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Net Zero: The Mystery of the Falling Fertility

By Tomas Furst | Brownstone Institute | July 8, 2025

In January 2022, the number of children born in the Czech Republic suddenly decreased by about 10%. By the end of 2022, it had become clear that this was a signal: All the monthly numbers of newborns were mysteriously low.

In April 2023, I wrote a piece for a Czech investigative platform InFakta and suggested that this unexpected phenomenon might be connected to the aggressive vaccination campaign that had started approximately 9 months before the drop in natality. Denik N – a Czech equivalent of the New York Times – immediately came forward with a “devastating takedown” of my article, labeled me a liar and claimed that the pattern can be explained by demographics: There were fewer women in the population and they were getting older.

To compare fertility across countries (and time), the so-called Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is used. Roughly speaking, it is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime. TFR is independent of the number of women and of their age structure. Figure 1 below shows the evolution of TFR in several European countries between 2001 and 2023. I selected countries that experienced a similar drop in TFR in 2022 as the Czech Republic.

Figure 1. The evolution of Total Fertility Rate in selected European countries between 2000 and 2023. The data corresponding to a particular year are plotted at the end of the column representing that year.

So, by the end of 2023, the following two points were clear:

  1. The drop in natality in the Czech Republic in 2022 could not be explained by demographic factors. Total fertility rate – which is independent of the number of women and their age structure – dropped sharply in 2022 and has been decreasing ever since. The data for 2024 show that the Czech TFR has decreased further to 1.37.
  1. Many other European countries experienced the same dramatic and unexpected decrease in fertility that started at the beginning of 2022. I have selected some of them for Figure 1 but there are more: The Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden. On the other hand, there are some countries that do not show a sudden drop in TFR, but rather a steady decline over a longer period (e.g. Belgium, France, UK, Greece, or Italy). Notable exceptions are Bulgaria, Spain, and Portugal where fertility has increased (albeit from very low numbers). The Human Fertility Project database has all the numbers.

This data pattern is so amazing and unexpected that even the mainstream media in Europe cannot avoid the problem completely. From time to time, talking heads with many academic titles appear and push one of the politically correct narratives: It’s Putin! (Spoiler alert: The war started in February 2022; however, children not born in 2022 were not conceived in 2021). It’s the inflation caused by Putin! (Sorry, that was even later). It’s the demographics! (Nope, see above, TFR is independent of the demographics).

Thus, the “v” word keeps creeping back into people’s minds and the Web’s Wild West is ripe with speculation. We decided not to speculate but to wrestle some more data from the Czech government. For many months, we were trying to acquire the number of newborns in each month, broken down by age and vaccination status of the mother. The post-socialist health-care system of our country is a double-edged sword: On one hand, the state collects much more data about citizens than an American would believe. On the other hand, we have an equivalent of the FOIA, and we are not afraid to use it. After many months of fruitless correspondence with the authorities, we turned to Jitka Chalankova – a Czech Ron Johnson in skirts – who finally managed to obtain an invaluable data sheet.

To my knowledge, the datasheet (now publicly available with an English translation here) is the only officially released dataset containing a breakdown of newborns by the Covid-19 vaccination status of the mother. We requested much more detailed data, but this is all we got. The data contains the number of births per month between January 2021 and December 2023 given by women (aged 18-39) who were vaccinated, i.e., had received at least one Covid vaccine dose by the date of delivery, and by women who were unvaccinated, i.e., had not received any dose of any Covid vaccine by the date of delivery.

Furthermore, the numbers of births per month by women vaccinated by one or more doses during pregnancy were provided. This enabled us to estimate the number of women who were vaccinated before conception. Then, we used open data on the Czech population structure by age, and open data on Covid vaccination by day, sex, and age.

Combining these three datasets, we were able to estimate the rates of successful conceptions (i.e., conceptions that led to births nine months later) by preconception vaccination status of the mother. Those interested in the technical details of the procedure may read Methods in the newly released paper. It is worth mentioning that the paper had been rejected without review in six high-ranking scientific journals. In Figure 2, we reprint the main finding of our analysis.

Figure 2A. Histogram showing the percentage of women in the Czech Republic aged 18–39 years who were vaccinated with at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the respective month. Figure 2B. Estimates of the number of successful conceptions (SCs) per 1,000 women aged 18–39 years according to their pre-conception Covid vaccination status. The blue-shaded areas in Figure 1B show the intervals between the lower and upper estimates of the true SC rates for women vaccinated (dark blue) and unvaccinated (light blue) before conception.

Figure 2 reveals several interesting patterns that I list here in order of importance:

  1. Vaccinated women conceived about a third fewer children than would be expected from their share of the population. Unvaccinated women conceived at about the same rate as all women before the pandemic. Thus, a strong association between Covid vaccination status and successful conceptions has been established.
  2. In the second half of 2021, there was a peak in the rate of conceptions of the unvaccinated (and a corresponding trough in the vaccinated). This points to rather intelligent behavior of Czech women, who – contrary to the official advice – probably avoided vaccination if they wanted to get pregnant. This concentrated the pregnancies in the unvaccinated group and produced the peak.
  3. In the first half of 2021, there was significant uncertainty in the estimates of the conception rates. The lower estimate of the conception rate in the vaccinated was produced by assuming that all women vaccinated (by at least one dose) during pregnancy were unvaccinated before conception. This was almost certainly true in the first half of 2021 because the vaccines were not available prior to 2021. The upper estimate was produced by assuming that all women vaccinated (by at least one dose) during pregnancy also received at least one dose before conception. This was probably closer to the truth in the second part of 2021. Thus, we think that the true conception rates for the vaccinated start close to the lower bound in early 2021 and end close to the upper bound in early 2022. Once again, we would like to be much more precise, but we have to work with what we have got.

Now that the association between Covid-19 vaccination and lower rates of conception has been established, the one important question looms: Is this association causal? In other words, did the Covid-19 vaccines really prevent women from getting pregnant?

The guardians of the official narrative brush off our findings and say that the difference is easily explained by confounding: The vaccinated tend to be older, more educated, city-dwelling, more climate change aware…you name it. That all may well be true, but in early 2022, the TFR of the whole population dropped sharply and has been decreasing ever since.

So, something must have happened in the spring of 2021. Had the population of women just spontaneously separated into two groups – rednecks who wanted kids and didn’t want the jab, and city slickers who didn’t want kids and wanted the jab – the fertility rate of the unvaccinated would indeed be much higher than that of the vaccinated. In that respect, such a selection bias could explain the observed pattern. However, had this been true, the total TFR of the whole population would have remained constant.

But this is not what happened. For some reason, the TFR of the whole population jumped down in January 2022 and has been decreasing ever since. And we have just shown that, for some reason, this decrease in fertility affected only the vaccinated. So, if you want to argue that a mysterious factor X is responsible for the drop in fertility, you will have to explain (1) why the factor affected only the vaccinated, and (2) why it started affecting them at about the time of vaccination. That is a tall order. Mr. Occam and I both think that X = the vaccine is the simplest explanation.

What really puzzles me is the continuation of the trend. If the vaccines really prevented conception, shouldn’t the effect have been transient? It’s been more than three years since the mass vaccination event, but fertility rates still keep falling. If this trend continues for another five years, we may as well stop arguing about pensions, defense spending, healthcare reform, and education – because we are done.

We are in the middle of what may be the biggest fertility crisis in the history of mankind. The reason for the collapse in fertility is not known. The governments of many European countries have the data that would unlock the mystery. Yet, it seems that no one wants to know.

July 9, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Court Orders Bank Freezing Records in Freedom Convoy Case

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | July 9, 2025

A Canadian court has ordered the release of documents that could shed light on how federal authorities and law enforcement worked together to freeze the bank accounts of a protester involved in the Freedom Convoy.

Both the RCMP and TD Bank are now required to provide records related to Evan Blackman, who took part in the 2022 demonstrations and had his accounts frozen despite not being convicted of any crime at the time.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) announced the Ontario Court of Justice ruling. The organization is representing Blackman, whose legal team argues that the actions taken against him amounted to a serious abuse of power.

“The freezing of Mr. Blackman’s bank accounts was an extreme overreach on the part of the police and the federal government,” said his lawyer, Chris Fleury. “These records will hopefully reveal exactly how and why Mr. Blackman’s accounts [were] frozen.”

Blackman was arrested during the mass protests in Ottawa, which drew thousands of Canadians opposed to vaccine mandates and other pandemic-era restrictions.

Although he faced charges of mischief and obstructing police, those charges were dismissed in October due to a lack of evidence. Despite this, prosecutors have appealed, and a trial is set to begin on August 14.

At the height of the protests, TD Bank froze three of Blackman’s accounts following government orders issued under the Emergencies Act. Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had invoked the act to grant his government broad powers to disrupt the protest movement, including the unprecedented use of financial institutions to penalize individuals for their support or participation.

In 2024, a Federal Court Justice ruled that Trudeau’s decision to invoke the act had not been justified.

Blackman’s legal team plans to use the newly released records to demonstrate the extent of government intrusion into personal freedoms. According to the JCCF, this case may be the first in Canada where a criminal trial includes a Charter challenge over the freezing of personal bank accounts under emergency legislation.

July 9, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Von der Leyen blames Russia for no-confidence motion

RT | July 8, 2025

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has dismissed efforts by members of the European Parliament to oust her, branding her critics “conspiracy theorists” and accusing them of acting on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Von der Leyen is facing a parliamentary motion of no-confidence in her presidency, which is scheduled for a vote on Thursday after being tabled by Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea. Addressing the parliament during a debate on Monday, von der Leyen said those backing the proposal were following “the oldest playbook of extremists” and were attempting to undermine public confidence in the EU with “false claims.”

“There is no proof that they have any answers, but there is ample proof that many are supported by our enemies and by their puppet masters in Russia or elsewhere.”

“These are movements fueled by conspiracies, from anti-vaxxers to Putin apologists. And you only have to look at some of the signatories of this motion to understand what I mean.”

In his remarks to parliament, Piperea accused the Commission of centralizing decision-making in a non-democratic fashion and of interfering in the internal affairs of member states.

Russian officials have claimed that EU leaders are using fear tactics to shield themselves from criticism. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dubbed von der Leyen, who is German, a “fuhrer” for her efforts to push a multi-billion euro militarization program on member states. Russia maintains that unlike Western states it does not interfere with other nations’ domestic affairs.

Von der Leyen urged “all the pro-Europeans, pro-democracy forces” in the chamber to support her agenda, arguing that unity was essential to uphold the EU’s foreign policy strength.

Criticism of von der Leyen’s leadership has centered on her handling of the EU’s Covid-19 response during her first term, particularly the lack of transparency in finalizing a 2021 vaccine procurement deal with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Earlier this year, the European Court of Justice found her office at fault for failing to retain text messages exchanged with Bourla and for refusing to release them to journalists with adequate justification.

Piperea is a member of Romania’s AUR party, led by George Simion, who narrowly lost a presidential runoff this year to a pro-EU candidate. The election followed a scrapped first-round vote earlier in 2024, in which outsider Calin Georgescu emerged as the frontrunner. The country’s Constitutional Court annulled the results, citing government allegations of Russian interference. Critics of the EU claim the episode reflects a broader anti-democratic trend allegedly enabled by Brussels.

July 8, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Major Study: ‘Long Covid’ Caused by ‘Vaccines,’ Not Virus

By Frank Bergman | Slay News | July 2, 2025

A shocking new peer-reviewed study has just confirmed that so-called “long Covid” is actually a side effect of the mRNA “vaccines” and not the virus.

The explosive study has just detonated one of the biggest lies of the pandemic era, revealing that neurological and psychiatric symptoms blamed on “long Covid” are now showing up in people who were never even infected with the virus, but who were heavily “vaccinated.”

The team of researchers behind the study was led by Dr. Yi-Chun Chen of the Department of Neurology at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Linkou Medical Center and College of Medicine at Taiwan’s Chang Gung University.

The results of the peer-reviewed study were published in the world-renowned Journal of Microbiology, Immunology and Infection.

The study confirms what critics of the shots have warned all along: It is not the virus causing long-term health issues but the so-called “vaccines” themselves.

Researchers examined 467 healthcare workers at a teaching hospital in northern Taiwan.

Every single participant had received at least three doses of Covid shots, some even had four, before the Omicron wave hit.

Despite the participants receiving mixed combinations of Covid “vaccines,” they all received at least one mRNA injection.

The results show that hundreds reported classic “long Covid” symptoms: memory loss, brain fog, depression, fatigue, and anxiety.

Alarmingly, 222 of the “long Covid” patients had never been infected with COVID-19 at all.

“No statistically significant differences in neurological and psychiatric symptoms across the COVID-19 status groups,” the study authors quietly admitted.

The so-called “long Covid” symptoms appeared regardless of infection.

The only common factor was that they all received repeated “vaccinations.”

The researchers note that what was originally believed to be “long Covid” is actually “Post-Vaccine Syndrome” (PVS).

The symptoms reported included:

  • Memory decline
  • Trouble concentrating
  • Sleep disturbances
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Chronic fatigue
  • Cognitive dysfunction

Even those with no positive Covid test, no symptoms, and no anti-nucleoprotein antibodies (clear signs they were never infected) reported fatigue in over 30% of cases, and nearly 10% had trouble concentrating.

One in nine uninfected, triple-vaxxed participants experienced worsening memory over time.

And yet, despite these glaring red flags, the authors never even considered that the shots themselves might be responsible.

The term “vaccine injury” never appears once in the 11-page paper.

That’s not science, it’s damage control.

This new study drops just as fresh reports confirm the NIH has funded researchers to create over 200 synthetic versions of the virus using gain-of-function-style engineering.

The revelation is raising obvious questions about what caused the original outbreak and what new threats lie ahead.

Meanwhile, a recent publication in the JMA Journal linked repeated Covid “vaccination” to excess mortality in Japan, as Slay News reported.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now admitting that young, healthy people face heightened risks of myocarditis and heart inflammation from mRNA shots.

Still, health bureaucrats and corporate media continue to push the tired, unscientific “safe and effective” narrative.

All 467 workers in the Taiwan study received mix-and-match combinations of:

  • Pfizer (mRNA)
  • Moderna (mRNA)
  • AstraZeneca (viral vector)
  • Medigen (protein subunit)

Yet no matter the brand, the outcome was the same: brain and nervous system symptoms without any confirmed infection.

This is what they continue to call “long Covid.”

Yet, what we are seeing looks more and more like a rebranding of widespread “vaccine” injury.

If you can develop “long Covid” without being infected with the virus, then it’s not “long Covid.”

If vaccinated but uninfected individuals are showing the same symptoms, then the “vaccines” demand scrutiny, not blind praise.

And if researchers continue to tiptoe around these facts to protect Big Pharma and government agencies, then the injured, gaslit, and ignored public will be left holding the bag.

As Slay News previously reported, experts have been raising the alarm about the PVS phenomenon for some time.

Scientists have been warning that Covid mRNA shots have caused a global surge in cases of AIDS-like autoimmunity disorders.

A major study by the world-renowned Yale University School of Medicine also linked Covid injections to AIDS-like Vaccine-Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (VAIDS).

The Yale researchers published the findings of their bombshell study in February.

They found that mRNA injections alter human biology to create long-term spike protein production that increases over time.

The scientists warn that the Covid mRNA vaccines trigger VAIDS.

Two of the Yale study’s co-senior authors, Harlan Krumholz and Akiko Iwasaki, have been leaders in investigating mRNA shots’ links to so-called “Long Covid.”

They believe it should be renamed “Long Vax.”

As the scientific reporting on VAIDS becomes more mainstream, the condition is increasingly being referred to as “post-vaccination syndrome” (PVS).

However, PVS is identical to the condition that experts have been warning about for some time – VAIDS.

These findings demand rigorous independent replication, as they raise urgent questions about diagnosis, treatment, and the safety profile of mRNA “vaccines.”

Ex-CDC Director: ‘Long Covid’ Is ‘mRNA Vaccine Injury’

July 5, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

“Why Can’t We Talk About This?”

Rainey Media TV | June 4, 2025

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“Why Can’t We Talk About This?” delves into the life of a man grappling with the aftermath of a COVID-19 vaccine injury, weaving his personal struggle into a broader examination of why such experiences are rarely discussed.

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We’ve made this film easily accessible for everyone because the information it contains and the discussion it starts is just too important. This film had no funding and was made without sponsorship. All costs were paid out of my own pocket. My team and I spent over a year and a half making this film. Any support you give will go towards expenses incurred making and marketing the movie. (Even sending the price of a movie ticket would help.) Once we cover those costs, we will be providing Michael with a share of the proceeds.

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July 2, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Study of 1.3 Million Women Links COVID Vaccines to Pregnancy Risk

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 27, 2025

The rate of successful conception — a pregnancy leading to live birth nine months later — for women who received the COVID-19 vaccine was “substantially lower” than for unvaccinated women, according to a new peer-reviewed study.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), called the study’s conclusions alarming. He said:

“This preliminary analysis shows that much more information is needed to understand both short- and long-term implications of the different types of COVID shots on fertility and pregnancy parameters. This information should have been obtained prior to any public use of the COVID vaccine.”

The results showed that by June 2021, approximately six months after COVID-19 vaccines became available to the public, successful conceptions per 1,000 women were considerably lower for vaccinated women than for those not vaccinated.

The researchers observed an increase in the rate of successful conceptions for unvaccinated women beginning in June 2021, which “was maintained over the subsequent 6-month period.”

In 2022, the rate of successful conceptions “stabilized” among both vaccinated and unvaccinated women but remained “about 1.5 times higher” for the latter group.

‘Troubling’ results indicate long-term impact on reproductive health

The preliminary analysis, by five researchers from the Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden, was published last week in the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine.

The study examined data obtained from the Czech Republic, one of the few countries where nationwide birth data for women who were vaccinated or unvaccinated for COVID-19 are available, the authors said.

The researchers analyzed data on 1.3 million women, ages 18-39, between January 2021 and December 2023.

The authors said their reasons for undertaking the study included existing research showing that COVID-19 vaccines have adverse effects on “menstrual characteristics,” and the lack of data on the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on birth rates.

Data from several countries had shown decreased birth rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers said. However, the “potential influence of COVID-19 vaccines on reproductive health was not assessed” in randomized preauthorization trials for those vaccines.

Pediatrician Dr. Michelle Perro said the study’s findings are “deeply concerning” and “provide insight regarding adverse effects on fertility that warrants immediate and unbiased scientific investigation.”

“Releasing a new technology, especially one administered to our most vulnerable populations without comprehensive, long-term safety data, once again, has been shown to be disastrous towards the health of future generations,” Perro said.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at CHD, said it was “troubling” that the rates of successful conceptions among vaccinated and unvaccinated women have not converged after 2021, indicating the vaccines’ potentially long-term impact on women’s reproductive health.

“If the exposure had short-term influence, the two groups would converge over time, and they don’t,” Jablonowski said.

Among the vaccinated women examined in the study, 96% received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, with 11 times more women receiving Pfizer’s vaccine compared to Moderna’s.

Multiple studies link COVID vaccines and reproductive problems

The researchers noted the relationship between vaccination and fertility is not necessarily causal, and some women may have based their decision to get vaccinated on whether they planned to become pregnant — a possible example of “self-selection bias.”

However, the researchers pointed out that, during the pandemic, the overall fertility rate in the Czech Republic declined. During that time, Czech public health authorities recommended that pregnant women get vaccinated — a recommendation the researchers said many women likely followed.

These factors reduce the likelihood that self-selection bias accounts for the difference in successful conception rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated women.

Other recent studies have also found an association between COVID-19 vaccines and reproductive problems.

A peer-reviewed study published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth in April found that among pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19, those who received a COVID-19 vaccine were significantly more likely to miscarry compared to unvaccinated women.

A peer-reviewed study published in March in the journal Vaccines found that COVID-19 vaccines decreased the number of primordial follicles — “the foundation of fertility” — in female rats by up to 60%.

Contaminated COVID vaccine batches may have lowered conception rates

According to the Czech researchers, highly contaminated early batches of COVID-19 vaccines may be related to decreased rates of successful conception — a theory which they said deserves further investigation.

The researchers cited several studies — including a peer-reviewed analysis by Jablonowski and Hooker published last year in the journal Science, Public Health Policy and the Law — that found early batches of COVID-19 vaccines led to a disproportionately higher number of adverse events.

According to the Jablonowski-Hooker analysis, batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine distributed in the U.S. were associated with significantly different rates of serious adverse events.

Α 2023 Danish study found a significant percentage of the batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine distributed in the European Union likely consisted of placebos — and the non-placebo batches demonstrated higher-than-normal severe adverse events in recipients.

In a paper published in the journal Medicine last year, the authors of the Danish study expanded their analysis to Sweden, finding the existence of the same batch-dependent issues in that country.

In another study published last year, researchers from the Czech Republic replicated the Danish study’s methodology. They found that COVID-19 vaccine batches in that country also had differing rates of adverse events, with more issues seen in early vaccine releases for all vaccines.

The lead author of that paper, Tomáš Fürst, Ph.D., is one of the new study’s co-authors.

Perro said the study’s findings “highlight the necessity for extreme caution in public health interventions, particularly for women of childbearing age and children when they involve reproductive health.” She supports calls for the “immediate cessation and withdrawal of mRNA technology.”

Hooker said, “Any decrease in fertility and increase in miscarriages and stillbirths lies at the heart of the fact that this vaccine technology should have never been rolled out to the public in the first place.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

June 29, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

After Years of Silence, New CDC Vaccine Panel to Vote on Mercury in Flu Shots

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 18, 2025

The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee will vote next week on the mercury-based flu vaccine, according to an Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting agenda draft posted today on the ACIP website

The committee will also vote on RSV vaccines for pregnant mothers, babies and young children.

This will be the first meeting since U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tapped eight new ACIP members — just days after removing all 17 former members in what he called a “clean sweep … needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”

Before they vote, ACIP members will hear presentations on respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV vaccines, including Merck’s new RSV shot for newborns. Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the new shot, even though clinical trials showed an 11.71% rate of serious adverse events, including death.

Discussions, but no votes, are slated for other vaccines, including COVID-19, Chikungunya, Anthrax and MMRV (Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Varicella).

ACIP decides which vaccines should be recommended to the public, who should take them and how often — recommendations the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) typically rubber stamps and publishes on its immunization schedules.

The committee will meet June 25-26 in Atlanta, Georgia.

ACIP to discuss thimerosal after years of silence

Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used in multi-dose vials of the flu vaccine, according to the CDC. Most single-dose vials and pre-filled syringes of the flu shot don’t contain the preservative, as they’re intended for single use.

Over 25 years ago, vaccine industry leaders and public health officials concealed evidence from the CDC’s own database that linked thimerosal to neurodevelopmental disorders in children, including autism, according to transcripts from a meeting in Norcross, Georgia.

The U.S. government has long said thimerosal poses no harm to children. However, in 2001, out of what the agency said was an abundance of caution, the CDC said the ingredient would no longer be used in childhood vaccines.

A recent investigation by journalist Sharyl Attkisson proved both statements untrue.

Thimerosal’s potential to harm kids has been on Kennedy’s radar for over a decade. In 2014, he edited a book on the topic: “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury — a Known Neurotoxin — from Vaccines.”

The CDC webpage for flu shot safety considerations during pregnancy makes no mention of thimerosal, nor does it encourage pregnant women to be sure they get a flu shot from a single-dose vial or prefilled syringe to avoid mercury exposure.

Next week, ACIP members will hear a presentation on thimerosal in vaccines and a presentation on proposed recommendations for flu vaccines that contain thimerosal. The names of the presenters were not listed on the agenda at press time.

The committee will also vote on flu vaccines that don’t contain thimerosal.

Dr. Meryl Nass, who has attended many past ACIP meetings, said, “There is no need for thimerosal, a known neurotoxin, as it is not used in single-dose vials. Its use should be ended.”

Critics weigh in on ACIP agenda

Reactions to the ACIP meeting agenda were mixed. Some said it signaled that the CDC is veering off course, while others called for even more change.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) chief scientific officer, said that although he was encouraged by Kennedy’s selections for the new ACIP members, he was disappointed in the slate of meeting presenters and moderators.

“It is the same old cast of CDC characters (from the National Center for Infectious and Respiratory Diseases) who present a very biased viewpoint,” Hooker said. “CDC’s culture is vaccinology as a religion, straight up. ACIP committee members desperately need an alternative view that is based on the very stark reality of vaccine ineffectiveness and the extremely high prevalence of vaccine adverse events.”

Dr. Jeremy Faust, editor of Medpage, said in a Substack post critiquing the ACIP meeting agenda that the planned vote on thimerosal “revives and elevates a longstanding anti-vaccine conspiracy theory.”

“Removing the compound will do nothing to improve vaccine safety,” Faust wrote, “but it certainly will undermine confidence in other existing vaccines.”

Faust also criticized the CDC for failing to put a COVID-19 vaccine vote on the meeting agenda, writing that the move will leave “fall policies unclear.”

HHS officials last month removed the COVID-19 shot from the CDC’s recommended list of immunizations for healthy children and pregnant women after the FDA limited its COVID-19 vaccine approvals to high-risk groups and the elderly.

‘This could mark a turning point’

James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D. is president and CEO of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, an advocacy group that pushes for accuracy and integrity in science and for biomedical researchers to put people’s health before profits. He said the ACIP meeting agenda suggested that the CDC was making progress in “structure, balance, and transparency.”

“If public comment is taken seriously and if safety data are rigorously and honestly evaluated — then this could mark a turning point,” Lyons-Weiler said.

Lyons-Weiler said it’s also important that the CDC be “fully open” about its Evidence to Recommendations framework.

When ACIP makes a vaccine recommendation, it’s accompanied by what’s called an Evidence to Recommendations framework that describes the information the committee used in making its decision.

In the past, the CDC took shortcuts in showing this evidence, Lyons-Weiler said. He said he hopes the next ACIP meeting shows that the CDC is moving forward “with the full light of science, skepticism, and civic trust.”

ACIP guidelines don’t address full scope of possible vaccine injuries

Historically, states use ACIP recommendations to help shape vaccine policy and doctors use them in making decisions.

Some states consider the ACIP’s “General Best Practice Guidelines for Immunization,” which lists examples of contraindications and precautions for each vaccine, as the only acceptable authority when deciding whether to grant a child’s medical exemption request to a school-required vaccine.

However, ACIP’s list of contraindications isn’t exhaustive, according to attorney Sujata Gibson, who said:

“Right now, states like New York and California are overruling treating physicians and rejecting medical exemptions when they don’t see the condition listed in the ACIP best practices guideline as a contraindication or a precaution.

“But the guideline doesn’t provide an exhaustive list of all the reasons a child may be at risk of serious harm… The way that New York, California and other states are treating these guidelines is reckless and dangerous, and children are being severely harmed as a result.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter how many doctors confirm that a particular child will likely be harmed by a certain vaccine, states like New York and California give medical exemptions only for conditions specified in ACIP’s guidelines.

The Defender reached out to the CDC to ask if the new ACIP committee will clarify that its guidance is not a substitute for clinical decision-making and should not be used as a standard for clinicians or schools in deciding whether to grant medical exemptions. The CDC did not respond by the deadline.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

June 22, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Did Covid Vaccines Really Save Millions?

By Yaakov Ophir | Brownstone Institute | June 21, 2025

Two years have passed since the official end of the Covid-19 pandemic, yet the topic of vaccination remains highly sensitive in both public and scientific discourse. Attempts to question the legitimacy of the mass vaccination campaign or to raise concerns about potential harms are often met with a moral red line: the widely repeated claim that “Covid-19 vaccines have saved millions and millions of lives.”

Remarkably, this assertion was treated as established fact even during the recent U.S. Senate PSI hearing on May 21, 2025, which focused on vaccine-related adverse outcomes.1 Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal opened the hearing with the following statement:

“As we talk about the side effects of COVID vaccines, I think we need to be clear about the most important fact. For all Americans, COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions and millions of lives. There is no scientific question about that fact… One study found that 3 million American deaths were averted…in the United States… I would like this study entered into the record.1

This confident assertion raises a fundamental question: Is there truly solid and conclusive scientific evidence to support the powerful claim that the Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign resulted in a net benefit of millions of lives saved?

Faced with this fundamental question, our research team undertook a structured, step-by-step evaluation of the empirical foundations of the “millions saved” narrative. Building on our prior work,2, 3 we critically examined the hypothetical statistical models that produced this extraordinary figure, as well as multiple randomized controlled trials and large-scale observational studies that served as the empirical basis for the vaccine efficacy estimates fed into these models.

We have now uploaded our full-length article with what we believe to be urgently important findings to a preprint server,4 in order to allow scientists, physicians, and policymakers to independently evaluate the evidence. Because meaningful scientific discourse requires careful scrutiny of the data, we strongly urge readers not to rely solely on the current brief article, but to engage directly with the full analysis presented in our preprint.4

Our goal here is to highlight several central findings that, in our view, demand serious attention, given their direct relevance to one of the most significant public health interventions in modern history: a global, government-backed mass vaccination campaign that, in many countries, was accompanied by mandates and unprecedented restrictions on individual freedoms.

What follows is a concise overview of key insights from our structured analysis that, in our view, every health professional, policymaker, and citizen deserves to consider:

  1. The widely cited claim that “millions of lives were saved” by Covid-19 vaccines is based on hypothetical models that rest on a long sequence of assumptions—many of which are either weak, unvalidated, or demonstrably false (see below). As a result, the outputs of these models are of questionable value and cannot be taken as reliable evidence.
  2. A central assumption underlying these models was that Covid-19 vaccines provided strong and durable protection against infection and transmission. Consider the original statement by Dr. Anthony Fauci, then Chief Medical Advisor to the US President: “When you get vaccinated you not only protect your own health… but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community…you become a dead end to the virus” (bold added).5 This assumption—serving as the cornerstone of the mass vaccination campaign—turned out to be false. Real-world data quickly revealed that vaccine efficacy against infection was fragile and short-lived, and efficacy against transmission was never directly studied.
  3. Strikingly, despite the collapse of this original narrative (point 2), the vaccination campaign continued under a revised justification: that the vaccines provide lasting protection against severe illness and death, even after their short-term effect against infection diminishes. It is important to recognize that this updated claim hinges on a conceptual separation between these two types of efficacy—a separation that, as we demonstrate repeatedly in our preprint article, was never empirically validated.
  4. In fact, available data suggest that protection against infection and protection against severe illness or death are closely linked, following a similar trajectory of waning over time. The difference lies primarily in timing, with a natural delay between initial infection and the development of severe outcomes.
  5. To directly assess the validity of this supposed distinction between protection against infection and protection against severe illness, we examined the conditional probability of severe illness among individuals who became infected across several key studies. The results were clear: the apparent protection against severe outcomes was most likely a byproduct of the short-term protection against infection. None of the influential studies we analyzed demonstrated independent or durable protection against severe illness or death.
  6. Notably, some studies stopped tracking severe outcomes precisely at the point when vaccine protection would be expected to wane—paralleling the well-documented decline in protection against infection and the typical delay between infection and the onset of severe illness or death mentioned above. This pattern raises serious concerns about potential misrepresentation or selective reporting of research findings.
  7. Finally, the pivotal randomized controlled trial that led to the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the Pfizer vaccine showed no meaningful difference between the vaccine and placebo groups in preventing: (1) flu-like symptoms, (2) severe Covid-19, or (3) all-cause mortality. The only significant difference was observed in a non-clinical outcome—laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 infection—and even this result was based on data from no more than 8.24% of participants, collected in a potentially biased manner, as detailed in our preprint.
  8. Notably, no Covid-19-related deaths were recorded in Pfizer’s pivotal trial. This absence raises serious questions about whether the legal and medical criteria for issuing an emergency use authorization were truly met.
  9. Even more importantly, the six-month follow-up trial by Pfizer reported 15 deaths in the vaccine group (n = 21,720), compared to 14 in the placebo group (n = 21,728). Given the large sample size, this lack of mortality benefit should have served as a critical anchor for any hypothetical model or evidence-based discussion regarding the overall benefit of the vaccine.

These findings seriously challenge the notion that Covid-19 vaccines saved millions of lives. Moreover, our in-depth investigation uncovered a broader range of methodological flaws that cast doubt on the overall reliability of the existing evidence base. These include: (a) followup periods that were exceedingly short and inconsistently applied across groups; (b) implausible efficacy signals appearing almost immediately after vaccination—well before full immunization could have occurred biologically; and (c) heavy reliance on observational data vulnerable to Healthy Vaccinee Bias, differential testing rates, and numerous other confounding factors.

Taken together, these methodological and empirical concerns not only undermine the foundation of the “millions saved” narrative, but also raise a deeper question: If the evidence is so limited and flawed, how did this narrative gain such dominance in scientific and public discourse?

The issue is not whether some degree of vaccine efficacy was observed at specific moments (e.g., see the fascinating example in our preprint of the Bar-On et al. study on the second booster), but rather how such fleeting observations came to shape the broader public narrative. Isolated data points were elevated and decontextualized, while critical considerations—such as (a) waning immunity, (b) the lack of demonstrated mortality benefit, (c) vaccine breakthrough infections leading to hospitalization or death, and (d) an increasingly robust body of evidence on adverse effects—were systematically sidelined (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Illustrating a Selective Focus on a Transiently Favorable Outcome While Ignoring Concerning Data

This narrowing of focus — peering through the keyhole of one transient success — has allowed a fragile claim to solidify into a powerful myth, reinforced by institutional authority, social conformity, and the systematic suppression of dissenting voices (including our own experience of censorship, as detailed in our preprint).

We therefore call on the scientific and medical communities to take a step back, widen the lens, and return to a foundational principle of medicine: every intervention, no matter how promising, must undergo continuous, evidence-based evaluation of both its benefits and its potential harms. To the best of our knowledge, such a balanced and rigorous appraisal has yet to be applied to the Covid-19 vaccines.

Based on the evidence reviewed in our preprint, we conclude that the claim that “Covid-19 vaccines saved millions and millions of lives”1 is not supported by empirical evidence. While these vaccines were widely promoted as safe and effective, accumulating reports of serious adverse events—such as myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombosis, and neurological symptoms—have been extensively documented across pharmacovigilance systems and in multiple peer-reviewed studies (e.g., 6-16), many co-authored by the last author of the current article.

Notably, this biologically active intervention was administered repeatedly in the form of boosters, thereby compounding potential risks—often in populations with near-zero risk of Covid-related mortality, such as children. Taken together with the lack of demonstrable long-term efficacy presented in our preprint,4 the available evidence suggests that the risk–benefit balance of the Covid-19 vaccines may, in fact, tilt toward the negative end of this fundamental medical equation.17, 18

References

1. Homeland Security. The Corruption of Science and Federal Health Agencies: How Health Officials Downplayed and Hid Myocarditis and Other Adverse Events Associated with the COVID-19 Vaccines.

2. Ophir Y, Shir-Raz Y, Zakov S, McCullough PA. The Efficacy of COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters against Severe Illness and Deaths: Scientific Fact or Wishful Myth?. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. 2023;28(1). doi: https://www.jpands.org/vol28no1/ophir.pdf.

3. Ophir Y. The Final Brick in the Vaccine Efficacy Narrative ⋆ Brownstone Institute. 2023.

4. Ophir Y, Shir-Raz Y, Zakov S, McCullough PA. A Step-by-Step Evaluation of the Claim That COVID-19 Vaccines Saved Millions of Lives. Researchgate (preprint). 2025. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12897.42085.

5. NEWS C. Transcript: Dr. Anthony Fauci on “Face the Nation,” May 16, 2021. 2021.

6. Rose J. A Report on the US Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) of the COVID-1 9 Messenger Ribonucleic Acid (mRNA) Biologicals. Science, Public Health Policy, and The Law. 2021;2:59–80.

7. Fraiman J, Erviti J, Jones M, et al. Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomized trials in adults. Vaccine. 2022;40(40):5798–5805. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.08.036.

8. Shir-Raz Y. Breaking: Leaked Video Reveals Serious Side-Effects Related to the Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Covered Up by the Israeli MOH. 2022.

9. Witberg G, Barda N, Hoss S, et al. Myocarditis after Covid-19 Vaccination in a Large Health Care Organization. N Engl J Med. 2021;385(23):2132–2139. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2110737.

10. Chua GT, Kwan MYW, Chui CSL, et al. Epidemiology of Acute Myocarditis/Pericarditis in Hong Kong Adolescents Following Comirnaty Vaccination. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 2021:ciab989. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciab989.

11. Hulscher N, Alexander PE, Amerling R, et al. A Systematic REVIEW of Autopsy findings in deaths after covid-19 vaccination. Forensic Sci Int. 2024:112115. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2024.112115.

12. Oster ME, Shay DK, Su JR, et al. Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021. JAMA. 2022;327(4):331–340. doi: 10.1001/jama.2021.24110.

13. Takada K, Taguchi K, Samura M, et al. SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine-related myocarditis and pericarditis: An analysis of the Japanese Adverse Drug Event Report database. Journal of Infection and Chemotherapy. 2024.

14. McCullough P, Rogers C, Cosgrove K, et al. Association between COVID-19 Vaccination and Neuropsychiatric Conditions. 2025.

15. McCullough PA, Hulscher N. Risk stratification for future cardiac arrest after COVID-19 vaccination. World J Cardiol. 2025;17(2):103909. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v17.i2.103909.

16. Hulscher N, Hodkinson R, Makis W, McCullough PA. Autopsy findings in cases of fatal COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis. ESC Heart Failure. 2024;n/a. doi: 10.1002/ehf2.14680.

17. Mead MN, Seneff S, Wolfinger R, et al. COVID-19 Modified mRNA “Vaccines”: Lessons Learned from Clinical Trials, Mass Vaccination, and the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Part 1. International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research. 2024;3(2):1112–1178. doi: 10.56098/fdrasy50.

18. Mead MN, Seneff S, Rose J, Wolfinger R, Hulscher N, McCullough PA. COVID-19 Modified mRNA “Vaccines”: Lessons Learned from Clinical Trials, Mass Vaccination, and the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Part 2. International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research. 2024;3(2):1275–1344. doi: 10.56098/w66wjg87.

This article was co-authored by Yaffa Shir-Raz, Shay Zakov, and Peter A. McCullough.

Dr. Yaakov Ophir is Head of the Mental Health Innovation and Ethics Lab at Ariel University and a member of the Steering Committee for the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (CHIA) at the University of Cambridge. His research explores digital-age psychopathology, AI and VR screening and interventions, and critical psychiatry. His recent book, ADHD Is Not an Illness and Ritalin Is Not a Cure, challenges the dominant biomedical paradigm in psychiatry. As part of his broader commitment to responsible innovation and scientific integrity, Dr. Ophir critically assesses scientific studies related to mental health and medical practice, with particular attention to ethical concerns and the influence of industrial interests. He is also a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in child and family therapy.

June 21, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Excess deaths 2025

Dr. John Campbell | May 28, 2025

Excess mortality: Deaths from all causes compared to average over previous years

https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000282

1 January 2020 until 31 December 2022

47 countries of the Western World, 3, 098, 456

Excess mortality

2021, 42 countries

2022, 43 countries

Conclusions

Excess mortality has remained high in the Western World for three consecutive years

This raises serious concerns.

Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality.

2015–2019 compared to 2020–2024

Percentage difference between the reported weekly or monthly deaths in 2020–2024 and the average deaths in the same period in 2015–2019

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-average-baseline

Correlation and causality

Smoking is correlated with lung cancer

Asbestos exposure is correlated with mesothelioma

Alcohol consumption is associated with liver cirrhosis

Obesity is correlated with high sugar intake

Radiation exposure is correlated with cancer

Dioxin exposure is correlated with cancer

Causality may be adjudicated by larger scale associations, consistent between countries, where other explanations are unlikely, where effect follows cause, where greater exposure causes more harm with a plausible biological mechanism with coherence between bench science and epidemiological data supported by (even limited) experimentation. By analogy to other causes of harm and sometimes by reversibility.

https://drjohncampbell.co.uk/

June 18, 2025 Posted by | Video | , , | Leave a comment

US makes sweeping changes to key vaccine group

RT | June 10, 2025

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has dismissed all the members of a key advisory panel that has helped shape national vaccination policy for decades. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Monday that the move was necessary to reestablish public trust and address longstanding concerns over conflicts of interest.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was created within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the mid-1960s. In an op-ed published on Monday in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy claimed that the panel has “a history of conflicts of interest, persecution of dissidents, a lack of curiosity, and skewed science.”

The secretary cited reports from a House committee in 2000 and the HHS inspector general in 2009 that detailed financial connections between ACIP members and pharmaceutical companies. He said his decision to replace all 17 current members was driven by the need for a “clean slate.”

“The problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt. Most likely aim to serve the public interest as they understand it,” Kennedy wrote. “The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.”

ACIP members are appointed to four-year terms, and eight of the most recent appointments were made in the final days of the administration of Joe Biden.

”It was very intentional,” a former senior HHS official told STAT News. “It was our goal to fill every vacancy on every [federal advisory committee] the department has, with particular focus on ones like ACIP where maintenance of our scientific expertise was critical.”

Mandy Cohen, who served as the CDC director under Biden, told NBC News the move “spreads confusion and casts doubt on transparent public health processes that protect Americans.” Richard Besser, who was acting CDC director under Barack Obama, said it “should erase any remaining doubt that he intends to impose his personal anti-vaccine agenda on the American people.”

Kennedy has long criticized aspects of US vaccine programs, arguing they are too closely aligned with industry interests and fail to prioritize public health. His detractors frequently label him an “anti-vaxxer.”

During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy pledged that his decisions would be science-driven. In his WSJ piece, he warned against attributing the American public’s “crisis of trust” solely to “misinformation or anti-science attitudes.”

June 10, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

APPROVE NOW, STUDY LATER: IS THIS SAFE?

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | June 5, 2025

As alarming new data reveals a spike in sudden heart attacks and strokes, the FDA has greenlit Moderna’s latest mRNA COVID shot—no placebo trials, no independent long-term safety data, and post-market studies delayed until 2029 and 2034. Once again, speed trumps caution. Is safety giving way to speed again, or are post-marketing placebo trials a step in the right direction?

June 9, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , | Leave a comment

Science Under Attack

The myths and realities

By John Ridgway | Cimate Scepticism | June 3, 2025

During the recent Covid-19 pandemic, Peter J. Hotez, professor of paediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine, wrote a Scientific American opinion piece that spoke of an emerging threat that he believed should concern us all:

Antiscience has emerged as a dominant and highly lethal force, and one that threatens global security, as much as do terrorism and nuclear proliferation. We must mount a counteroffensive and build new infrastructure to combat antiscience, just as we have for these other more widely recognized and established threats.

He paints a picture of a political right-wing engaging in a disinformation campaign, and of an interference with an otherwise scientifically sound programme – actions that he maintained would result in many dying unnecessarily:

Despite my best efforts to sound the alarm and call it out, the antiscience disinformation created mass havoc in the red states. During the summer of 2020, COVID-19 accelerated in states of the South as governors prematurely lifted restrictions to create a second and unnecessary wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Given his strong views, and the bellicose manner in which he chose to express them, it is not surprising that Hotez recently teamed up with Professor Michael Mann to write of the triple threat of global warming, a “cadence of pandemic threats” and, most importantly:

… a well-organized, financed, politically motivated, and steadily globalizing campaign of disinformation and attacks against mainstream science that makes it extremely difficult to mount an effective global response to the climate and pandemic threats.

Of course, Hotez and Mann are not alone in promoting this narrative of a burgeoning threat to humanity. For example, in a recent PNAS article, Phillipp-Muller et al wrote:

From vaccination refusal to climate change denial, antiscience views are threatening humanity.

So confident are the authors in the reality of the phenomenon that they dedicate the whole paper to analysing causes and suggesting countermeasures:

Building on various emerging data and models that have explored the psychology of being antiscience, we specify four core bases of key principles driving antiscience attitudes. These principles are grounded in decades of research on attitudes, persuasion, social influence, social identity, and information processing. They apply across diverse domains of antiscience phenomena… Politics triggers or amplifies many principles across all four bases, making it a particularly potent force in antiscience attitudes.

But what exactly is antiscience? Is it well-organized? Does it primarily emanate from the right-wing? And is it an attitude that represents an existential threat to humanity on a par with nuclear war?

The authors of the PNAS paper seem to have no doubts regarding the basis for antiscience — it’s simply a case of pathological psychology:

Distinct clusters of basic mental processes can explain when and why people ignore, trivialize, deny, reject, or even hate scientific information—a variety of responses that might collectively be labeled as “being antiscience”.

Once one starts out with such a premise, it becomes remarkably easy to formulate ‘frameworks’ and ‘models’ to give the whole thing a scientific veneer. And since science is upheld as the epitome of the rational venture, any resistance to scientific findings can be readily dismissed as a retreat from reason.

Indeed, in their book, Science and the Retreat from Reason, John Gillot and Manjit Kumar present a thoughtful treatise explaining why, despite the obvious benefits of the scientific method and its resulting successes, society has nevertheless grown wary of the technocratic future that it offers. Yet nowhere within its 250 pages does the book use the term ‘antiscience’, or speak of it as a phenomenon resulting from politically inspired disinformation. Furthermore, perhaps because it was written back in 1995, it doesn’t see the retreat from reason as an existential threat requiring ‘new infrastructures’ to ‘mount a counteroffensive’. Instead, a lack of faith in science is seen as stemming from a post-war disillusionment. Basically, science had gained the reputation of being the handmaiden of a belligerent military, and it became very difficult to maintain high levels of trust in a sector of society that delivered the threat of atomic annihilation. Furthermore, developments such as genetically modified food and the various attempts to control and exploit the environment did little to endear those who buy in to the idea of a purity of nature. As such, it was the liberal left-wing that led the movement against science in its practical realities. The idea that antiscientific attitudes are the reserve of the right wing is a relatively modern invention.

Of course, none of this should be used as a reason to question the potency and integrity of the scientific method. However, I sincerely doubt that this is why anyone would come to ‘ignore, trivialize, deny, reject, or even hate scientific information’. It isn’t the scientific mind that some people distrust – it is the scientific community. It is the recognition that science is a social enterprise and, as such, is not immune to the problems that can emerge when humans interact and compete. Seen in this light, antiscience is not a pathology of thinking but the label invented by those who are comfortable with such issues in order to stigmatize those who are not.

It is easy to see where the comfortable position would come from. Scientists do know about phenomena such as groupthink. They are well aware that the structuring of academia is such that scientific enquiry is marshalled both by sources of funding and by influential figureheads (not to mention a growing tendency for prosocial censorship). And yet they can look around them and see a broadly uncorrupted society of individuals who are personally motivated only by the desire to understand how the world works and how best to further the interests of humanity. They are ideally placed to understand just how much effort has gone into validating a particular finding, and so must find it highly frustrating to see vociferous and vehement rejection emanating from those who enjoy no such advantage. When the challenge has a political foundation, their disquiet is bound to be all the more profound. They are the scientists and practitioners of the scientific method, so this challenge is, by definition, antiscientific to them. And if you have an ego like Michael Mann’s, combined as it is with a victim complex, you are going to imagine you are surrounded by an orc army.

There are certainly plenty of science communicators on the internet who are only too willing and eager to defend the comfortable position and to cruelly mock the ‘antiscientist’. See, for example, some of the output from Professor David James Farina, aka Professor Dave. As is often the case, he specialises in debunking easy targets such as Flat Earthers and proponents of Intelligent Design, but along with that comes a regrettably condescending and arrogantly dismissive attitude towards anyone who isn’t fully on board with the idea that only credentialed scientists are qualified to criticise other scientists. But this isn’t a debate that is going to be settled by lampooning your local crackpot. The issues are far too nuanced for that.

For example, let us return to the Covid-19 pandemic and reflect upon its use as an example of an explosion of the antiscience movement. There was indeed no shortage of opinion expressed on subjects such as the safety and efficacy of vaccines, the importance of masks, lockdown strategies, mobile phone masts, etc. Some of the advice given wasn’t particularly well thought through and there was no shortage of downright conspiracy and pseudoscience in the air. But throughout it all, politicians were anxious to maintain the mantra that they were only following the science, no matter how many twists and turns that entailed. The reality, however, was that there was never any single science but a plurality of sciences offering different perspectives. As Dr Elisabeth Paul et al point out:

“Anti-science” accusations are common in medicine and public health, sometimes to discredit scientists who hold opposing views. However, there is no such thing as “one science”. Epistemology recognizes that any “science” is sociologically embedded, and therefore contextual and intersubjective.

The paper illustrates the point by tracing the history of claims made on behalf of the various vaccines employed, pointing out many inconsistencies and contradictions in the various narratives as the crisis unfolded. The paper finishes with some very wise words:

Rather than uncritically continuing to perpetuate the “follow the science” vs “anti-science” dichotomy, let us all look in the mirror and reflect what really constitutes science. If nothing else, this involves the curiosity of deliberating the multiple perspectives arising from the different lenses of inquiry. Being open-minded and critical does not immediately equate to being “anti-science”, as some medical and political thought leaders want us to believe.

The message given is that scientists are themselves very often to blame for the lack of trust they encounter within the public, and this is basically due to them adopting an overly dogmatic attitude:

To regain public trust in science, it is high time scientists acknowledge the limitations of their methods and of their results, and to provide decision-makers, populations and healthcare providers with appropriate tools to judge how to best apply particular research results to individuals and communities.

None of this is to accuse scientists of corruption or of engaging in a hoax. They are simply dealing with complexities that have to be honestly portrayed as such. As Dr Paul et al put it:

Here, understanding the dynamics of how knowledge is socially constructed and used is crucial. This is because health interventions, and what is determined to be science, can often be captured by combinations of favoured scientific practice, pathway-dependency, vested interests, politics, louder voices, or, regarding our immediate concern, by ideational hegemonies that prohibit wider dialogic knowledge production.

Very often, by being defensive about this, scientists become their own worst enemies. Too often, sceptics are accused of failing to understand the scientific method, but the reality is that they usually understand it all too well. They are just not that convinced that it is all that relevant when evaluating a scientist’s latest earnest statement.

There is a certain hubris to be detected within those who speak of existential threats from an organised antiscience movement, since it implies that there are those with dark motives who fear the spotlight of scientific truth being shone in their direction. No doubt there is much that is irrational in modern discourse and we would all do well to take whatever benefit there is to be had from listening to the scientific voice (that is why the Trump administration’s DOGE purge is so worrying). However, that is a long way from uncritically accepting all that has been said in the interests of ‘following the science’. I’m sure that those on both sides of the debate would argue that being legitimately open-minded and critical is not being ‘antiscience’. Unfortunately, however, we are still a long way from agreeing upon what constitutes legitimacy, and this is as true for the climate change debate as it is for any.

June 8, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

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