Gregg Semenza, a pediatrician and a professor of Genetic Science, is a prominent researcher. Prof. Semenza works at Johns Hopkins University, a premier scientific institution so important that it received $1,050,368,895 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (JHU played the most prominent role in the Covid pandemic response.)
Prof. Semenza made major discoveries regarding how cells adapt to oxygen availability. Those findings could potentially lead to curing cancer! So important was his work that he was awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine in 2019.
There was a small problem, however.
Seven of his studies were fake and were eventually retracted. Retraction Watch has the details. Even the pictures of mice used in the studies were photoshopped:
The authors have retracted this article as multiple image irregularities have been noted within this article, specifically: Figure 1A, upper panel (HIF-1a blot), lanes five and seven appear to be duplicates. Figure 6B, lower panel (b-actin blot), the first six lanes appear to be identical to Fig. 6G, lower panel (b-actin blot). Figure 3G, the image of the third mouse in the D10 Saline group is identical to the image of the third mouse in the D21 Digoxin group.
Here’s one retracted article and the retraction notice. I downloaded the image from that study and highlighted the mouse in question, which appears in two pictures but with different scan results.
The authors copied/pasted the mouse picture and overlaid different scan results on the two copies. So, they did not have the scientific measurements they claimed to have!
Other retractions expose similarly ridiculous scientific fraud, including fake Western blots and more.
This fraud was not perpetrated by an obscure researcher languishing at a third-rate institution. Quite to the contrary, Prof. Semenza is a world-renowned scientist, occupying a position at a premier facility favored by the major funder of science, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Prof. Semenza shares the honor of receiving a Nobel prize with other famed recipients, such as Barack Obama, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and António Egas Moniz, inventor oflobotomy and the winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in medicine.
Antonio Moniz, Inventor of Lobotomy
So, the world of Nobel prizes is very special!
In consolation, we at least know about this fraud, and Semenza’s articles in question were properly retracted. So the self-correcting scientific process worked as intended, at last.
Sadly, as we know, retractions do not always work in an evidence-based, scientific way. For example, many honest articles questioning Covid vaccines or masks were retracted under pressure from science funders.
I feel that my trust in scientists has been violated by “COVID science” and certain other new scientific developments, but I still like the science of the good kind. I have much less faith in Nobel Prizes, however.
“Vaccine hesitancy and the spread of misinformation on social media have been recognised by the World Health Organization as an urgent threat to public health, with potentially lethal consequences.”
Well that’s settled then. Being recognised by the unelected, pharma-funded, supranational organisation that is the WHO does not lend any credibility to the article’s claim.
They go on to say:
“US president Joe Biden concluded that misinformation on social media was “killing people”.
If this Biden quote is the best they can find to lend support to their hypothesis, it may be time for the authors to go back to the drawing board.
A final excerpt (we recommend reading the whole piece):
“Although doctors are typically among the most trusted professionals, during the covid-19 pandemic some medical credentials were used to peddle fake cures and outright misinformation about vaccination.”
Given the well-established, proven vaccine (in)efficacy, and the military grade coercion that was employed to get people to take them, it’s hard to know where to start in critiquing this particular sentence.
HART felt compelled to write a Rapid Response to the BMJ pointing out that there may in fact be a more pressing need to address the glaring holes in current vaccine trial methodologies, rather than ‘studying’ those raising valid questions.
HART Rapid Response (which unsurprisingly the BMJ chose not to publish):
Dear Editor,
Rather than working out rules for gold standard RCTs on how to reduce online misinformation and vaccine hesitancy, maybe the best thing would be to re-address the golden rules for RCTs of vaccines in the first place.
The Covid-19 vaccine trials provide a classic example of how to increase vaccine hesitancy.
Firstly, the clinical trials were commenced before any human pharmacokinetic and biodistribution studies of all the components were carried out let alone published.
Secondly, they allowed unblinding to take place and many of the control arm then received the vaccine, making the longer term safety assessment from the Phase 3 trials meaningless.
Thirdly they looked at mortality only from the disease in question rather than looking at all cause mortality.
Fourthly, they failed to provide raw anonymised data so that readers could check the results. The dangers of lack of transparency have been highlighted before.[1]
Fifthly, there was no clear separation of the authors from the drug company sponsors, which has its own dangers.[2]
Sixthly, the manufacturers required unlimited indemnity, which tends to make the public ask why.
Seventhly, many studies are underpowered. The children’s trials in particular were too small to elucidate safety – their efficacy was largely based on the concept of ‘immunobridging’.
Eighthly, use of saline placebo. Some vaccine trials used other unrelated vaccines as a control rather than a saline placebo, which is a problem if the comparator vaccine also has under-reported side effects.
It is time to return to proper independently conducted RCTs in which the trial organisers are genuinely in ‘equipoise’, previously the ethical basis for any trial. It is also time to ensure that ‘all cause’ morbidity/mortality are used as end points rather than allowing the investigators to decide whether an individual SAE was or was not related to the vaccine under investigation and use a double-blind placebo-controlled methodology with a minimum 12 month follow-up as recommended by the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA)[3]
Such an approach could go a long way to restore faith in the whole process of approvals.
Dr Rosamond Jones, retired consultant paediatrician
[1]Doshi, P. (2018). Pandemrix vaccine: why was the public not told of early warning signs? BMJ, 362:k3948. doi: 10.1136/bmj.k3948
[2]Jureidini J, McHenry L B. (2022).The illusion of evidence based medicine BMJ 2022; 376 :o702 doi:10.1136/bmj.o702
In 1928 scientist Alexander Fleming returned to his laboratory after a 2-week holiday. A petri dish of bacteria accidentally left on the lab bench, somehow became cross-contaminated with Penicillium notatum mould. Fleming noticed the mould inhibited the growth of the bacteria. This accidental discovery marked the dawn of the antibiotic era and a turning point in medical, and perhaps human history.
Recently, another accidental discovery has scientists wondering whether we have turned another corner in history.
The story begins with Kevin McKernan, a scientist with 25 years experience in the genomic field and a leading expert in sequencing methods for DNA and RNA. He has worked on the Human Genome Project and more recently in medicinal genomics involving DNA sequencing.
In the process of trying to sort out a sequencing problem, McKernan used anonymously sent, Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 bivalent vaccines to act as mRNA controls.
‘Somebody sent me these thinking, this is the perfect control… It should be pure. So, if you get this to work, you’ll sort out your mRNA sequencing problems,’ McKernan explains in a recent interview. ‘They were right about that. It did sort out our problems. But what we discovered in the process is that they weren’t pure mRNA. They actually had a lot of DNA in the background.’
McKernan was shocked, ‘It’s not what we were looking for… I had this hunch that the new modified nucleotides they have in the mRNA may have a higher error rate, and therefore we would see more mistakes in the mRNA. So, I knew we would have to sequence like a millionfold deep… over and over again to find these mistakes. When we did that DNA popped up and I thought “Oh, that’s a bigger problem. We have to focus on that.” … I kind of went into panic mode, realizing that I didn’t budget any time to look into this, and the world has to know about it.’
Let’s pause here and look at what we’re told about the Covid-19 mRNA injections. We’re assured:
The injections are safe. Meanwhile, adverse event reporting systems around the world record previously unseen rates of adverse events and injuries;
The injections areeffective. We would ask: Effective for what? Not stopping transmission. We’re not sure about preventing serious illness either evidenced by recent data and New South Wales Health reports which show a disproportionate number of hospital and ICU admissions amongst the vaccinated.
The injection materials stay at the injection site. Recently released documents obtained under FOI show the lipid nanoparticles become widely distributed – notably to the liver, spleen, adrenal glands, ovaries, and testes;
The injections won’t change your DNA.
Let’s look at that last one a little bit closer.
The Australian TGA states you can find reputable information about Covid-19 vaccines on their ‘Is it true’ section of the website. It is worth a look. In answer to the question ‘Can COVID-19 vaccines alter my DNA?’ the TGA is clear: ‘No, COVID-19 vaccines do not alter your DNA.’
They explain, ‘mRNA vaccines use a synthetic genetic code called RNA to give our cells instructions about how to make the coronavirus’ unique spike protein. When our body has made the protein encoded by the mRNA vaccine, it then recognises the spike protein as being foreign and launches an immune response against it. The RNA from the vaccine does not change or interact with our DNA in any way.’
Phew. Well, that’s ok then, right?
Possible routes for mRNA to convert to DNA (including a process known as reverse transcription) were discounted. Until the publication of an annoying little paper in 2022 by Alden et al, an in vitro study involving human liver cells which showed Pfizer’s mRNA was expressed as DNA within six hours.
At the time, this was assumed due to reverse transcription of the mRNA. However, in light of McKernan’s discovery, there’s a whole new possibility to consider. What if the vaccines already contained DNA? Then arguments about whether the mRNA could reverse transcribe into DNA become irrelevant.
Let’s return to McKernan and take a closer look at what he found. In addition to the expected mRNA, he also found mRNA fragments, other pieces of RNA, and two forms of DNA: linearised and circular. The significance of the circular – or plasmid – DNA is important. The plasmid DNA is the ‘complete recipe’ used to program bacterial cells to mass produce the mRNA. This DNA should not be there. Further investigation by McKernan showed the plasmid DNA contained in the vaccines was indeed viable and capable of transformation in bacterial cells.
So, the Pfizer and Moderna vials of bivalent vaccine that McKernan tested were contaminated with DNA. DNA encoding the spike gene and potentially capable of inserting into the genome of an organism.
The question is, does this DNA have the potential to become part of the genome of a human organism and if so what might be the consequences? This would have required looking at ‘genotoxicity,’ something Australia’s TGA says the (Pfizer) injections were not tested for, and the TGA did not ask for.
In case you are wondering, there are strict guidelines about DNA contamination levels in mRNA products. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and FDA stated limits are 330 nanograms of DNA per milligram of RNA. In Australia, the TGA says it should be no more than 10 nanograms per dose.
(It’s unclear how these limits were decided. Personally, we’d be hoping for zero DNA in our mRNA injections.)
This means that DNA should not be more than 0.033 per cent of the total nucleic acids in the dose. But McKernan’s analysis demonstrated DNA contamination of up to 35 percent in the bivalent injection samples. This is up to 1,000 times higher than deemed to be ‘acceptable’ by the regulating authorities.
Next, McKernan analysed the monovalent (earlier) injections. The Pfizer monovalent injections were also found to be contaminated with DNA, though not as much. The levels of DNA in the Pfizer monovalent injections were 18-70 times higher than the EMA limit.
So, what happens now?
These results are in the process of being further verified by the scientific community. In the essence of speed, McKernan published his findings and methods publicly on Substack and online. He explains, ‘The publication system, during the pandemic, is politicised. So, that’s probably not going to get the word out very quickly. I had to do my best to document this all and make the data public.’
If McKernan’s findings are verified, the implications are serious. Widespread DNA contamination would bring into question the quality of the entire mRNA injection manufacturing process, safety systems, and regulatory oversight. In addition, DNA might not be the only contaminant.
This contamination discovery begs a question. What does Australia’s Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) know about the safety of these mRNA injections? And what discussions have occurred between the TGA and the OGTR regarding the safety of these injections?
Some of these questions are being asked and will hopefully get answers. Soon, we hope.
Another question weighs heavily. What does this ‘accidental discovery’ mean for those who’ve had the mRNA injections, in terms of their health, their offspring, and future of the human genome?
Scientists and genomics experts are shocked by the discovery. McKernan too, ‘I didn’t expect to find Pfizer’s entire blueprint for how they manufacture this thing sitting in the vial.’
Neither did we.
Dr Julie Sladden is a medical doctor and freelance writer with a passion for transparency in healthcare. Her op-eds have been published in both The Spectator Australia and The Daily Declaration. In 2022, she was elected as a Local Government Councillor for West Tamar in Tasmania.
Children ages 12 to 17 who received the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine face a heightened risk of heart inflammation, according to a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study.
But because the study only identified a safety signal for two heart conditions — myocarditis and pericarditis — in children “these results provide additional evidence for the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines in the pediatric population,” FDA researchers concluded.
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said he disagreed. “My concern is that these data represent a gross under-reporting of the frequency and severity of COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis,” McCullough told The Epoch Times.
“There have been > 200 papers in the peer-reviewed literature and over 100 fatal documented cases largely among young men, peak ages 18-24 years, some with autopsy-proven COVID-19 vaccine heart inflammation resulting in death,” McCullough added.
In the study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, FDA researchers examined health outcomes in more than 3 million children who received the Pfizer mRNA vaccine through mid-2022.
They found the number of cases of both myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, and pericarditis, inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart, were high enough to meet the criteria for a safety signal.
The researchers also found reports of myocarditis and pericarditis cases among vaccinated children ages 5 to 11, but not enough to trigger a safety signal, they said.
Conclusions ‘pretty ludicrous’ and ‘political,’ experts say
Norman Fenton, Ph.D., professor emeritus of risk at the Queen Mary University of London, called the claim that the results provide additional evidence that the vaccines are safe in children “pretty ludicrous.”
He said that conclusion didn’t make sense given that the signal was both strong and “likely underestimated given some obvious weaknesses of the study” and also that children of that age are at no risk from COVID-19 but at higher risk of getting COVID-19 if they are vaccinated.
Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, told The Defender the safety claim didn’t hold up because the study identified two safety signals. “The signal is what indicates they are not safe,” he said.
He said with previous children’s vaccines such as RotaShield, the first vaccine to prevent rotavirus gastroenteritis, about 100 vaccine-related cases of intussusception, or folding of the intestine, led to the conclusion that it was unsafe and it was withdrawn from the market. But with myocarditis in young people, he said, “we’re at thousands,” and the cases are likely undercounted.
Experts question study’s methodology
The researchers reviewed medical records from healthcare claims filed in three commercial health insurance claims databases run by Optum, HealthCore and CVS Health.
They examined insurance claims made for different possible vaccine-related adverse events within a window of time following vaccination that varied for the different events studied.
They found 153 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis among children ages 12 to 17. The children sought care for their symptoms within seven days of vaccination on average.
The researchers’ study period began in December 2020, when the FDA authorized Pfizer’s vaccine for emergency use and ran through May or June 2022, depending on the database.
The FDA also monitored the databases for 18 other potential adverse events that included anaphylaxis, Bell’s palsy, Guillain-Barré syndrome hemorrhagic stroke and others, but the study reported that none of the other conditions met the criteria for a safety signal.
Some experts questioned the study’s methodology, noting that the risk windows were short given that some effects can take time to express themselves and that the signal threshold for some criteria was set so high they would have to occur at double the rate in the unvaccinated to be recognized as a signal.
They also said categories of outcomes were sometimes overly narrow, and some adverse events were not even considered.
“I think the idea that they look at only 20 very specific AEs [adverse events] then declare them safe upon not finding anything is very myopic,” Hebrew University lecturer Joshua Guetzkow, Ph.D., wrote in an email.
Experts also said the study didn’t account for the effects of the “healthy user bias,” where people who take up certain treatments tend to be healthier than people who don’t, usually related to socio-economic factors.
Research has shown that people who decide to get vaccinated tend to be healthier than people who don’t.
In this case, all of the people in the study were vaccinated, fully insured for the entire duration of the study and able to visit a doctor who maintained their continuous health records.
Milhoan added that prior to COVID-19, it wasn’t common practice for scientific papers to make public health acknowledgments at the end of the papers.
Previously, he said, researchers wouldn’t imply recommendations, they would just say, “This is what we found medically.” He added, “These public health claims aren’t scientific, they’re political.”
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.
No one has the courage and aptitude to lead Europe today, meaning there is no political leadership in the European Union, especially in the European Commission, said Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga at a Budapest conference on Thursday.
“In the European Union today, it is non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations and think tanks that tell Europe how to run Europe, according to the will of their own leaders,” she said.
“Recently, for asymmetric reasons, a crisis of confidence has arisen between the EU leadership and the Hungarian government. This is because the Hungarian government, unlike the EU institutions, says what it thinks and does what it says,” she added.
Varga said Europe is stumbling around the stage of history as a clumsy sideshow, drifting from crisis to crisis, and since the migration crisis, it has been trying to make policy in a way that is completely divorced from the real needs of its citizens. She said the institutional system also failed during the Covid crisis and then shot itself in the foot with sanctions against Russia after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
She warned that immigration is a crisis that still affects Europe and continues to cost the Hungarian budget heavily.
“At the same time, by defending Europe, we have to constantly fight the judgments and proceedings of the European Court of Justice,” she said. “Waiting for yet another slap in the face instead of any good deed, that is the fate of Hungary.”
Varga noted that during the coronavirus crisis, the EU made deals regarding vaccines, and yet those text messages have never been produced, referring to the murky case involving EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“We make no secret of the fact that we want to hold the functioning of the institutions in the European Union accountable in terms of the rule of law. Let’s talk about whether the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European institutions are respecting the rules, whether the rule of law is working in the institutions,” said the minister.
On the issue of the Hungarian EU presidency, the European Parliament has no say in this, the minister said, stressing that more than 10 years ago, a unanimous European Council decision had established the order of the member states, which can only be changed by unanimity. The presidency is not only a right but also an obligation, and the opposition will not achieve anything by such an attempt, but it could do enormous damage.
According to the minister, the European Parliament wants to block Hungary’s EU presidency precisely because it fears that Hungary will take stock of the dysfunctional state of EU institutions.
Due to the importance of the issue of Covid-19 vaccinations to society, PANDA calls on Lancet to retract a seminal paper that is demonstrably incorrect in its assumptions.
On June 23, 2022, the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases published an article by Watson et al. entitled Global Impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: a mathematical modelling study.[1] The authors of this paper “estimated that vaccinations prevented 14.4 million deaths from COVID-19 in 185 countries and territories between Dec 8, 2020 and Dec 8, 2021.” This estimate is so impossibly high that this article should be retracted by The Lancet. The obvious impossibility of their estimate may be demonstrated by any of the following five relatively simple calculations.
First, the WHO reports that as of Feb 17, 2023 there were “756.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 including 6.84 million deaths.”[2] This gives an overall case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.9%. At this rate, had the Covid vaccines prevented 14.4 million deaths in the space of one year, then they would also have needed to prevent 1.59 billion confirmed cases in that same year. But this is more than twice the total number of cases in three years, meaning it would require a six-fold increase in the number of confirmed cases since the beginning of the Covid era. Therefore, based on the overall CFR it is impossible that the vaccines saved 14.4 million deaths.
The situation is unchanged if we use data from before the vaccines were rolled out. The WHO reports that on December 28, 2020 there had been 84.9 million cases and 2.0 million deaths. This gives a CFR of 2.4%. To save 14.4 million deaths at this rate would require preventing 611 million cases, meaning it would require a 7 fold increase in infections and deaths in 2021 from Covid.
Second, it is well established that the infection fatality rate (IFR) of Covid is age-dependent. For instance, the BMJ published an article on Oct 26, 2020 which noted that “the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said that eight in 10 Covid-19 related deaths reported in the country have been among people aged 65 years or over.”[3] Therefore, for vaccinations to have prevented 14.4 million deaths, they would need to have prevented 11.52 million deaths among those over 65 years of age. According to the UN, the world population is about 7,954 million, of which about 10% are over 65.[4] That means that there are 795 million people in this age group. To have prevented 11.52 million of them from dying would have required the following things to have happened during that one year:
All 795 million people over 65 are vaccinated,
None of these people contracted Covid while waiting to be (fully) vaccinated.
The vaccines are 100% effective (absolute risk reduction) against death,
Without vaccination, all 795 million would have contracted Covid, and
The average IFR of Covid for those over 65 and unvaccinated is at least 1.45%.
In an earlier article in The Lancet it was estimated that the IFR of Covid (before vaccination) for those over 60 is 1.0035%.[5] Thus, all five of these requirements are either incorrect or impossible. Therefore based on age-specific mortality rates it is impossible that the vaccines prevented 14.4 million deaths.
Third, on Mar 10, 2022, The Lancet published an article in which it was estimated that between Jan 1, 2020 and Dec 31, 2021 about “18.2 million people died worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic.”[6] If the vaccines had successfully prevented another 14.4 million deaths, then 32.6 million deaths would have occurred without the vaccines. For this many people to have died, it would have required all eight billion people in the world to have been infected with Covid, and a global average IFR of at least 0.41%. But a bulletin published by WHO estimates the IFR to be at most 0.23%, and it “might even be substantially lower than 0.23%.”[7] One must conclude from this that either the Lancet article claiming 18.2 million people died in the first two years of Covid is incorrect, or the Lancet article claiming that 14.4 million deaths were prevented in the first year of the vaccines is incorrect, or both Lancet articles are incorrect. Therefore, based on published average IFRs, it is impossible that both Lancet articles are correct.
Fourth, on Jan 25, 2023, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) published a report that estimated the number needed to vaccinate (NNV) to prevent a Covid hospitalisation. In Table 4 of Appendix 1, they say that 2,500 people over 70 must be vaccinated to prevent one severe hospitalisation in that age group.[8] This is the smallest NNV figure in the table. If we apply this number to the entire world population, and assume both that the entire population is over 70 years of age and that every last soul was vaccinated, according to the UKHSA data, only 3.2 million severe hospitalisations would be prevented. Therefore, it is clearly impossible for the vaccines to have prevented 14.4 million deaths.
Fifth, according to the published results of Pfizer’s Phase 3 clinical trials, of the 21,728 volunteers who received the placebo shot, 162 contracted Covid. Conversely, of the 21,720 volunteers who received the BNT162b2 injection, eight contracted Covid.[9] This means that the Pfizer shot may have prevented about 154 infections per 21,720 persons receiving the vaccine. According to Our-World-In-Data, about 4.5 billion people received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine during the first year of the roll-out.[10] Although not all received the Pfizer product, the majority did in many countries, and the Pfizer shot is generally held as the superior option. Thus, using Pfizer’s own results, at most 31.9 million infections might have been prevented in the first year of the vaccines. Using the IFR of 0.23% mentioned earlier, the maximum number of deaths prevented by the vaccines after one year is 73,384. This is almost 200 times less than the 14.4 million estimate put forward in the Lancet article.
It may be worthwhile to point out that Watson et al. inadvertently provide at least some of the reasons why their estimate is so obviously incorrect. In the first place, the authors expressly state that “excess all-cause mortality … [was] used to quantify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.” However, so many health variables were altered in 2020 and 2021 that it is certain that multiple factors contributed to excess mortality, not just Covid. Thus, they overestimated how lethal Covid was. And secondly, the authors testified that they assumed the vaccines were effective: “Vaccination was assumed to confer protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe disease requiring hospital admission, and to reduce transmission from vaccine breakthrough infections (i.e. we assumed vaccinated individuals who develop infection would be less infectious than unvaccinated individuals).” Since all of these assumptions are false (as Pfizer’s own clinical trial results testify), it is certain they overestimated the effectiveness of the vaccines.[11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]
In conclusion, by overestimating the mortality caused by Covid, and by overestimating how effective the vaccines were, Watson et al. came up with obviously incorrect conclusions about how many deaths were prevented by the Covid vaccines. Whether one looks at the average CFR, or the age-specific IFR, or the average IFR, or the NNV, or Pfizer’s own data, it is quite impossible that the Covid vaccines prevented 14.4 million deaths in the first year. Since this is a tremendously important issue to society at large, it is requested that the editors at The Lancet retract this obviously flawed paper.
Covid-19 Forecasting Team, “Variation in the COVID-19 infection–fatality ratio by age, time, and geography during the pre-vaccine era: a systematic analysis,” February 24, 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02867-1
Wang, Haidong, “Estimating excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic analysis of COVID-19-related mortality, 2020–21,” March 10, 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02796-3
Ioannidis, John P A. (2021). Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 99 (1), 19 – 33F. World Health Organization.http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.20.265892
Polack, Fernando et al, “Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine,” December 31, 2020 N Engl J Med 2020; 383:2603-2615 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2034577
Pritchard et al, “Impact of vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 cases in the community: a population-based study using the UK’s COVID-19 Infection Survey,” medRxiv 2021.04.22.21255913; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.22.21255913
Wang, Lindsey et al, “Increased risk for COVID-19 breakthrough infection in fully vaccinated patients with substance use disorders in the United States between December 2020 and August 2021,” Wiley Online Library, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20921
Everyone ‘knows’ that flu disappeared in the winter of 2020-2021. The popular explanation for this is ‘viral interference’, whereby one virus replaces another in circulation, as often happens with different strains of flu. The assumption is that flu was outcompeted by SARS-CoV-2 and hence largely vanished.
However, the stark juxtaposition of its absence and its replacement by the ‘novel and deadly’ SARS-CoV-2 virus remains an open question, given that flu vanished only from Westernised countries yet remained prevalent in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Haiti and Bangladesh in the winter of 2020/21.
Tracking the prevalence of any virus relies not only the quality and extent of testing, but also on the protocols, procedures and the public health bureaucracy that govern when the test should be administered and how the test result is validated, interpreted and reported. Therefore a systematic assessment of the effects of seemingly unrelated policy decisions is needed to determine whether policies were enacted – wittingly or unwittingly – which brought about a particular result as a kind of ‘spooky action at a distance’ that caused flu to appear to vanish from some countries but not others.
By now we are all familiar with the problems associated with SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing. Ultimately clinical judgement regarding Covid-19 was delegated from the physician to a diagnosis based solely on the PCR test. The possibility of false positives and negatives was entirely absent from clinical decision-making, despite the now well understood issues where false positives can be caused by high cycle thresholds, cross reactivity, and the use of single genes to declare positive results. In other words: ‘it was all about the test’.
If we have good reason to mistrust the testing regime for SARS-CoV-2, why should we trust the testing and surveillance regime used for flu?
Quarantines were promoted as measures to reduce spread of SARS-CoV-2 and are also paradoxically claimed to have prevented the spread of flu (even though they did not prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2). There is the possibility that what they actually did was dramatically reduce the chance of receiving a positive flu test result. If you don’t have a positive flu result, there was little possibility of being diagnosed with flu in the presence of a contradictory explanation – SARS-CoV-2. Given that PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 were mandated (when not enthusiastically and voluntarily performed by a populace terrified by propaganda) there was therefore a very high chance of being diagnosed with Covid-19 instead of the flu.
Flu tests are recommended to be administered within four days of symptom onset. If they are administered after four days, they would likely produce a false negative result for someone with flu (flu tests are rarely administered routinely anyway). Mandatory Covid-19 tests, run at high cycle thresholds and suffering from cross-reactivity with other pathogens (amongst other operational issues), may well have resulted in false positives for Covid-19, when in fact the pathogen causing symptoms may have been flu. Therefore, people with flu would have been wrongly categorised as having Covid-19, and as a result quarantined for a period sometimes up to 14 days. Hence any flu test given after quarantine ended would inevitably result in a negative for flu even if that was the causative agent, because it was given later than the four days needed for the flu test to be accurate.
Compared with Covid-19, diagnosing flu ‘out of season’ is fraught with tricky clinical and bureaucratic barriers, which also served to depress the likelihood of reporting flu cases. According to CDC (the US Centers for Disease Control) algorithms for diagnosing flu ‘out of season’, in the event of a positive flu test the clinician is asked to pause and consider if this is a false positive. Furthermore, they also need to justify any decision to support the positive result and diagnose flu with an assessment of whether there is evidence of an epidemiological link between this case and others (i.e. link to existing circulation in the community). Likewise, the clinician would also have to consider the signs and symptoms of flu, but given that these will heavily overlap with Covid, which the authorities are proclaiming as an epidemic, it looks as if the cards are stacked against them.
There is an elegant logical circularity at play here that a physician needs to consider. The CDC say you need an outbreak and an epidemiological link to help justify a positive flu test, but surely you only know there is an outbreak, and can determine an epidemiological link, if you and others, in coordination, have already accumulated enough positive test results. It’s a chicken and egg situation. Who determines whether there is an outbreak? None of the CDC documents says.
Therefore, even if a physician was armed with a positive flu test result the chances of this overruling an all-pervasive prior belief in Covid-19 being the cause of all respiratory illnesses, encouraged by powerful incentives directed by a centralised bureaucracy, would have been close to zero.
In combination it is possible that these primary mechanisms, rather than ‘viral competition’ between flu and SARS-CoV-2 or ‘effective lockdowns’, could partially or wholly account for the disappearance of flu. If flu did not disappear then what might then have been the primary cause of those who died with symptoms of a respiratory virus in 2020/21?
This article is based on an original article co-authored with Professor Norman Fenton and Jonathan Engler. The extended version of the article is available from the substack Where are the Numbers?
Google has renewed its partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide what it calls “factual” information about different diseases and conditions. The partnership is positioned as a way to combat what it says is the spread of medical “misinformation” observed during the pandemic.
On Google search, there are already Knowledge Panels at the top of results when users search for certain conditions and diseases.
Soon, the Knowledge Panels will include more conditions and illnesses like depressive disorder, Ebola, COPD, malaria, hypertension, diabetes, Mpox, and others, all using information verified by the WHO.
In a previous partnership, Google awarded more than $320 million to the WHO in Ad Grants to help spread its medical information. In the new partnership, Google awarded the global public health organization an additional $50 million to continue the efforts.
The WHO has been criticized more in frequent years for calling for censorship while itself putting out information during the pandemic that turned out to ultimately be untrue.
“Is modern medicine helping us live longer and healthier?” Or is a “darker, more sinister agenda” creating “a longer but sicker life?”
Journalist James Li explored this question on a recent episode of “Breaking Points,” where he discussed how “Big Pharma, Big Food, mainstream media, medical professionals, [and] the government” collaborate to make us sick.
Li showed a “60 Minutes” clip about the obesity epidemic ravaging the U.S., in which Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, obesity medicine physician-scientist and associate professor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, explained why common beliefs about obesity are wrong.
“The number one cause of obesity is genetics,” she said. “That means if you are born to parents that have obesity you have a 50 to 85% likelihood of having the disease yourself even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management and stress management.”
“So the message from the mainstream media is pretty simple,” Li said. “Obesity is a disease, take a drug.” But that’s not the whole story, he said.
Obesity in the U.S. has gone from “almost nonexistent” in the 1950s to a projected 50% of the population by 2030. So, “unless the human race experienced some kind of quantum leap in genetics, there must be something else we’re doing that is destroying our metabolic health,” Li said.
Drawing on recent work by pharma consultant-turned-whistleblower Calley Means, Li pointed to two major issues in the U.S. food system — too much sugar and a lack of fiber.
The average child eats 100 times more sugar — which is more addictive than cocaine — per day today than 100 years ago — and the sugar hides in processed foods, Li said.
Knowing that sugar is addictive creates an incentive for processed food producers to keep adding more of it to our food.
Li told viewers:
“If you are a food industry executive — bonus is on the line, shareholders demanding astronomical growth quarter after quarter — what do you do to get a leg up on your competitor?
“Well, you add sugar to your products to make them more addictive so people buy yours and not your competitors’ and then they try to one-up you and all of a sudden sugar is everywhere.”
Fiber, which according to the Mayo Clinic helps “maintain a healthy weight and lowers your risk of diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer” has almost completely disappeared in a lot of our most popular food products.
In fact, Li said, according to the National Institutes of Health, only 5% of people consume the recommended daily target of fiber.
Li quoted Nicole Avena, Ph.D., who told Newsweek that many ultra-processed foods are “almost pre-chewed” for us:
“They melt in your mouth immediately. There’s no protein. There’s no water. There’s no fiber slowing them down. It’s going to hit your taste buds and light up your reward and motivation centers of the brain immediately. Then there’s a secondary hit of dopamine when it gets absorbed into the body.”
Li said, “These food companies have morphed into narcotics laboratories. They’ve found a way to hack our brains and make a killing both figuratively and literally.”
The healthcare system, he said, then comes in as a hero to treat these illnesses and makes skyrocketing profits doing so. Li cited Means to say that the healthcare system doesn’t focus on health or prevention. It only makes money when people are sick.
“Every single institution is incentivized for more Americans to be sicker for longer periods of time,” Li said.
FAIR reported that every doctor interviewed by “60 Minutes” for its segment on obesity had received money from Novo Nordisk, maker of the drugs effectively being advertised on the show.
None of the doctors mentioned the serious side effects associated with the drugs, Novo Nordisk’s massive profits from the drugs or the lobbying the drugmaker is doing to get insurance to pay for weight-loss drugs.
This is how the “obesity industrial complex” works, Li said:
“The food industry makes billions of dollars selling food that’s known to be toxic and poisonous, making millions of Americans sick in the process. The healthcare industry in this case gets to play hero while also pocketing billions of dollars selling a supposed miracle drug to millions of adults and children.
“Both of these industries have worked out a little deal with the federal government, Congress with lobbying money with funding for the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] so that they can rewrite science and continue to sell food that is known to be toxic and poisonous.”
But, he said, despite the fact that the entire system is organized to profit from making people sick, there are some “no-brainer” solutions Means proposed that Li puts forward.
First, the FDA ought to revise the “recommended” added sugar in children’s diet per day from 50 grams, based on a 2,000-calorie diet, to zero.
Second, he said, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as “food stamps,” functions as a subsidy to the processed food industry because most SNAP benefits are expended on cheap, processed food. Reforming that program, he said, could end those subsidies.
Li concluded by asking the audience:
“All the technological advancements in public policy decisions of the last half century, have they contributed to promoting a longer and healthier life? Or a longer and sicker life?”
Watch here:
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.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently changed its recommendations for all women to get screened for breast cancer every other year starting at age 40 instead of 50.
Wanda Nicholson, USPSTF Vice Chair and professor at George Washington University said the updated recommendations “will save more lives among all women.”
Sadly, it’s not that simple.
Time and time again, the evidence shows that screening healthy women using mammograms in fact, does not save lives.
In 2014, in a large study published in The BMJ, half of women underwent annual mammogram screening, and the other half did not.
At the end of the 5-year trial period, and after 25 years of follow-up (see graph), the probability of survival was similar in the two groups.
A Cochrane review in 2013 (and an unpublished update in Jan 2023) also found mammography screening had no impact on the most important outcome, i.e. overall (all-cause) mortality.
How is it possible that detecting cancers earlier doesn’t save lives?
The imaging technology is so sensitive that it detects lumps, masses and cysts that are not cancerous, resulting in biopsies and follow-up procedures that can cause patients immense stress.
Also, it’s detecting abnormalities that would never lead to harm because they grow so slowly, or they don’t grow at all.
And because we’re not very good at distinguishing the difference between slow and fast-growing cancers, the standard is to treat them all – sometimes, unnecessarily.
Danish physician Peter Gøtzsche and lead author of the Cochrane review on mammography screening wrote a review in 2015 called “Mammography screening is harmful and should be abandoned.”
Gøtzsche explains why screening healthy women actually harms more than it helps. It’s a well-intentioned program that has unintended harmful consequences.
For example, while trying to reduce death from breast cancer, the treatments (e.g. radiotherapy) may cause death from other diseases like heart disease or lung cancer – so in the end – there is no improvement in lifespan.
Much of the difficulty lies with ~20% of breast abnormalities called “Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) – otherwise known as stage 0 cancer. Their detection is a direct consequence of the mammography screening, as they would not be detected otherwise.
Importantly, these are not cancers, but have the potential to progress.
The problem is, few clinicians are comfortable with the wait-and-see approach, and often encourage women to undergo invasive surgeries, radiation, or chemotherapy that they didn’t ultimately need.
For this reason, some oncologists have suggested changing the name of DCIS to avoid using words such as “stage 0 cancer” or “carcinoma” which cause fear and unnecessary psychological stress.
The question of whether patients benefit from immediate treatment of DCIS or from ‘active surveillance’, may be answered over the next few years by three ongoing trials – two in Europe and one in the US.
Too Much Medicine
Lowering the screening threshold from age 50 to 40, means millions more people become eligible for treatments that they might not need, under the guise of “prevention is better than cure.”
Consequently, a huge number of scarce resources is diverted from the sick to the ‘worried well.’
Dr Iona Heath, past president of the UK Royal College of General Practitioners, once said to me, “Medicine should probably be leaving the well to be well, instead of constantly trying to find something wrong with them.”
Dr Heath was among several experts who featured in my documentary called “Too Much Medicine” which aired on ABC TV in 2015 (see it here). The program explored the issue of over-diagnosis and over-treatment in various areas of healthcare.
There are women at high risk of breast cancer – e.g. those with a genetic/family history – who might benefit from targeted detection tools, but screening women in the general population appears to cause more harm than good.
*15 of the 16 members of the US Task Force declared no conflicts of interest related to this recommendation. There was only one Task Force member who had a relevant conflict of interest, and he was recused from all activities related to this recommendation.
*Peter Gøtzsche, former head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, published a book titled “Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy” available here.
*Vinay Prasad, a practicing haematologist-oncologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, has recently produced a video explaining the data.
Covid pandemic disinformation; Covid conspiracy doctor claimed he was ‘poisoned after interview’ just days before death; IMO, I don’t put anything past the ‘dark unseen hand’, those behind COVID fraud.
‘A notorious conspiracy theorist doctor, known for his wild takes on the Coronavirus pandemic, claimed he had been poisoned just a few days before he died.
Dr Rashid Buttar, who was part of the group nicknamed the “Disinformation dozen”, died suddenly yesterday (Saturday, May 20) at the age of 57.
He was known for being a huge anti-vaxxer and became a cult figure during the pandemic.’
‘The medical community is mourning the loss of Dr. Rashid Buttar, a respected doctor known for his views on COVID-19 and vaccines.
He was named as one of the “Disinformation Dozen” by the far-left media along with Democrat presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Dr. Buttar, 57, a licensed physician and a retired Major in the US Army who served in special forces, died on Thursday at his home, while spending time with his family, according to an email sent by his family.’
“Every single one of you, independently, is a beacon of light for those around you. So set the example, stand up, continue to fight … let your children see what it means to be free.” — Dr. Rashid Buttar
The entire Children’s Health Defense (CHD) team is saddened to learn of the May 18 passing of renowned physician, humanitarian and children’s health advocate Dr. Rashid Buttar.
Dr. Buttar was born in England in 1966. He moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 10 years old. He graduated from Washington University with a double major in biology and theology, later obtaining a doctor of osteopathic medicine degree from the University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery in Des Moines, Iowa.
Dr. Buttar trained in general surgery and emergency medicine and served as brigade surgeon and chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Moncrief Army Community Hospital at Ft. Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, during his time with the U.S. Army.
He was board certified in clinical metal toxicology and was the medical director for Advanced Concepts in Medicine in North Carolina and California clinics specializing in alternative treatments for patients with cancer, heart disease and autism.
Dr. Buttar distinguished himself among the families of children diagnosed with autism for his compassion and willingness to think outside the box in terms of treatment — even when his methodologies went against the grain of mainstream medicine.
He became an advocate for children who were injured by vaccines, testifying in 2004 before the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform on the topic of “Revolutionary New Treatment of Neurodevelopmental Diseases.”
Commenting on Dr. Buttar’s death, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD founder and chairman on leave, said:
“Rashid was an irreplaceable leader in the medical freedom movement. He was also my friend and physician. His early and courageous stand for his patients, for medical integrity and for evidence-based medicine cost him his career, relationships, income and his standing in his community and made him a pariah among his physician colleagues for decades.
“Rashid rarely spoke of his own sacrifices. His consuming focus was on healing the sick, comforting the afflicted and consoling the grief-stricken. I’ll always be grateful to him for the miraculous relief he provided me from mercury toxicity. He gave similar gifts to thousands. I’m grateful to God for giving me such a friend.”
A stalwart pioneer in innovative treatments for autism and other conditions, Dr. Buttar was considered a medical maverick by both his peers and his patients.
In 2010, he wrote the popular book, “The 9 Steps to Keep the Doctor Away: Simple Actions to Shift Your Body and Mind to Optimum Health for Greater Longevity.”
“Our community has lost a dear colleague, a caring physician and a steadfast friend,” said Laura Bono, acting president of CHD.
Bono added:
“Dr. Buttar treated my son’s environmental toxicity and heavy metal poisoning for many years. We drove four hours, round-trip, to his office three days a week. He listened to our views regarding our son’s needs and altered treatments as needed based on our input, a real rarity in medicine today.
“Dr. Buttar never doubted my son’s history of regression into autism after vaccines. After all, it was a story he had heard many times before. The key to his success in treating patients was that he listened to and trusted the parents.
“We can only hope that Dr. Buttar’s example of treating patients’ illnesses with individualized, effective protocols will become the standard for all physicians.”
Dr. Buttar applied the spirit of his experiences on the battlefield to his tireless work for truth and freedom on behalf of neurodevelopmentally injured children despite well-financed censorship of his efforts.
“The many people impacted by Dr. Buttar’s courage and determination will carry on his legacy by continuing to speak truth to power, even when the deck is so heavily stacked against them,” said Bono. “Our collective voices will ensure that truth triumphs in the end.”
Marc Dutroux, Belgian pedophile, sadist, and serial killer with friends in high places
By Aedon Cassiel | Counter – Currents | December 23, 2016
To reiterate a point that should be clear to the more astute reader, my goal in this series (part 1, part 2) has not been to defend “Pizzagate” as such. My goal has been to defend the people who want to investigate it against specific accusations levied against them by people who think Pizzagate has revealed no intriguing information at all—for a specific reason, which I will be honing in and focusing on much more directly in this closing entry.
Whereas the mainstream critics of Pizzagate would have you believe that the dividing line is between paranoid conspiracy theorist followers of “fake news” and level-headed people who follow trustworthy news sources and rely on cold, hard reason to determine the truth, my goal has been to show that—whatever is or is not happening with Pizzagate itself—this framing of the issue is arrogant, insulting, and the product of extremely narrow tunnel vision. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News 