Should the technocrats who pushed governments to lockdown their citizens be tried for crimes against humanity?
One prominent German lawyer, who is also licensed to practice law in America, thinks they should. And he is organizing a team of thousands of participating lawyers who want to prosecute a “second Nuremberg tribunal” against a cadre of international elites responsible for what he calls the “corona fraud scandal.”
Targeting the Davos, Switzerland-based World Economic Forum and its devotees among global political leaders, attorney Reiner Fuellmich says they are guilty of crimes against humanity for their perpetration of COVID-response policies that led to forced shutdowns, destroyed businesses, impoverished families, broken lives and a spike in suicide rates.
He has formed the German Corona Investigative Committee to pursue civil charges against the main perpetrators, among them being the head of the United Nations World Health Organization Dr. Tedros Adhanom. He hopes a successful class-action lawsuit will also lead to criminal charges.
Fuellmich was on the legal team that won a major lawsuit against German automaker Volkswagen in a 2015 case involving tampered catalytic converters in the U.S. He also was involved in a lawsuit that exposed one of Germany’s largest banks, Deutsche Bank, as a criminal enterprise. The bank was recently ordered by the U.S. Justice Department to pay $130 million to resolve corrupt practices that included money laundering, bribery and fraud between the years 2009 and 2016.
Fuellmich is licensed to practice law in Germany and the state of California.
He believes the frauds committed by Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank pale in comparison to the damage wrought by those who sold the Covid-19 crisis as the worst viral outbreak to hit the world in more than a century and used it to cause media-driven panic, government overreach and human suffering on a scale still not fully quantified.
The truth is revealed in the numbers, Fuellmich said, citing figures that show COVID-19 has not caused any statistically significant increase in the 2020 death counts over previous years.
The scam perpetrated on humanity hinged on one dirty little secret, he said – the PCR Test.
Not only are these tests not approved for diagnostic purposes but the inventor of the PCR Test, the late Kary Mullis, explicitly stated in an interview that this was never the purpose of his test.
Fuellmich explains in the video below how the coronavirus response of governments worldwide working in cahoots with the Bill Gates-funded U.N. World Health Organization “are probably the biggest crimes against humanity ever committed.”
“A number of highly respected scientists [he names several in the video including a Nobel Laurette from Stanford University] have concluded there has never been a coronavirus pandemic but only a PCR test pandemic,” he says.
“If someone tests positive it does not mean they are infected with anything, let alone with the contagious SARS-COV-2 virus,” Fuellmich says in the video.
“Based on the rules of criminal law, asserting false facts concerning the PCR tests, or intentional misrepresentation, that can only be assessed as fraud. Based on the rules of civil tort law, this translates into intentional infliction of damage.”
He said persons harmed by the PCR-induced lockdowns are entitled to full compensation for their losses.
“The crimes committed by Mr. Christian Drosten [an epidemiologist and Germany’s version of Dr. Anthony Fauci] and Mr. Lothar Wieler, a veterinarian and head of the German equivalent of the CDC, and Tedros Adhanom, head of the WHO, must be legally qualified as actual crimes against humanity as defined in Section 7 of the International Criminal Code.”
He said the class-action lawsuit is the best avenue to try the case.
In a Feb. 24 article about Fuellmich’s effort, the journal Principia Scientific International quoted him saying “this COVID-19 crisis should be renamed the ‘Covid-19 Scandal,’ and all those responsible should be prosecuted for civil damages due to manipulations and falsified test protocols. Therefore, an international network of business lawyers will plead the biggest tort case of all time, the COVID-19 fraud scandal, which has meanwhile turned into the biggest crime against humanity ever committed.”
Here is a summarized translation of the most-recent update Fuellmich put out on his German website on Feb. 15:
“The hearings of around 100 internationally renowned scientists, doctors, economists and lawyers, which have been conducted by the Berlin Commission of Inquiry into the COVID-19 affair since 10.07.2020, have in the meantime shown with a probability close to certainty that the COVID-19 scandal was at no time a health issue. Rather, it was about solidifying the illegitimate power (illegitimate because it was obtained by criminal methods) of the corrupt ‘Davos clique’ by transferring the wealth of the people to the members of the Davos clique, destroying, among other things, small and medium-sized enterprises in particular. Platforms such as Amazon, Google, Uber, etc. could thus appropriate their market share and wealth.”
Was the vaccinethe reason for the virus?
Perhaps the most egregious outgrowth of the coronavirus scam has been the fear-mongering that not only led to devastating and non-scientific shutdowns but also the rush to market of an unproven, experimental vaccine, which is now making billions of dollars for Big Pharma.
Just like the lockdowns, the vaccine is unnecessary because there are already several well-documented treatments involving long-established drugs that are proven safe and widely available. Also just like the lockdowns, this vaccine carries potentially devastating long-term effects on human health. There are questions about its effects on the fertility of men and women, and it has already led to more than 600 deaths in the U.S. and more than 250 deaths in the U.K.
To make matters worse, it is becoming plainly obvious that the intent is to make this experimental vaccine mandatory for all of humanity. It was billionaire vaccine investor Bill Gates who originally floated the idea, in April 2020, that humanity could never return to “normal” until “we have a vaccine that we’ve gotten out to basically the entire world.”
This reporter predicted last April that the vaccine would eventually be made mandatory, largely by corporations using coercive tactics.
Israel takes the lead in instituting medical tyranny
Among the nations considered to be part of the “free world,” Israel is taking the lead in pushing forward with a new type of society in which corporations and governments work together to coerce and eventually force every human being on the planet to get an injection of experimental vaccine treatments.
Not since the Nazi Third Reich has there been so little respect for citizens’ rights of individual health autonomy in a Western nation.
Whether you live in America, the U.K., Australia or Europe, if you wish to see what your future holds under the “new normal,” just look at Israel.
The Israeli government has announced that people will not be allowed to participate in a host of life functions without showing papers offering proof that they have either been vaccinated or that they have had and recovered from COVID.
A host of Israeli businesses including shops, malls, markets, pubs, gyms, museums, synagogues, hotels and libraries were allowed to reopen Sunday, Feb. 21, the Times of Israel reports. But only those Israelis who have been vaccinated or have recovered from COVID will be able to use gyms and pools, attend synagogues, sporting and culture events, board a flight or stay at hotels.
Calling the Health Ministry’s hotline and having the pass sent by email or fax.
Europe also moving toward vaccine passports
The European Union also appears to be on the cusp of embracing similar draconian measures. German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated this week that the concept of a digital vaccine passport has achieved “unanimous support within the E.U.“
“Everyone agreed that we need a digital vaccination certificate,” Merkel said last Wednesday after a meeting with European leaders.
E.U. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also praised Israel’s new Green Pass system.
The Telegraph reports that the government of the U.K. is nearing an announcement of new rules similar to Israel’s in which no Brit will be allowed to enter pubs, gyms, large-venue events or hotels without showing their special COVID vaccine passport.
Since when do we take away freedom in order to restore it under a new set of terms defined by unelected “experts” at the United Nations World Health Organization? This is the twisted way in which the globalist technocrats think. Always perverting the language to sell their lies and enticing ill-informed masses to walk straight into their devious traps.
Forcing people to accept a medical treatment and to “show your papers” proving they have received the treatment in order to participate in society is a violation of the well-established international norms.
The Nuremberg Code came out of the Nuremberg tribunals that convicted leading German Nazis. The Code states that any experimental medical treatment must not only be voluntary but must include “informed consent,” meaning the person not only volunteered but was informed of exactly what the treatment entailed and the risks involved.
Global power elites have already used COVID as cover to clamp down on free speech, assembly, religious gatherings and small business operations, creating a world of the haves and have-nots. Big-box stores like Walmart and online retailer Amazon have thrived, raking in record profits, while small businesses are dying.
So the class-action lawsuit appears justified, at least in theory. A small cabal of globalist corporations and “experts” at the WHO created the problem, made it impossible for people to live their lives as normal human beings, leading to mass anxiety and huge spikes in suicide.
Now that everyone is miserable and desperate to get back to normal, the technocrats introduce an experimental gene therapy, the mRNA vaccine, and are holding that out as the salvation, making it oh so tempting for many to line up and roll up their sleeve.
Tempting, that is, if you haven’t done your research to find out who is promoting the vaccine, what are their long-held motives and goals, and what their previous track record has been.
Such research would lead you straight to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested billions into an ever-growing lineup of vaccines through the GAVI global vaccine alliance and other organizations. Gates has bragged about the tremendous 20-to-1 “return on investment” he has reaped by investing in vaccine therapies. His net worth has increased by $17 billion since making the shift in focus from computers to vaccines.
U.S. companies bribing employees to take the shot
A number of U.S. companies are now bribing their employees, offering cash bonuses of $100 to $150 if they get the shot. Meijer, Kroger, Publix, Dollar General, Aldi, JBS Meat Processing and Trader Joe’s, among others, have all jumped on the bandwagon. They are being highly praised by “health experts” for doing this, so look for more companies to follow suit.
Those who refuse the vaccine, which is their right under the Nuremberg Codes, will become the new untouchables in a caste system that divides people along medical lines. Those getting the shot will be allowed to re-enter something closer to normalcy while those rejecting it will be left behind.
The dots are all there – with the virus, the fear-mongering, the lockdowns and mask mandates, and the coming vaccine mandates. All you have to do is connect them.
Leo Hohmann is an independent journalist whose work is 100 percent reader supported. Contributions of any size are appreciated. Send c/o Leo Hohmann, PO Box 291, Newnan, GA 30264
A study from the National Institutes of Health claims wearing a moist mask is actually good for you because inhaling through the wet mask hydrates your lungs and boosts your immune system. However, it’s important to realize that the humidity inside the mask will rapidly allow pathogenic bacteria to grow and multiply. This is a documented fact not addressed by the NIH.
Medical doctors have warned that bacterial pneumonia, facial rashes, fungal infections on the face, “mask mouth” (bad breath, tooth decay and gum inflammation) and candida mouth infections are all on the rise.
By breathing through a bacteria-infested mask, you risk inhaling bacteria deep into your lungs, and according to recent research, the presence of microbes in your lungs can worsen lung cancer pathogenesis and contribute to advanced stage lung cancer.
Face masks can also reduce oxygen intake, leading to hazardous oxygen deficiency (hypoxia), along with rapid accumulation of harmful carbon dioxide, which can have significant cognitive and physical impacts.
Research1 also shows asymptomatic individuals pose virtually no risk, as they rarely ever spread live virus, thereby undermining the idea that everyone must be masked simply because you don’t know who’s infectious and who’s not.
Despite all of that, government officials insist that universal mask wearing is an essential strategy to combat COVID-19, now even recommending wearing two,2 three3,4 or even four5 layers of face masks. And, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Americans may have to wear masks all the way through 2022.6
Is Wearing A Wet Mask Good For You?
Just when you thought mainstream propaganda could not propose a greater irrational perversion of the truth, a new study7 from the National Institutes of Health claims wearing a moist mask — which is a breeding ground for harmful bacteria — is actually good for you because inhaling through the wet mask hydrates your lungs and boosts your immune system. As reported by Healthing.ca, February 16, 2021:8
“The study, published in the Biophysical Journal, tested an N95 mask, a three-ply disposable surgical mask, a two-ply cotton-polyester mask and a heavy cotton mask, measuring the level of humidity by having a volunteer breathe into a sealed steel box.
When the person did not wear a mask, the water vapor of the exhaled breath filled the box, leading to a rapid increase in humidity inside the box. When the person wore a mask, the buildup of humidity inside the box greatly decreased as most of the water vapor remained in the mask, became condensed, and was re-inhaled. The researchers conducted the tests at three different temperatures ranging from 7 to 36 degrees Celsius.
‘We found that face masks strongly increase the humidity in inhaled air and propose that the resulting hydration of the respiratory tract could be responsible for the documented finding that links lower COVID-19 disease severity to wearing a mask,’ said Adriaan Bax, Ph.D., a NIH Distinguished Investigator and the study’s lead author.
‘High levels of humidity have been shown to mitigate severity of the flu, and it may be applicable to severity of COVID-19 through a similar mechanism.’”
However, it’s important to realize that the humidity inside the mask will allow pathogenic bacteria to rapidly grow and multiply — a documented fact not addressed by the NIH — and since the mask makes it more difficult to breathe, you’re likely to breathe heavier, thereby risking inhaling the microbes deep inside your lungs. As you’ll see below, this can have significant health risks that vastly outweigh any benefit you might get from breathing more humid air.
Occupational Respirator Testing Expert Speaks Out
In June 2020, Schaefer wrote an open letter9 addressed to the chief medical officer in Alberta, Canada, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, pointing out the errors of recommending universal wearing of N95 masks, surgical masks or nonmedical masks as protection against SARS-CoV-2. In it, he writes:10
“I have been teaching and conducting respirator fit testing for over 20 years and now currently for my company SafeCom Training Services Inc. My clients include many government departments, our military, healthcare providers with Alberta Health Services, educational institutions and private industry. I am a published author and a recognized authority on this subject.
Filter respirator masks, especially N95, surgical and non-medical masks, provide negligible COVID-19 protection for the following reasons:
1. Viruses in the fluid envelopes that surround them can be very small, so small in fact that you would need an electron microscope to see them. N95 masks filter 95% of particles with a diameter of 0.3 microns or larger. COVID-19 particles are .08 – .12 microns.
2. Viruses don’t just enter us through our mouth and nose, but can also enter through our eyes and even the pores of our skin. The only effective barrier one can wear to protect against virus exposure would be a fully encapsulated hazmat suit with cuffs by ankles taped to boots and cuffs by wrists taped to gloves, while receiving breathing air from a self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA).
This barrier is standard gear to protect against a biohazard (viruses) and would have to be worn in a possible virus hazard environment 24/7 and you wouldn’t be able to remove any part of it even to have a sip of water, eat or use the washroom while in the virus environment. If you did, you would become exposed and would negate all the prior precautions you had taken.”
Face Masks Pose Several Health Hazards
In his letter, and in the video above, Schaefer also stresses that these kinds of face masks pose “very real risks and possible serious threats to a wearer’s health” for a number of reasons, including the following:
1. Wearing a face mask increases breathing resistance, and since it makes both inhaling and exhaling more difficult, individuals with pre-existing medical conditions need to be screened by a medical professional to make sure they won’t be at risk of a medical emergency if wearing a face mask.
This includes those with shortness of breath, lung disease, panic attacks, breathing difficulties, chest pain on exertion, cardiovascular disease, fainting spells, claustrophobia, chronic bronchitis, heart problems, asthma, allergies, diabetes, seizures, high blood pressure and those with pacemakers. The impact of wearing a face mask during pregnancy is also wholly unknown.
2. Face masks can reduce oxygen intake, leading to potentially hazardous oxygen deficiency (hypoxia).
3. They also cause rapid accumulation of harmful carbon dioxide, which can have significant cognitive and physical impacts. That said, there is some evidence to support that this may be one of the few benefits of mask wearing, as slightly elevated CO2 levels can also contribute to health benefits as per my interview with Patrick McKeown. (We’re not talking about dangerously high levels, however.)
4. Wearing a face mask increases your body temperature and physical stress, which could result in an elevated temperature reading that is not related to infection.
5. All face masks can cause bacterial and fungal infections in the user as warm, moist air accumulates inside the mask. This is the perfect breeding ground for pathogens. “That is why N95 and other disposable masks were only designed to be short duration, specific task use and then immediately discarded,” Schaefer notes.
Medical doctors have warned that bacterial pneumonia, facial rashes, fungal infections on the face,11 “mask mouth” (symptoms of which include bad breath, tooth decay and gum inflammation) and candida mouth infections12 are all on the rise.
What’s worse, a study13,14 published in the February 2021 issue of the journal Cancer Discovery found that the presence of microbes in your lungs can worsen lung cancer pathogenesis and can contribute to advanced stage lung cancer. As reported by Global Research :15
“While analyzing lung microbes of 83 untreated adults with lung cancer, the research team discovered that colonies of Veillonella, Prevotella, and Streptococcus bacteria, which may be cultivated through prolonged mask wearing, are all found in larger quantities in patients with advanced stage lung cancer than in earlier stages.
The presence of these bacterial cultures is also associated with a lower chance of survival and increased tumor growth regardless of the stage.”
6. With extended use, medical masks will begin to break down and release chemicals that are then inhaled. Tiny microfibers are also released, which can cause health problems when inhaled. This hazard was highlighted in a performance study16 being published in the June 2021 issue of Journal of Hazardous Materials.
Schaefer also points out that to provide any benefit whatsoever, users must be fitted with the right type and size of respirator, and must undergo fit testing by a trained professional. However, N95 respirators, even when fitted properly, will not protect against viral exposures but can adequately protect against larger particles.
Surgical masks, which do not seal to your face, “do not filter anything,” Schaefer notes. These types of masks are designed to prevent bacteria from the mouth, nose and face from entering the patient during surgical procedures, and researchers have warned that contaminated surgical masks actually pose an infection risk.17 After just two hours, a significant increase in bacterial load on the mask was observed.
Nonmedical cloth masks are not only ineffective but also particularly dangerous as they’re not engineered for “easy inhalation and effective purging of exhaled carbon dioxide,” making them wholly unsuitable for use.
In the video, Schaefer demonstrates the only type of mask that is actually safe to wear — the gas mask kind of respirator you’d use to protect yourself against painting fumes, organic vapors, smoke and dust.
Real respirators are built to filter the air you breathe in, and get rid of the carbon dioxide and humidity from the air you breathe out, thereby ensuring there’s no dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide or reduction in oxygen inside the mask.
I’ve written many articles detailing the evidence showing that face masks do not prevent viral illnesses. To these we can now add an updated Cochrane review,18 which summarizes randomized trial evidence from studies that looked at face masks, hand-washing and/or physical distancing as prevention against respiratory infections.
There are many limitations to the included studies, including the facts that none was specific to COVID-19 and most had questionable adherence. They did not include the one COVID-19 specific trial that also included adherence parameters. With regard to medical and surgical masks, they found that:
“Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness (9 studies; 3507 people); and probably makes no difference in how many people have flu confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 3005 people).”
Four health care studies and one small community study looked at the use of N95/P2 respirators. Here they found that:
“Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (5 studies; 8407 people) or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people).”
COVID-19 Specific Mask Trial Failed To Prove Benefit
Cochrane’s review certainly would have been more complete had they included the only COVID-19-related study to date. Unfortunately, they only included studies published before April 1, 2020. The trial in question, which was done in Denmark, was published November 18, 2020.
This COVID-19-specific randomized controlled surgical mask trial19,20 confirmed and strengthened previous findings, showing that mask wearing may either reduce your risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection by as much as 46%, or increase your risk by 23%. Either way, the vast majority — 97.9% of those who didn’t wear masks, and 98.2% of those who did — remained infection free.
The study included 3,030 individuals assigned to wear a surgical face mask and 2,994 unmasked controls. Of them, 80.7% completed the study. Based on the adherence scores reported, 46% of participants always wore the mask as recommended, 47% predominantly as recommended and 7% failed to follow recommendations.
Among mask wearers, 1.8% ended up testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to 2.1% among controls. When they removed those who did not adhere to the recommendations for use, the results remained the same — 1.8%, which suggests adherence makes no difference.
Among those who reported wearing their face mask “exactly as instructed,” 2% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 compared to 2.1% of the controls. So, essentially, we’re destroying economies and lives around the world to protect a tiny minority from getting a positive PCR test result which, as detailed in “Asymptomatic ‘Casedemic’ Is a Perpetuation of Needless Fear,” means little to nothing.
This article was brought to you by Dr. Mercola, a New York Times bestselling author. For more helpful articles, please visit Mercola.com today and receive your FREE Take Control of Your Health E-book!
During the past 10 years that Health Impact News has been publishing the truth about vaccines and exposing the corruption and lies in the pharmaceutical industry and their marketing branch, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), regarding the annual flu statistics, we have usually run stories around this time of year explaining to people that the number of people dying from the flu according to the CDC is false, and that the CDC themselves have always admitted that they do not know the exact number of people who die from the flu each year, but instead base their data on “estimates.”
For years this was published very clearly on the CDC website for all to see, at least for those who bother to “fact check” the CDC’s claims regarding annual flu deaths.
Many others over the years have exposed this scam as well.
The CDC’s decision to play up flu deaths dates back a decade, when it realized the public wasn’t following its advice on the flu vaccine.
During the 2003 flu season “the manufacturers were telling us that they weren’t receiving a lot of orders for vaccine,”Dr. Glen Nowak, associate director for communications at CDC’s National Immunization Program, told National Public Radio.
Flu results in “about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths” worldwide, Wikipedia tells us.
“The typical estimate is 36,000 [deaths] a year in the United States,” reports NBC, citing the Centers for Disease Control.
“Somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 Canadians a year die of influenza and its related complications, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada,” the Globe and Mail says, adding that “Those numbers are controversial because they are estimates.”
“Controversial” is an understatement, and not just in Canada, and not just because the numbers are estimates. The numbers differ wildly from the sober tallies recorded on death certificates — by law every certificate must show a cause — and reported by the official agencies that collect and keep vital statistics.
According to the National Vital Statistics System in the U.S., for example, annual flu deaths in 2010 amounted to just 500 per year — fewer than deaths from ulcers (2,977), hernias (1,832) and pregnancy and childbirth (825), and a far cry from the big killers such as heart disease (597,689) and cancers (574,743).
The story is similar in Canada, where unlikely killers likewise dwarf Statistics Canada’s count of flu deaths.
Even that 500 figure for the U.S. could be too high, according to analyses in authoritative journals such as the American Journal of Public Health and the British Medical Journal.
Only about 15-20 per cent of people who come down with flu-like symptoms have the influenza virus — the other 80-85 per cent actually caught rhinovirus or other germs that are indistinguishable from the true flu without laboratory tests, which are rarely done.
In 2001, a year in which death certificates listed 257 Americans as having died of flu, only 18 were positively identified as true flus. The other 239 were simply assumed to be flus and most likely had few true flus among them.
This article takes issue with the 36,000 flu-death figure commonly claimed, and with describing “influenza/pneumonia” as the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S.
As you can see from Mr. Solomon’s 2014 article, he quoted sources dating all the way back to the early 2000s where this scam was exposed. It just wasn’t published in the pharma-controlled corporate media, so those spoon-fed the propaganda from this corporate media lined up every year to get their flu shots, as Big Pharma raked in huge profits from producing over 300 million doses of the flu vaccine each year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that the 2017-2018 flu season killed 80,000 and hospitalized 900,000 Americans. Of course, the mainstream media reported this as fact as shown in this September 27, 2018 article in the Washington Post.
The Powers-That-Be, including the CDC and the mainstream media, are using these estimates to promote the flu shot for the upcoming flu season.
Keep in mind, the 80,000 deaths and 900,000 hospitalizations are ESTIMATES. And, I can state, with authority, that they are very poor estimates.
You see, deaths from flu are always estimates because if the Powers-That-Be reported the true numbers of deaths from actual influenza infections, the numbers would be much lower and people would not be so inclined to receive a flu shot.
How does the CDC overestimate the number of flu deaths? The CDC accomplishes this by reporting a combined pneumonia and influenza death rate. Every time I try to analyze this data, I know I will have to spend at least an hour searching for the true number who died from influenza because the CDC tries to hide that data.
Why does the CDC do this? The answer is easy: The more people that receive the flu vaccine, the more money the CDC makes. You see, the CDC holds patents on many vaccines including the flu vaccine. (1)
Perhaps I could tolerate the CDC combining pneumonia with flu deaths IF the flu vaccine prevented both. However, the flu vaccine has never been shown to have any impact on the number of deaths from pneumonia.
In fact, for the vast majority who receive it, the flu vaccine has little impact on preventing the flu, but I digress.
In 2001 the CDC reported that 62,034 died from influenza and pneumonia. That year, I would bet that CDC proclaimed that flu killed over 50,000 Americans. After a painful hour of searching the CDCs database, I found the true 2001 numbers: 257 died from influenza and 61,777 died from pneumonia. Keep in mind, any death from the flu is tragic, but those numbers are out of a population of over 300 million. In 2010 (the latest year data are available) there were 55,227 deaths due to pneumonia and flu. Flu killed 4,605 while pneumonia killed the rest. (2)
So, let’s go back to last year’s flu season. The flu season lasts about six months. 80,000 deaths would lead one to conclude that 13,333 died per month (80,000/6 months) from the flu. If we further divide that number by 50 (the number of states), we can conclude that there were 267 people dying each month in every state from the flu. Since the internet provides 24-hour news cycles, I think we all would have heard that about 9 people (267/30 days per month) in every state dying daily from the flu. (3)
I have five practitioners in my office. We have over 100 years of experience in treating patients. None of us has can recall a single patient dying from the flu.
In fact, I can guarantee you that if 9 people were dying in my state daily from the flu, my partners and I would hear about it. In fact, there are always headlines on the internet when one person dies from the flu.
Studying the past CDC data shows that each year a few hundred to a few thousand die from the flu.
This annual flu death scam continued through 2019, as again Dr. Brownstein wrote:
The headline in the January 5, 2019 edition of the Wall Street Journal reads “Six Feet, 48 Hours, 10 Days: How to Avoid the Flu.”
This article, like nearly all main stream media flu articles was written to scare the reader into getting the flu vaccine. As with most mainstream medical articles about the flu, it is filled with fake news.
Let’s analyze the article.
The author starts off by writing,
“After a slow start, the flu season has taken off. Between Christmas and New Years Day, there was a marked rise in flu illnesses across the U.S.”
So far, no fake news to report.
However, as with most main stream media influenza stories, the writer misstates the true numbers of Americans who die from the flu.
“In a mild year, influenza, a highly contagious viral infection of the respiratory system, kills as many as 12,000 people in the U.S., and in a bad year, it could be as many as 56,000.”
I have two words to state here:
FAKE NEWS!
Folks, that is a blatant LIE. Over the last 38 years, neither twelve nor fifty-six thousand deaths from influenza infections occurred. In fact, the deaths from influenza are not even close to those numbers.
Why would the mainstream media and the Powers-That-Be continually lie about the numbers of people that die from the flu?
It is not hard to understand why—they want to scare the public in order to increase the number of people vaccinated with the flu vaccine.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps annual death statistics. When searching through that data, it is easy to find the first Table (Table B) which lists the number of deaths from the top fifteen causes of death (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_05.pdf -page 6).
In fact, every year that the CDC reports the final data for deaths, the CDC combines influenza and pneumonia together as one of the top 15 causes of death. No other separate illnesses are combined, so why combine pneumonia and influenza which are two separate illnesses?
The answer is easy: the CDC artificially inflates the numbers of deaths from influenza to scare us into getting the flu shot. You see, if a very small percentage of Americans died yearly from the flu vaccine, why would so many of them want to get vaccinated for influenza?
The CDC has a direct financial interest in vaccinating the entire population since it holds multiple patents on vaccines including the flu vaccine.
In order to frighten the public to get the flu vaccine, the CDC’s scare tactics include annual statements that the flu kills 36,000 Americans per year.
The Great Flu Reset 2020-21: COVID Deaths Take Over to Sell New Novel COVID “Vaccines”
So now we come to the 2020-21 flu season, where we are being told the flu has “vanished.” Hardly anyone is getting the flu. Nobody is dying from the flu.
And if you still get your news only from the pharma-owned corporate media, you are being told that the lockdowns, social distancing, handwashing, and of course masks, have worked to eliminate all those horrible flu cases and deaths.
To believe this, of course, one has to overlook that these measures did nothing to slow down COVID deaths, as according to CDC statistics we have seen more COVID deaths in January and February than all the rest of the months since the “pandemic” started combined.
The “logic” of this is so absurd, that they even hired an editorialist at the New York Times to explain to people that they should not try to figure this out, because “Critical thinking, as we’re taught to do it, isn’t helping in the fight against misinformation.”
Despite all those warnings from Dr. Anthony Fauci about COVID-19 and the flu joining forces in 2020 and 2021 to create some kind of super-deadly double-whammy viral pandemic, it’s no longer a secret at this point that worries about a super-charged flu season simply never came to pass. We’ve reported on the phenomenon of falling flu cases before.
February is usually the peak of flu season, when doctors’ offices and hospitals are packed with patients. But that’s not the case this year. Instead, the flu has virtually disappeared from the US, with reports coming in at far lower levels than the world has seen in decades. Some areas, like San Diego, have seen such low numbers, health authorities have demanded audits of COVID-positive patients to see whether some might have been misdiagnosed.
According to the CDC, the cumulative positive influenza test rate from late September into the week of December 19th was just 0.2%, compared to 8.7% from a year before.
Hospitals say the expected army of flu-sickened patients never materialized, and that nationally “this is the lowest flu season we’ve had on record,” according to a surveillance system that is about 25 years old.
One source from Maine Medical Center in Portland, the state’s largest hospital, said “I have seen zero documented flu cases this winter,” said Dr. Nate Mick, the head of the emergency department.
Ditto in Oregon’s capital city, where the outpatient respiratory clinics affiliated with Salem Hospital have not seen any confirmed flu cases.
The phenomenon isn’t unique to the US.
In the UK, data released this week show that the number of active flu cases in the country has fallen to zero. (Source.)
Of course for those of us who have followed this issue for more than a decade now, we know that the flu deaths have not gone anywhere, because they were never there to begin with.
What we actually had, based on the Department of Justice quarterly reports on settlements paid out from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, is many people being injured and killed by the flu shots.
The CDC simply stopped estimating and inflating the flu deaths, and concentrated on COVID deaths instead, to support the TRILLIONS spent to fast-track experimental COVID vaccines which Big Pharma is now rushing to manufacture and distribute.
So has this “Great Reset” simply replaced one scam for another one?
I’ll let Dr. Scott Jensen, a medical doctor and Senator from Minnesota, tell you in his own words:
The number of COVID cases has been faked in various ways.
By far, the most extensive strategy is re-labeling. Flu is called COVID.
We don’t need charts and graphs to see this. It’s right in front of our eyes.
The definition of a COVID case allows flu in the door. There is nothing unique about that definition. For example, a cough, or chills and fever, would constitute “a mild case of COVID.” [1] [2]
A positive PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 would also be required, but as I’ve shown in my recent series on the test, obtaining a false positive is as easy as pie. [3]
All you have to do is run the test at more than 35 cycles. Most labs run the test at 40 cycles. A cycle is a quantum leap in magnification of the swab sample taken from the patient. When you run the test at more than 35 cycles, false-positives come pouring out like water from a fire hose. [4] [5] [5a] [5b]
So… with ordinary flu symptoms plus a false-positive PCR test… voila, you have a COVID case.
Keep in mind that, overwhelmingly, most COVID cases are mild. In other words, they’re indistinguishable from ordinary flu.
But there is a rabbit hole here, and we can go down that hole much farther. The next question is: what is a flu case? What is it really?
Researcher Peter Doshi did much to answer that question. In December of 2005, the British Medical Journal (online) published his shocking report, which created tremors through the halls of the CDC, where “the experts” used to tell the press that 36,000 people in the US die every year from the flu.
Here is a quote from Doshi’s report, “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” (BMJ 2005; 331:1412): [6] [7]
“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.”
Boom.
You see, the CDC creates one overall category that combines both flu and pneumonia deaths. Why do they do this? Because they disingenuously assume the pneumonia deaths are complications stemming from the flu.
This is an absurd assumption. Pneumonia has a number of causes.
But even worse, in all the flu and pneumonia deaths, only 18 revealed the presence of an influenza virus.
Therefore, the CDC could only say, with assurance, that 18 people died of influenza in 2001. Not 36,000 deaths. 18 deaths.
Doshi continued his assessment of published CDC flu-death statistics: “Between 1979 and 2001, [CDC] data show an average of 1348 [flu] deaths per year (range 257 to 3006).” These figures refer to flu separated out from pneumonia.
This death toll is obviously far lower than the old parroted 36,000 figure.
However, when you add the sensible condition that lab tests have to actually find the flu virus in patients, the numbers of annual flu deaths plummet even further.
In other words, it’s all promotion and hype.
But we’re not finished yet. Because…what test were researchers using to decide there were 18 cases of honest flu, in which a virus was found and identified? Answer: unknown.
It’s quite probable the test didn’t really isolate a flu virus at all. It only identified some marker that was ASSUMED, without proof, to be unique to a flu virus.
If so—ZERO cases of actual flu were found in the population.
Instead, what we had was “flu-like illness.” Chills, cough, congestion, fever, fatigue; the ubiquitous symptoms that describe about a billion cases of illness, every year, worldwide.
The cause of those billion cases? There is no single cause. Instead, there are many factors, ranging from sudden weather changes to air pollution, to malnutrition, to sub-standard sanitation…on and on.
That being the case, we can now say: Many, many cases of FAKE FLU are being relabeled FAKE COVID.
Now we’re getting real.
The medical cartel “discovers” (markets) huge numbers of so-called unique diseases—each disease with a purported specific cause: virus A, virus B, virus C…
For each virus, there must be at least several highly profitable drugs that supposedly kill the germ. And for each germ, there must be a vaccine that prevents the disease.
Billions and trillions in rewards follow.
And so does CONTROL. Control of minds.
Because the population is tuned up by ceaseless propaganda to believe in the rigid one-disease one-germ notion.
And when the time is right, the medical cartel can even claim a new germ is decimating the world, and they must “destroy the village in order to save it.”
Which is the psychotic fiction we are in the middle of, right now.
The Holy Church of Biological Mysticism needs your support. Give them your time, your money, your livelihood, your future, your loyalty, your faith.
Western media portrays Australia as a beautiful nation with independent people and a close ally of the United States. But the American Empire has no allies, only vassal states. Australia became a colony of the American empire in 1975 after an Anglo-American coup. Australians noticed nothing since Australia had been an British colony since its inception and dispatches military forces when ordered to fight empire wars.
“ALLY THIS: The CIA Subversion of Australian Democracy”; Jon Gleur; Dunemessiahdotnet; November 23, 2014; (details of the 1975 coup) https://dunemessiahdotnet.wordpress.c…
“The PM, the spy and the governor-general: what John Kerr didn’t tell the palace”; Guy Rundle; Crikey; July 17, 2020; (details about the CIA coup from the “Palace Papers” that were declassified in 2020); https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/07/17/…
I had included a short clip from this anti-China propaganda story produced by the American empire to fool Australians. “60 Minutes” objected to my “fair use” for commentary so I was forced to clip it out, resulting in an audio blip in this video.
This doesn’t look like extremist hate speech to us. Judging from these blurbs and titles, it looks like pretty balanced and fair discussion of a very serious, and vehemently disputed, allegation.
The first one in the list below even presents both sides of the argument in an attempt to get to the bottom of who is telling the truth.
Why are some people so afraid of a fair and open discussion?
These books were banned from Amazon in March of 2017, but are easily available online at other sellers. Take a look at the blurbs describing these books. They are an eye-opener.
Thomas Dalton
Mainstream historians insist that there cannot be, may not be a debate about the Holocaust. But ignoring it does not make this controversy go away. Traditional scholars admit that there was neither a budget, a plan, nor an order for the Holocaust; that the key camps have all but vanished, and so have any human remains; that material and unequivocal documentary evidence is absent; and that there are serious problems with survivor testimonies. Dalton juxtaposes the traditional Holocaust narrative with revisionist challenges and then analyzes the mainstream’s responses to them. He reveals the weaknesses of both sides, while declaring revisionism the winner of the current state of the debate. 3rd edition.
An overview of the many rumors, myths and lies about Auschwitz spread during and right after the war, which mainstream historians today reject as untrue: murder by gas bombs, electrocution chambers, gas showers, pneumatic hammer systems, electrocution conveyor belts; oils, grease and soap made of murder victims; 4 million victims; crematoria with a capacity of up to 400 million bodies… It then explains by which ridiculous methods some claims about Auschwitz were accepted as true and turned into “history,” although they are just as untrue.
Historical writings to date give at times the impression that Jews who wished to leave Third Reich Germany had to sneak over the borders in defiance of the German authorities, and leave all their possessions and wealth behind. The truth is that the emigration was welcomed by the German authorities, and benefitted from encouragement and assistance that increased over time. Until the outbreak of the war, emigration was not some kind of wild flight, but rather a lawfully conducted and regulated matter. Weckert’s booklet elucidates the emigration process in law and policy, thereby correcting the traditionally received picture of Jewish emigration from Germany significantly. 2nd expanded edition.
This compact but substantive study documents propaganda spread prior to, during and after the FIRST World War that claimed East European Jewry was on the brink of annihilation. The magic number of suffering and dying Jews was 6 million back then as well. The book details how these Jewish fundraising operations in America raised vast sums in the name of feeding suffering Polish and Russian Jews but actually funneled much of the money to Zionist and Communist groups, including Communist revolutionaries in Russia. 5th, revised edition.
In 1941, British Intelligence analysts cracked the German “Enigma” code. Hence, in 1942 and 1943, radio communications between German concentration camps and Berlin were decrypted. The data reveals that the Germans were desperate to reduce the death rate in their labor camps, which was caused by catastrophic typhus epidemics. Dr. Kollerstrom, a science historian, has taken these intercepts and a wide array of mostly unchallenged corroborating evidence to show that “witness statements” supporting the human gas-chamber narrative clearly clash with the available scientific data. Kollerstrom concludes that the history of the Nazi “Holocaust” has been written by the victors with ulterior motives. With a foreword by Prof. Dr. James Fetzer. 4th edition.
During World War Two both German and Allied reconnaissance aircraft took countless air photos of places of tactical and strategic interest in Europe. Some of these photos provide evidence for the investigation of the Holocaust. Air photos of locations like Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Babi Yar etc. permit an insight into what did or did not happen there. The author has unearthed many pertinent photos and has thoroughly analyzed them. This book is full of air-photo reproductions and schematic drawings explaining them. According to the author, these images refute many of the atrocity claims made by witnesses in connection with events in the German sphere of influence. 3rd revised and expanded edition. With a contribution by Carlo Mattogno.
A compendium of past and present controversies about the mainstream Holocaust narrative. A comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the critical research into the Holocaust: physical traces, forensic examinations, demographies, document analysis, critique of witness testimony. Rudolf introduces the most-important arguments for his findings, and his audience reacts with supportive, skeptical and also hostile questions. Of the thousands of books on this topic, this one gives the most-comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the critical research into the Holocaust. With its dialog style, it is pleasant to read, and with its logical organization and index, it can even be used as an encyclopedic compendium.
Six million Jews, we are told, died. Although much has been written about this, much remains a mystery. For example, we would like to know: Where did the six million figure come from? Why do we have so little physical evidence from major death camps? Why has there been so much suppression and censorship on this topic? In a sense, the Holocaust is the greatest murder mystery in history which can point us to deeper truths about our contemporary society. Let’s explore the evidence, and see where it leads.
This book applies state-of-the-art scientific technique and classic methods of detection to investigate the alleged murder of millions of Jews by Germans during World War II. In 22 contributions—each of some 30 pages—the 17 authors dissect generally accepted paradigms of the “Holocaust.” It reads as excitingly as a crime novel: so many lies, forgeries and deceptions by politicians, historians and scientists are proven. This is the intellectual adventure of the 21st century. Be part of it!
Impaired by dementia, Biden is cognitively unfit and unable to fulfill duties of the office he holds.
His condition will likely worsen to Alzheimer’s Disease, entirely incapacitating him cognitively.
Psychology explained dementia as follows:
It’s “a progressive loss of cognitive function, marked by memory problems, trouble communicating, impaired judgment, and confused thinking.”
“Dementia most often occurs around age 65 and older but is a more severe form of decline than normal aging.”
“People who develop dementia may lose the ability to regulate their emotions, especially anger, and their personalities may change.”
Up to 80% of cognitively impaired individuals with dementia develop Alzheimer’s Disease, about five million Americans affected.
Biden has been declining cognitively for some time. The condition steadily worsens over time.
He can’t perform his duties. Yet establishment media conceal his deteriorated state.
Rare exceptions like the Boston Herald prove the rule.
In mid-February, it headlined “Biden’s babbles continue,” saying:
He “seldom makes much sense when he speaks.”
On Valentine’s Day, he made a “semi-coherent remark,” saying:
“Valentine’s Day is a big. Jill’s favorite day. For real.”
Biden’s White House is “little more than an assisted-living facility (for the nation’s) doddering First Senior Citizen.”
Some of his recent mumbling and bumbling was as follows — read from a teleprompter or notes:
“From 400 million ordered to 600 million this is enough vaccine to fully vaccinate 300 Americans by end of summer, the beginning of fall.”
“But we wanna make look that’s I wanna me-peat it’ll be enough to fully vaccinate 300 Americans.”
He called climate change a “sexessential threat to the planet.”
He identified war secretary Lloyd Austin as “senator Austin.”
He referred to sorties as “sortays.”
He said “Saudi Arabia has released a prominent human rights activist, Loujain al-Hathlou — loul — excuse me, l-o-u-l, uh, from prison.”
He vowed to “never, ever dishonest you.”
He said “(i)magine the incredible love it must have taken for the proud Tuskee-kee, Tus-kay-gee airmen.”
He claimed that he “work(s) with Congress to make far-reaching investments in research and development of transformendale and transformidible technologies.”
He said “(l)ike the previous (regime), we’ll start to properly manage unlike it we’ll start to properly manage lands and waterways.”
He mumbled and bumbled that “(o)ne uh congressman pointed out I I could uh I I ah uh I he used a very anyway colorful term to say wearing a mask I tell him to kiss my ear I’m not gonna wear a mask well guess what not very American.”
He said “(i)t’s hard, the hard-hit areas, like cancer alleys in Louisiana, cancer alleys in Louisiana.”
He doesn’t know or understand what’s in dozens of executive orders he signed.
He said “(u)h uh the second uh order I’m gonna be signing also changes what the president has done – pres, the president – what the former president uh has done and it’s uh a memorandum to reverse the my predecessor’s attacks on women’s health.”
After coughing, he added: “Excuse me, health access.”
He’s especially focused on when the next meal will arrive.
They’re all that nursing home and assisted living facility residents look forward to — except for visits when occurring by family and/or friends if still able to recognize them.
During last year’s campaign, Biden said “China is going to eat our lunch?”
“Come on man! They can’t even figure out how to deal with the the the fact the that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east I mean in the west.”
Separately, he said “(b)ut you know, we don’t get goin’, they’re gonna eat our lunch!”
In remarks about seasonal flu-renamed covid, he said:
“You’ve all hold. You can hold a second.”
“You all you’ve all heard about the strain the the the British strain, the Brazilian strain, the South African strain and they are they seem to be more transmittable more easily.”
Does any of the above sound like a coherent, effectively functioning head of state?
How long will the charade continue before Biden is replaced by president-in-waiting Harris?
Isn’t this what was planned all along, most of the public none the wiser.
A Final Comment
Because Biden is too cognitively impaired to speak more that a few lines at most in public, a look-alike double represents him when delivering public remarks of any length, including addresses.
#SolutionsWatch isn’t just about the Big Ideas. It’s also about the simple tricks, tips and techniques that we can use to regain power over our lives and help create the world we want. Today, James explores one very simple and tragically under-appreciated tool: Really Simple Syndication.
Before I digress slightly, let me state from the outset that the book by Greg Poulgrain that I am about to review is extraordinary by any measure. The story he tells is one you will read nowhere else, especially in the way he links the assassination of President Kennedy to former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the engineering by the latter of one of the 20th century’s most terrible mass murders. It will make your hair stand on end and should be read by anyone who cares about historical truth.
About twelve years ago I taught a graduate school course to Massachusetts State Troopers and police officers from various cities and towns. As part of the course material, I had created a segment on the history of the United States’ foreign policy, with particular emphasis on Indonesia.
No one in this class knew anything about Indonesia, not even where it was. These were intelligent, ambitious adults, eager to learn, all with college degrees. This was in the midst of the “war on terror” – i.e. war on Muslim countries – and the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. Almost all the class had voted for Obama and were aware they he had spent some part of his youth in this unknown country somewhere far away.
I mention this as a preface to this review of JFK vs. Dulles, because its subtitle is Battleground Indonesia, and my suspicion is that those students’ lack of knowledge about the intertwined history of Indonesia and the U.S. is as scanty today among the general public as it was for my students a dozen years ago.
This makes Greg Poulgrain’s remarkable book – JFK vs. Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia – even more important since it is a powerful antidote to such ignorance, and a reminder for those who have fallen, purposefully or not, into a state of historical amnesia that has erased the fact that the U.S. has committed systematic crimes that have resulted in the deaths of more than a million Indonesians and many more millions throughout the world over innumerable decades.
Such crimes against humanity have been hidden behind what the English playwright Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel Prize address called “a tapestry of lies.” Of such massive crimes, he said:
But you wouldn’t know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.
And when one examines the true history of such atrocities, again and again one comes up against familiar names of the guilty who have never been prosecuted. Criminals in high places whose crimes around the world from Vietnam to Chile to Cuba to Nicaragua to Argentina to Iraq to Libya to Syria, etc. have been – and continue to be – integral to American foreign policy as it serves the interests of its wealthy owners and their media mouthpieces.
In his brilliant new book on U.S./Indonesian history, Dr. Greg Poulgrain unweaves this tapestry of lies and sheds new light on the liars’ sordid deeds. He is an Australian expert on Indonesia whose work stretches back forty years, is a professor at University of the Sunshine Coast in Brisbane and has written four highly-researched book about Indonesia.
In JFK vs. Dulles, he exposes the intrigue behind the ruthless regime-change strategy in Indonesia of the longest-serving CIA director, Allen Dulles, and how it clashed with the policy of President John F. Kennedy, leading to JFK’s assassination, Indonesian regime change, and massive slaughter.
Poulgrain begins with this question:
Would Allen Dulles have resorted to assassinating the President of the United States to ensure that his ‘Indonesian strategy’ rather than Kennedy’s was achieved?
To which he answers: Yes.
But let me not get ahead of myself, for the long, intricate tale he tells is one a reviewer can only summarize, so filled is it with voluminous details. So I will touch on a few salient points and encourage people to buy and read this important book.
Indonesia’s Strategic Importance
The strategic and economic importance of Indonesia cannot be exaggerated. It is the world’s 4th most populous country (275+ million), is located in a vital shipping lane adjacent to the South China Sea, has the world’s largest Muslim population, has vast mineral and oil deposits, and is home in West Papua to Grasberg, the world’s largest gold mine and the second largest copper mine, primarily owned by Freeport McMoRan of Phoenix, Arizona, whose past board members have included Henry Kissinger, John Hay Whitney, and Godfrey Rockefeller.
Long a battleground in the Cold War, Indonesia remains vitally important in the New Cold War and the pivot to Asia launched by the Obama administration against China and Russia, the same antagonists Allen Dulles strove to defeat through guile and violence while he engineered coups at home and abroad. It is fundamentally important in the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific strategy for what it euphemistically calls a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” While not front-page news in the U.S., these facts make Indonesia of great importance today and add to the gravity of Poulgrain’s historical account.
JFK
Two days before President John Kennedy was publicly executed by the US national security state led by the CIA on November 22, 1963, he had accepted an invitation from Indonesian President Sukarno to visit that country the following spring. The aim of the visit was to end the conflict (Konfrontasi) between Indonesia and Malaysia and to continue Kennedy’s efforts to support post-colonial Indonesia with economic and developmental aid, not military. It was part of his larger strategy of ending conflict throughout Southeast Asia and assisting the growth of democracy in newly liberated post-colonial countries worldwide.
He had forecast his position in a dramatic speech in 1957 when, as a Massachusetts Senator, he told the Senate that he supported the Algerian liberation movement and opposed colonial imperialism worldwide. The speech caused an international uproar and Kennedy was harshly attacked by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even liberals such as Adlai Stevenson. But he was praised throughout the third world.
Poulgrain writes:
Kennedy was aiming for a seismic shift of Cold War alignment in Southeast Asia by bringing Indonesia ‘on side.’ As Bradley Simpson stated (in 2008), ‘One would never know from reading the voluminous recent literature on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and Southeast Asia, for example, that until the mid-1960s most officials [in the US] still considered Indonesia of far greater importance than Vietnam or Laos.
Of course JFK never went to Indonesia in 1964, and his peaceful strategy to bring Indonesia to America’s side and to ease tensions in the Cold War was never realized, thanks to Allen Dulles. And Kennedy’s proposed withdrawal from Vietnam, which was premised on success in Indonesia, was quickly reversed by Lyndon Johnson after JFK’s murder on November 22, 1963. Soon both countries would experience mass slaughter engineered by Kennedy’s opponents in the CIA and Pentagon. Millions would die.
While the Indonesian mass slaughter of mainly poor rice farmers (members of the Communist Party – PKI) instigated by Allen Dulles began in October 1965, ten years later, starting in December 1975, the American installed Indonesian dictator Suharto, after meeting with Henry Kissinger and President Ford and receiving their approval, would slaughter hundreds of thousands East-Timorese with American-supplied weapons in a repeat of the slaughter of more than a million Indonesians in 1965 when the CIA engineered the coup d’état that toppled President Sukarno. The American installed dictator Suharto would rule for thirty years of terror. The CIA considers this operation one of its finest accomplishments. It became known as “the Jakarta Method,” a model for future violent coups throughout Latin America and the world.
And in-between these U.S. engineered mass atrocities, came the bloody coup in Chile on September 11, 1973 and the ongoing colossal U.S. war crimes in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
Dulles’s Secret
What JFK didn’t know was that his plans for a peaceful resolution of the Indonesia situation and an easing of the Cold War were threatening a covert long-standing conspiracy engineered by Allen Dulles to effect regime change in Indonesia through bloody means and to exacerbate the Cold War by concealing from Kennedy the truth that there was a Sino-Soviet split. Another primary goal behind this plan was to gain unimpeded access to the vast load of natural resources that Dulles had kept secret from Kennedy, who thought Indonesia was lacking in natural resources. But Dulles knew that if Kennedy, who was very popular in Indonesia, visited Sukarno, it would deal a death blow to his plan to oust Sukarno, install a CIA replacement (Suharto), exterminate alleged communists, and secure the archipelago for Rockefeller controlled oil and mining interests, for whom he had fronted since the 1920s.
Reading Poulgrain’s masterful analysis, one can clearly see how much of modern history is a struggle for control of the underworld where lies the fuel that runs the megamachine – oil, minerals, gold, copper, etc. Manifest ideological conflicts, while garnering headlines, often bury the secret of this subterranean devil’s game.
The Discovery of Gold
His murder mystery/detective story begins with a discovery that is then kept secret for many decades. He writes:
In the alpine region of Netherlands New Guinea (so named under Dutch colonial rule – today, West Papua) in 1936, three Dutchmen discovered a mountainous outcrop of ore with high copper content and very high concentrations of gold. When later analyzed in the Netherlands, the gold (in gram/ton) proved to be twice that of Witwatersrand in South Africa, then the world’s richest gold mine, but this information was not made public.
The geologist among the trio, Jean Jacques Dozy, worked for the Netherlands New Guinea Petroleum Company (NNGPM), ostensibly a Dutch-controlled company based in The Hague, but whose controlling interest actually lay in the hands of the Rockefeller family, as did the mining company, Freeport Sulphur (now Freeport McMoRan, one of whose Directors from 1988-95 was Henry Kissinger, Dulles’ and the Rockefeller’s close associate) that began mining operations there in 1966.
It was Allen Dulles, Paris-based lawyer in the employ of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, who in 1935 arranged the controlling interest in NNGPN for the Rockefellers. And it was Dulles, among a select few others, who, because of various intervening events, including WW II, that made its exploitation impossible, kept the secret of the gold mine for almost three decades, even from President Kennedy, who had worked to return the island to Indonesian control. JFK “remained uninformed of the El Dorado, and once the remaining political hurdles were overcome, Freeport would have unimpeded access.” Those “political hurdles” – i.e. regime change – would take a while to effect.
The Need to Assassinate President Kennedy
But first JFK would have to be eliminated, for he had brokered Indonesian sovereignty over West Papua/West Irian for Sukarno from the Dutch who had ties to Freeport Sulphur. Freeport was aghast at the potential loss of “El Dorado,” especially since they had recently had their world’s most advanced nickel refinery expropriated by Fidel Castro, who had named Che Guevara its new manager. Freeport’s losses in Cuba made access to Indonesia even more important. Cuba and Indonesia thus were joined in the deadly game of chess between Dulles and Kennedy, and someone would have to lose.
While much has been written about Cuba, Kennedy, and Dulles, the Indonesian side of the story has been slighted. Poulgrain remedies this with an exhaustive and deeply researched exploration of these matters. He details the deviousness of the covert operations Dulles ran in Indonesia during the 1950s and 1960s. He makes it clear that Kennedy was shocked by Dulles’s actions, yet never fully grasped the treacherous genius of it all, for Dulles was always “working two or three stages ahead of the present.” Having armed and promoted a rebellion against Sukarno’s central government in 1958, Dulles made sure it would fail (shades of the Bay of Pigs to come) since a perceived failure served his long-term strategy. To this very day, this faux 1958 Rebellion is depicted as a CIA failure by the media. Yet from Dulles standpoint, it was a successful failure that served his long-term goals.
“This holds true,” Poulgrain has previously written, “only if the stated goal of the CIA was the same as the actual goal. Even more than five decades later, media analysis of the goal of The Outer Island rebels is still portrayed as a secession, as covert US support for ‘rebels in the Outer Islands that wished to secede from the central government in Jakarta’. The actual goal of Allen Dulles had more to do with achieving a centralized army command in such a way as to appear that the CIA backing for the rebels failed.”
Dulles’ the Devil
Dulles betrayed the rebels he armed and encouraged, just as he betrayed friend and foe alike during his long career. The rebellion that he instigated and planned to fail was the first stage of a larger intelligence strategy that would come to fruition in 1965-6 with the ouster of Sukarno (after multiple unsuccessful assassination attempts) and the institution of a reign of terror that followed. It was also when – 1966 – Freeport McMoRan began their massive mining in West Papua at Grasberg at an elevation of 14,000 feet in the Alpine region. Dulles was nothing if not patient; he had been at this game since WW I. Even after Kennedy fired him following the Bay of Pigs, his plans were executed, just as those who got in his way were. Poulgrain makes a powerful case that Dulles was the mastermind of the murders of JFK, U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold (working with Kennedy for a peaceful solution in Indonesia and other places), and Congolese President Patrice Lumumba, the first president of a newly liberated Congo.
His focus is on why they needed to be assassinated (similar in this regard to James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable), though with the exception of Kennedy (since the how is well-known and obvious), he also presents compelling evidence as to the how. Hammarskjold, in many ways Kennedy’s spiritual brother, was a particularly powerful obstacle to Dulles’s plans for Indonesia and colonial countries throughout the Third World. Like JFK, he was committed to independence for indigenous and colonial peoples everywhere and was trying to implement his Swedish-style ‘third way,’ proposing a form of ‘muscular pacifism’.
Poulgrain argues correctly that if the UN Secretary General succeeded in bringing even half these colonial countries to independence, he would have transformed the UN into a significant world power and created a body of nations so large as to be a counter-weight to those embroiled in the Cold War.
He draws on documents from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu to show the connection between South Africa’s “Operation Celeste” and Dulles’s involvement in Hammarskjold’s murder in September 1961. While it was reported at the time as an accidental plane crash, he quotes former President Harry Truman saying, “Dag Hammarskjold was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said, ‘When they killed him’.” Hammarskjold, like Kennedy, was intent on returning colonized countries to their indigenous inhabitants and making sure Papua was for Papuans, not Freeport McMoRan and imperial forces.
And Dulles sold his overt Indonesian strategy as being necessary to thwart a communist takeover in Indonesia. Cold War rhetoric, like “the war on terrorism” today, served as his cover. In this he had the Joint Chiefs of Staff on his side; they considered Kennedy soft on communism, in Indonesia and Cuba and everywhere else. Dulles’s covert agenda was to serve the interests of his power elite patrons.
While contextually different from David Talbot’s portrayal of Dulles in The Devil’s Chessboard, Poulgrain’s portrait of Dulles within the frame of Indonesian history is equally condemnatory and nightmarish. Both describe an evil genius ready to do anything to advance his agenda.
Dulles and George de Mohrenschildt
Poulgrain adds significantly to our understanding of JFK’s assassination and its aftermath by presenting new information about George de Mohrenschildt, Lee Harvey Oswald’s handler in Dallas. Dulles had a long association with the de Mohrenschildt family, going back to 1920-21 when in Constantinople he negotiated with Baron Sergius Alexander von Mohrenschildt on behalf of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. The Baron’s brother and business partner was George’s father. Dulles’s law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, was Standard Oil’s primary law firm. These negotiations on behalf of elite capitalist interests, in the shadow of the Russian Revolution, became the template for Dulles’s career: economic exploitation was inseparable from military concerns, the former concealed behind the anti-communist rhetoric of the latter. An anti-red thread ran through Dulles’s career, except when the red was the blood of all those whom he considered expendable. And the numbers are legion. Their blood didn’t matter.
Standard Oil is the link that joins Dulles [who controlled the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of JFK] and de Mohrenschildt. This connection was kept from the Warren Commission despite Dulles’ prominent role and the importance of the testimony of de Mohrenschildt. Poulgrain argues convincingly that de Mohrenschildt worked in “oil intelligence” before his CIA involvement, and that oil intelligence was not only Dulles’s work when he first met George’s father, Sergius, in Baku, but that that “oil intelligence” is a redundancy. The CIA, after all, is a creation of Wall Street and their interests have always been joined. The Agency was not formed to provide intelligence to US Presidents; that was a convenient myth used to cover its real purpose which was to serve the interests of investment bankers and the power elite, or those I call The Umbrella People who control the U.S.
While working in 1941 for Humble Oil (Prescott Bush was a major shareholder, Dulles was his lawyer, and Standard Oil had secretly bought Humble Oil sixteen years before), de Mohrenschildt was caught up in a scandal that involved Vichy (pro-Nazi) French intelligence in selling oil to Germany. This was similar to the Dulles’s brothers and Standard Oil’s notorious business dealings with Germany.
It was an intricate web of the high cabal with Allen Dulles at the center.
In the midst of the scandal, de Mohrenschildt, suspected of being a Vichy French intelligence agent, “disappeared” for a while. He later told the Warren Commission that he decided to take up oil drilling, without mentioning the name of Humble Oil that employed him again, this time as a roustabout.
“Just when George needed to ‘disappear’, Humble Oil was providing an oil exploration team to be subcontracted to NNGPM – the company Allen Dulles had set up five years earlier to work in Netherlands New Guinea.” Poulgrain makes a powerful circumstantial evidence case (certain documents are still unavailable) that de Mohrenschildt, in order to avoid appearing in court, went incommunicado in Netherlands New Guinea in mid-1941 where he made a record oil discovery and received a $10,000 bonus from Humble Oil.
“Avoiding adverse publicity about his role in selling oil to Vichy France was the main priority; for George, a brief drilling adventure in remote Netherlands New Guinea would have been a timely and strategic exit.” And who best to help him in this escape than Allen Dulles – indirectly, of course; for Dulles’s modus operandi was to maintain his “distance” from his contacts, often over many decades.
In other words, Dulles and de Mohrenschildt were intimately involved for a long time prior to JFK’s assassination. Poulgrain rightly claims that “the entire focus of the Kennedy investigation would have shifted had the [Warren] Commission become aware of the 40-year link between Allen Dulles and de Mohrenschildt.” Their relationship involved oil, spying, Indonesia, Nazi Germany, the Rockefellers, Cuba, Haiti, etc. It was an international web of intrigue that involved a cast of characters stranger than fiction, a high cabal of the usual and unusual operatives.
Two unusual ones are worth mentioning: Michael Fomenko and Michael Rockefeller. The eccentric Fomenko – aka “Tarzan” – is the Russian-Australian nephew of de Mohrenschildt’s wife, Jean Fomenko. His arrest and deportation from Netherlands New Guinea in 1959, where he had travelled from Australia in a canoe, and his subsequent life, are fascinating and sad. It’s the stuff of a bizarre film. It seems he was one of those victims who had to be silenced because he knew a secret about George’s 1941 oil discovery that was not his to share. “In April 1964, at the same time George de Mohrenschildt was facing the Warren Commission – a time when any publicity regarding Sele 40 [George’s record oil discovery] could have changed history – it was decided that electro-convulsive therapy would be used on Michael Fomenko.” He was then imprisoned at the Ipswich Special Mental Hospital.
Equally interesting is the media myth surrounding the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, Nelson’s son and heir to the Standard Oil fortune, who was allegedly eaten by cannibals in New Guinea in 1961. His tale became front-page news, “a media event closed off to any other explanation and the political implications of his disappearance became an ongoing tragedy for the Papuan people.” To this very day, the West Papuan people, whose land was described by Standard Oil official Richard Archbold in 1938 as “Shangri-la,” are fighting for their independence.
The Sino-Soviet Split
While the gold in West Papua was very important to Allen Dulles, his larger goal was to keep the Cold War blazing by concealing the dispute between China and the Soviet Union from Kennedy while instigating the mass slaughter of “communists” that would lead to regime change in Indonesia, with Major-General Suharto, his ally, replacing President Sukarno. In this he was successful. Poulgrain says:
Not only did Dulles fail to brief Kennedy on the Sino-Soviet dispute early in the presidency, but he also remained silent about the rivalry between Moscow and Beijing to wield influence over the PKI or win its support. In geographical terms, Beijing regarded Indonesia as its own backyard, and winning the support of the PKI would give Beijing an advantage in the Sino-Soviet dispute. The numerical growth of the PKI was seen by Moscow and Beijing for its obvious political potential. Dulles was also focused on the PKI, but his peculiar skill in political intelligence turned what seemed inevitable on its head. The size of the party [the Indonesian Communist Party was the largest outside the Sino-Soviet bloc] became a factor he used to his advantage when formulating his wedge strategy – the greater the rivalry between Moscow and Beijing over the PKI, the more intense would be the recrimination once the PKI was eliminated.
The slaughter of more than a million poor farmers was a trifle to Dulles.
The September 30, 1965 Movement
In the early hours of October 1, 1965, a fake coup d’état was staged by the CIA’s man, Major-General Suharto. It was announced that seven generals had been arrested and would be taken to President Sukarno “to explain the rumor that they were planning a military coup on October 5.” Suharto declared himself the head of the army. Someone was said to have killed the generals. In the afternoon, a radio announcement was made calling for the Sukarno government to be dismissed. This became Suharto’s basis for blaming it on the communists and the so-called September 30 Movement, and he gave the order to kill the PKI leaders. This started the massive bloodshed that would follow.
With one hand, Suharto crushed the Movement, accusing the PKI of being the ultimate instigator of an attempt to oust Sukarno, and with the other hand he feigned to protect the “father of the Indonesian revolution,” while actually stripping Sukarno of every vestige of political support.
When the generals’ bodies were recovered a few days after Oct 1, Suharto falsely claimed the PKI women had tortured and sexually mutilated them as part of some primitive sexual orgy. This heinous perversion of power was the start of the Suharto era. In total control of the media, he manipulated popular wrath to call for revenge.
If this confuses you, it should, because the twisted nature of this fabricated coup was actually part of a real coup in slow motion aimed at ousting Sukarno and replacing him with the CIA’s man Suharto. This occurred in early 1967 after the mass slaughter of communists. It was a regime change cheered on by the American mass media as a triumph over communist aggression.
New Evidence of U.S. Direct Involvement in the Slaughter
Poulgrain has spent forty years interviewing participants and researching this horrendous history. His detailed research is quite amazing. And it does take concentration to follow it all, as with the machinations of Dulles, Suharto, et al.
Some things, however, are straightforward. For example, he documents how, during the height of the slaughter, two Americans – one man and one woman – were in Klaten (PKI headquarters in central Java) supervising the Indonesian army as they killed the PKI. These two would travel back and forth by helicopter from a ship of the U.S. 7th Fleet that was off the coast of Java. The plan was that the more communists killed, the greater would be the dispute between Moscow and Beijing, since they would accuse each other for the tragedy, which is exactly what they did. This was the wedge that was mentioned in the Rockefeller Brothers Panel Report from the late 1950s in which Dulles and Henry Kissinger both participated.
The hatred drummed up against these poor members of the Communist Party was extraordinary in its depravity. In addition to Suharto’s lies about communist women mutilating the generals’ bodies, a massive campaign of hatred was directed against these landless peasants who made up the bulk of the PKI. False Cold War radio broadcasts from Singapore stirred up hostility toward them, declaring them atheists, etc. Wealthy Muslim landowners – the 1 per cent – made outrageous charges to assist the army’s slaughter. Poulgrain tells us:
Muhammadiyah preachers were broadcasting from mosques that all who joined the communist party must be killed, saying they are the ‘lowest order of infidel, the shedding of whose blood is comparable to killing a chicken.’
For those Americans especially, who think this history of long ago and far away does not touch them, its compelling analysis of how and why Allen Dulles and his military allies would want JFK dead since he was a threat to national security as they defined it in their paranoid anti-communist ideology might be an added impetus to read this very important book. Indonesia may be far away geographically, but it’s a small world. Dulles and Kennedy had irreconcilable differences, and when Dulles was once asked in a radio interview what he would do to someone who threatened national security, he matter-of-factually said, “I’d kill him.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed.
I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the introduction to JFK vs. Dulles by Oliver Stone and the afterward by James DiEugenio are outstanding. They add excellent context and clarity to a really great and important book.
The US has asked to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council in another move that, superficially at least, spells a departure from the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the institution. However, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated, the reasons for the earlier departure from the Council still stand: alleged excessive focus on Israel, as well as the inclusion of nations which the US considers hostile, remain prominent issues for Washington and its rhetoric about “human rights”.
“We need to eliminate Agenda Item 7 and treat the human rights situation in Israel and the Palestinian Territories the same way as this body handles any other country,” declared Blinken.
Agenda Item 7 has long antagonised Israel and the US. It makes discussion of Israel a permanent agenda item at the UNHRC and has elicited calls of anti-Israel bias which divert attention from other human rights violations around the world.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has endorsed Blinken’s criticism of human rights abuses by countries – mentioning China and Russia – that “seem to have joined the council only to undermine its work and to deflect criticism of themselves.” However, doesn’t the UN promote a safe space where various dynamics protect human rights abusers under various schemes, while allowing powers such as the US to determine which countries should be defined as violators of such rights? It is precisely the special status awarded to the US and Israel that needs to be challenged, in order to start altering the narrative on human rights and to make the UN and its institutions truly answerable and accomplished in holding rights abusers to account.
Israel has maintained its self-declared exceptionalism to prolong its military occupation of Palestine, a derivative of the colonial process that accelerated during the Trump era and which will most probably also benefit under US President Joe Biden. It is the exceptionalism which Israel created for its own purpose that has set it apart in the international arena. As far as criticism goes, Israel also benefits from the duplicity that comes with the settler-colonial state being a permanent item at the UNHRC, as well as receiving close to unanimous endorsement for its security and “self-defence” narrative. There is, in fact, no anti-Israel bias, but there is intentional ambiguity, in much the same way that Israel is considered as a normal country rather than a settler-colonial enterprise with its origins rooted deep within the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population.
HRW’s recommendations for the US to alter the scrutiny on Israel has more to do with the dynamics of voting on resolutions than encouraging the Biden administration to take a tough stance on Israel’s colonial expansion. The US and Israel know full well that resolutions are non-binding, hold no political value, and are just a veneer for the international community’s contempt when it comes to the Palestinian people’s political and human rights. A far more pressing discussion would centre on how the UN is ignoring its own principles and priorities. Had it acted against Israel’s colonisation of Palestine and its accompanying brutality and cruelty, as it is bound to do in order not to be in violation of international law, there would be no need for “Agenda Item 7” at the UNHRC or anywhere else.
I’ve been asked why I’m so skeptical when it comes to health and medical science. My answer is because I’ve spent many hours studying medical history, and I’ve seen how much damage doctors have done over the centuries. If you were to select a patient-doctor consultation at random from all the ones that have happened throughout history, your odds are probably better of selecting one in which the doctor harmed the patient than one in which the doctor helped the patient. That is certainly true if you only look at consultations happening before the year 1900.
It’s a shame that medical history generally isn’t part of the curriculum in medical school. If it was, maybe doctors would be more humble about what they know, and what they don’t know. If I were to design a medical school curriculum, I would make the first five to ten weeks of medical school an in-depth course in medical history, with a particular focus on all the mistakes doctors and scientists have made through the centuries, and why they made those mistakes. To quote a well worn cliché, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
Personally, I wear my skepticism as a badge of pride. If I were to seek out a doctor for some medical condition I was suffering from, I would want that person to be a natural skeptic. I would want someone who won’t believe something just because that’s what they were taught in medical school, or because it’s what they heard from a salesperson working for a pharmaceutical company.
I’m going to present four different cases from recent history, that I think show clearly why it’s important to be highly skeptical when it comes to the area of health and medicine. Things can often seem to be very beneficial after a few early studies, or because common sense suggests they should be beneficial. Then when more data comes in, sometimes decades after a certain treatment has become the “gold standard” of therapy, it becomes clear that the intervention is actively harmful. In some cases, millions of people have died prematurely as a result of the intervention by this point. When this happens, when something goes from being the recommended therapy to turning around 180 degrees and becoming something that doctors recommend against, it is known as a medical reversal. Unfortunately, medical reversals are common.
Another thing that I think is unfortunate is that scientific methodology is not really something that is taught in school. People even leave university with very limited training in scientific method. This causes the large majority of the population to be unable to weigh scientific evidence themselves, and it makes them totally beholden to the opinions of others. That’s why I try to use this blog to educate in scientific method. Science, just like democracy, thrives when lots of people are able to examine different pieces of evidence and think for themselves.
Anyway, let’s get to the four cases.
Lobotomy was first developed in the 1930’s by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, and further refined by two American doctors, neurologist Walter Freeman and neurosurgeon James Watts. A lobotomy is basically a surgical intervention in which parts of the frontal cortex of the brain are destroyed. It was developed as a treatment for psychiatric disorders, based on the hypothesis that destroying parts of the frontal lobe would allow destructive mental patterns to “reset” themselves.
After his first surgeries in 1935, Moniz presented a case report of twenty psychiatric patients. He claimed that a third were significantly improved in their underlying psychiatric illness, while a third were mildly improved, and a third were unimproved. None were apparently harmed. This claim was immediately countered by the psychiatrist that had provided the patients to Moniz, who responded that all the patients had suffered a “degradation” of personality.
The frontal cortex is responsible for complex goal oriented behavior, self-control, and higher order thinking, pretty much the things that separate humans from other animals. So, knowing what we know today about the function of the frontal lobe, destroying large chunks of it is likely to turn a person in to an apathetic, lethargic zombie. And this is what happened to the people who were lobotomized, as was clear early on to those who cared to look.
In spite of the limited evidence of benefit, and early suggestion of harm, the procedure was taken up enthusiastically in several parts of the world. By 1949, when lobotomies were at their most popular, thousands of people were being lobotomized around the world each year. That same year Egas Moniz was awarded the Nobel prize in medicine for his efforts.
Then the truth started to catch up with the hype. It became clear that somewhere between 5% and 15% of all patients undergoing lobotomy were being killed by the procedure, either dying on the operating table or shortly after surgery. It was not uncommon for arteries in the brain to become accidentally nicked, resulting in major intracranial bleeding and strokes. When this didn’t kill outright, it often resulted in severe physical handicaps.
It also became more widely known that, although the patients might become more “placid” after the procedure, they were hardly being cured. People who had been institutionalized before the procedure, continued to be institutionalized after the procedure. Few people were able to function independently after undergoing a lobotomy. So lobotomies gradually fell out of favor, although they were still being carried out on patients in some countries as late as the 1980’s.
Let’s move on to our next medical reversal. Starting in the 1960’s, public health authorities around the world started recommending that parents have their babies sleep on their stomachs. The recommendation was not based on any scientific studies, rather it was based on “common sense”, that all too frequent destroyer of lives.
There were multiple hypotheses floating around that together constituted the basis for the recommendation. One was that it would decrease the risk of hip dysplasia, another was that it would prevent scoliosis, a third that it would decrease the risk of aspiration of milk (accidentally getting milk in to the airways), a fourth that it would prevent babies developing “flat heads”.
In the late 1980’s, observational data started to appear suggesting that prone sleeping was causing a huge increase in the number of children dying of cot death, a.k.a. SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Children sleeping on their bellies appeared to be around 500% more likely to die of SIDS than children sleeping on their backs.
Pretty much over night, government health authorities switched from recommending that babies sleep on their bellies to recommending that they sleep on their backs. And virtually over night, the rate of cot death dropped. Dramatically. Here in Sweden, the number of children dying of SIDS decreased by 85% over the course of a few years.
How many children died unnecessarily during the few decades in which prone sleeping was being recommended by public health authorities? Probably millions.
It amazes me how keen government agencies often are to offer recommendations based on little or no evidence, especially when we have such clear examples of situations in which this has resulted in mind-boggling harm. If only public health professionals bothered to follow the first credo of the medical profession, which is “first, do no harm”.
Let’s move on to our next case.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID’s) have been around for a long time. Aspirin was invented in the 1890’s, and ibuprofen has been around since the early 1960’s. One problem with these drugs, which has been recognized since the early days, is that they can cause stomach ulcers. In fact, over-use of NSAID’s is one of the most common reasons for emergency hospital admissions due to bleeding ulcers.
The reason for this side-effect is that NSAID’s block an enzyme called cyclo-oxygenase, generally shortened to just COX (another name for NSAID’s is COX-inhibitors). There are two different versions of COX, COX-1 and COX-2. All the early NSAID’s are unselective COX-inhibitors. In other words, they block both COX-1 and COX-2.
At some point it was discovered that the entire positive effect that comes from NSAID’s, in terms of decreasing inflammation and pain, comes from their inhibition of COX-2, while inhibition of COX-1 is responsible for the side effect of increased bleeding. This naturally led drug companies to seek to develop specific COX-2 inhibitors, that would decrease inflammation, but not cause stomach ulcers.
In 1999, the first two COX-2 selective inhibitors came on the market, rofecoxib (a.k.a. Vioxx), produced by Merck, and celecoxib (a.k.a. Celebrex), produced by Pfizer. They instantly become some of the best selling drugs in the world. Of the two, rofecoxib was much better at blocking COX-2 specifically, and thus far less likely to cause stomach ulcers.
After a few years on the market, signals started to appear that rofecoxib was associated with a heavily increased risk of heart attack and stroke. In fact, people taking rofecoxib had something like a 300% increased risk of having a heart attack compared with people taking non-selective NSAID’s. Merck’s initial response was, unsurprisingly, to try to put the lid on this information. But by 2004, the cat was well and truly out of the bag. In the face of mounting criticism (and lawsuits), Merck chose to withdraw the drug from the market. By that point, 80 million people had been treated with rofecoxib and around 100,000 people had suffered unnecessary heart attacks.
I’m going to end with a slightly more personal example. On my first day of medical school I was told about a fantastic new treatment that had been developed at my new place of study, Karolinska Institutet, and its associated hospital. The developer of the new treatment was a surgeon called Paolo Macchiarini, and the treatment was a stem-cell coated synthetic windpipe. The windpipe could be transplanted in to people who had damaged their windpipes in accidents, or who had to to have their windpipes removed due to cancer. The idea was that the synthetic windpipe would meld with the surrounding tissues and grow in to a fully functioning new windpipe.
Paolo Macchiarini had been head-hunted by Karolinska Institutet in competition with several other top universities. He seemed a shoe-in for the Nobel prize.
The synthetic windpipe transplant surgeries had started in 2010. The first people to be operated on all died relatively soon afterwards, but there was a lot of media hype around them anyway, probably due to the feeling that this was a revolutionary technology, and probably also due to the fact that Machiarini was an excellent salesman.
Since the people he operated on had an annoying habit of dying, Machiarini supposedly felt that he needed healthier specimens to operate on. Thus far, all the people had been suffering from end-stage diseases that would have killed them in the near future even without the surgery. Maybe they were just too sick to begin with to truly benefit?
So he found some people who weren’t actually dying. In 2012 he put synthetic windpipes in to two people who lived with chronic tracheostomies (breathing tubes in the throat) after car accidents, and one in a woman who had suffered accidental damage to her trachea during an earlier surgery. In 2013 he put a synthetic windpipe in to a two-year old who had been born without one. These people were perfectly healthy otherwise, and they were young.
The synthetic windpipes didn’t work. The stem cells didn’t turn in to functional epithelium, as had been hoped. The synthetic windpipes became seeding grounds for bacteria and were attacked by the immune system. They failed to meld with the surrounding tissues. They literally fell apart within months. And the patients died.
What is particularly galling is that there was no need for the synthetic windpipes. Windpipes could have been taken from cadavers instead. In fact, Machiarini had started out doing surgeries with windpipes from cadavers, which had on the whole been successful, but had then chosen to switch over to synthetic windpipes, apparently because it seemed more high-tech and was therefore more likely to generate media attention. The entire exercise was a PR-stunt, primarily intended to speed Paolo Machiarini on the path to a Nobel prize.
By the time I first heard of the synthetic wind pipes, on my first day of medical school in September 2014, things were already starting to come apart. The patients were dying like flies – even the ones who had been healthy before their surgery. Yet Machiarini was continuing to publish articles in prestigious scientific journals, in which he claimed that the stem cell treated synthetic windpipes were holding up well, and integrating with the surrounding tissues, just as planned.
Everything came crashing down very suddenly, in 2016, when Swedish public television aired a documentary that told the truth about Machiarini’s surgeries. Apart from making clear that the surgeries were nowhere near as successful as was being claimed, it became clear that Machiarini had never tested any of his synthetic windpipes on animals before moving on to humans(!), and it also surfaced that colleagues at Karolinska University Hospital had tried to blow the whistle on Machiarini two years earlier, in 2014, but had been threatened in to silence by the leadership at the university and the hospital.
I guess this last case isn’t really a medical reversal, since the synthetic windpipes never actually became standard practice. But I think it’s an interesting cautionary tale. There are lots of charlatans out there, masquerading as serious scientists. Some of them get discovered early on, like Paolo Machiarini, and some of them don’t get discovered until decades have passed and many people have had their lives ruined, like Egas Moniz.
My main point from these cases is that doctors and health authorities harming patients is not even remotely something that is in the distant past. We’re not talking blood letting here, a practice that resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths, but that doctors thankfully stopped doing on a regular basis two hundred years ago. Serious medical reversals have happened in the recent past, and they will happen again. They are particularly likely when new interventions get rushed out based on scant evidence.
I try not to write about anyone who has died because if it was my family member I would not want to read any speculations about their death. However, in this case I feel that justice has not been given a chance and therefore it needs highlighting. ... continue
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