiss the complaint, alleging the board was violating her First Amendment rights.
The board responded by withdrawing all charges based on her speech, retaining only the charges related to the treatment of three patients.
Libby told The Defender that through the entire investigation and hearings, the board never even spoke to the three patients. It did not inform them their medical records had been subpoenaed, or ask them about their treatment by Dr. Nass.
“Yet the remaining disciplinary charges are all predicated on Dr. Nass’ consultation with and advice to these patients.”
Libby called the patients to testify in Nass’ hearings. They all made “glowing comments” about her availability, her medical advice and her handling of their cases and expressed anger that Nass was being targeted by the board for their cases.
Libby said he interpreted this to indicate the board’s singular focus was not to ensure patient well-being, but rather “silencing Dr. Nass and attempting to brand her as crazy.”
According to the complaint, the board’s animus against Nass is also demonstrated by the fact that it is flouting its own rules for selecting and paying expert witnesses.
Board guidelines stipulate that witnesses can be paid a maximum of $125/hour for preparation and $175/hour for testimony and that the witnesses should have the same specialty as the practitioner in question and be licensed to practice in Maine.
But the board is paying Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician from Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, $500/hour to testify.
And board member Gleaton, who has conflicts of interest because of her position as FSMB director and has acted in openly mocking ways, has refused to recuse herself.
The next medical board hearing is set for mid-September.
But in the meantime, Libby said “The actions of the board are so outrageous, they need to be acted on legally.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
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From the Archives
The Great Recycling Scam
By Dr. Vernon Coleman – 21st Century Wire – September 2, 2022
Recycling was introduced, worldwide, as a tool to teach citizens to become compliant.
Forcing citizens to sort their rubbish into up to nine separate bags or boxes every week had absolutely nothing to do with ‘saving the planet’ and everything to do with teaching citizens (through a mixture of fines and shame) to behave ‘responsibly’ i.e. to do as they were told without looking too closely at the rationale of what they were being told to do.
The recycling never had anything to do with protecting the planet, of course. Most of the rubbish sorted, washed and collected in the UK was taken abroad, by lorry or ship or train, and burnt or dumped. It was, quite simply, impractical and not cost effective to recycle the material that had been collected. And, of course, collecting the sorted rubbish involved massive costs in terms of cash and pollution.
Today, the recycling business has reached an apogee of lunacy. Councils introduce ever more complex rules and fees. They refuse to take away much of the waste that is collected. And those wanting to take their rubbish to a ‘recycling’ centre will probably have to make an appointment and answer a host of questions.
It is no surprise that fly-tipping has become a major problem. The biggest causes of plastic in the sea are dumped fishing gear and plastic waste (much of it officially designated as recycled) which has been dumped by ships.
The good news, however, is that in Britain, recycling rates are falling. More and more people have become aware that the whole recycling movement was just another piece of manipulative trickery.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
- Beyond Netanyahu: what Israel’s election means for Palestinians
- Lithuania plans universal conscription
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Ukraine News
- Financial Times rejects Nordic demands to correct Putin call story – media
- The Case for Less Unity in Europe
- Ukraine expands minority rights under EU pressure – but Russians remain excluded
- Albania takes anti-riot crackdown cue from France
- The interest of the House of Rothschild in Ukraine
- Pentagon fires top military planner
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
