Dr. Peter McCullough, joins the Highwire again, this time to discuss the serious problem with the efficacy of the #Covid19 vaccines and how mass vaccination is creating this runaway train of a pandemic.
News that billionaire Google co-founder Larry Page has been hiding out on and buying isolated private islands in Fiji to avoid tourists who aren’t allowed in once again underscores how the elite is using the fallout from the pandemic to segregate themselves from the general public.
Page has been living off grid for over a year and forced a state-owned news website to remove an article about his activities that was also de-listed by Google in an apparent effort to conceal his location.
“He has spent months in Fiji during the coronavirus pandemic – mostly on the island of Tavarua – and it has been rumored the billionaire has bought at least one island in the country’s Mamanuca archipelago,” reports the Daily Mail.
“Page has also been spotted an a smaller island called Namotu – which a sailor named Lorenzo Cipriani claimed Page bought in a blog post in August.”
Page, who has a net worth of $117 billion, making him the sixth-wealthiest person in the world, was able to take advantage of Fiji’s ‘Blue Lane’ program, which “lets the super wealthy visit the archipelago on their superyachts and private jets, even when other travelers were banned.”
So while Page gets to enjoy a sumptuous view of the South Pacific while being attended to on his luxury private island by 30 staff waiting on him, ordinary people who have lost their jobs, businesses and homes due to the lockdown aren’t even allowed to travel there.
Page’s story is just a microcosm of how wealthy elitists have rapaciously exploited the lockdowns that they have vehemently supported and facilitated to further expand the economic inequality gap and segregate themselves from the peasants.
While Page has his staff prepare him cocktails and the finest cuisine after a day of surfboarding in paradise, children in his home country are either permanently traumatized and afraid to go outside or literally committing suicide out of loneliness caused by lockdown.
Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum – architects of ‘the Great Reset’ that has been rapidly advanced thanks to lockdown policies – tells people that they’ll “own nothing and be happy.”
It tells them to look forward to their rental servitude under a system of neo-feudalism that will make home ownership completely unaffordable.
Meanwhile, Davos billionaires like Bill Gates are buying up huge swathes of property, with Gates recently becoming the largest owner of farmland in America.
In terms of individual land owners, Gates is still far behind media mogul John C. Malone, who is in top spot with 2.2 million acres of ranches and forests and CNN founder Ted Turner, who owns 2 million acres of ranch land.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is also “investing in land on a large scale,” according to Forbes.
While billionaire philanthropists and technocrats are acquiring land at an accelerating speed, they appear to be telling the general public that in the future private property will virtually cease to exist.
The WEF also celebrates the notion that “lockdowns are quietly improving cities,” greasing the skids for climate lockdowns and regulated air travel even as the likes of Page and his ilk jet off for luxury holidays whenever they please, absent the nuisance of those pesky tourists who might spoil their tranquility.
While our quality of life is eroded, while we have to take vaccines and jump through 100 flaming hoops to be allowed to travel internationally, they’re all completely exempt – exempt from the same rules they onerously impose on us.
Tourists are flushed out and banned from entering countries so Page and his rich friends can enjoy their days of pampered, opulent leisure in total seclusion.
Indeed, many elitists have expressed delight at how global lockdowns have left roads, airports and luxury resorts in Caribbean countries virtually empty, allowing them to avoid any interaction whatsoever with the unwashed masses.
This then has the knock-on impact of forcing low income workers to flood to western countries in search of work, exacerbating tensions caused by mass uncontrolled immigration.
Billionaires also exploited the pandemic to snuff out their remaining competition and create even more centralized monopolies.
Worldwide, the combined wealth of the world’s 10 richest men rose by $540bn during the first year of the pandemic, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who saw his personal wealth grow by $86 billion as Amazon shares soared.
According to an Oxfam report, billionaires exploited the the impact of lockdown to create a “rigged economy,” causing expanding wealth inequality during the “worst economic downturn in a century.”
A record number of billionaires were also created in the UK during the pandemic even as millions of ordinary people lost their jobs and saw their businesses go under.
Meanwhile, lockdowns caused 150 million people globally to be pushed into extreme poverty.
But for those lucky enough to hold onto their jobs, they’re kept at arms length by ‘stay at home’ orders, remote working and Zoom calls, even as globalists continue to enjoy maskless BBQ parties at the G7 and socially un-distanced black tie dinners at Davos.
They still get to meet each other in person (while avoiding the worker drones), but you don’t.
None of this is anything new.
Since humanity began to divide into class systems, entrenched elites have always sought to aggressively separate themselves from the public, prevent the creation of a strong middle class, and maintain a poor service class that is only good for attending to their needs.
The major difference now is that the elite have built a giant technocracy which enables them to maintain total surveillance of the populations under their control, while they get to enjoy total exclusivity and privacy.
As Larry Page’s successful effort to get the article about his whereabouts removed from the news media proves, they get to conceal everything about their activities while demanding to know everything about yours.
They get to avoid attention and they get to avoid people knowing their location.
Meanwhile, your government health app knows your every locations and ‘pings’ you back under quarantine at the drop of a hat.
The advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence will also ensure that even much of the elite’s servant class will become obsolete in the near future.
This agenda will all be facilitated through puppet governments and private corporations, allowing Page, Gates, Zuckerberg and other billionaires to fade into the background and hide their role in the managed decline of civilization.
While they continue to inflict all of this upon humanity, we continue to bicker over identity politics, racism and all manner of relative trivialities that keep us divided and asleep.
And if you’re naive enough to think that this is all coming to an end as the coronavirus pandemic winds down, rest assured that there are many more ‘variants’ to be discovered and innumerable more reasons to put you back under lockdown.
Don’t worry though, because none of these restrictions will apply to Larry Page and his billionaire friends, who will remain totally isolated on their luxury private islands as the rest of the world goes to hell in a hand basket thanks to the economic warfare they declared on us.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced yesterday that it has regained its observer status at the African Union. Until 2002, the colonial state was an observer member of the Organisation of African Unity, until the latter was dissolved and replaced by the African Union.
Who has decided to readmit Israel to the AU as an observer state? We know those responsible very well, because ever since they came to power in the continental body they have made some very unpopular decisions of no benefit to Africa and its people. Instead, they have sold us all to the highest bidder.
One day they will be exposed as traitors because Africa and its states have been born out of the struggles against slavery and colonialism; we don’t need to associate ourselves with colonial states such as the Zionist entity. In days gone by our kings and chiefs sold us for a teaspoon of sugar and a shiny mirror. Today our leaders are selling us again to the descendants of the same imperialists wearing democratic cloaks to hide their colonialist intentions.
Is there any difference between these modern African leaders and those who sold us into colonial slavery? Quite simply, none at all. They are the people who allow imperialists and Zionists to have access to our continent’s natural resources in exchange for spyware technology and weapons to enable their continuing grip on power.
When former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi spearheaded the formation of the African Union in 2002, he made sure that Zionist Israel was sidelined. Little did he know that his African brothers would go on to betray him and his anti-colonialist legacy.
Israel is a racist, apartheid state, so why should it have observer status at the AU? Before any such readmission was even considered, the union should have demanded that the Zionist state complies with the many UN resolutions hanging over it. It was a perfect opportunity to put pressure on Israel to withdraw from all Arab land that it occupies — Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian alike — and facilitate the independence of the State of Palestine.
The AU needs to wake up to what Israel is capable of doing. Just this week, Britain’s Guardian newspaper has reported that an Israeli company has developed and sold Pegasus spyware to a number of governments, including some in Africa, and that at least fourteen world leaders (among many activists, journalists and human rights campaigners), including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, have been targeted by the technology.
This is just one example of what befriending Israel means. One of the African leaders said to be implicated in such use of the Pegasus technology is Paul Kagame of Rwanda. He is a well-known friend of Israel and his relations with many of his neighbours in Africa are strained. Such relations are going to be tested even further after the Pegasus leak.
Kagame is known for pursuing his political opponents wherever they might be, and assassinating them. His relationship with the South African government is tense for that very reason. He also has problems with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who accuses him of espionage using the very same Pegasus spyware. The government of Burundi is also complaining about Kagame for doing the same thing.
Rwanda recently deployed its troops to northern Mozambique and a fierce war of words has since erupted within the ruling FRELIMO party in Maputo. Given the Pegasus situation, how can the Southern African Development Community, of which Mozambique is part, trust the Rwandan military working alongside its forces? This arrangement could go very wrong. It is impossible to fight alongside those who are spying on you.
It’s a fact that wherever Israel goes and is welcomed, problems of this nature tend to arise. Countries are destabilised and turn on each other. It’s the old colonial tactic of divide and rule, playing one side off against another while pretending to be friends of both.
The Israel observer status move is the second serious blunder made by the AU recently. The first was to allow Morocco to return to the fold before withdrawing its forces from occupied Western Sahara.
With the Zionist entity involved in the AU, we can expect the continent to be destabilised even further. Africa simply cannot afford or allow that to happen. The AU must, as a matter of urgency, rescind the decision about Israel’s status unless and until it complies with all UN resolutions concerning its withdrawal from all occupied territories and facilitate Palestinian independence. If the colonial-occupation state refuses to do so, then formal relations between Tel Aviv and the African Union should be off the agenda.
The FBI’s extensive role in Governor Whitmer’s case has once again raised the question of the bureau’s possible infiltration of the Capitol riots, says independent American journalist Max Parry, citing the federal agency’s long record of incitement, including the infamous COINTELPRO.
On 20 July, BuzzFeedreported that at least 12 FBI informants had infiltrated the group behind the Governor Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot. What’s more, these informants were not passively sitting there wearing wires but were actively involved with the group. One of them, an Iraq War veteran, rose to become the second-in-command of the Michigan militant group, taught the members of the militia military tactics, told them to convene with other potential suspects, and even paid for their transportation.
Yet another plotter who advised the militia on where to place explosives and offered to get them as much as the task would require turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, according to the media outlet.
Prior to this, members of the militia group stormed the State Capitol in April 2020 as part of a larger crowd that entered the building wearing protective gear and carrying rifles to protest against Whitmer’s COVID restrictions.
At the time, the US mainstream media largely blamed Trump for the April riot and the kidnapping plot, citing his Twitter posts targeting the state’s Democratic governor.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson picked up the BuzzFeed story raising the question as to what extent the FBI directed the Michigan militia’s conduct in both cases and reiterated his earlier assumption that the agency could have infiltrated and instigated the January 6th protests as well.
Tucker Carlson & @julie_kelly2 Discuss The Buzzfeed Report About The FBI's Involvement In The Governor Whitmer Plot & The Striking Similarities It Has To January 6th
Tucker: "So what does this suggest about January 6th, before you dismiss it as a 'conspiracy theory?'" pic.twitter.com/f7WCV3zIp6
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) July 22, 2021
Could the FBI Have Organised 1/6?
“The new revelations about the extent to which informants were involved in the devising of the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer raises serious questions about 1/6”, says independent American journalist Max Parry. “If they were encouraging, arranging, and directing the Michigan extremists to try and capture the governor, they very well could have planned, controlled, and engineered the storming of the US Capitol if the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other groups were as heavily penetrated by law enforcement as believed”.
This brings up the question: “Would the storming of Congress have happened without the instigations of undercover informants?”, the journalist notes.
According to Parry, there are reasons to believe that the militia groups participating in the Capitol siege in DC could have been infiltrated by federal agents, given it is known that Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio used to be an FBI informant. For its part, on 30 June, Revolver News, presumed that Stewart Rhodes, the founder and the leader of The Oath Keepers, America’s largest militia, could possibly be in cahoots with the bureau.
Per the media, it appears suspicious that while the DoJ has enough evidence to jail the leader of “the most extensively prosecuted paramilitary group” in connection with the Capitol riots, he, unlike his group mates, has not been arrested.
In any event, the bureau cannot deny that they, at the very least, had foreknowledge of the apparent 1/6 plot, Parry notes. A US Senate report last month detailed the intelligence failures leading up to the Capitol attack where the FBI and DHS dismissed the credibility of online rhetoric calling for violence.
FBI’s Long Record of Incitement
The mainstream media in America is dismissing the claims that the FBI could have played a role in the siege. Tucker Carlson, who suggested in June that federal agents may have helped organise the riot, was immediately called a conspiracy theorist. However, this assumption by no means sounds outlandish given the FBI’s long record of incitement.
On 21 June, Revolver Newslisted at least five cases when the bureau did just that, including the 1993 attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre and the agency’s infamous 15-year Counter Intelligence Programme (COINTELPRO) best-known for spying on Martin Luther King Jr.
COINTELPRO, which aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting political organisations and movements perceived as “subversive” by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, officially ran from 1956-1971. The tactics included smearing individuals and groups by using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media, IRS audits, harassment, incitement, warrantless surveillance and surreptitious entries, incarcerations on false pretexts, withholding exculpatory evidence, targeted assassinations, etc.
In June 1975, the American Civil Liberties Union submitted a report for Senate investigators on the Secret Army Organisation (SAO), a South California paramilitary group that was reportedly funded by the bureau to commit acts of violence and intimidation against left-wingers and their sympathisers between 1971 and 1972.
In 1976, American lawmakers detailed the methods of the FBI’s covert operation in a 994-page report and concluded that “many techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all its targets had been involved in violent activity but COINTELPRO went far beyond that”. Still, the bureau insisted that all of these were for the greater good, i.e. to protect national security and deter violence by “preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas”.
“The common thread throughout these operations where federal law enforcement orchestrates and participates in terror plots is exploiting individuals who are an easy target and prone to militancy, be it religious fanaticism or political extremism at either end of the spectrum”, highlights Parry. “Amid the current political climate in the country, the threat of right-wing extremism is most suitable to this particular time. During COINTELPRO, the target was the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, and the political left. In the War on Terror, the aim was combating Islamic extremism. Recently we’ve seen how the bureau’s mission has shifted its focus to right-wing militia groups”.
What’s happening now is that with the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 and USA Patriot Act’s subsequent redefining of homegrown terrorism, “the national security apparatus is manufacturing the threats needed to broaden its surveillance state and unconstitutional powers at this particular historical moment”, the journalists presumes.
The Left Should be Alarmed
The American Left should not be deluded by the government having shifted its focus to the right and pro-Trump groups, says Parry.
“Following January 6th we have seen Democrats leading the charge for new domestic terror laws”, he stresses. “The left should have the sense to understand that these new expanded powers for the security state will inevitably be used against them and will backfire, especially given the precedent set by history and COINTELPRO. These are lawless and rogue agencies with no transparency or accountability and the FBI in particular routinely impedes oversight and goes totally out of bounds of the US Constitution”.
According to the journalist, “it is particularly disturbing the way the national security complex has managed to rehabilitate its image overnight during the Trump era where high-ranking intelligence officials and FBI directors have become media darlings and liberal heroes”.
Yet, in both the Whitmer case and, possibly, on 6 January, “the FBI has put the public at greater risk under the guise of protecting it and manufactured terrorism in the name of fighting it”, Parry concludes.
Mandating children to wear facemasks for long periods of time while at school and participating in other activities is an unprecedented move, one that was put into place despite no research showing the practice is safe. It’s not simply a case of “something is better than nothing,” because the act of mask wearing comes with a risk of adverse effects.
Now that the pandemic is more than a year behind us, evidence is starting to accumulate showing that the use of face masks in children may cause more harm than good. One of the latest studies noted that the evidence base for making face masks compulsory in schoolchildren is “weak,” and looked into their effects on carbon dioxide in inhaled air.1
Masks Increase Carbon Dioxide Inhalation
Your body produces carbon dioxide (CO2) as a byproduct of cellular function.2 This odorless, colorless gas is then transported via your blood to your lungs, where it is exhaled from your body. Normally, the CO2 then dissipates into the air around you before you take another breath. In the open air, carbon dioxide typically exists at about 400 parts per million (ppm), or 0.04% by volume.
The German Federal Environmental Office set a limit of CO2 for closed rooms of 2,000 ppm, or 0.2 percent by volume. If you’re wearing a facemask, the CO2 cannot escape as it usually does and instead becomes trapped in the mask. In a study published in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers analyzed the CO2 content of inhaled air among children wearing two types of masks, as well as wearing no mask.3
Children in the study ranged in age from 6 to 17 years, with a mean age of 10.7. While no significant difference in CO2 was found between the two types of masks, there was a significant elevation when wearing masks compared to not wearing them.
CO2 in inhaled air under surgical and filtering facepiece masks came in between 13,120 ppm and 13,910 ppm, “which is higher than what is already deemed unacceptable by the German Federal Environmental Office by a factor of 6,” the researchers noted.4 Also important, this level was reached after only three minutes, while children wear masks at school for a mean of 270 minutes at a time.
Even the child who had the lowest measured CO2 level had a measurement threefold greater than the closed room CO2 limit of 0.2 percent. However, younger children appeared to have the highest CO2 values; a level of 25,000 ppm was measured from a 7-year-old wearing a facemask.5
The study attracted criticism and calls for retraction by those questioning mask risks to children, but in a thoughtful synopsis by Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, it’s noted that there are both benefits and risks to forcing children to wear masks.6
While large, empirical studies could answer the question of whether masks help or harm children, “we did literally zero of them,” Prasad said, and the CO2 study is attempting to add some clarity. He added:7
“Here is the real answer to the question of whether it’s worth it to mask kids: No one has any clue. During the last year and half, the scientific community has failed to answer these questions. Failed entirely.
We have no idea if masks work for 2-year-olds and above, 5 and above, 12 and above. No idea if they only work for some period of time. No idea if this is linked to community rates. No idea if the concerns over language loss offset the gains in reduced viral transmission, and if so, for what ages.”
Children’s Mask Complaints Could Be Caused by Elevated CO2
A German study using data from 25,930 children showed that 68% reported adverse effects from wearing facemasks.8 Among them, 29.7% reported feeling short of breath, 26.4% being dizzy and 17.9% were unwilling to move or play.9
Hundreds more experienced “accelerated respiration, tightness in chest, weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness.” Additional symptoms were also reported among the children, who wore facemasks for an average of 270 minutes a day:10
Reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44 percent)
Malaise (42 percent)
Impaired learning (38 percent)
Drowsiness or fatigue (37 percent)
Signs of mild to moderate hypercapnia, which is a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream, include shortness of breath, daytime sluggishness, headache, daytime sleepiness and anxiety.11
Hypercapnia is often associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which makes it harder for you to breathe, but it can also be caused by activities that limit you from breathing fresh air, such as scuba diving or being on a ventilator.12,13 The researchers of the featured study believe, however, that the use of facemasks could lead to “impairments attributable to hypercapnia,” adding:14
“Most of the complaints reported by children can be understood as consequences of elevated carbon dioxide levels in inhaled air. This is because of the dead-space volume of the masks, which collects exhaled carbon dioxide quickly after a short time.
This carbon dioxide mixes with fresh air and elevates the carbon dioxide content of inhaled air under the mask, and this was more pronounced in this study for younger children … We suggest that decision-makers weigh the hard evidence produced by these experimental measurements accordingly, which suggest that children should not be forced to wear face masks.”
Nanoparticles, Pollutants Detected In Facemasks
Disposable plastic facemasks pose another risk in terms of the pollution they contain. A study by Swansea University researchers noted that 200 million disposable plastic facemasks are produced in China daily, and “improper and unregulated disposals” have led to a significant plastic pollution problem.15
The researchers submerged seven disposable facemask brands in water to simulate what happens with littering, when masks end up in waterways. Micro- and nanoscale fibers and particles and heavy metals, including lead, antimony and copper, were detected, raising significant environmental and public health concerns. According to a university news release:16
“The findings reveal significant levels of pollutants in all the masks tested — with micro/nano particles and heavy metals released into the water during all tests.
Researchers conclude this will have a substantial environmental impact and, in addition, raise the question of the potential damage to public health — warning that repeated exposure could be hazardous as the substances found have known links to cell death, genotoxicity and cancer formation.”
Not only are masks not being recycled, but their materials make them likely to persist and accumulate in the environment. Most disposable face masks contain three layers — a polyester outer layer, a polypropylene or polystyrene middle layer and an inner layer made of absorbent material such as cotton.
Polypropylene is already one of the most problematic plastics, as it’s widely produced and responsible for large waste accumulation in the environment. Leading researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Princeton University also warned that masks could quickly become “the next plastic problem.”17
A performance study published in the June 2021 issue of Journal of Hazardous Materials18 also highlighted the little talked about fact that wearing masks poses a risk of microplastic inhalation, and reusing masks increases the risk.
The Link Between Masks And Advanced Stage Lung Cancer
A National Institutes of Health study19 published in February 2021 confirmed that when you wear a mask, most of the water vapor you would normally exhale remains in the mask, becomes condensed and is re-inhaled.20 They went so far as to suggest that wearing a moist mask and inhaling the humid air of your own breath was a good thing, because it would hydrate your respiratory tract.
But researchers from New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine revealed that when oral commensals — microbes that live in your mouth — are “enriched” in the lungs, it’s associated with cancer.21
Specifically, in a study of 83 adults with lung cancer, those with advanced-stage cancer had more oral commensals in their lungs than those with early-stage cancer. Those with an enrichment of oral commensals in their lungs also had decreased survival and worsened tumor progression.
While the study didn’t look into how mask usage could affect oral commensals in your lungs, they did note, “The lower airway microbiota, whether in health or disease state, are mostly affected by aspiration of oral secretions, and the lower airway microbial products are in constant interaction with the host immune system.“22
It seems highly likely that wearing a mask would accelerate the accumulation of oral microbes in your lungs, thereby raising the question of whether mask usage could be linked to advanced stage lung cancer.
Masks Developed That Test For COVID-19
Adding further support that masking leads to an accumulation of breath droplets, which you can then re-inhale, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University developed a face mask that tests such droplets for the presence of COVID-19.23
The facemasks contain tiny, freeze-dried sensors surrounded by water. When the wearer pushes a button, the water is released, hydrating the sensor, which then begins the test.
Reportedly, the mask can diagnose COVID-19 within 90 minutes and is “as sensitive as the gold standard, highly sensitive PCR tests,“24 which have been fraught with trouble since the beginning of the pandemic.
CDC Study Finds Masks In Schools Had Little Effect On COVID
If children are risking inhalation of excessive levels of CO2 to wear masks at school, what benefit are they receiving in exchange? Very little, if any, according to a CDC study that compared the incidence of COVID-19 in Georgia kindergarten through grade 5 schools that were open for in-person learning in fall 2020 with various recommended prevention strategies, such as mandatory masks and improvements to ventilation.25
The study revealed that COVID-19 incidence was 37 percent lower in schools that required teachers and staff members to use masks and 39 percent lower in schools that improved ventilation, compared to schools that did not use these strategies.26
Because the COVID-19 incidence at the schools was extremely low to begin with, even with a 37 percent reduction in incidence from staff members wearing masks, that only reduced COVID-19 incidence by about one case in the entire school. When students were masked, it also made virtually no difference. Further, ventilation led to better outcomes, reducing incidence by 39 percent.
Dilution methods, which work by diluting the number of airborne particles, include opening windows and doors or using fans. This led to a 35 percent lower incidence of COVID-19, while methods to filter airborne particles, such as using HEPA filtration systems with or without ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, led to a 48 percent lower incidence.
More States Ban Mask Mandates In Schools
While the CDC continues to recommend “universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing” in kindergarten through grade 12 schools,27 a number of states, including Texas, Iowa, South Carolina and Arkansas, are defying the CDC’s nonsensical advice and proceeding to ban mask mandates in public schools or at least make mask usage optional.28
In addition to the physical risks, experts have warned that masks are likely to be causing psychological harm to children and interfering with their development.29 All of these risks come at little benefit to children, as, one expert report noted, “Figures illustrate that the risk of death from this disease for this age group is negligible … To introduce these [compulsory face covering measures] without detailed, thorough and meticulous risk assessment, is potentially reckless.“30
Mass, peaceful protests are often effective at compelling change, so if you’re unhappy with the facemask policies at your child’s school, contact your local district and let them know.
It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgement of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The photograph was taken in the same room with a similar environment; unfortunately the patient wore the same shirt.
The journal found this explanation acceptable and forwarded the response to the complainants.
It’s becoming clear that science has major difficulties with not only a flood of incorrect and intellectually fraudulent claims, but also literally faked, entirely made up papers with random data, imaginary experiments and photoshopped images in them. Some of these papers are sold by organised gangs to Chinese doctors who need them to get promoted. But others come from really sketchy outfits like (sigh) the National Health Service, to whom we owe the masterpiece seen above.
The British Government hasn’t noticed that its doctors are massaging medical evidence. Instead this example comes from Elizabeth Bik, who runs a blog where she and a few other volunteers try to spot clusters of fraudulent papers. She embarrassed the journal in public here, and the paper was finally retracted. But she’s just a volunteer who raises money on Patreon for her work. Here’s her assessment of what’s going on:
Science has a huge problem: 100s (1000s?) of science papers with obvious photoshops that have been reported, but that are all swept under the proverbial rug, with no action or only an author-friendly correction… There are dozens of examples where journals rather accept a clean (better photoshopped?) figure redo than asking the authors for a thorough explanation.
As the only people trying to spot these fake papers are bloggers, we can safely assume that far larger numbers of papers are fake than the “thousands” they have already found and reported. For example,
It’s been known for years that a lot of claims made by scientists can’t be replicated. In some fields, the majority of all claims appear to not replicate due to a large mix of issues like overly lax thresholds for claiming statistical significance, poor study design and other somewhat subtle errors. But how much research is deliberate falsehood?
The sad truth is the size of the fraud problem is entirely unknown because the institutions of science have absolutely no mechanisms to detect bad behaviour whatsoever. Academia is dominated by (and largely originated) the same ideology calling for the total defunding of the police, so no surprise that they just assume everyone has absolute integrity all the time: research claims are constantly accepted at face value even when obviously nonsensical or fake. Deceptive research sails through peer review, gets published, cited and then incorporated into decision making. There are no rules and it’d be pointless to make any because there’s nobody to enforce them: universities are notorious for solidly defending fraudulent professors.
So let’s turn over the rock and see what crawls out. We’ll start with China and then turn our attention back to more western types of deception.
Chinese fraud studios
In 2018, the U.S. National Science Foundation announced that: “For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications.” Should the USA worry about this? Perhaps not. After some bloggers exposed an industrial research-faking operation that had generated at least 600 papers about experiments that never happened, a Chinese doctor reached out to beg for mercy:
Hello teacher, yesterday you disclosed that there were some doctors having fraudulent pictures in their papers. This has raised attention. As one of these doctors, I kindly ask you to please leave us alone as soon as possible… Without papers, you don’t get promotion; without a promotion, you can hardly feed your family… You expose us but there are thousands of other people doing the same. As long as the system remains the same and the rules of the game remain the same, similar acts of faking data are for sure to go on. This time you exposed us, probably costing us our job. For the sake of Chinese doctors as a whole, especially for us young doctors, please be considerate. We really have no choice, please!
Note the belief that “thousands of other people” are doing the same, and that these doctors need more than one paper to keep being promoted, so the 600 found so far is surely the tip of an iceberg given China’s size. There are about 3.8 million doctors in China implying that there are quite possibly tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of these things in circulation.
The fake papers are remarkable:
They are so good they are undetectable in isolation. The NHS photo is an aberration – normally these papers get spotted by noticing re-used technical images across papers that claim to be different experiments by different people. The fake papers are probably produced by real scientists with access to real lab equipment. The use of spammy-looking Gmail accounts is also a signal because Gmail is banned in China (e.g. BrendaWillingham12192@gmail.com, RosettajKirkland3814@gmail.com, CaseyPeiffer8311@gmail.com). The reliance on bot-generated Gmail accounts implies enormous scale.
They are peer reviewed and published in western journals. For instance, the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry by Wiley or Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy by Elsevier. They claim to be doing advanced micro-biology on serious diseases: a typical title is something like “MicroRNA-125b promotes neurons cell apoptosis and Tau phosphorylation in Alzheimer’s disease”. Journals have no way to detect these papers and aren’t trying to develop any.
Some of them present traditional Chinese medicine as scientific. TCM is more or less the Chinese equivalent of homeopathy with lots of herbal remedies, eating body parts of exotic animals to cure erectile dysfunction, and so on. But the Chinese Government is obsessed with it and thinks it’s the same as normal medicine. From the top down, Chinese scientists are expected to produce papers claiming that TCM works, and they do! Mostly this stuff stays in Chinese but the ever increasing reliance of western universities on Chinese funding means it’s now finding its way into the English language literature as well, e.g. “Probing the Qi of traditional Chinese herbal medicines by the biological synthesis of nano-Au” was published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Advert by a research faking operation. Credit to “Smut Clyde” and “TigerBB8”.
Most western scientists are too clever to buy a completely fake paper (or so we hope). But their promotion incentives are identical, and there are other techniques that let you publish as many fake papers as you want. Let’s turn our attention to…
Impossible numbers in western science
The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.
How many scientists just make up their data? A well known recent case of this was the Surgisphere scandal, in which a paper appeared in The Lancet that claimed to be based on a proprietary dataset of nearly 100,000 COVID-19 patients across over 670 U.S. hospitals. This figure was larger than the official case counts of some entire continents at the time, and there was no reason for hospitals to share tightly controlled medical data with a random company nobody had heard of, so the claim was implausible on its face. Sure enough, when challenged it turned out none of the authors had ever actually seen the data, just summaries of it provided by one guy, who on investigation had a long track record of dishonesty. The Lancet probably accepted this paper because it made Trump look bad and the editor (Horton, quoted above) appears to hate Trump more than he hates bad science.
President Trump’s decision to defund WHO is simply this—a crime against humanity. Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity. https://t.co/7hTwUZ4lJV
There are some other cases like this that came to light over the years, like the story of Brian Wansink, or that of Paolo Macchiarini, who left a trail of dead patients in his wake. But while anecdotes about individual cases are interesting, can we be more rigorous?
One clue comes from automated tools that scan research papers looking for mathematically impossible numbers, which can sometimes be detected even in the absence of the raw original data. In recent years a few such tools have been developed and deployed, mostly against psychology and food science.
The statcheck program showed that “half of all published psychology papers… contained at least one p-value that was inconsistent with its test”.
The GRIM program showed that of the papers it could verify, around half contained averages that weren’t possible given the sample sizes, and more than 20% contained multiple such inconsistencies.
Being flagged by a stats checker doesn’t guarantee the data is made up: GRIM can detect simple mistakes like typos and SPRITE requires common sense to detect that something is wrong (i.e., no child will eat a plate of 60 carrots). But when there are multiple such problems in a single paper, things start to look more suspicious. The fact that half of all papers had incorrect data in them is concerning, especially because it seems to match Richard Horton’s intuitive guess at how much science is simply untrue. And the GRIM paper revealed a deeper problem: more than half of the scientists refused to provide the raw data for further checking, even though they had agreed to share it as a condition of being published. This is rather suspicious.
One of the difficulties with detecting scientific fraud is that the line between dishonesty and simple absurdity can get quite blurry. Sometimes scientists “calculate” data that is clearly wrong, but don’t actually try to hide or it may even admit to it in the paper, knowing full well that nobody cares and nonsensical data won’t actually matter. Here’s an example from a COVID modelling paper:
The model was allowed to calculate that the average Brit must live with 7 other people, because it couldn’t obtain data fit otherwise (actual number=2.4). This one comes from University College London, is written by 12 neuroscientists, passed peer review and has 37 citations. The peer reviewer noticed that the incorrect number was in the paper but signed off on it anyway.
For decades psychiatrists published research into the “gene for depression” 5-HTTLPR. They created an entire literature not only linking the gene to depression but explaining how it worked, linking it to parenting styles, developing treatments based up on it. Over 450 papers were published on the topic. Eventually a geneticist discovered what they were doing and used DNA databanks to point out that none of those papers could possibly be true.
Sometimes numbers aren’t “wrong” but are instead logically vacuous. The Flaxman et al paper from Imperial College that tried to prove lockdowns work had the usual problem of statistically implausible numbers, but more importantly was built on circular logic: their model assumed only government interventions could end epidemics. This is obviously nonsense and they breezily admitted it in the paper, where they said their work was “illustrative only” and that “in reality even in the absence of government interventions we would expect Rt to decrease”. No problem: this fictional illustration got published in Nature and the authors presented the model’s outputs as scientific proof of their own assumption to the media. The paper is vacuous mathematical obfuscation, but scientists either can’t tell or don’t care: it has racked up over 1,300 citations and the number is still growing rapidly. To put that number in perspective, in physics the top 1% of all researchers have around 2,000 citationsover their entire career.
Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?
Earlier this month, the BMJ published an astounding blog post with the same title as this section. There’s no need to add anything because simply quoting it is sufficient:
The anaesthetist John Carlisle analysed 526 trials submitted to Anaesthesia and found that… when he was able to examine individual patient data in 153 studies, 67 (44%) had untrustworthy data and 40 (26%) were zombie trials… [Ben] Mol’s best guess is that about 20% of trials are false. Very few of these papers are retracted.
We have now reached a point where those doing systematic reviews must start by assuming that a study is fraudulent until they can have some evidence to the contrary.
Richard Smith
Richard Smith is a former editor of the BMJ, cofounder of the Committee on Medical Ethics (COPE), for many years the chair of the Cochrane Library Oversight Committee, and a member of the board of the U.K. Research Integrity Office.
Or put another way, an overseer of the Research Integrity Office believes research has no integrity.
What can be done?
600 fraudulent papers here, 450 over there, 1300+ citations of just one bad paper… pretty quickly it starts adding up.
We’re often told science is self-correcting. Is that true? Probably not. “The Science Reform Brain Drain” is perhaps the bleakest essay I’ve read this year. Reformers like the men who developed SPRITE and GRIM have been giving up and leaving science entirely. Pointing out in public that your colleagues are dishonest is never a great career move, and the work was often futile. One scientist who quit and went into industry summed up his fraud detection work like this:
The clearest consequence of my actions has been that Zhang has gotten better at publishing. Every time I reported an irregularity with his data, his next article would not feature that irregularity.
Even when a bull enters the China shop and gets a few papers retracted, it doesn’t actually matter because it has little effect: retracted papers keep getting cited for years afterwards and actually may be cited more than non-retracted papers, because one of the effects of retraction is that the article becomes free to download.
In the past year most talk of bad science has been about models with bad assumptions. This is an issue but has been hiding problems that are far worse: scientists are buying fake papers, Photoshopping evidence, refusing to upload their data, knowingly publishing numbers that cannot be correct, citing papers that were retracted for being fraudulent and (of course) presenting mathematical obfuscations of what they want to be true as if it were science. Journals usually ignore fraud reports entirely, or when put under pressure let scientists submit “corrected” versions of their papers. And worst of all, the journal editors that are responsible for scientific gatekeeping know all this is happening, but aren’t doing anything about it.
In fact, very little can be done because above all, universities rely on reputation and don’t want anyone to find out about bad behaviour, so they fight tooth and nail to protect academics no matter how badly they are behaving. There are no rules. Any rules that are alleged to exist turn out when tested to be illusions.
Claims made by scientists are automatically trusted by the majority of people. Maybe they shouldn’t be?
Mike Hearn is a former Google software engineer. You can read his blog at Plan 99.
We sat down with Dr. Byram Bridle, an associate Professor of Viral Immunology, Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph. Here’s the article that we discussed: https://theconversation.com/a-year-of…
Anger has swirled around the globe over revelations that Pegasus spyware created by Israeli software firm NSO Group has been used by governments to wiretap journalists and public figures. However, the fury is mild when compared to claims Beijing compelled Huawei to put a “backdoor” into its phones, which has never been proven.
Earlier this week, a group of news outlets including the Washington Post and Forbidden Stories, along with human rights group Amnesty International, revealed disturbing findings: governments around the globe have been buying up Pegasus spyware from NSO Group and using it to spy on journalists, public figures, and even other world leaders.
50,000 Phones Targeted
Thousands of phone numbers are on the list, with some of the biggest names including French President Emmanuel Macron and Moroccan journalists Omar Radi, both allegedly wiretapped by Morocco, and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, allegedly wiretapped by his native Saudi Arabia prior to being killed by a Saudi hit squad at the Saudi consulate in October 2019.
In all, 180 journalists were targeted in 20 countries, including Kazakhstan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Morocco, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mexico, Egypt, Algeria, Togo, Turkey, France, Spain and the United Kingdom. They also targeted at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials, including high-level officials like cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military officers, according toThe Washington Post.
Also on the list were 10 prime ministers, three presidents, and one king, including Iraqi President Barham Salih, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the prime ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, and Morocco, and seven former heads of government from Lebanon, Uganda, and Belgium, and several other countries.
Shalev Hulio, NSO’s chief executive and co-founder, has cast the story as flimsy, but said the company is “investigating every allegation … and if we find that it is true, we will take strong action.”
“NSO Group’s technologies have helped prevent terror attacks, gun violence, car explosions and suicide bombings. NSO Group is on a lifesaving mission and the company will faithfully execute this mission undeterred, despite any and all continued attempts to discredit it on false grounds,” the company told the US Public Broadcasting Service.
On Wednesday, the firm put out a press release saying “enough is enough,” announcing it would cease responding to media inquiries about what it called a “vicious and slanderous campaign.”
“NSO is a technology company. We do not operate the system, nor do we have access to the data of our customers, yet they are obligated to provide us with such information under investigations,” the company added.
The Israeli government has confirmed it “approves the export of cyber products exclusively to governmental entities, for lawful use, and only for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and counterterrorism, under end use /end user certificates provided by the acquiring government. In cases where exported items are used in violation of export licenses or end use certificates, appropriate measures are taken.”
However, it denied having any knowledge of the use of Pegasus to spy on other targets, and noted to the Post that “Israel does not have access to the information gathered by NSO’s clients.”
That said, a former senior US national security official who has worked closely with the Israeli security services also told the outlet “It’s crazy to think that NSO wouldn’t share sensitive national security information with the government of Israel. That doesn’t mean they’re a front for the Israeli security agencies, but governments around the world assume that NSO is working with Israel.”
How Have Nations Reacted?
Representatives from many of the nations implicated in the investigation have unanimously denied the reports they spied on journalists, dissidents, and world figures, insisting their governments are based on the rule of law. However, it’s notable that not all of the countries where journalists were targeted have been asked for comment, with France, Spain, and the UK being notable exceptions.
Asked byThe Hindu, a White House spokesperson said on Wednesday that “The United States condemns the harassment or extrajudicial surveillance of journalists, human rights activists, or other perceived regime critics.”
However, despite the admission by NSO that it sells such software and by Israel that it, at the very least, approved of each sale, and in light of comments by foreign intelligence officials that Israel likely materially benefitted from the affair by gleaning information from the group, it seems that a bigger scandal would be expected. But not a single government has demanded punishment for either NSO or Israel, or decried even the possibility that Israel helped countries wiretap people not suspected of criminal actions, or raised fears that a country’s government likely got ahold of classified information from them via illegal means.
There have been no calls for sanctions against Israel or NSO or any senior figures at NSO, or prosecutions, or frankly even acknowledgements that the affair is even happening outside of dry-mouthed condemnations. In fact, the only calls for sanctions have been by journalists themselves, such as the Intercept’s Ryan Grim and Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abuminah.
The reactions – and lack thereof – stand in stark comparison to how Chinese tech giant Huawei has been treated.
Huawei Crucified Without Evidence
Shenzhen-based Huawei is the world’s largest manufacturer of both telecommunications equipment and smartphones and a major supplier of 5G internet service. The company was started in 1987 by Ren Zhangfei, a former Chinese military engineer, although he owns less than 2% of its shares, which are owned by Huawei employees.
The US has claimed for years that Ren’s military experience and membership in the Communist Party of China make Huawei a security liability, but in 2018 a more concerted effort began aimed at forcing US military and government agencies from using products by Huawei and another Chinese phone maker, ZTE, claiming that the CPC had forced Huawei to insert a secret “back door” into its phones and networks, enabling the Chinese government to spy on users if so desired.
The company and the Chinese government have both denied that such a backdoor does or even could exist or that they would pursue one if it were possible.
“If they believe there’s a backdoor, they should offer evidence to prove it,” Huawei chairman Liang Hua challenged US intelligence in January 2019. At the time, Washington said it didn’t need to, citing Huawei’s alleged proximity to the Chinese government as sufficient proof.
However, as the US began hounding allies in Germany and the “Five Eyes” nations to drop Huawei’s technologies, it did begin providing them with evidence to support its claims – evidence London, Berlin, and Paris all said wasn’t very convincing. Still, within months each of them had either rejected bids by Huawei or suddenly found new evidence to justify falling into line with US demands.
The firm was placed on a US blacklist in 2019, requiring Americans to obtain a special license from the US Department of Commerce before doing business with Huawei, effectively banning Americans from buying Huawei’s phones, and several nations have now sanctioned Huawei as well. The company’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was also arrested in Canada in connection with charges in a US court that aren’t related to the espionage allegations but which are widely seen as further persecution of the company.
The sanctions had their effect, too: in March, a first-quarter earnings report showed its sales down 16.5% year-on, part of a trend that caused it to sell its Honor smartphone marquee last year.
Legacy of Israeli Spying on Allies
In September 2019, Politico reported that US government officials had concluded Israel was responsible for placing cell phone surveillance devices called “Stingrays” around Washington, DC, and had even used them to spy on White House communications. A former senior official used as a source for the article said the devices were likely intended to spy specifically on then-US President Donald Trump, a known lover of his iPhone.
Then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the report, saying, “Israel doesn’t conduct espionage operations in the United States, period.”
However, the claims go back much further. In 1985, US intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested, charged, and later convicted of espionage after he passed classified US Navy documents to Israel, including dirt on Israel’s Arab neighbors, for $1,500 a month.
Jonathan Pollard, U.S. Navy ID picture
Israel also spied on then-US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014 and 2015 during negotiations for what became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, according to reports by Der Spiegeland theWall Street Journal.
In 2017,Le Monde revealed that Israel’s Mossad had penetrated the French intelligence directorate in what it called Operation Ratafia, with the goal of developing close relationships with fellow spies “to the point of crossing the line of turning them into double agents.”
None of these brought calls for sanctions, either, revealing how politically motivated the attacks on Huawei and other Chinese tech firms really are. Why does the West continue to tolerate the Israeli government spying on them and their citizens?
THE UK Medical Freedom Alliance has sent an open letter to Dr Brenda Kelly, consultant obstetrician at Oxford University Hospitals, detailing ‘serious concerns’ about statements she made in videos on the hospitals’ website about Covid-19 vaccination in pregnancy.
The alliance, a group of medical professionals, scientists and lawyers, says it is concerned about several ‘simplified, misleading and biased’ claims Dr Kelly made about the safety and efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccines. It says these claims are not supported by the available evidence, and ‘may seriously impede the process of obtaining fully informed consent from pregnant women’.
This is the text of the letter:
We would like to share with you our Open Letters to the RCOG / RCM dated 29 March 2021 and to the JCVI dated 19 April 2021 vaccines-should-be-offered-to-all-pregnant-women regarding Covid-19 vaccines for pregnant women.
This is in response to your recent appearance in a series of short videos, published on the Oxford University Hospitals website, where you made several statements conveying simplified and biased messages that are not supported by the available evidence.
Concerns are mainly related, but not limited to, your representation of the Covid-19 vaccine safety profile.
1. You state that Covid-19 vaccines are safer for pregnant women than contracting Covid-19 disease, when there is no evidence at all that Covid-19 vaccines will prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection or any of the complications you refer to (stillbirths / premature delivery / long Covid).
2. Your statement that Covid-19 vaccines are ‘safe and effective’ stands completely unqualified, resulting in the suggestion that nobody will come to any serious harm as a result of the vaccine.
As a medical practitioner, we are sure that you will be aware that such a statement does not apply to any medical intervention, and cannot possibly apply to a product that is based on a completely novel technology whilst remaining in Phase 3 trial stages, not due to be completed till 2023.
3. You indicate it to be reassuring that Covid-19 vaccines do not contain any live virus, but completely fail to mention that the gene technology using mRNA and lipid nanoparticles has never previously received full regulatory approval for humans on a large scale.
As pregnant women were not included in the regulatory trials, the effect of this technology on a pregnancy, a developing foetus and on a breastfeeding baby cannot possibly be known and declared safe at this stage.
4. You categorically state that there are no harmful ingredients in the Covid-19 vaccines, specifically the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which you recommend for pregnant women. May we refer you to the Government documents for a full list of ingredients of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Both mRNA vaccines contain polyethylene glycol (PEG). PEG is a known allergen which carries a risk of serious, potentially fatal allergic reactions. The US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has issued advice that anyone allergic to PEG or its close relative, Polysorbate, should not receive either of the currently available mRNA vaccines.
This has also been reflected in advice from the NHS, which states: ‘Since the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine contains PEG, individuals with PEG allergy should not receive this vaccine.’
5. You state that side-effects to be expected after a Covid-19 vaccine would be mild and self-limiting. However, since the start of Covid-19 vaccine rollout to the population in December 2020, thousands of vaccine-related illnesses and deaths have been reported through databases in the US, Europe and the UK, raising serious concerns about safety.
In the report published by the MHRA on June 30, 2021, there were over one million adverse reactions in the UK, some of them very serious, including seizures, paralysis, blindness, strokes, blood clots and acute cardiac events. This report includes 1,440 fatalities.
Some life-threatening effects, such as blood clots and myocarditis, have been reported specifically in young people, which will be particularly relevant for women of childbearing age.
We strongly suggest that any published information regarding Covid-19 vaccine should include reference to risks of serious morbidity, which you completely fail to mention.
In this context, it is also essential to note that Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers demanded and were granted exemption from any liability for adverse effects of injury or death caused by their products.
6. You claim that safety of Covid-19 vaccines in pregnancy may be inferred from monitoring over 130,000 pregnant women in the US, which has not raised any safety concerns.
Whilst this suggests robust reassurance, this assertion completely fails to acknowledge that this ‘study’ refers to the CDC’s V-safe Covid-19 Vaccine Pregnancy Registry, which is a voluntary reporting system, collecting observational data of over 130,000 women, who happened to be pregnant at the time of vaccination. It is notable that only just over 5,000 of these women have been formally enrolled.
This is not comparable to robust, thorough, scientific evaluation and peer-reviewed evidence.
No data is available regarding potential effects on the foetus or other pregnancy outcomes, as the length of time Covid-19 vaccines have been tested and administered does not even equal the length of a single pregnancy at this point.
Published data from June 2021 in the New England Journal of Medicine only refer to ‘preliminary findings’ regarding safety of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines in pregnancy, also mostly based on the V-safe pregnancy registry.
This study reports 104 miscarriages before 20 weeks in 127 women, who had received a Covid-19 vaccine before the third trimester and completed their pregnancy. As of 30 June 2021, 314 miscarriages and 12 stillbirths / foetal deaths have been reported to the MHRA via the Yellow Card system.
7. We would like to draw your attention to a recent report from the MHRA regarding the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, dated June 4, 2021, which states under toxicology conclusions: ‘In the context of supply under Regulation 174, it is considered that sufficient reassurance of safe use of the vaccine in pregnant women cannot be provided at the present time: However, use in women of childbearing potential could be supported provided healthcare professionals are advised to rule out known or suspected pregnancy prior to vaccination. Women who are breastfeeding should also not be vaccinated.’
8. We further would like to draw your attention to the Summary of Product Characteristics for Covid-19 Vaccine Moderna by the MHRA updated 25 June 2021, which states: ‘Administration of COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna in pregnancy should only be considered when the potential benefits outweigh any potential risks for the mother and foetus. It is unknown whether COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna is excreted in human milk.’
This is not consistent with your message that the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines are suitable for every pregnant woman without further considerations.
In the current situation, which is fraught with uncertainty and fear, the public is looking to professionals for balanced advice. We suggest that anyone stepping forward with a purpose of conveying information relevant to Covid-19 vaccination bears the responsibility to do so comprehensively and based on all available evidence.
We further suggest that presenting such a simplified and biased message as in your series aimed at pregnant women, is deeply irresponsible and even unprofessional.
We find it incomprehensible how you would justify omitting all the information we have presented in this letter, which is freely available and essential to assimilate for anyone deliberating whether to accept a Covid-19 vaccine, especially when two lives are potentially affected at once, as during pregnancy.
We therefore strongly recommend that you immediately retract your videos or issue a corrected version including comprehensive and balanced information regarding the available evidence about Covid-19 vaccine safety in pregnancy.
We thank you for reading this letter and sincerely hope you consider its contents in full.
Here is Craig Kelly presenting his evidence of Ivermectin suppression to an empty Australian parliament. This picture illustrates the type of ‘democracy’ that we have in Australia today. The people’s voice is not being heard by our government.
Health research is based on trust. Health professionals and journal editors reading the results of a clinical trial assume that the trial happened and that the results were honestly reported. But about 20% of the time, said Ben Mol, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Monash Health, they would be wrong. As I’ve been concerned about research fraud for 40 years, I wasn’t that surprised as many would be by this figure, but it led me to think that the time may have come to stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported, and assume that the research is fraudulent until there is some evidence to support it having happened and been honestly reported. The Cochrane Collaboration, which purveys “trusted information,” has now taken a step in that direction.
As he described in a webinar last week, Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, began to have doubts about the honest reporting of trials after a colleague asked if he knew that his systematic review showing the mannitol halved death from head injury was based on trials that had never happened. He didn’t, but he set about investigating the trials and confirmed that they hadn’t ever happened. They all had a lead author who purported to come from an institution that didn’t exist and who killed himself a few years later. The trials were all published in prestigious neurosurgery journals and had multiple co-authors. None of the co-authors had contributed patients to the trials, and some didn’t know that they were co-authors until after the trials were published. When Roberts contacted one of the journals the editor responded that “I wouldn’t trust the data.” Why, Roberts wondered, did he publish the trial? None of the trials have been retracted.
Later Roberts, who headed one of the Cochrane groups, did a systematic review of colloids versus crystalloids only to discover again that many of the trials that were included in the review could not be trusted. He is now sceptical about all systematic reviews, particularly those that are mostly reviews of multiple small trials. He compared the original idea of systematic reviews as searching for diamonds, knowledge that was available if brought together in systematic reviews; now he thinks of systematic reviewing as searching through rubbish. He proposed that small, single centre trials should be discarded, not combined in systematic reviews.
Mol, like Roberts, has conducted systematic reviews only to realise that most of the trials included either were zombie trials that were fatally flawed or were untrustworthy. What, he asked, is the scale of the problem? Although retractions are increasing, only about 0.04% of biomedical studies have been retracted, suggesting the problem is small. But the anaesthetist John Carlisle analysed 526 trials submitted to Anaesthesia and found that 73 (14%) had false data, and 43 (8%) he categorised as zombie. When he was able to examine individual patient data in 153 studies, 67 (44%) had untrustworthy data and 40 (26%) were zombie trials. Many of the trials came from the same countries (Egypt, China, India, Iran, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey), and when John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford University, examined individual patient data from trials submitted from those countries to Anaesthesia during a year he found that many were false: 100% (7/7) in Egypt; 75% (3/ 4) in Iran; 54% (7/13) in India; 46% (22/48) in China; 40% (2/5) in Turkey; 25% (5/20) in South Korea; and 18% (2/11) in Japan. Most of the trials were zombies. Ioannidis concluded that there are hundreds of thousands of zombie trials published from those countries alone.
Others have found similar results, and Mol’s best guess is that about 20% of trials are false. Very few of these papers are retracted.
We have long known that peer review is ineffective at detecting fraud, especially if the reviewers start, as most have until now, by assuming that the research is honestly reported. I remember being part of a panel in the 1990s investigating one of Britain’s most outrageous cases of fraud, when the statistical reviewer of the study told us that he had found multiple problems with the study and only hoped that it was better done than it was reported. We asked if he had ever considered that the study might be fraudulent, and he told us that he hadn’t.
We have now reached a point where those doing systematic reviews must start by assuming that a study is fraudulent until they can have some evidence to the contrary. Some supporting evidence comes from the trial having been registered and having ethics committee approval. Andrew Grey, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Auckland, and others have developed a checklist with around 40 items that can be used as a screening tool for fraud (you can view the checklist here). The REAPPRAISED checklist (Research governance, Ethics, Authorship, Plagiarism, Research conduct, Analyses and methods, Image manipulation, Statistics, Errors, Data manipulation and reporting) covers issues like “ethical oversight and funding, research productivity and investigator workload, validity of randomisation, plausibility of results and duplicate data reporting.” The checklist has been used to detect studies that have subsequently been retracted but hasn’t been through the full evaluation that you would expect for a clinical screening tool. (But I must congratulate the authors on a clever acronym: some say that dreaming up the acronym for a study is the most difficult part of the whole process.)
Roberts and others wrote about the problem of the many untrustworthy and zombie trials in The BMJ six years ago with the provocative title: “The knowledge system underpinning healthcare is not fit for purpose and must change.” They wanted the Cochrane Collaboration and anybody conducting systematic reviews to take very seriously the problem of fraud. It was perhaps coincidence, but a few weeks before the webinar the Cochrane Collaboration produced guidelines on reviewing studies where there has been a retraction, an expression of concern, or the reviewers are worried about the trustworthiness of the data.
Retractions are the easiest to deal with, but they are, as Mol said, only a tiny fraction of untrustworthy or zombie studies. An editorial in the Cochrane Library accompanying the new guidelines recognises that there is no agreement on what constitutes an untrustworthy study, screening tools are not reliable, and “Misclassification could also lead to reputational damage to authors, legal consequences, and ethical issues associated with participants having taken part in research, only for it to be discounted.” The Collaboration is being cautious but does stand to lose credibility—and income—if the world ceases to trust Cochrane Reviews because they are thought to be based on untrustworthy trials.
Research fraud is often viewed as a problem of “bad apples,” but Barbara K Redman, who spoke at the webinar insists that it is not a problem of bad apples but bad barrels if not, she said, of rotten forests or orchards. In her book Research Misconduct Policy in Biomedicine: Beyond the Bad-Apple Approach she argues that research misconduct is a systems problem—the system provides incentives to publish fraudulent research and does not have adequate regulatory processes. Researchers progress by publishing research, and because the publication system is built on trust and peer review is not designed to detect fraud it is easy to publish fraudulent research. The business model of journals and publishers depends on publishing, preferably lots of studies as cheaply as possible. They have little incentive to check for fraud and a positive disincentive to experience reputational damage—and possibly legal risk—from retracting studies. Funders, universities, and other research institutions similarly have incentives to fund and publish studies and disincentives to make a fuss about fraudulent research they may have funded or had undertaken in their institution—perhaps by one of their star researchers. Regulators often lack the legal standing and the resources to respond to what is clearly extensive fraud, recognising that proving a study to be fraudulent (as opposed to suspecting it of being fraudulent) is a skilled, complex, and time consuming process. Another problem is that research is increasingly international with participants from many institutions in many countries: who then takes on the unenviable task of investigating fraud? Science really needs global governance.
Everybody gains from the publication game, concluded Roberts, apart from the patients who suffer from being given treatments based on fraudulent data.
Stephen Lock, my predecessor as editor of The BMJ, became worried about research fraud in the 1980s, but people thought his concerns eccentric. Research authorities insisted that fraud was rare, didn’t matter because science was self-correcting, and that no patients had suffered because of scientific fraud. All those reasons for not taking research fraud seriously have proved to be false, and, 40 years on from Lock’s concerns, we are realising that the problem is huge, the system encourages fraud, and we have no adequate way to respond. It may be time to move from assuming that research has been honestly conducted and reported to assuming it to be untrustworthy until there is some evidence to the contrary.
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Competing interest: RS was a cofounder of the Committee on Medical Ethics (COPE), for many years the chair of the Cochrane Library Oversight Committee, and a member of the board of the UK Research Integrity Office.
In the discussion regarding COVID-19 vaccination of children, several aspects seem to be missing.
First, vaccination of children is based on a small Pfizer-sponsored phase 3 trial of 2260 adolescents randomized to BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine or saline. The resulting paper concludes that the vaccine ”had a favorable safety profile”(1). However, based on data presented in supplementary table 2, in the age group 12-15 years, 7/1131 vaccinated vs. 2/1129 unvaccinated had a severe adverse event (1), i.e. a 3-fold increased risk. In the 16-25 years age group presented in the same paper, 9/536 vaccinated vs. 3/561 unvaccinated had a severe adverse event (1), i.e. likewise a 3-fold increased risk. The combined results indicate a 3.28 (95% confidence interval 1.21 to 8.94)-fold increased risk in severe adverse events in the vaccinated adolescents/young adults (2). In absolute numbers, 1 of 100 vaccinated experienced a severe event, vs. 3 of 1000 unvaccinated. Data was not presented by sex.
A protective vaccine can have negative non-specific and sex-differential effects on overall health (3). For instance, a protective measles vaccine had to be withdrawn after being associated with 2-fold higher all-cause mortality for females (4). A partially protective malaria vaccine was recently likewise associated with 2-fold higher female mortality (5). These epidemiological observations indicate that while the vaccines protected against the target disease, they increased the susceptibility to other diseases. In other words, the specific protection came at the price of increased susceptibility to other diseases. This epidemiological phenomenon of negative non-specific effects has been linked to innate immune tolerance (3, 6). Though the number of participants was small, the only study so far of BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine indicates that this vaccine induces innate immune tolerance towards bacterial and viral ligands (7). Thus, protection against COVID-19 could come at the price of increased risk of other infections.
Other pandemic vaccines have later been found out to have caused rare but severe side effects, like Guillain-Barré syndrome in recipients of flu vaccines in 1976, and narcolepsy linked to one brand of swine flu influenza vaccine in 2009(8). None of the phase 3 trials of COVID-19 vaccines were designed to study either non-specific sex-differential effects, or rare but severe long-term side effects (8).
Given the low risk of severe COVID-19 in previously healthy children – none in the Pfizer-sponsored phase 3 trial (1) – it is not clear that vaccine benefits outweigh harm in healthy children.
Second, arguments for vaccinating children include that infection in children could lead to more dangerous variants. Variants of concern have typically been the result of persistent infections in immunocompromised people that can cause the virus to mutate more frequently because the person’s immune system cannot clear the virus as quickly as the immune system of a healthy person (9). Presumably healthy children, who typically have very mild/short-lasting infections, are unlikely to give rise to variants of concern. Noteworthy, individuals, who have had COVID-19 infection, will likely have broad resistance towards SARS-CoV2 variants(10), and thus contribute importantly to herd immunity.
This leads us to the third point: Should COVID-19 be a vaccine disease or a childhood disease? There has been surprisingly little discussion about the future of COVID-19. Many people seem to assume that COVID-19 will become a disease for which we vaccinate the whole population perhaps annually or biannually. This will be expensive – and potentially harmful, if the (repeated) vaccinations have negative effects. We do not think vaccination of the whole population is necessary either; in fact, it may be counter-productive for society.
The known endemic human Corona-viruses (HCoV) infect most people before age 15; thereafter people may become re-infected again, but as evidenced by the lack of IgM responses, the response is a recall response (11). These HCoV rarely cause severe disease until the age of immunosenescence and we would never contemplate vaccinating against HCoVs at the population level, even if vaccines existed.
Given that we are so lucky that SARS-CoV2 very rarely cause severe disease in children, the safest and cheapest way forward seems to be to tame SARS-CoV2 to a common childhood disease like other HCoV. This would happen by allowing SARS-CoV2 to infect children, who thereby likely become protected against severe disease well into late adulthood. Importantly, this transition of SARS-CoV2 into a childhood disease would be delayed if there is too little SARS-CoV2 circulating. As noted by others: “Once most adults are vaccinated, circulation of SARS-CoV-2 may in fact be desirable, as it is likely to lead to primary infection early in life when disease is mild, followed by booster re-exposures throughout adulthood … This would keep reinfections mild and immunity up to date”(12).
In conclusion, there are good arguments why not vaccinating children may in fact serve several purposes at the individual as well as at the societal level:
• Not vaccinating children protects children against the potential unknown harms of COVID-19 vaccinations.
• Not vaccinating children gives them the opportunity to develop a broad natural immunity, contributing to herd immunity, and speeding up the transition of SARS-CoV2 into a childhood disease.
The avoided costs of making COVID-19 a vaccine disease, for which we vaccinate the whole population maybe annually or biannually, could be well spent on other health related issues such as smoking, cancer, obesity, and mental health.
References:
1. Frenck RW, Jr., Klein NP, Kitchin N, Gurtman A, Absalon J, Lockhart S, et al. Safety, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 Covid-19 Vaccine in Adolescents. N Engl J Med. 2021.
2. Benn CS. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/christine-stabell-benn_safety-immunogenic…. LinkedIn post 2021.
3. Benn CS, Fisker AB, Rieckmann A, Sørup S, Aaby P. Vaccinology: time to change the paradigm? Lancet Infect Dis. 2020.
4. Aaby P, Jensen H, Samb B, Cisse B, Sodemann M, Jakobsen M, et al. Differences in female-male mortality after high-titre measles vaccine and association with subsequent vaccination with diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and inactivated poliovirus: reanalysis of West African studies. Lancet. 2003;361(9376):2183-8.
5. Klein SL, Shann F, Moss WJ, Benn CS, Aaby P. RTS,S Malaria Vaccine and Increased Mortality in Girls. MBio. 2016;7(2):e00514-16.
6. Blok BA, de Bree LCJ, Diavatopoulos DA, Langereis JD, Joosten LAB, Aaby P, et al. Interacting, Nonspecific, Immunological Effects of Bacille Calmette-Guerin and Tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis Inactivated Polio Vaccinations: An Explorative, Randomized Trial. Clin Infect Dis. 2020;70(3):455-63.
7. Föhse FK, Geckin B, Overheul GJ, van de Maat J, Kilic G, Bulut O, et al. The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 reprograms both adaptive and innate immune responses. medRxiv. 2021:2021.05.03.21256520.
8. Doshi P. Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us. Bmj. 2020;371:m4037.
9. Peacock TP, Penrice-Randal R, Hiscox JA, Barclay WS. SARS-CoV-2 one year on: evidence for ongoing viral adaptation. J Gen Virol. 2021;102(4).
10. Ferretti AP, Kula T, Wang Y, Nguyen DMV, Weinheimer A, Dunlap GS, et al. Unbiased Screens Show CD8(+) T Cells of COVID-19 Patients Recognize Shared Epitopes in SARS-CoV-2 that Largely Reside outside the Spike Protein. Immunity. 2020;53(5):1095-107.e3.
11. Zhou W, Wang W, Wang H, Lu R, Tan W. First infection by all four non-severe acute respiratory syndrome human coronaviruses takes place during childhood. BMC Infect Dis. 2013;13:433.
12. Lavine JS, Bjornstad O, Antia R. Vaccinating children against SARS-CoV-2. BMJ. 2021;373:n1197.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Christine S Benn & Professor Peter Aaby
Bandim Health Project, Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark
Studiestræde 6, 1455 Copenhagen K, Denmark
@StabellBenn
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | July 8, 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease. … continue
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