Talking to Normies About Vaccination
Thoughts on how to dissuade older friends and relatives from going back to the vaccinators in the Fall
eugyppius | June 7, 2022
The vaccinators are in summer hibernation, but very soon they’ll be with us again, hawking a novel set of wares. The media blitz will start anew and the medical bureaucrats will return to forcing superfluous and potentially harmful medical interventions on millions of people who don’t need them. One day, all of this will be recognised for the absurd hypochondriac panic that it is, but no few people will be hurt, and at least a few will die, before we get there. What follows are some thoughts I have about how to approach especially older acquaintances, who will be at ground zero of the coming propaganda campaign, and who probably don’t need a fifth dose of the magical miraculous mRNA elixir.
First, some notes on normie psychology:
You have to understand that they think the vaccines are the best things ever. They believe Pfizer and Moderna have almost singlehandedly turned the whole pandemic around and given them their lives back. If ever a doubt should creep into their minds about that, they will fall back to believing that being vaccinated is the right pro-social thing to do, and that not being vaccinated is evil, selfish and stupid. It is the unvaccinated who are responsible for variants, who spread Corona and who are prolonging the pandemic. Normies have The Science on their side, and they take great comfort in buying into and espousing the mythology that has been sold to them. This is how sophisticated propaganda and information management works. Contradictory information will make them extremely uncomfortable, and they’ll look for any reason at all not to believe it. If you cause them too much discomfort, they’ll get angry, tune you out, and put you in the antivaxxer bin, where you can be safely ignored.
It’s going to be very hard to win ground here, and your goal shouldn’t be total victory. You just want to get them to think for themselves, consider their own experiences as valid and real information about the world, and break out of the limited vaccinator-cult patterns of thought long enough to ponder how many boosters they really want to put up with.
The most important thing is to present a relaxed, jovial scepticism on key points. The goal is not to argue, but to challenge in an oblique, casual way, while giving as much as you take. Unless we’re talking about somebody who absolutely trusts you and is earnestly seeking your opinion, you shouldn’t be scheduling in-depth conversations or sitting down for a serious talk. You want to raise questions and plant little seeds of doubt, before they ever realise what is happening, and then you want to fade away before they notice that you’re encouraging them to have heretical thoughts.
Weird that the “I-Believe-The-Science(TM)” crowd has completely given up on science
The NY Times announces that henceforth, clinical trials for Covid-19 shots must be abandoned because real world data makes the cartel look bad
By Toby Rogers | June 9, 2022
I. Pharma is losing the game so they are throwing the chess board across the room
The NY Times published a vile piece of fascist Pharma propaganda today. Berenson flagged the online version of the article yesterday. As you know, I have been yelling about the FDA’s Orwellian “Future Framework” for weeks because it’s literally the worst idea in the history of public health.
It turns out that it’s even worse than I thought.
Pharma has already begun a PR offensive to get it across the line and Sharon LaFraniere of the NY Times was eager to do their bidding.
Here’s what’s happening. The mRNA shots are not working against SARS-CoV-2. Everyone knows this. So Moderna and Pfizer are racing to reformulate these shots. The reformulated shots are not working either. Just last week Moderna was touting a bivalent shot that combined Alpha + Beta, but now, apparently, they’ve abandoned that approach. The NY Times article hypes a Moderna shot targeting earlier Omicron variants (it does not say, but perhaps BA.2 and BA.2.12.1?). However evidence from South Africa shows that BA.4 and BA.5 are outcompeting the earlier Omicron variants and the reformulated Moderna shot probably won’t work against the new strains (the virus evolved for a reason — to evade vaccines).
So what are predatory pharmaceutical companies and their feckless government enablers supposed to do!? Abandon clinical trials altogether!
Here’s how the NY Times describes this scheme:
… many experts worry that the virus is evolving so quickly that it is outpacing the ability to modify vaccines, at least as long as the United States relies on human clinical trials for results.
See, it’s not that coronavirus vaccine have failed over and over again (even though they have). It’s that This Wily Virus(TM) is just evolving so quickly that we could not possibly allow human clinical trials of coronavirus vaccines ever again. The only way to beat This Wily Virus(TM) at this point is to abandon science.
Of course it gets worse. The NY Times elaborates:
The problem is that Moderna and Pfizer — the maker of the other main coronavirus vaccine in the United States — do not have enough time now to run more human clinical trials and still manufacture shots before the fall, when the Biden administration is hoping to be able to offer an updated vaccine to counter what public health experts predict will be a winter surge.
See, it’s not that rapacious pharmaceutical companies want to suck all wealth out of the world and put it into their own pockets while setting up a 1,000 year Pharma Reich. No, no, no, silly. It’s just that they “do not have enough time” to do actual science anymore so they are just going to skip all that. Don’t you worry your little head about it.
Furthermore, only a conspiracy theorist would believe that the FDA has abandoned all of its statutory responsibilities to protect public health in order to prostitute themselves to Pharma. The Correct Understanding(TM) is that the FDA is being forced by circumstances outside their control to abandon science. This is not a problem because the cartel is truth, the cartel has always been truth, and since the cartel has decided to abandon science altogether then that’s the new science.
Henceforth, quite literally, the peasants will be forced every six months to inject whatever they are told, with no questions asked, and “they will be [required by law to be] happy about it”.
Instead of human clinical trials the FDA will rely on a few test tube and mouse studies. In the article, Fauci describes this as, “alternative pathways of decision.” That guy just oozes totalitarianism at this point.
So if the “Future Framework” is approved on June 28 the new rules will be: a pharmaceutical company can claim that some new injection creates antibodies in a test tube or mouse (that no one else can see or audit). Done! Ship it and inject it! That’s it. Even though the FDA admits that there are no “correlates of protection.”
In the replies to my earlier articles about the Future Framework some astute readers have pointed out that the FDA has already abandoned human trials when it comes to Covid-19 shots in kids. None of the Moderna or Pfizer clinical trials in kids showed any real world health benefit at all. So they switched to looking at antibodies in the blood and use this tortured mental gymnastics called “immunobridging” to conjure up hypothetical future benefits that never materialize in the real world. Abandoning even the pretense of human trials and moving to test tubes and mice is the obvious next step in this complete abandonment of science.
When people say “I Believe The Science(TM)” what they really mean is “I Support The Genocide.” That’s what’s happening. The FDA has not done science in two years, probably much longer than that.
There is no left and right in politics anymore. Just, the FDA Pharma Fascist Party where members are expected to participate in self-genocide for “the good of society” (read: the profits of the cartel)
vs.
the Rebel Alliance where we practice actual science, critical thinking, logic, and reason, and work every day to protect human health and dignity.
Any politician who wants the 18 million votes of single-issue medical freedom voters in November needs to know that there must be hearings, arrests, and trials of the bureaucrats at FDA, CDC, NIAID, HHS, and NIH who did this to us.
II. What is to be done?
In the meantime, here are the email addresses for all of the public health political appointees, FDA staff, and VRBPAC members who have a say in connection with the “Future Framework”. Please contact them to urge them to reject this nonsense (proposed subject line and email text below — or share your own personal story).
Subject line: The “Future Framework” is the WORST idea in the history of public health. Please vote NO.
1. No Covid-19 shots for kids that failed clinical trials. According to the journal Nature Medicine, children and young people have a 99.995% recovery rate. According to the CDC, the overwhelming majority of children already have natural immunity. The harms from Covid-19 shots in kids are catastrophic.
2. The FDA and CDC must pivot to therapeutics. About twenty off-the-shelf treatments are more effective than vaccines (if used for prophylaxis or early intervention). Get these safe and effective medicines to people who need them and let doctors be doctors again and treat patients based on their own best clinical judgment.
3. Any reformulated Covid-19 shots MUST go through proper HUMAN clinical trials and FDA review. That means:
• large (50,000+ person) double-blind randomized controlled trials with inert saline placebos conducted by an independent third party;
• safety and efficacy studies for two years prior to any application; monitor the treatment and control group for the rest of their lives to record non-specific effects;
• must provide sterilizing immunity with greater than 90% efficacy and less than 0.1% Grade 3 Adverse Events; and
• proper monitoring for carcinogenesis, mutagenesis, and impairment of fertility.
[Contact list:]
sean.mccluskie@hhs.gov, commissioner@fda.hhs.gov, DeanofPublicHealth@brown.edu, Aux7@cdc.gov, Peter.Marks@fda.hhs.gov, Hong.Yang@fda.hhs.gov, Richard.Forshee@fda.hhs.gov, Huilee.Wong@fda.hhs.gov, Leslie.Ball@fda.hhs.gov, Doran.Fink@fda.hhs.gov, CBERVRBPAC@fda.hhs.gov, hanae@bcm.edu, paula.annunziato@merck.com, adam.berger@nih.gov, hbernstein@northwell.edu, acohn@cdc.gov, anc0@cdc.gov, hjanes@fredhutch.org, hgans@stanford.edu, david.kim@hhs.gov, asmonto@umich.edu, offit@chop.edu, spergam@fredhutch.org, Jportnoy@cmh.edu, erubin@hsph.harvard.edu, erubin@nejm.org, ashane@emory.edu, swamy002@mc.duke.edu, fullerao@umich.edu, bgellin@rockfound.org, RandyHawkins@cdrewu.edu, officeofthepresident@mmc.edu, JYLee@uams.edu, ofer.levy@childrens.harvard.edu, wayne_marasco@dfci.harvard.edu, cmeissner@tuftsmedicalcenter.org, mrn8d@virginia.edu, stanley-perlman@uiowa.edu, reingold@berkeley.edu, mhsawyer@ucsd.edu, mew2@cdc.gov
III. The FDA has opened the formal comment portal for the “Future Framework”
If you prefer the official route, you can lodge a formal comment with the FDA by following the instructions (here). Enter docket number FDA-2022-N-0905 at https://www.regulations.gov by June 22 to tell the FDA what you think of their proposed plan to abandon clinical trials for Covid-19 shots in perpetuity.
THE WHO, PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF FALSE MESSAGING
By Dr David Bell | Pandemics – Data and Analytics | June 9, 2022
The World Health Organization (WHO), and the growing pandemic preparedness industry sponsoring it, has faced considerable challenges in maintaining support for its COVID-19 response. It has addressed this difficult situation with simple and uniform messaging. The compliance thus achieved by the WHO has been vital to achieving a successful concentration of wealth, benefitting not just its major sponsors, but also the army of global health staff who have remained obedient throughout.
Threatening this progress, a skeptical minority within the public sphere have been using evidence and rational argument to undermine the pandemic industry’s potential. As the pandemic preparedness and response narrative is poorly defensible on rational criteria, such criticism and opposition must be dealt with and dismissed by other means. This is being achieved through the creation of a dogma around mass COVID-19 vaccination sufficiently separated from reality as to render the normal processes of debate irrelevant. If the gap between pandemic messaging and reality can be kept sufficiently wide, few passengers can step off, and this lucrative gravy train becomes unstoppable.
Small lies can be argued against, big lies become matters of faith
The development and mass deployment of vaccines has been a key component of the COVID-19 response, underpinning much of the transfer of wealth from lower-income people and countries to large Pharma, their investors and the global health workforce they sponsor. Against a background of rapidly increasing global poverty, this unprecedented increase in wealth has in turn raised the potential for unprecedented funding to global health institutions – the mostly Western-based industry that fills offices and drains aid budgets in Europe and North America. A significant cognitive decoupling has been necessary across this sector to achieve sufficient uniformity of voice and purpose, as the institutions involved were ostensibly intended to improve the health and uphold the rights of those less financially fortunate. To achieve success, staff of the WHO and other international organizations therefore had to be enabled to signal virtuous intent while acting in concert for corporate gain.
Vaccines traditionally protect the vaccinated against a target pathogen and humans tend to develop good immunity after respiratory virus infections. These two realities create an urgent problem for the pandemic preparedness industry, as the increased financing set to expand their reach is dependent on successfully convincing the world that these truths are indeed fallacies. Thus, to sell COVAX, the WHO’s financing facility for mass COVID-19 vaccination and the model for future pandemic responses, it was vital for the WHO to ensure that the obvious nonsensical nature of the programme would be ignored. This required coordination and adherence to a single simple message, repeated incessantly to stifle external opinion; a slogan so ridiculous that it becomes inarguable. In other words, it required propaganda.
It is essential to focus people on simplistic slogans if the aim is to suppress their tendency for independent thought and to make any venture in that direction a cause of stress. If people can see their respected authority figures standing behind a statement that is otherwise obviously false, it becomes easier to accept that the false must be true than to stand alone against authority and the crowd. Once one’s colleagues are on-board, the Asch conformity phenomenon kicks in – if everyone else is saying ‘X’, then it surely must be ‘X’, even if it looks like ‘Y’. If a health programme flies in the face of all existing medical knowledge, it must therefore be supported by a sufficiently strong dogma to negate evidence-based arguments. It is a testament to the power of group-think, loyalty to sponsors and the allure of money that this has, thus far, been brilliantly achieved.
COVAX – Selling the golden goose
“No one is safe, until everyone is safe”, the WHO’s COVAX motto, fulfills all the above criteria.
Most people want to be safe – and to achieve industry aims, the public must be convinced that others, not just themselves, are the key to their personal safety. They must support the blame or coercion being applied to these others. But the brilliance of ‘No one is safe, until everyone is safe’ is not just in its appeal to self-preservation and its divisiveness, but in its simple stupidity.
1) For the slogan to be true, the vaccine must be transmission-blocking only. It must not protect the vaccinated individual. Otherwise, their safety will not be dependent on the vaccination of others. However, the WHO and its partners also claim that “COVID-19 vaccines provide strong protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death”. Therefore, in promoting its ‘No one is safe’ slogan, WHO staff must collectively proclaim a falsehood. This builds loyalty and cohesion, as a lie is more easily maintained within a like-minded group.
2) To be ‘safe’ from a virus, one must either be intrinsically at very low risk (as most people are to most viruses) or gain immunity.
- ‘Intrinsic low risk’ created a huge problem for the mass-vaccination narrative early in the COVID-19 outbreak, as data from China showed the very strong skew of severe COVID-19 towards old age, and association with certain comorbidities. Most people are clearly at minimal risk. This had to be suppressed to enable mass-vaccination – all must consider themselves at risk. Public health agencies and their corporate backers even proclaimed impending catastrophe for the people of sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of whom are under 20 years of age. The use of age-based disease metrics, standard for disease-burden assessments up to 2019, were put aside and ‘COVID-19’ mortality reported as raw mortality numbers only.
- Immunity presents a problem, as it is both the pathway through which vaccines work, and the way we naturally gain protection. Immunity makes us safe, but natural immunity is useless to investors. While a safe vaccine would be preferable to a dangerous virus, once infection has occurred the gain from vaccination is minimal. This poses an immediate threat to profits and share price. The response to this dilemma included one of history’s more ludicrous statements from a global institution, when the WHO modified its herd immunity definition to only recognize immunity resulting from pharmaceutical intervention. This is nonsense to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of immunology, and of course the WHO’s staff have at least rudimentary knowledge.
Inevitably, SARS-CoV-2 has continued spreading, including from the vaccinated. Based on serology from Africa, India and the USA, and the highly transmissible Omicron variant, we can now be confident that nearly all the world’s population have post-infection immunity. It is no biological surprise that immunity gained from a respiratory tract infection with whole virus reduces disease severity more effectively than injection with spike-protein or its mRNA precursors. Claiming that mass vaccination still has public health relevance in these populations requires both abandonment of logic, and a willingness to dispense with decades of prior scientific learning. It requires acceptance of dogma.
A final component of the COVAX strategy, to lock-in celebrity support and enable those promoting the vaccine to still feel virtuous, is ‘vaccine equity’. People in rich countries are having boosters whilst many of the ‘global poor’ still await their first doses. The lack of benefit to be obtained from these doses, and the requirement of coercion to attain high coverage, are irrelevant – inequity in vaccine distribution simply has to be ‘bad’. Whilst pushing more boosters on high income markets, the same Pharma companies can look good by demanding vaccine equity, advocating for the ‘disadvantaged’. In reality this diverts resources from areas of greater need, thereby killing more children, but such fine print will never make the front pages. Commodity equity expands markets and provides returns, while health equity does not. Fear of being vilified as anti-equity helps keep skeptics quiet.
Bolting down the golden goose
Science, including public health, were previously held to be based on processes of logic, based on an acceptance that aspects of our world are grounded in discoverable truth. This concept is a threat to COVAX and the wider pandemic preparedness narrative. It is a threat to the return on investment of the pandemic industry’s sponsors. Greed is a stronger driver than truth, and it must be allowed to run free if society is to be truly reset in favor of those who wish to concentrate and control its wealth.
Despite its massive internal contradictions, disproportionate cost, coercion, and requirement for its promoters to live obvious lies, COVAX and the entire mass-vaccination paradigm has created a strong model for the success of the wider pandemic preparedness project. If truth in public health can be so readily dispensed with, and those working in the field so willingly corralled, the potential for milking the public’s trust and desire for safety presents unprecedented potential for profit. As this wealth accumulates, it supports the continuing advocacy and manipulation required to keep its adherents loyal. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle – we can expect to see more outbreaks, health emergencies and pandemics declared, more vaccines rolled out, and more wealth concentrated as a result. An unstoppable cycle burying truth under a growing fog of fear and falsehood.
That, at least, is the plan. The eventual outcome will depend on whether truth, human rights, equality and trust were ever fundamental to maintaining societal cohesion and peace. If they were, then let us hope the chaos that follows their abandonment is somehow contained. For now, business is business, and the golden goose, bolted down in a hall of lies, will keep on laying.
Research Confirms Statins Are a Colossal Waste of Money
This article was previously published December 8, 2021, and has been updated with new information.
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | June 9, 2022
The lecturer in the featured video, Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., produced the 2014 Australian Catalyst documentary, “Heart of the Matter: Dietary Villains,” which exposed the cholesterol/saturated fat myths behind the statin fad and the financial links which lurk underneath.
The documentary was so thorough that vested interests actually convinced ABC TV to rescind the two-part series.1 The Australian Heart Foundation, the three largest statin makers (Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Merck Sharp & Dohme) and Medicines Australia, Australia’s drug lobby group, complained2 and got the documentary expunged from ABC TV.
Cholesterol and saturated fat have been the villains of heart disease for the past four decades, despite the many studies showing neither has an adverse effect on heart health.
The entire food industry shifted away from saturated fat and cholesterol, ostensibly to improve public health, and the medical industry has massively promoted the use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs for the same reason. Despite all of that, the rate of heart disease deaths continues to be high.3 That really should tell us something.
Statins Are a Colossal Waste of Money
Since the release of Demasi’s documentary, the evidence against the cholesterol theory and statins has only grown. As noted in an August 4, 2020, op-ed by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, a general practitioner with the British National Health Service:4
“New research shows that the most widely prescribed type of drug in the history of medicine is a waste of money. One major study found that the more ‘bad’ cholesterol was lowered, the greater the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost every other medical condition has been shoved onto the sidelines. However, in the UK last year, heart attacks and strokes (CVD) killed well over 100,000 people — which is at least twice as many as have died from COVID-19.
CVD will kill just as many this year, which makes it significantly more important than COVID-19, even if no one is paying much attention to it right now.”
According to a scientific review5 published online August 4, 2020, in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, lowering LDL is not going to lower your risk of heart disease and stroke. “Decades of research has failed to show any consistent benefit for this approach,” the authors note.
Since the commercialization of statin drugs in the late ’80s (lovastatin being the first one, gaining approval in 19876), total sales have reached nearly $1 trillion.7,8 Lipitor — which is just one of several brand name statin drugs — was named the most profitable drug in the history of medicine.9,10 Yet these drugs have done nothing to derail the rising trend of heart disease.
Lowering Cholesterol Does Not Show a Beneficial Impact
According to a press release announcing the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine review, the analysis found that:11
“… over three quarters of all the trials reported no positive impact on the risk of death and nearly half reported no positive impact on risk of future cardiovascular disease.
And the amount of LDL cholesterol reduction achieved didn’t correspond to the size of the resulting benefits, with even very small changes in LDL cholesterol sometimes associated with larger reductions in risk of death or cardiovascular ‘events,’ and vice versa. Thirteen of the clinical trials met the LDL cholesterol reduction target, but only one reported a positive impact on risk of death …”
In their paper,12 the study authors argue that since dozens of randomized controlled trials looking at LDL-cholesterol reduction “have failed to demonstrate a consistent benefit, we should question the validity of this theory.”
They also cite the Minnesota Coronary Experiment,13 a double-blind randomized controlled trial involving 9,423 subjects that sought to determine whether replacing saturated fat with omega-6 rich vegetable oil (corn oil and margarine) would reduce the death rate from heart disease by lowering cholesterol.
It didn’t. Mortality and cardiovascular events increased even though total cholesterol was lowered by 13.8%. For each 30 mg/dL reduction in serum cholesterol, the death risk rose by 22%. In conclusion, the Evidence-Based Medicine study authors note that:14
“In most fields of science the existence of contradictory evidence usually leads to a paradigm shift or modification of the theory in question, but in this case the contradictory evidence has been largely ignored, simply because it doesn’t fit the prevailing paradigm.”
Deception Through Statistics
If lowering cholesterol doesn’t reduce mortality or cardiovascular events, there’s little reason to use them, considering they come with a long list of adverse side effects. Sure, there are studies claiming to show benefit, but many involve misleading plays on statistics.
One common statistic used to promote statins is that they lower your risk of heart attack by about 36%.15 This statistic is derived from a 2008 study16 in the European Heart Journal. One of the authors on this study is Rory Collins, who heads up the CTT Collaboration (Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration), a group of doctors and scientists who analyze study data17 and report their findings to regulators and policymakers.
Table 4 in this study shows the rate of heart attack in the placebo group was 3.1% while the statin group’s rate was 2% — a 36% reduction in relative risk. However, the absolute risk reduction — the actual difference between the two groups, i.e., 3.1% minus 2% — is only 1.1%, which really isn’t very impressive.
In other words, in the real world, if you take a statin, your chance of a heart attack is only 1.1% lower than if you’re not taking it. At the end of the day, what really matters is what your risk of death is the absolute risk. The study, however, only stresses the relative risk (36%), not the absolute risk (1.1%).
As noted in the review18 “How Statistical Deception Created the Appearance That Statins Are Safe and Effective in Primary and Secondary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease,” it’s very easy to confuse and mislead people with relative risks.
Statins Sabotage Your Health
A stunning review of statin trials published in 2015 found that in primary prevention trials, the median postponement of death in those taking statins was a mere 3.2 days. While potentially extending life span by 3.2 days, those taking statins are also at increased risk for:
- Diabetes (if taken for more than two years, your risk for diabetes triples)
- Dementia, neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric problems such as depression, anxiety and aggression
- Musculoskeletal disorders
- Osteoporosis
- Cataracts
- Heart disease
- Liver damage
- Immune system suppression
Oftentimes statins do not have any immediate side effects, and they are quite effective, capable of lowering cholesterol levels by 50 points or more. This is often viewed as evidence that your health is improving. Side effects that develop over time are frequently misinterpreted as brand-new, separate health problems.
Crimes Against Humanity
The harm perpetuated by the promotion of the low-fat, low-cholesterol myth is so significant, it could easily be described as a crime against humanity. Ancel Keys’ 1963 “Seven Countries Study” was instrumental in creating the saturated fat myth.19,20
He claimed to have found a correlation between total cholesterol concentration and heart disease, but in reality this was the result of cherry picking data. When data from 16 excluded countries are added back in, the association between saturated fat consumption and mortality vanishes.
In fact, the full data set suggests that those who eat the most saturated animal fat tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease, which is precisely what other, more recent studies have concluded.
Procter & Gamble Co.21 (the maker of Crisco22), the American Heart Association and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) all promoted the fallacy for decades, despite mounting evidence that Keys had gotten it all wrong.
The AHA was issuing stern warnings against butter, steak and coconut oil as recently as 2017.23 That same year, Procter & Gamble partnered with University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute to promote heart health by lowering cholesterol.24
CSPI was also instrumental in driving heart disease skyward with its wildly successful pro-trans fat campaign. It was largely the result of CSPI’s campaign that fast-food restaurants replace beef tallow, palm oil and coconut oil with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which were high in synthetic trans fats linked to heart disease and other chronic diseases.
As late as 1988, CSPI praised trans fats, saying “there is little good evidence that trans fats cause any more harm than other fats” and that “much of the anxiety over trans fats stems from their reputation as ‘unnatural.'”25
CSPI and AHA Omit Their Role in Heart Disease Epidemic
Today, you’ll have to dig deep to unearth CSPI’s devastating public health campaign. In an act of deception, they erased it from their history to make people believe they’ve been doing the right thing all along. Their historical timeline26 of trans fat starts at 1993 — the year CSPI decided to change course and start supporting the elimination of the same trans fat they’d spent years promoting.
Similarly, the AHA conveniently omits saturated fat and cholesterol from its history of “lifesaving” breakthroughs and achievements.27 It makes sense, though, considering the AHA’s and CSPI’s recommendations to swap saturated fat for vegetable oils and synthetic trans fat never resulted in anything but an epidemic of heart disease.
The idea that the harms of trans fats were unknown until the 1990s is simply a lie. The late Dr. Fred Kummerow started publishing evidence showing trans fat, not saturated fat, was the cause of heart disease in 1957. He also linked trans fat to Type 2 diabetes.
The Truth About Saturated Fat
In addition to the more recent studies mentioned earlier, many others have also debunked the idea that cholesterol and/or saturated fat impacts your risk of heart disease. For example:
•In a 1992 editorial published in the Archives of Internal Medicine,28 Dr. William Castelli, a former director of the Framingham Heart study, stated:
“In Framingham, Mass., the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person’s serum cholesterol. The opposite of what … Keys et al [said] …”
•A 2010 meta-analysis,29 which pooled data from 21 studies and included 347,747 adults, found no difference in the risks of heart disease and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat.
•Another 2010 study30 published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a reduction in saturated fat intake must be evaluated in the context of replacement by other macronutrients, such as carbohydrates.
When you replace saturated fat with a higher carbohydrate intake, particularly refined carbohydrate, you exacerbate insulin resistance and obesity, increase triglycerides and small LDL particles, and reduce beneficial HDL cholesterol. According to the authors, dietary efforts to improve your cardiovascular disease risk should primarily emphasize the limitation of refined carbohydrate intake, and weight reduction.
•A 2014 meta-analysis31 of 76 studies by researchers at Cambridge University found no basis for guidelines that advise low saturated fat consumption to lower your cardiac risk, calling into question all of the standard nutritional guidelines related to heart health. According to the authors:
“Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats.”
Will Saturated Fat Myth Soon Be Upended?
Nina Teicholz, a science journalist, adjunct professor at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the executive director of The Nutrition Coalition, is the author of “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet,” which reviews the many myths surrounding saturated fat and cholesterol.
In an interview I did with Dr. Paul Saladino and Teicholz, they reviewed the history of the demonization of saturated fat and cholesterol, starting with Keys, and how the introduction of the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 1980 (which recommended limiting saturated fat and cholesterol) coincided with a rapid rise in obesity and chronic diseases such as heart disease.
Teicholz also reviewed a paper32 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, published online June 17, 2020, which actually admits the long-standing nutritional guideline to limit saturated fat has been incorrect. This is a rather stunning admission, and a huge step forward. As noted in the abstract:
“The recommendation to limit dietary saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake has persisted despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Most recent meta-analyses of randomized trials and observational studies found no beneficial effects of reducing SFA intake on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and total mortality, and instead found protective effects against stroke.
Although SFAs increase low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol, in most individuals, this is not due to increasing levels of small, dense LDL particles, but rather larger LDL which are much less strongly related to CVD risk.
It is also apparent that the health effects of foods cannot be predicted by their content in any nutrient group, without considering the overall macronutrient distribution.
Whole-fat dairy, unprocessed meat, eggs and dark chocolate are SFA-rich foods with a complex matrix that are not associated with increased risk of CVD. The totality of available evidence does not support further limiting the intake of such foods.”
Sources and References
- 1 Highstreaks May 21, 2014
- 2 YouTube Dr. Maryanne Demasi: My Experience of Exposing the Statin Con
- 3 Cardiovascular Business August 27, 2019
- 4, 7 RT August 4, 2020
- 5, 12, 14 BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine August 4, 2020 DOI: 10.1136/bmjebm-2020-111413
- 6 News-Medical.net History of Statins
- 8 BMJ January 21, 2018
- 9 Youtube.com Maryanne Demasi, Statin Wars: Have We Been Misled by the Evidence?, 1:40 minutes
- 10 Kiplinger December 1, 2017
- 11 Medical Xpress August 3, 2020
- 13 BMJ 2016;353:i1246
- 15 Youtube.com Maryanne Demasi, Statin Wars: Have We Been Misled by the Evidence?, 14:40 minutes
- 16 European Heart Journal February 1, 2008; 29(4): 499-508
- 17 CTT Collaboration, About
- 18 Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology March 2015:8(2); 201-210
- 19 Carnivore Aurelius June 16, 2019
- 20 Institute for Science in Society April 13, 2015
- 21 The Atlantic April 26, 2012
- 22 Weston A. Price February 23, 2009
- 23 Los Angeles Times July 23, 2017
- 24 UH Hospitals August 17, 2017
- 25 The Free Library, The Truth About Trans Fat, CSPI 1988
- 26 CSPI Timeline for Trans Fat
- 27 Heart.org Our Lifesaving History
- 28 Archives of Internal Medicine 1992 Jul;152(7):1371-2
- 29 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2010 Mar;91(3):535-46
- 30 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition March 2010: 91(3); 502-509
- 31 Annals of Internal Medicine March 18, 2014
- 32 Journal of the American College of Cardiology June 17, 2020 [Epub ahead of print]
‘Israel has failed to prove its history in al-Quds despite extensive excavations for decades’
Press TV – June 9, 2022
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says the Israeli regime has dismally failed to prove it is steeped in the history of al-Quds despite the regime’s extensive excavations of sacred sites of the occupied holy city for decades.
“Fifty-five years of excavations and tunnel digging did not prove that there is a temple in the city,” Shtayyeh said as he addressed a conference dubbed “Property Documentation and the Historical Status of the Holy al-Aqsa Mosque” in the central West Bank city of al-Bireh on Wednesday.
He added that events like such a conference will reinforce the Palestinian narrative of al-Quds history, and will thwart the Tel Aviv regime’s systematic distortion of facts and its attempts to disguise the Arab, Muslim and Christian identities of the city.
Shtayyeh called on Arab rulers not to contribute to Israel’s Judaization plans in al-Quds, stressing that helping Palestinian residents of the holy city does not go hand in hand with implementing joint projects with the occupying regime.
He demanded that Arab statesmen prop up the Palestinian resistance front in any possible way.
In recent months, the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has warned that any Israeli attempt to seize al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied Old City of al-Quds will have “damaging consequences” for Israel.
Hardline Israeli legislators and extremist settlers regularly storm the al-Aqsa Mosque compound – a provocative move that infuriates Palestinians. Such mass settler break-ins almost always take place under the protection and support of Israeli military forces.
The al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which sits just above the Western Wall plaza, houses both the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Jewish visitation of al-Aqsa is permitted, but according to an agreement signed between Israel and the Jordanian government in the wake of Israel’s occupation of East al-Quds in 1967, non-Muslim worship at the compound is prohibited.
Back in May last year, frequent acts of violence against Palestinian worshipers at al-Aqsa Mosque led to an 11-day war with Palestinian resistance groups in the besieged Gaza Strip, during which the Israeli regime killed at least 260 Palestinians, including 66 children.
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First Photographs Ever Taken of Iran [1848-1858] + Persepolis, Old World
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Book Review
A Palantir Manifesto
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The First Photographs Ever Taken of Iran [1848-1858] by Colonel Luigi Pesce + Persepolis, Old World
- Confusion, delusion, and how Israel drives the Iran War
- After the ceasefire illusion: Why Gaza’s “Day After” still has no buyer?
- Shifting to Guerilla Warfare, Hezbollah Delivers Massive Blows to Israel
- Wired for War: Israel’s Black Cube and the infiltration of Europe
- Monitoring group finds UK media guilty of ‘systematic’ dehumanization of Palestinians
- Al-Akhbar’s Amal Khalil assassinated by Israel, left to die under rubble
- US naval blockade has disrupted but ‘not broken’ Iran’s oil exports: Kpler
- On Mass Surveillance, Will the Deep State Win Again?
- Fire breaks out aboard identity-fluid $8bn USS Zumwalt
- If Americans Knew
- Meet the Top “Content” Producers Linked to Canary Mission
- Lebanese Journalist Amal Khalil Bombed and Left to Die by Israel
- Israel Moves to Re-establish Ganim Colony In Jenin
- Two Iranian Women in ICE Detention Are Not, In Fact, Related to Qasem Soleimani, Documents Show
- “The shooting was not in the air”: Testimonies from the Flour Massacre
- Israel chases down, kills Lebanese journalist, massacres 5 in Gaza, all during “ceasefires” – Daily Update
- Gaza’s unseen casualties: A surge in stillbirths and birth defects
- ‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
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